For comparison, in Finland all salaries are made public by the tax authority. Annual salaries are printed in the newspaper annually and traffic ticket fines are proportionate with your income.
New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary
311–320 of 680 posts
Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary
#312I was asked once at an interview for my current salary, since I barely wanted the new job I gave them a number $20k less than true.
The recruiter immediately said the job pays $10k less than that.
Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. That's the key. I want to know what reasons. It is the best possible feedback for me. If you want to earn X more, you need to do this and that like this colleague does. It will force management to have better salary…
> It will force management to have better salary policies.
Totally agreed. Quite often the reason X gets paid more than Y is that X demanded the money and had the social power to get away with it.
This is, of course, a really bad idea. If one believes in salary as any sort of incentive for specific behavior, then it encourages people being aggressive and demanding. It also encourages people to create situations where they are necessary, irreplaceable, and noticed due to regular heroics. While discouraging people from being polite, unassuming, dedicated team players who work hard to share knowledge, improve truck factor, and invest in long-term sustainability.
Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
this problem can be easily solved by removing the absurdity of a multi-million dollar lottery.
Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary
#315Earlier 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…
> I assume you are American, as am I, and so I understand we've been socialized by our culture to feel this way Just a unrelated comment. It's funny to hear that. In France there's a widespread stereotype that Americans are very open to talk about their salary.
No, that's very wrong. Talking about salary or really money in general is rude and kind of unseemly. You generally would never ask someone how much they make in social situations, and only assholes would brag about their salary to others.
Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary
#316Earlier 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.
As a counterpoint, if it wasn't for all the friendly people on HackerNews and similar places talking about how big their salaries are, I would still be stuck in Eastern Europe happy to write code for $7/hour. The biggest capitalist victory has been convincing people that sharing salary information is impolite. It benefits "the ruling class" in several ways. First it prevents people from realizing they're underpaid an…
It benefits the "ruling class" because it benefits people who know how to negotiate and use information asymmetry, and those people tend to wind up in the "ruling class".
Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
how about telling the candidates in front that the expected salary is in the range of x-y.
Any prospective employee who asks me is going to get an answer that is 20% lower than the other job description they were eligible for prior to asking.
Great way to alienate good people and encourage underqualified applicants.
Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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…
> So what stops you from sharing this 'hidden' metric with Y? "John is making $10k more than you because his code is usually higher quality than yours and he has a better attitude". You closed one can of worms and you just opened five new ones.
As a manager, it's my job to open those cans of worms. It's also my job to be continually helping people improve, so that issues like this never get to the "can of worms" stage.
Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary
#319Previous title and company will probably become one of the proxy to get a good guesstimate of the candidate's salary. Writing this as the Senior Chief Executive Architect (of that 10 lines bug fix that i just pushed).
Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary
#320Earlier 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…
I am very well compensated for bringing a lot of value to my company. The exact details are private between the company, me/my family, and the IRS.
It's not going to benefit me one bit to have my financial arrangements made public. I'm more than happy with the deal I've struck; the company's leverage is not reduced by 3rd parties knowing the numbers.