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Employers use your personal data to figure out the lowest salary you'll accept

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Re: Employers use your personal data to figure out the lowest salary you'll accept

#251

Post by [deleted] »

steveBK123 wrote: post #230
alexpotato wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of those strategies that may be "correct" in the sense that it works once or twice, but isn't a great long term strategy. e.g. let's say you sue and then win: that's now in the public record (which any new hiring company can see).

Its the perfect case for why labor organizes. Collectively battling this is good, but individually no one wants to because its personally high risk (legal costs, deter future employers hiring you) and low reward (some settlement that won't change your life).

[deleted]

Re: Employers use your personal data to figure out the lowest salary you'll accept

#252

Post by sdfjkhdfjkdhs »

bckr wrote: post #235
steveBK123 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its the perfect case for why labor organizes. Collectively battling this is good, but individually no one wants to because its personally high risk (legal costs, deter future employers hiring you) and low reward (some settlement that won't change your life).

Are you part of a union? How can we get the tech industry unionized?

[flagged]

Re: Employers use your personal data to figure out the lowest salary you'll accept

#253

Post by onelesd »

QuantumSeed wrote: post #203

Both Amex and Chase regularly ask me to confirm my income. I wonder why they do that if the data is already available to them via Equifax.

data can also be treated as signal. for example, if they know you are claiming a different income than is verifiable it signals something - good, bad, or indifferent - that they will use in algorithms.

Re: Employers use your personal data to figure out the lowest salary you'll accept

#254

Post by saghm »

tombert wrote: post #86
saghm wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Increasingly it's seeming that I will probably not be worth billions of dollars in my lifetime, for no other reasons than I'm too much of a coward and I'm too discriminating with what I actually work on I can't tell if you're wildly underestimating how many circumstances are outside of your control or just have an extremely high opinion of how much of an outlier you are (or maybe this isn't meant seriously and just…

Clearly poor communication on my end; I was joking about the billion dollars. My bad. I was just saying that I am too much of a coward to actually even attempt to make my own business.

> Clearly poor communication on my end; I was joking about the billion dollars. My bad.

No worries, I'm pretty bad at being able to recognize humor over text even when it's done well, so I legitimately can't tell the difference between whether it's on my end or yours! And if it is on your end, it's certainly still a more palatable character trait than the amount of ego needed to say it seriously.

Re: Employers use your personal data to figure out the lowest salary you'll accept

#255

Post by elephanlemon »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #247
bitexploder wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never had to supply a W-2 for a vehicle loan. Just my SSN. I almost always get unsecured loans too. They just dump money into your bank account and say "please buy a car with this" and you keep the title. For a mortgage you do have to validate your income. The work around is to just buy your house in cash, I guess (sigh). So I guess mortgage loans leave you open there, but those happen less frequently and may not b…

> They just dump money into your bank account and say "please buy a car with this" and you keep the title. where is this? you don't have or keep the title until the bank sees you paid off the loan, in every instance i've seen.

An unsecured loan just a straight cash loan. In my experience the interest rates are usually a fair bit higher than a vehicle loan, and I would assume the maximum amount is generally quite a bit lower.

Re: Employers use your personal data to figure out the lowest salary you'll accept

#256

Post by jcomis »

array_key_first wrote: post #249
skeeter2020 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical. Credit checks don't give you an accurate picture of your compensation and it's not like they get your transactional banking history or tax documents (yet). Even with that it would be impossible to get an accurate compensation figure within 25%, so while I agree there's an informational imbalance if that's how you're negotiating you've already lost.

The Work Number by Experian gives all past income information. I think many (most?) companies participate in it, so it's somewhat likely your current income is being reported.

This is accurate, except theworknumber is an equifax product. Experian and transunion have similar products however that share past comp data in exchange for a fee and/or current data sharing. Basically, "theworknumber" lets employers see what you made previously in exchange for the employer sharing what they pay all/most employees currently.

Large companies often share a lot of details too, such as yearly raises, bonuses, weekly rates, etc. Still, it is often inaccurate. For example, I have worked freelance extensively under my name (DBA) and llc and none of it is there.

You can pull your record if you want. If your employer uses workday, they almost certainly share every paystub with theworknumber.

You can freeze your data: https://employees.theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze

HOWEVER, if you do so, many companies won't proceed with an offer until you unfreeze.

Re: Employers use your personal data to figure out the lowest salary you'll accept

#257

Post by onion2k »

AlBugdy wrote: post #187
onion2k wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works the same way here in the UK. Some companies ask your previous salary, and sometimes check your references, and sometimes your previous employer will disclose what your salary was. If it turns out you lied nothing bad happens, but you've just given your new employer a reason to dismiss you. The main problem with the UK system is that it means that if you were underpaid before you're likely to continue to be u…

> For that reason when I'm hiring I've stopped asking for someone's previous salary, and just ask them what they want instead. Why don't you post what you're paying in the job ad/offer? Some people even skip ads without a salary or a salary range because of all the uncertainty. As a potential employee somewhere, you've obviously already calculated a range or a fixed number - so why ask the employee?

Everyone just says the top of the range.

Re: Employers use your personal data to figure out the lowest salary you'll accept

#258

Post by jjtheblunt »

elephanlemon wrote: post #255
jjtheblunt wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They just dump money into your bank account and say "please buy a car with this" and you keep the title. where is this? you don't have or keep the title until the bank sees you paid off the loan, in every instance i've seen.

An unsecured loan just a straight cash loan. In my experience the interest rates are usually a fair bit higher than a vehicle loan, and I would assume the maximum amount is generally quite a bit lower.

Ahhh, like if you were to put your new VW on your Visa card entirely.

That might work: you'd have bought the car, from the point of view of VW and your DMV, so the DMV sends you the title, not Visa.

Re: Employers use your personal data to figure out the lowest salary you'll accept

#259

Post by stuckkeys »

quesera wrote: post #241
p1esk wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might have to pay tax on that

Credit agencies do not report income to the IRS, so there's no tax relevance. Credit agencies are not party to your obligations to the IRS at all. You can lie to credit agencies all day long if you like. However, if you do so for the purpose of some kind of benefit, financial or otherwise, it's clearly fraud. It's hard to remember that that's still illegal these days -- but it is, for you and for me, at least.

Is it Fraud though? Think about it...sounds to me like data obfuscation. There are no laws that enforce the truth if there is no financial damage. So the previous comment stands.

Re: Employers use your personal data to figure out the lowest salary you'll accept

#260

Post by quesera »

stuckkeys wrote: post #259
quesera wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit agencies do not report income to the IRS, so there's no tax relevance. Credit agencies are not party to your obligations to the IRS at all. You can lie to credit agencies all day long if you like. However, if you do so for the purpose of some kind of benefit, financial or otherwise, it's clearly fraud. It's hard to remember that that's still illegal these days -- but it is, for you and for me, at least.

Is it Fraud though? Think about it...sounds to me like data obfuscation. There are no laws that enforce the truth if there is no financial damage. So the previous comment stands.

I think you're wrong, but I'm not a lawyer and I don't operate on the fringes of fraudulent behaviour, so I might be miscalibrated.

But my premise is that there is benefit derived from the lie, either financial or otherwise. I believe this is clearly fraud and risks civil penalties if pursued by the party who used the information to extend the benefit.

An interesting case is if you lie about previous salary to a prospective employer who does not have the ability to confirm the data. In that context, with no formal pre-employment agreements or contracts, the lie is probably just negotiation strategy with no civil liabilities. I repeat that I am not a lawyer. :)

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