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Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

news.ycombinator.com

211–220 of 805 posts

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#211

If this is correct, then it would be risky for someone to lie to a new employer about their former salary in order to receive an offer for a higher pay, because the new employer could use this service to cross check the employee's claims.

You don't need to lie. There's nothing wrong with saying "My current salary is $xxxxx, but I feel that my employer undervalues my skills so I want $yyyyyy. It's why I'm leaving my current role." There is no reason why your future salary has to be based on your current salary. If the employer you're negotiating with disagrees then walking away is the best option because they undervalue your skills too.

In practice future salaries are heavily based on current ones because that is what the new employer is de facto negotiating against. Very few people, in my experience, are willing to entertain a new job with a salary much lower than their last one. And very few employers are willing to 'leave money on the table' and offer more than they think they need to close the candidate simply because the candidate thinks they have 'mad skillz'.

If you want to actually get paid more, get two competing offers. Or you can try the strategy of not lying and just telling the new employer, 'I'm not going to tell you my previous salary.' The downside is that this clearly signals to the employer that you weren't making very much before and you are fishing for a big raise.

This kind of goes against conventional wisdom, but I actually don't think that switching jobs is the strongest time to ask for more money. I think it's after you have gotten into a role, are killing it, and adding crazy value to the company. That's when you actually have a lot of leverage to say 'hey, I love what I'm doing here and I should be paid a lot more'.

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#212

Honest question for people who are concerned about this - why is it troubling? If another company wants to hire you, obviously they'll need to offer stronger compensation than you currently have to convince you to ditch a comfortable position. The fact that employers want employees to stay quiet about their compensation so they don't have to start handing out raises doesn't seem like a good reason to be concerned abo…

a) Lots of people consider their salary quite private/personal. Equifax are, in the eyes of myself and many others, a pretty awful company, AND proven to be terrible at data security. Them hoovering up all sorts of private data that nobody wants them to have, and then selling it off, is gross

b) A potential new employer knowing your current/previous salary is bad for your negotiating position, not good

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#213
If people are upset their employers are selling this information to Equifax, you know it would be a fantastic thing that an organized bargaining unit of all your fellow coworkers could demand your employer cease. Might be time to start talking to coworkers about this and many other things that upset you about your employer.

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#214

This is a good use case for the web3 ecosystem, or at least for those working on the decentralization, personal data ownership and control parts. It should be obvious that it is important to employers to be able to verify the claims made by people who are applying to them for jobs. Claims of employment or education or credential or skill or whatever. That's what zero trust is all about, isn't it? That need is the rea…

I think it would depend a lot on who has the power in said product. The business model of the product. If it's tailored towards workers, it could be as simple as a key that you, the employee, could revoke at any time, making the centralized data void. Something like rainbow.me For the b2b model... well it could be like equifax I guess? Offer to provide that service to the business to check the data, while allowing th…

2030 and Equifax “uses the latest blockchain data” in their composite score sold to HR customers. A blockchain-based system doesn’t have enough centralized database control to appeal to Equifax.

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#215
In Colorado, employers are not allowed to prevent people from discussing compensation with coworkers and they can't retaliate if they do.

I'm working for a DAO and our salaries are public because governance had to approve the budget and all the transactions are on the public blockchain. It's refreshing to that level of transparency not to mention it forces us to have fair compensation.

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#216
post #35
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be willing to torpedo a good candidate making a reasonable request for compensation based on a discrepancy on this site?

And if you were, I suspect you are doing the candidate a favor.

a favor? how so

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rare to hear such a direct, strong argument for a union on HN.

Is it not always like this?

Not sure if you lurked much before creating an account. This is not my first account - I've been here since 2014. HN took a strong left turn a couple years ago. Before that it leaned more tech, and before that more founder/entrepreneurial. If I had to guess, it comes from this change in user distribution as HN is a decent way to keep a pulse on tech and IC's simply have more labor concerns.

(this is a weakly held take. just spitballing)

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#219

How is this even legal? How do we make this no longer possible? It seems like we need a new law to stop this unapproved sharing. Did we ever agree to this?

Your employer sold the data to equifax. There's no law that makes your income a secret. I agree it's ridiculous.

Re: Tell HN: Salary data is for sale

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hijacking here to say, literally all you need to get access to someones employment + salary history is their SSN and birthdate. edit: and a past employer that used this system Birthdays are extremely easy to get (public record), and I seem to recall a specific large organization leaking a bunch of SSN's not too long ago.......

It seems crazy to allow a large organization like that to continue operation after such an egregious error, especially if their business is centered around a bunch of personal information.

Their customers are happy. And that means Congress is kept happy. You are not their customer and Congress doesn't care if you are happy.
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