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New York City bans employers from asking potential workers about past salary

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Re: New York City bans employers from asking potential workers about past salary

#171

Post by pc86 »

louisswiss wrote: post #82
pmoriarty wrote: post #43

I never answer questions about my past or expected salary, not to employers and not to recruiters. Most employers don't ask, and the few that have (perhaps by having a part of an employment form ask for previous salary) have never made my leaving that information out an issue. Most recruiters, if they even ask, respect my decision not to talk about it, but I've been pressed hard on this by a handful of recruiters, an…

Agree with you in principle (your previous deal with company A is absolutely none of company B's business) but I would like to challenge you on one point: > I'm placed at a disadvantage in negotiations if I name a number first. ... This is unlikely to be true. Generally, in price negotiations it is advantageous to name a number first. This is known as anchoring and basically the theory is that the end result is bette…

Anchoring only works in this way if there's no definitive market value for what you're selling. I know what a software architect commands in my geographic area. If you come in asking for 1.8x that, you're off the table as a candidate immediately (which you mention in the next point). No amount of anchoring will change that.

Re: New York City bans employers from asking potential workers about past salary

#172

Post by pc86 »

jnwatson wrote: post #124
louisswiss wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with you in principle (your previous deal with company A is absolutely none of company B's business) but I would like to challenge you on one point: > I'm placed at a disadvantage in negotiations if I name a number first. ... This is unlikely to be true. Generally, in price negotiations it is advantageous to name a number first. This is known as anchoring and basically the theory is that the end result is bette…

Anchoring only works if the potential employer is ready to buy. Many, many organizations will simply use the number as yet another filter, and you won't even begin discussions. By giving a number first, you're either too high and you won't have an opportunity to sell yourself, you're too low and you've literally already negotiated against yourself, or you're lucky and right at their expectation, which you could have…

This is why we publish salary ranges with our job ads but also require a desired salary within that range from candidates.

Re: New York City bans employers from asking potential workers about past salary

#173

Post by somethingwitty1 »

I'm a bit skeptical that this will have a real impact. It may stop employers from asking, but it does not stop them from low-balling someone based on race/gender, etc. HR departments calculate this in to their offers already.

Don't get me wrong, I think this will help some folks and is a great step forward. People who know their value and what the employer pays will surely benefit (or great negotiators). But for the people this is touted to help, they can still very easily be kept in the lower-end of the pay scale.

It seems to me that the only way to close the pay gap is to have employers release what they pay. That in itself is a tough thing to write legislation for. In my mind, it would need to take into account experience, actual role/leveling, etc. A lot of it is subjective and easy to manipulate to help the employer. And of course, if we just release a straight list of all employees' salaries (with the details needed to calculate where you fall), you may run into privacy concerns.

Re: New York City bans employers from asking potential workers about past salary

#174

Post by richrichardsson »

zimzam wrote: post #119
jimparkins wrote: post #20

Have a google for: "can i lie to a employer about past salary" - it really really messes with people - people feel super uncertain about how to approach this situation. Throwing any confidence they have during the negotiation out the window. Even now I hesitate to write this as a million people will come out and say never lie - what if they found out. More than banning. There needs to be acceptance that if someone as…

Unfortunately there are employers in NYC who do call previous employers to verify salary. Remember that most white-collar employees are in much less demand than developers and have to deal with far more employer bullshit.

How can it be legal for an employer to disclose a specific employees salary to a third party?

Re: New York City bans employers from asking potential workers about past salary

#175

Post by clavalle »

pmoriarty wrote: post #115
louisswiss wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with you in principle (your previous deal with company A is absolutely none of company B's business) but I would like to challenge you on one point: > I'm placed at a disadvantage in negotiations if I name a number first. ... This is unlikely to be true. Generally, in price negotiations it is advantageous to name a number first. This is known as anchoring and basically the theory is that the end result is bette…

I never consider interviewing and negotiations a waste of time. It's very valuable practice, no matter what the outcome. Practice is how I get better at both. The more interviews I go on and the more times I negotiate salary, the better I get. Also, even if a company can't hire me at the moment due to real budget constraints, they might be able to do so in the future, or perhaps one of the people I interviewed and im…

>I never consider interviewing and negotiations a waste of time.

As an employer, I do.

I once made the mistake of spending a lot of time interviewing a candidate assuming that their salary expectations would be around market rates...they weren't. This was years ago and it chaps me a bit to this day that I made such a rookie blunder. I won't make that mistake again. I ask for a range right off and give one in return. This saves a lot of time if expectations are way off.

Re: New York City bans employers from asking potential workers about past salary

#176

Post by sitkack »

pmoriarty wrote: post #43

I never answer questions about my past or expected salary, not to employers and not to recruiters. Most employers don't ask, and the few that have (perhaps by having a part of an employment form ask for previous salary) have never made my leaving that information out an issue. Most recruiters, if they even ask, respect my decision not to talk about it, but I've been pressed hard on this by a handful of recruiters, an…

Both Google and Oracle made it a condition of getting hired. Meaning they were ready to walk away if previous pay wasn't disclosed. Oracle even wanted scans of W2s ...

Re: New York City bans employers from asking potential workers about past salary

#177

Post by always_good »

louisswiss wrote: post #140
VT_Drew wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Generally, in price negotiations it is advantageous to name a number first. This is absolutely 100% wrong. In price negotiations you will almost always fair better if you force the other party to bring up a number first.

Source? There is a large body of research which disagrees with you... Oechssler, Jörg; Roider, Andreas; Schmitz, Patrick W. (2009). "Cognitive abilities and behavioral biases". Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. 72 (1): 147–152. doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2009.04.018. Jump up ^ Orr, D. & Guthrie, C. (2005). "Anchoring, information, expertise, and negotiation: New insights from meta-analysis". Ohio St. J. Disp. Reso…

Citation soup doesn't really add anything to a discussion.

Why not link to the Wiki article you copied the sources from? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring

Re: New York City bans employers from asking potential workers about past salary

#178

Post by sheeshkebab »

pc86 wrote: post #172
jnwatson wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anchoring only works if the potential employer is ready to buy. Many, many organizations will simply use the number as yet another filter, and you won't even begin discussions. By giving a number first, you're either too high and you won't have an opportunity to sell yourself, you're too low and you've literally already negotiated against yourself, or you're lucky and right at their expectation, which you could have…

This is why we publish salary ranges with our job ads but also require a desired salary within that range from candidates.

That's how us government jobs work too :)

Re: New York City bans employers from asking potential workers about past salary

#179

Post by mcherm »

josho wrote: post #118
pmoriarty wrote: post #43

I never answer questions about my past or expected salary, not to employers and not to recruiters. Most employers don't ask, and the few that have (perhaps by having a part of an employment form ask for previous salary) have never made my leaving that information out an issue. Most recruiters, if they even ask, respect my decision not to talk about it, but I've been pressed hard on this by a handful of recruiters, an…

Hijacking this for visibility. If the recruiter asks repeatedly, a trick that I learned is to answer that it's in your employee confidentiality agreement not to discuss the terms of your employment. It's arguably a true statement as well (in case you were concerned about telling a white lie)--your employer could be considering your salary as confidential because they obviously haven't disclosed it publicly, so you ar…

> a trick that I learned is to answer that it's in your employee confidentiality agreement not to discuss the terms of your employment.

Except that this is a lie. In the US, it is ILLEGAL to have an employee agreement that states this (at least if you are an employee potentially capable of unionizing).

If I wanted to make up an untrue reason for keeping the data confidential, I would make up something more interesting than this. But instead, I'd prefer to simply keep mum. Or not... if I've been particularly well-compensated in my previous position I might be quite willing to share that salary information, accompanied with an assurance that I would be willing to negotiate a lower salary (if I am actually willing) in exchange for other things like flexible working conditions, autonomy, or greater responsibility.

Re: New York City bans employers from asking potential workers about past salary

#180

Post by pmoriarty »

clavalle wrote: post #175
pmoriarty wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never consider interviewing and negotiations a waste of time. It's very valuable practice, no matter what the outcome. Practice is how I get better at both. The more interviews I go on and the more times I negotiate salary, the better I get. Also, even if a company can't hire me at the moment due to real budget constraints, they might be able to do so in the future, or perhaps one of the people I interviewed and im…

>I never consider interviewing and negotiations a waste of time. As an employer, I do. I once made the mistake of spending a lot of time interviewing a candidate assuming that their salary expectations would be around market rates...they weren't. This was years ago and it chaps me a bit to this day that I made such a rookie blunder. I won't make that mistake again. I ask for a range right off and give one in return.…

If it's such a big deal to employers, and they don't want to waste their time, why don't they name a number first?

I won't object.

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