Employers use your personal data to figure out the lowest salary you'll accept • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by refurb » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 10:15 PM UTC

jakevoytko wrote: post #190

alexpotato wrote: post #164

Many years ago, back when companies could ask for your previous compensation [0], a hiring manager once said to me "don't ever lie about your past compensation". I wasn't sure how they could figure this out at the time until someone later pointed out that many corporations do a credit history check on you as part of the background check. This gives them access to past compensation. The information asymmetry here is,…

An old neighbor of mine was a headhunter. He once told me that some companies had a trick to get around the law. Upon getting hired, you'd sign a document saying that you'd agree to all policies in the employee handbook. Pretty standard stuff. One of the company policies was that you needed to prove any previous salary you stated in the negotiation. If it was too far off, they'd just terminate you. The trick is that…

That seems like a great way to open your company up to a discrimination lawsuit (whether warranted or not). Not to mention the costs of hiring a new employee you only fire a month later - why bother?

Sounds like HR mythology.

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

#292

Post by verteu » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 11:22 PM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #127

verteu wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's not what the evidence shows, eg: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472... > Gruber is able to identify incidence on gross earnings as well as on employment by exploiting variation in payroll tax changes between firms. The benefit of the payroll tax cut is found to have been fully shifted to workers through higher earnings, with no significant employment effects. With similar objectiv…

From the same paper: "Higher marginal tax rates are associated with increases in gross wages and earnings." The part that you cited is where they cite the old papers by other authors. They also say why conclusions of those papers might have been wrong: "Moreover, we show that ignoring the potential labour supply response to a tax change, following the methodology of Gruber (1997) or Anderson and Meyer (1998), as well…

Right, the tax is partially borne by employers (who raise gross wages), and partially by workers (who receive lower net wages).

Debunking your claim:

> While in practice employers know exactly for how little money (in hand) you are willing to work and in absence of income taxes would just pay this much less so that your money in hand is the same.

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

#293

Post by verteu » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 11:24 PM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #126

verteu wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The poster is referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence

It's really not as straightforward as they make it to be: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472... Higher taxes cause gross pay to raise. There's evidence that increasing cost of operation of corporations through taxation is not fully born by workers. It falls in large part on the owners and landlords (who were omited in earlier works on income tax incidence). https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&so…

> We find strong evidence of partial shifting of the burden of income tax from worker to employer. Although income tax is incident on equilibrium wages, the tax burden is not fully shifted

Debunking your claim:

> While in practice employers know exactly for how little money (in hand) you are willing to work and in absence of income taxes would just pay this much less so that your money in hand is the same.

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

#294

Post by CrimsonCape » Mon, Apr 06, 2026, 11:36 PM UTC

doix wrote: post #220

ralph84 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work harder on the right things. Digging holes in your backyard with a shovel is hard work but nobody is going to pay you for it.

I bet if you could make it interesting, YouTube/TikTok/Instagram/Whatever could make it possible to get paid to dig holes in your backyard. You could argue that the value is in the entertaining filming/acting/story telling etc, but if the videos are about digging holes then I think it's valid to say someone is paying you to dig holes.

Yeah i hate what you are suggesting, because soon there are uninteresting people chasing every subject trying to convert it into a career. Just leave some things alone ok and quit strangling my hobby with both hands

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

#295

Post by scotty79 » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 1:29 AM UTC

verteu wrote: post #293

scotty79 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not as straightforward as they make it to be: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472... Higher taxes cause gross pay to raise. There's evidence that increasing cost of operation of corporations through taxation is not fully born by workers. It falls in large part on the owners and landlords (who were omited in earlier works on income tax incidence). https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&so…

> We find strong evidence of partial shifting of the burden of income tax from worker to employer. Although income tax is incident on equilibrium wages, the tax burden is not fully shifted Debunking your claim: > While in practice employers know exactly for how little money (in hand) you are willing to work and in absence of income taxes would just pay this much less so that your money in hand is the same.

Yeah. Things are never simple, and rarely binary.

I exaggerated my claim to draw attention to the fact that it's not like many people believe, that income tax burden lands fully on the worker.

While my claim sound proposterous the opposite claim that is also false (maybe even equally so) rarely ever raises an eyebrow, which I think is very telling.

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

#296

Post by carlosjobim » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 1:40 AM UTC

delusional wrote: post #116

anonymars wrote: post #2

One (more) thing to opt out of: Freeze Your Data - The Work Number https://employees.theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze As I understand it, payroll whores your salary out to Equifax*, who then pimps it to others * Yeah, that one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Equifax_data_breach

As a European, it is wild to see a private company warning that disallowing them the ability to process your personal data might hinder your ability to access social services.

As a European, your complete tax records might be public information, and the tax authority itself will have a service number which anybody can call to get information on your income and much more.

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

#297

Post by saghm » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 2:20 AM UTC

tombert wrote: post #287

saghm wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can definitely relate to that to a certain extent. My (mistaken) inference that you were serious probably was because so much of the comment before that did seem genuinely thoughtful to me, so I assumed that maybe all of it was intended to be. If anything, it sounds like maybe holding off on the sarcasm for so long forced you to have to make a quip near the end (or I just missed more of the sarcasm earlier).

You pretty much got it. It's more obvious in verbal communication because of course it would be easy to tell by the tone of my voice that I'm being sarcastic.

Definitely, although in my case I still have had to intentionally work on my recognition skills for that

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

#298

Post by anal_reactor » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 3:40 AM UTC

mmarq wrote: post #177

sdoering wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in Germany 100k€ a year puts you in the top 2% (maybe even top1%) for single earners. And in the top 5% for a couple. So OP is - for eastern European standards (depending on which country specifically) very well off. Talking as if 100k€ was nothing special is actually quite telling imho.

But it’s not guaranteed that you’ll ever be as rich as a pensioner who owns a flat outright. Asset prices inflated so much that income is not completely irrelevant, but it is at best only half of the picture.

Some people predict that asset prices will only go up compared to wages so if you buy a house today you'll be rich by the time you get old. There's a whole cult built around "SP500 grows 10% YoY".

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

#299

Post by seanhunter » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 4:26 AM UTC

jakevoytko wrote: post #238

skeeter2020 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call BS. Why would they hire you at an agreed to price, go through the cost & effort and then try and "get you"? Your old neighbour was either in bed with his hiring clients or not very good at his job.

He recruited for wall street trading firms; based on the finance types I've met over the years in NYC I would 100% believe some did this just because they hated losing. He was just making the point that you should never lie about your salary history, because he can help you if you didn't want to give it but he couldn't help you if you BSed everyone and got caught.

It’s definitely made-up. I worked for a Wall Street trading firm in the securities division for 8 years. People lie about comp as a matter of course. Secondly, many/most senior-ish jobs in those firms come with a guaranteed bonus for the first year or couple of years. If they were to fire the person before that period elapsed they would have to pay out the bonus.

I know of many people who were fired the day their guarantee elapsed- I can’t think of a single person on a guarantee who was fired before then. To put this into context, we had a guy on a guarantee on our prop desk who came in for one week after he joined, put on a (massively winning) trade that got him enough to get his guarantee and then literally didn’t set foot in the office for the rest of the year[1] until the day he came in to collect his bonus and resign/be fired.

[1] And it’s not like he was working from home because people in trading were (for compliance reasons) not allowed to work from home unless there was an emergency like a terrorist incident where the trading floor was closed.

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

#300

Post by nicbou » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 5:53 AM UTC

impish9208 wrote: post #156

There was a story recently about how large landlords use salary data to raise rents. If they see you got a raise, they’ll increase your rent accordingly. And pretty soon, retailers will do the same. Your personalized price for a gallon of milk at Walmart will reflect your annual raise. I love living in the future!

From each according to his ability