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New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

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Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#71

Post by dragonwriter »

chollida1 wrote: post #3

> The goal is to narrow the gender wage gap. If a woman is paid less than a man doing the same job and a new employer bases her pay on her prior salary, gender discrimination can be perpetuated, the bill’s backers say. Hmm, I'd never thought about that angle,but I guess it makes sense. No word on if they are allowed to use Equifax, etc to pull salary data from? EDIT: looking at the bill it looks like querying Equifax…

> With the number of states introducing legislation like this it will be interesting to see if you can tease out any state or city based GDP growth/shrinking based on these laws.

Probably not reliably; the numbers are still small and there are way too may potential confounding factors.

Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#72

Post by kevinmchugh »

dominotw wrote: post #42
chollida1 wrote: post #3

> The goal is to narrow the gender wage gap. If a woman is paid less than a man doing the same job and a new employer bases her pay on her prior salary, gender discrimination can be perpetuated, the bill’s backers say. Hmm, I'd never thought about that angle,but I guess it makes sense. No word on if they are allowed to use Equifax, etc to pull salary data from? EDIT: looking at the bill it looks like querying Equifax…

What about this > We get the market rates through a company called Radford. [1] Is "Radford" still allowed to pull salary data? https://m.signalvnoise.com/how-we-pay-people-at-basecamp-f1d...

37s/basecamp uses Radford for market information - what is the going rate for a person with X responsibilities. This law bans the use of an individual's salary history to make a salary offer to that individual.

Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#73

Post by majormajor »

ciro_langone wrote: post #19
nicolashahn wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of off topic but should one always hide their current salary, even if it's above market rate (given their experience on paper)? It seems as though if an employer were only looking to spend so much on a hire, then if you're already likely above that number, wouldn't it save both you and the employer's time? I can see the obvious downside of sharing a relatively low salary, but it seems like there could be benefit…

No, there isn't, unless you're okay with short-selling yourself. If you share and your amount is > the employers, you have no job. Bad situation. If you share and your amount is If you offer the number first, the employer becomes the customer - and the customer is always right. If you wait for them to make you an offer, they have to make an offer that is compelling, in the same way sales people go above-and-beyond to…

"If you share and your amount is > the employers, you have no job. Bad situation."

If I'm currently employed, that saves me taking time off for interviews, etc.

Depends on how desperately you want to leave, in that case, I guess.

Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#74

Post by Retric »

benji-york wrote: post #57
ciro_langone wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there isn't, unless you're okay with short-selling yourself. If you share and your amount is > the employers, you have no job. Bad situation. If you share and your amount is If you offer the number first, the employer becomes the customer - and the customer is always right. If you wait for them to make you an offer, they have to make an offer that is compelling, in the same way sales people go above-and-beyond to…

I think that holds only if your time is worth nothing. I don't want to go through weeks of interviews just to find out that my salary demands are $50K more than they're willing to pay.

They need to convince you it's worth going through that much effort. It's also completely reasonable to ask what a position pays.

Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#75

Post by hildaman »

I don't think this will fix anything. Consider the following scenario.

Employer to (theoretically) underpaid/under-represented minority: I offer you x.

Underpaid minority: accepted.

Employer to market-rate perspective employee: I offer you x.

market-rate perspective employee: nope.

Employer to market-rate perspective employee: how about X+25K?

market-rate perspective employee: sounds good.

This bill tries to fix a symptom of the problem - but the underlying dynamics causing the pay disparity will remain.

Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#77

Post by sefpfi12 »

rajeshp1986 wrote: post #59
sefpfi12 wrote: post #35

I don't think this is a right way to go about trying to narrow the gender wage gap. Half of the reason we have one (a wage gap) is because it's taboo in America to reveal how much you get paid with your co-workers. It makes no sense to me why that is the case, all it does it allow the company to screw you over more. The solutions should be to have each company come up with there own publicly available pay scale that…

It is a good step towards that. Although top management in companies wants to bridge the gender gap but when it comes to hiring, the HR & recruiters get biased and tend to be biased towards candidates with lower salary expectations. They want to check how much the candidate was getting paid, which gives them more room to bargain with salary expectations. IMHO, the salary of a job should be based on how much the compa…

why I suggested each company have there own pay scale, like google will pay 60k for a programer, microsoft 65k and maybe they scale different, but it should be searchable. (numbers made up)

Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#78

Post by sharemywin »

leyth wrote: post #39

Why ask when you can just find out during background check. If anything, they should ban background checks completely.

some jobs background checks make sense. do you really want to hire a former bank robber as a teller? or convicted sex criminal as a teacher.

Personally, I would want to do a credit check on a CFO or controller because if they can't manage their own finances how can they manage the businesses.

Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#79

Post by komali2 »

So how does this work for larger companies with multiple offices? Some cases I'm curious about (and have always been for laws like this):

My company's headquarters are registered in Texas, but we have an office in CA that is doing hiring for that office.

Same as above, but hiring someone residing in CA to move to Texas.

Same as above, but hiring someone residing in CA to remote work (in CA or wherever they please).

Then, all three cases, but with a company headquartered Int'l.

Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#80

Post by dclowd9901 »

otakucode wrote: post #31

I've never once answered such a question and never understood why anyone would. When they ask, you tell them you don't give out that information. I've never even had someone question that or ask twice.

I once had a recruiter (contracted) get angry and berate me when I refused to answer, then finally gave in and gave him my full compensation figure from when I worked at Google. He said I was lying and nobody would hire me at that rate. Needless to say I let him know what I thought of him and ended that contact, letting the HR department at the company for whom he was recruiting know what a jackass he was.
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