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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

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but know that completely rational nations have decided to go with OPs way(like Norway)

I'd laugh my ass off if the CEO/upper management of any company in the US had to actually report to their employees how much they made, and not just through salary. There would be an uprising.

Compensation packages for CEOs and upper management for public companies are, in fact, public in formation (in most cases, there are some exceptions). This sort of thing is routinely reported on by the press. This has been true for a long time.

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

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but know that completely rational nations have decided to go with OPs way(like Norway)

I'd laugh my ass off if the CEO/upper management of any company in the US had to actually report to their employees how much they made, and not just through salary. There would be an uprising.

People already know CEO salaries for publicly traded companies, and there's been no uprising.

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

#163
I'd love a deeper analysis of how this law will help.

Someone's target salary is dependent on their current. Non-savvy negotiators will expose this number.. in which case they aren't going to end up any better.

If you are significantly underpaid, the solution today is just to get two offers to ensure your BATNA is based on an alternative offer, not your current situation.

I suppose this gives more negotiation leverage to the employee, but I don't see it helping Silicon Valley based devs much. It seems the beneficiaries are mainly lower earnings who lack time/ability to source multiple offers.

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

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No thank you. My salary is private. I do not want my family and friends to know how much I make. I also have never told a potential employer my salary. I believe it stopped things from going on to the interview stage but the way they took my refusal made me assume they paid under market rate.

>No thank you. >My salary is private. I do not want my family and friends to know how much I make. But have you thought about why you feel this way? I assume you are American, as am I, and so I understand we've been socialized by our culture to feel this way, but it really makes no sense. It's just a way to harm workers by keeping us from seeing when we're being screwed. I'd even go so far as to wager that this entir…

>>But have you thought about why you feel this way?

Yes. I don't want to increase my attractiveness regarding a house robbery, as I live well below my means in a developing neighborhood, amongst other reasons.

I very much understand the concept of leverage and have no problems privately discussing my salary amongst groups that I trust. That doesn't include the entire Internet.

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

#165
post #60

I'd prefer to see this go in the other direction and make all salary information public. Right now, employers have far more information than employees, and I don't think this law will do much to change that. To me, it's similar to real estate - imagine if only sellers had access to the database of exactly what every house sold for and when, but buyers had to go with unsubstantiated, scattered rumors. Or vise versa. T…

> make all salary information public. It's a disastrous idea. First of all, if you mean public as in "the whole world can know", I can't imagine anyone being comfortable with that. Advertisers, family members, people who don't like you, etc... surely you see the problem here. If by public you mean "only within the company", even this approach will create resentment and hundreds of hours wasted in discussions and nego…

Interestingly in Norway every tax return is public

https://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2016/apr/11/when-it-c...

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

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No thank you. My salary is private. I do not want my family and friends to know how much I make. I also have never told a potential employer my salary. I believe it stopped things from going on to the interview stage but the way they took my refusal made me assume they paid under market rate.

They don’t need to ask you anymore. You self-reported it to a credit agency and friends, family, potential employers can get that plus other financial information from these agencies.

That's totally false, at least in the US.

Credit agencies measure whether you pay your debts, nothing more.

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

#167
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only above-average-salaried employees reveal salary, and companies discard applicants that don't voluntarily reveal salary history, then that just means that companies end up paying more because they'll only hire people that got paid more than average in the past. Which is to say, no, I don't think it'll work out that way.

That's a good point as far as the employer's behavior goes. It still seems beneficial to the above-average applicant to reveal their salary. I guess that means employers will assume you're below average unless you reveal your salary. That would tend to lump all the below-average people into the same salary class as far as the potential employer is concerned.

It's still not really in the employee's interest to reveal their above-average salary history until they've gotten a salary range from the employer first. After they get that range, they can choose to reveal their salary history if they think it'll give them leverage in negotiations (e.g. if they want more than the high end of the range), but anyone who's happy with the offer they get won't have a reason to reveal their salary history even if it's above-average.

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

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t need to ask you anymore. You self-reported it to a credit agency and friends, family, potential employers can get that plus other financial information from these agencies.

Where are you seeing this? There is zero income information on any of my credit reports. In addition, if it was so easy to obtain how come my credit card bank still constantly begs me to update my income information?

The info is supplemental to what is considered to be a credit report, and thus does not have to appear on your pulled credit reports.

Similar to how your FICO score is not part of your credit report; it's a separate paid service that the credit unions pay for so they can charge their own customers.

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

#169
post #44

Next: Employers should compensate interviewd candidates for their time at a rate equivalent to the position for which they are interviewing.

Why? That would steer already perverse incentives to interviewing at companies for practice, for free trips, etc. even further toward the employee.

Employers take huge hits interviewing candidates (namely the interviewer's time); I don't see this being a problem that needs to be solved.

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

#170
post #38

Really wish this would extend to apartment rent applications. I'm fine with a credit check, but they don't need to know how high they can increase my rent before I'll need to move. edit I am referring to my experience renting apartments from Property Management run communities. (Think Essex or Prometheus) Rent increases every year with them.

Isn't the rent usually fixed and known to all renters-to-be? Or did I miss your meaning?

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