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New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

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

#611

Post by emodendroket »

RealityNow wrote: post #502
chollida1 wrote: post #3

> The goal is to narrow the gender wage gap. If a woman is paid less than a man doing the same job and a new employer bases her pay on her prior salary, gender discrimination can be perpetuated, the bill’s backers say. Hmm, I'd never thought about that angle,but I guess it makes sense. No word on if they are allowed to use Equifax, etc to pull salary data from? EDIT: looking at the bill it looks like querying Equifax…

Calling this a gender issue is like saying "we're raising the minimum wage to help women". The law benefits male employees just as much as it benefits women. Lawmakers and PR teams just like to spin everything as addressing the gender gap to appeal to society-wide damsel in distress syndrome.

I think it's fair to say it benefits all workers, but benefits underpaid groups, such as women, more than most.

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

#612

Post by gehwartzen »

ericd wrote: post #483
gehwartzen wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to wiki they have 225 million employment records and according to The Work Number they are used by 82% of Fortune 500 employers. Then they turn around and sell all that data while telling the participating companies what a wonderful service they are providing them by offloading this task from traditional HR. It's crazy.

Oh, wow, that is crazy.

Prepare to be even more shocked. Here is a 'sample' of the EDR report you can request from The Work Number containing all the information that they have on you and may or may not be giving out (or selling to the highest bidder):

https://www.theworknumber.com/samples/The-Work-Number-Employ...

As you can see its much more than 'just' your salary. It includes (amongst other things):

Union Affiliation; Salary breakdown (Base, OT, Commission, Bonus); Dates of pay increases; Medical Insurance (coverage, Policy #, Provider name, Annual cost); Any Workers Comp claims; Breakdown of your paycheck (401k contribution, taxes payed, garnishments, etc)

Just imagine the national outrage if some employer was shown to be directly selling this information to someone about their own employees. Yet a third party is doing just that and many companies are complicit. It is absolutely outrageous!

'hmmm maybe I don't want to hire Joe Shmo, after all he did join a union in the past. He might try to unionize our plant'

'looks like Joe also has some garnishments, doesn't sound like someone we want on our team. Probably has a troubled past.'

'well looks like Joe made 70k last year, but a lot of that was from working OT. I think we can get away with offering him 60k and promising him a lot of OT "opportunities"'

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

#613

Post by rangersanger »

Sangermaine wrote: post #308
rangersanger wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Julian Assange in the house. I can see an argument for forcing public companies to post anonymized data about salaries, perhaps including gender, race and age. Thus ensuring employees or advocates can understand if they are being treated fairly. But, My salary is very private. Exposing it means I have less leverage in some negotiations. Not just wage, but sticking with that example, what if employers created a cabal…

Such a cabal would be and is illegal. I think you're referring to Apple's attempt at this, and that didn't end well for the entities involved.

Yes, they are. Apple got caught, many others don't and wont.

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

#614

Post by odbol_ »

le-mark wrote: post #553
psergeant wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shameless plug for something I wrote today, in case you’re wondering what companies use it for and what you can do about that “Developer employee cheatsheet: WTF is Salary Benchmarking?“ https://codeformore.com/developer-employee-cheatsheet-wtf-sa...

Interesting read, thanks. How does one go from "senior engineer" to "architect"? Any tips?

Well the first step is to design some architectures for large systems. Poof, you're an architect.

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

#615

Post by KekDemaga »

emodendroket wrote: post #610
KekDemaga wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government is at least equally incompetent if not more so, at least if a private entity screws up you can sue.

The government is also not operated on a for-profit basis incentivizing doing the bare minimum level of security to shield yourself from liability.

>The government is also not operated on a for-profit basis incentivizing doing the bare minimum level of security to shield yourself from liability.

No instead they hire contractors for that purpose.

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

#616

Post by KirinDave »

seattle_spring wrote: post #495
KirinDave wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The $0.79 on the $1 shit has been debunked a million times yet is still persists for some reason. It persists because it's a real average. And uh, it's not the case that the pay gap has been disproven in many industries.

Yes, it's a real average that proves that a female teacher makes less than a male mechanical engineer. How does that help anyone, other than pushing a false narrative?

Which false narrative is this? That women get paid less?

If an average exists then an average exists. We can talk about how it's structured, but the existence of an average pay gap is hard to dispute at this point.

If you find that narrative offensive, ask yourself why. I suspect the motivations are not very laudable.

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

#617

Post by emodendroket »

KekDemaga wrote: post #615
emodendroket wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government is also not operated on a for-profit basis incentivizing doing the bare minimum level of security to shield yourself from liability.

>The government is also not operated on a for-profit basis incentivizing doing the bare minimum level of security to shield yourself from liability. No instead they hire contractors for that purpose.

OK, well, while I'm making proposals, let's go ahead and hire people to be employed by the government instead.

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

#618

Post by Mz »

syshum wrote: post #607
jldugger wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it might tell us the shape of discrimination is less overt and more structural. Why exactly was it that out of my CS graduating class of 100 there was 1 woman?

>>Why exactly was it that out of my CS graduating class of 100 there was 1 woman? Why are you not asking why out of 100 janitors, or 100 trash collectors there are only 1 women? I love how every time this subject somes up it is always how there is a lack of women in tech, never pluming, janitorial, auto mechanics, etc. Only Tech. Do you ask why there are are lack of men in Nursing? or a lack of Men in Childcare, soci…

Housekeepers earned a median salary of $20,740

https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/maid-and-housekee...

Median salary for a janitor: $28,064

http://www1.salary.com/Janitor-Salaries.html

Janitors tend to be male. Housekeepers tend to be female. It is similar work with a different name. This is really common. It has been documented that when a job becomes a predominantly female job, society tends to pay less than when it was a male job.

The crux of the issue here is that no matter how you slice it and dice it, on average, women make less money than men. Arguing that it isn't really due to sexism and that women just have interests in fields that happen to pay less is a pretty crappy justification for a well documented, unarguable fact.

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

#619

Post by RealityNow »

speedplane wrote: post #504
RealityNow wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling this a gender issue is like saying "we're raising the minimum wage to help women". The law benefits male employees just as much as it benefits women. Lawmakers and PR teams just like to spin everything as addressing the gender gap to appeal to society-wide damsel in distress syndrome.

Not sure about that. It helps anyone who has been systematically discriminated in hiring against over time. When you start a new job, it's not uncommon for your new employer to offer you a salary that's X% higher than your old one, using that as a base. If your old salary was lower due to discrimination, you'd start with a lower base, and would get less in the new job than someone who was not previously discriminated…

It helps anybody who's underpaid. One being underpaid doesn't imply or even suggest that one was discriminated against. I was underpaid my first job, and it wasn't due to discrimination. I would imagine that the majority of people who are underpaid are underpaid not due to discrimination, but due to poor negotiating ability, lack of awareness of the market rate, etc.

My analogy of "we're raising the minimum wage to help women/" still stands.

Also there's evidence to suggest that the gender gap is a myth http://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-true-story-of-the-gender...

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

#620

Post by KekDemaga »

emodendroket wrote: post #617
KekDemaga wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The government is also not operated on a for-profit basis incentivizing doing the bare minimum level of security to shield yourself from liability. No instead they hire contractors for that purpose.

OK, well, while I'm making proposals, let's go ahead and hire people to be employed by the government instead.

The reason the government doesn't do that is talented people don't want to work for them. Virtually all the government jobs are union and pay is primarily based on time served. You'd be getting third rate talent at best.
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