Live data from Hacker News

New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

m.sfgate.com

191–200 of 680 posts

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

#191
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…

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.

We could still do a better job of sharing this kind of information in an anonymized way. It definitely gets tough when it's a small organization, but simply knowing what the salaries are for every employee in a department could make a huge difference.

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

#193
post #95

California...doing it wrong again. You can refuse to give it. You can also get better at negotiating. Dumb law.

But most people don't. Tell me who this law is HURTING, and why it's a bad idea, rather than just why you think everyone should just act differently.

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

#195
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember seeing a table of salaries for each H-1 visa. I think the information is public.

Yeah, but not with names, and not for every employee (ie., including non H1B workers), right?

That is correct, no names, here is a sample [1]. Unless the specific individual you are querying about gives up their H1B case ID number, there is no way to be certain (unless you luck out and triangulate with physical address information, for example).

[1] https://lcr-pjr.doleta.gov/index.cfm?event=ehLCJRExternal.ds...

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

#196

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. 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…

One possibility is that extended family may feel that you make more money than a person could possibly need, and ought to share it with them. Easier to avoid this tension if you don’t let on how well you’re doing.

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

#197

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. 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.

We could still do a better job of sharing this kind of information in an anonymized way. It definitely gets tough when it's a small organization, but simply knowing what the salaries are for every employee in a department could make a huge difference.

Just thinking, but could you pool the anonymized salaries of all small orgs together? For instance what if all YC start-ups pooled salary info together under normalized job titles? Then they wouldn't be able to pay under market, but the data could be made public without ruining anyone.

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

#198

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. 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…

> 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.

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

#199
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then why not just post the salary range? The truth is, employers are willing to pay $180k, but if someone would work for $110k[1], they'd rather find that out in advance. Btw, I've had a recruiter from GooglAmaFaceSoft tell me in advance the max may for a position. [1] I consider this to be a bad idea. An employee who won't negotiate a higher salary will often instead test his or her market value by interviewing…

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.

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

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there isn't, unless you're okay with short-selling yourself. If you share and your amount is > the employers, you have no job. Bad situation. If you share and your amount is If you offer the number first, the employer becomes the customer - and the customer is always right. If you wait for them to make you an offer, they have to make an offer that is compelling, in the same way sales people go above-and-beyond to…

I think that holds only if your time is worth nothing. I don't want to go through weeks of interviews just to find out that my salary demands are $50K more than they're willing to pay.

This law requires them to provide salary ranges on demand to applicants, which addresses that without you giving them any info.
Post reply on HN