New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by vilmosi » Wed, Oct 18, 2017, 9:17 PM UTC

icelancer wrote: post #164

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…

>>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.

>>> Yes. I don't want to increase my attractiveness regarding a house robbery, as I live well below my means

If you live below your means, why would robbers target you? They don't care how much you make, they care what TV you have.

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

#222

Post by CodeWriter23 » Wed, Oct 18, 2017, 9:18 PM UTC

yeukhon wrote: post #206

NY has this in effect, but quite a few companies whose headquarters are based in NYC still ask applicants for their prior salary range on their applications. I hope this is just a lag, not ignoring the law deliberately. Also, we should outlaw employers from asking applications their desired salary range; the negotiation should happen after interviews. Employers should either specify a range or give a figure in the jo…

So as an employer, I should just waste mine and the applicant’s time and then find out they want more than I can possibly pay them? No thanks.

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

#223

Post by icelancer » Wed, Oct 18, 2017, 9:18 PM UTC

vilmosi wrote: post #221

icelancer wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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.

>>> Yes. I don't want to increase my attractiveness regarding a house robbery, as I live well below my means If you live below your means, why would robbers target you? They don't care how much you make, they care what TV you have.

Living below my means doesn't mean I live like my neighbors. My house is roughly the same as everyone around me. The contents of the house are not (and they are private), and yet I still live well below my means. I have a semi-nice TV, and more importantly, expensive computers like pretty much everyone on HN to do my job.

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

#224

Post by vilmosi » Wed, Oct 18, 2017, 9:18 PM UTC

everdev wrote: post #212

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…

All Americans have a right to privacy. Their reason for privacy doesn't matter and doesn't need to make sense to you. Compensation is an important conversation to make sure a job is a win/win. I think "What would you like to be paid?" is the most relevant question anyway.

[deleted]

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

#225

Post by michaelmrose » Wed, Oct 18, 2017, 9:19 PM UTC

nightski wrote: post #142

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #123

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?

Basically if this doesn't already exist I could start a business tomorrow recommending salary offers to employers based on position and applicant.

Possible sources of salary info include

Job sites where people review and report on salary at their employer, even if anonymous its super likely that figuring out exactly who you are could be less than rocket science.

Credit reporting agencies.

Bullshit surveys where people answer questions like how much money you make.

Really smart educated guesses based on analyses of known good data from your own and similar employers/employees.

Big employers. As long as the data isn't directly shared with their fellow companies and only in fact with me they stand to benefit from me knowing how much they and their competitor pay so I can recommend the lowest salary an employee is likely to accept so they can minimize cost.

In short your employer doesn't know how much you make but I do and recommend based on that info. Further I can even perpetuate racism and sexism! If minorities and women are currently paid less I can let you know to offer less and still get applicants. If I train a computer to make that determination it can even decide such without me explicitly telling it to and we can blame the algorithm instead of me!

Go technology and go capitalism. High five!

This is of course entirely hypothetical but sufficiently trivial that I find it hard to imagine people not doing it.

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

#226

Post by cm2187 » Wed, Oct 18, 2017, 9:19 PM UTC

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…

Or a slight variant. Base salary grids, and confidential discretionary compensation.

Whatever gets negotiated on hiring in term of variable comp rolls off relatively quickly and then it's up to individual performance. Salary grids remove any curiosity, jealousy and other distractions on that topic for employees. It also avoids a negotiation on hiring, or leaving too much discretion to the employee making the hiring (and possible discrimination).

Lets you still reward performance while eliminating discrimination on hiring.

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

#227

Post by euphoria83 » Wed, Oct 18, 2017, 9:19 PM UTC

This is a great move! Many a times, a company will set your salary by incrementing your current salary by 10% (say). This is demeaning. The future employer is basically saying that we want you to work for us at as low a wage as we can possibly pay, while not being stupid. Any negotiation comes back to why your existing salary is so low, implying that there must be something wrong with you.

The new law forces an open discussion where both sides can decide what they want to pay/earn and start the negotiation from there. The negotiation then follows the track of who has better opportunities. That is a better market dynamic. It will be interesting to see how this plays out when I look for my next job. :)

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

#228

Post by throw-away-8 » Wed, Oct 18, 2017, 9:19 PM UTC

icelancer wrote: post #175

tclancy wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I live well below my means in a developing neighborhood, amongst other reasons. And what, hide cash in your mattress?

Not really sure how I store my money is relevant; are you insinuating that my neighbors and potential regionally-available criminals can get my demand deposit and IRA balances at will? EDIT: Ah, I see, you were making a snarky joke about them breaking into my house and stealing stuff. I do have nice things in my house, yes, not cash under my mattress. Just because I live below my means doesn't mean I don't have thing…

So what you really need is a full public disclosure of expenses in addition to public salary information.

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

#229

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 18, 2017, 9:19 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #214

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…

You make it sound as if Americans were more open about salaries as the rest of the world. My impressions up to now were opposite - Americans super open and others not much.

[deleted]

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

#230

Post by dogma1138 » Wed, Oct 18, 2017, 9:20 PM UTC

sjg007 wrote: post #199

dogma1138 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of employers that can't afford to pay 180k, not everyone works for Google, Amazon or Facebook. Here in London you have a lot of companies that look for people with similar experience that have huge pay ranges. A Sr. Engineer can be making anywhere from 40-45K to 110-120K a year (in general health care pays the least, fintech/finance pays the most, startups in the UK often underpay and equity is a jok…

I don't know why everyone thinks Google pays well... It was only a few years ago that they gave everyone a 10% raise across the board to address issues of underpayment. That was probably due to the Facebook threat. In addition, lest we forget, all of the big tech companies colluded to depress wages as well.

I don't know I don't work in SV I work in London, here Google and Facebook are on the upper end of the spectrum above them most multinational banks and just below fintech and investment/exchanges houses.