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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

#321

Post by Sangermaine »

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.

We were talking about your friends and family knowing. If you're concerned that your friends and family might rob your home if they knew your salary, you've got larger problems than talking about it.

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

#322

Post by Khelavaster »

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 in a developing neighborhood, amongst other reasons.

The entire point is that it's deeply screwed up for you to need to hide your wealth from your neighbors--or from some set of neighbors but not others--for fear of being robbed.

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

#323

Post by Lev1a »

maxxxxx wrote: post #259
jogjayr wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Salaries in US Congress are also public and it's not a big deal. A lot of people don't like the idea of public salaries but I am pretty sure it would be to the benefit of the employee. Salary negotiation as an accountant should be pretty since you know exactly how much people make.

The main reason for public salaries for gov employees/law makers/etc. is that they are payed through taxes, employees of other companies (unless they do contract work for gov most of the time) are not.

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

#324

Post by r00fus »

komali2 wrote: post #101
whyenot wrote: post #76

At the same time, salary information for all California state employees, from the governor to university groundskeepers is publicly available online for anyone to use. transparentcalifornia.com

That site has the most aggressive anti ad-blocker mechanism I have ever seen. I understand why people do this but holy shit that is obnoxious. EDIT: UC Coaches some of the highest paid people in the state... sigh.

College sports is some of the best way for such institutions to make money. Is it a corruptive influence?

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

#325

Post by bentruyman »

ryandrake wrote: post #289
bentruyman wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this actually happening? After a good interview, qualified employees are being turned away by companies in the later stages of the interview/employment process, simply due to candidates refusing to divulge their current salary? I mean, I'm sure it _has_ happened, not sure if that's a strong argument though.

Impossible to know, because employers are not required to share the reason for dropping candidates from consideration. Candidates would need to speculate about the real reason, but I can tell you with pretty high certainty that it has happened to me at least once.

I'm sorry if that may have happened to you. In my experience, this has never happened and, if anything, I was given a substantial bump above the number I gave as a current salary. I guess one anecdote vs. another. I dunno, we'll hopefully see whether or not this actually achieves its intended goals or not.

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

#326

Post by Sangermaine »

whataretensors wrote: post #198
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 it really makes no sense If you have jealous and spiteful family you might feel differently. Unless you like hearing sob stories or being blamed for other people's problems.

That happens now anyway. My branch of my extended family is fairly well-off relative to the other branches, and so my whole life I'm used to my parents being asked by their relatives for money/favors/etc. I'd guarantee they don't give out their actual salary information to their relatives, but it's obvious they're better off.

Knowing or not knowing the specific number doesn't change anything with regard to relatives/friends bothering you for money. People who know you see how you live, where you live, etc and know generally where things stand.

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

#327

Post by hota_mazi »

wpietri wrote: post #318
hota_mazi wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Surely as a manager you understand that pitting people against each other is a recipe for disaster and not a path toward improvement.

In other words, never say "John's code is cleaner than yours", say "I suggest you work on polishing these pull requests".

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

#328

Post by s73ver_ »

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

I don't see a problem with it. I never saw the reason why any employer needed to know what someone was paid before. A job is worth around $X to your company to be performed. What I was paid in my previous job has absolutely no bearing on that.

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

#329

Post by Sangermaine »

pgeorgi wrote: post #270
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…

>> I do not want my family and friends to know how much I make. > But have you thought about why you feel this way? Not every family is healthy. Some become _decidedly_ unhealthy as soon as money comes into play, and having precise figures available can be really destructive. It might work better in more egalitarian societies, where the difference in pay is less to begin with (eg Scandinavia). But that's not a road t…

>and having precise figures available can be really destructive.

How? It doesn't change anything with regard to this specific concern about family. They already have an idea about how you live and how much you have from knowing you. They might not have a specific dollar amount, but they'll have a good idea.

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

#330

Post by adventured »

vilmosi wrote: post #285
adventured wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be private information so long as it's not considerably out of the ordinary (that could easily be a listing requirement established by an exchange). Just as in the case of eg acquisitions, which often will be or must be reported in specific financial terms if they're above a certain size. If an programmer makes $100,000 in a company where programmers regularly earn that, it should not be public information.…

[deleted]

As a shareholder of Google, you do not have access to every individual $100,000 expense they have across a given year (much less an explanation of exactly how it was spent, why it was spent, when it was spent).

The most obvious argument against it, is that people aren't always rational (and are regularly irrational about things like money). I'd argue they frequently aren't able to accurately assess their own financial value (in either direction). It opens a pandora's box within corporations about why X person is worth $Z, while Joe or Jane thinks they should obviously be paid more vs X person. It's not easy to maintain harmony within organizations, that would make it far worse.

What would be the value gained from making all individual employee salaries public (within a public corporation)? It would have to be immense to offset the friction it would cause.

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