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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

#181

Post by basseq »

nicolashahn wrote: post #62
benji-york wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is exactly why I made the comment. Recently went through 4 calls and a full day on site just to be met with an offer they wouldn't budge on that's 20% lower than what I currently make.

I've been through a similar situation: big mistake. They key is to validate you are in range on salary before committing to an interview process. Companies should have the same goal, but many will waste their own time—as you experienced.

This doesn't mean you should share current salary information, but does mean you should be prepared to state your salary expectations. This can be a good thing, as you can anchor high.

If you're in demand and are taking phone screens on a whim, you can always ask the recruiter to share their range. Odds are good they won't, and you can have some "fun" by expressing concern that they don't know what they're hiring for.

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

#182

Post by icelancer »

surfmike wrote: post #178
Sangermaine wrote: post #154

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. 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…

Money is also the root of a lot of strife, both within families and beyond, both for people who have money and those that don't. People should have a right to privacy in their financial affairs.

Correct. Look at lottery winners and see how their lives are ruined when it becomes public knowledge that they are suddenly worth a lot of money.

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

#183

Post by cortesoft »

ianai wrote: post #125
geebee wrote: 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…

Actually in this case it’s the buyers of labor (employers) that have all the market power. Denything them this additional information gives the producers of labor an edge through asymmetric information, theoretically. In practice, I don’t buy it. Sophisticated entities with lots of resources (aka employers) will always find a way to game any situation to their benefit. They could simply use this as a reason to pay ev…

It isn't just an information problem, it is a leverage problem. Suppose a company has 100 employees; if an employee leaves, they are down 1/100 of their productivity while they find a replacement. If an employee if fired, they are down somewhere between 50% and 100% of their income, depending on family status.

A single job is simply more vital to an employee than it is to a company, so the company has the leverage.

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

#184

Post by nightski »

falcolas wrote: post #168
nightski wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, but this information is easily accessible from family & friends as the parent aluded? If so can you provide a link?

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

#185

Post by majormajor »

pmoriarty wrote: post #155
majormajor wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Posting a range "job pays X to Y" runs the risk of every candidate assuming they'd be on the "Y" side, not the lower "X" side. If a candidate wows you, you want to impress them, so you have to have room to go above your posted range, in that case. But then you're being less transparent, once again.

"Posting a range "job pays X to Y" runs the risk of every candidate assuming they'd be on the "Y" side" Employers know this, so they just adjust their advertised range downwards so that the "Y" in "X to Y" is actually at the low end of the range they're actually willing to pay.

Yes, I mentioned that, but how does that help the candidate filtering lack-of-transparency problem? I as candidate no longer know their real range, so I have little useful information. I as employer can't win sharing the true range or the false range.

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

#186

Post by jogjayr »

geebee wrote: post #119
maxxxxx wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember seeing a table of salaries for each H-1 visa. I think the information is public.

Yeah, but not with names, and not for every employee (ie., including non H1B workers), right?

For H1B workers years of education and education is also provided. In most cases it's enough information for de-anonymization.

On the whole you may be right about making salaries public. Norway's made tax return public [1] across the board and the sky hasn't fallen in. Though to be fair in the Norwegian model you find out who has been looking at your salary info.

The counter-argument is that a system like that could allow criminals to target their victims more easily. Kidnappers could steal an SSN or other identifier to scope out victims (without a trail leading back to themselves). I also saw a scary article on HN a week ago about the guardianship industry in FL and how it targets seniors with assets to drain.

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

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

#187

Post by fsloth »

hota_mazi wrote: post #158
geebee wrote: 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…

"As someone running a large organization, this is also a logistical nightmare since I usually have very good reasons to compensate X more than Y even if Y might think they should be paid the same amount."

So what stops you from sharing this 'hidden' metric with Y? If there was some weasel reason X would have never recieved package in the first place if everything was public when he got his package.

Now, the reason X got his comp is therefore sane and you can just explain to Y what he needs to accomplish to reach X:s level.

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

#188

Post by rconti »

TearsInTheRain wrote: post #176
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…

> The goal is to narrow the gender wage gap. This makes the law seem even more ridiculous to me. Do we really need the government stepping into the hiring process like this and micromanaging? It feels like they treating us like children incapable of tying our own shoes or something

Apparently, yes, as this gap has not narrowed.

This seems like a very low-impact way to ensure that your past salary history is not used against you. Why should it be? And what is the burden of simply disallowing a line of questioning, with no burdensome reporting or auditing requirements?

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

#189

Post by rconti »

ryguytilidie wrote: post #8
civilian wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equifax has salary data? I hadn't heard that. //edit: Well shit, TIL: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/10/equifax-breach-fallout-y...

Any time you apply for a credit card or other form of credit, you generally have to give your income.

I've only given fairly vague numbers on these things. Can't say it's hurt my creditworthiness.

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

#190

Post by ryan-c »

mamon wrote: post #116
rpowers wrote: 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.

They really do that in America? I rented a lot of apartments in my country and was never asked about my income, or had a credit check. The usual way of avoiding not paying renters is requiring first rent plus guarantee deposit (usually equal to the one month rent) in advance. No further proofs of financial credibility required.

I've never rented an apartment in the US where they didn't do a credit check. Some places want a pay stub or some other proof of financial means. In a lot of parts of the US it can take several months to evict someone.
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