There also a growing list of states that prohibit asking for salary history. Don’t ever give a salary history if asked. Only share if it is going to help in your negotiation. Advise everyone you know who is job seeking to do the same.
This is a very dangerous question to ask because it locks in previous pay discrimination based on protected categories.
For any of us corporate workers, Equifax runs a service called "The Work Number" that has, for a big group of people, every single cent you ever made, who payed it, and when
I only learned about it recently. When I requested a report on my SSN, I saw every bi-weekly payment ever made to me
There is no way they can get actual paystub data from employer or tax return data from irs.
Most likely they use field Annual Income that you voluntarily provide to banks/cc companies when applying for a loan and that number is reported to Equifax. That number is verified by a lender by inspecting your W-2/paystubs when underwriting car/mortgage/other loan.
So you should never voluntarily provide income info to lenders, because every bit of that info will be sold to other companies and can be used against yiu in the future
How did you request a report for yourself? Did you create a personal account in order to access your data (via https://employees.theworknumber.com) or did you have a business account with them?
If you created an personal account in order to get your data, what kind of profile data did you have to give them before you could get to what they have?
NYC already prohibits employers from using salary information in setting compensation, unless the candidate voluntarily and without prompting offers that information (e.g. when the candidate thinks it will give them a higher offer). NY has a similar law at the state level as well (both apply simultaneously in NYC).
They still can use a service like The Work Number to verify candidate-provided numbers as part of a post-hiring background check, with proper consent from the candidate.
Hello GDPR yes, I know Equifax is in the US and the GDPR does not apply there, but this sort of abuse is why the GDPR exists. Equifax shouldn't even have that data, let alone be allowed to resell it.
I have literally told a HR person "I'm not answering this question" and when told to do or cancel, I cancelled that application with zero regrets.
Remember: Whenever someone in HR tells you "this is a standard question", immediately assume that means "we can get away with asking this, and it's strictly to our advantage, so we always do".
If they're pushy I ask if they want to know so that they can A) lowball me B) because they don't trust their own assessment of my value C) something else (this is a trap: there is no C).
One time an HR drone told me it was policy to ask and he didnt know why. I quizzically asked him why as an HR rep he didnt understand the HR policies of the company he worked for. I even asked him if it was policy for HR to not understand HR policy.
I kind of wished I'd told him that I'd recorded this phone call for training purposes :/
It's amazing how sweet and polite you can be with this line of questioning and how humiliating their answers will be (because there is no good answer).
It's a massive red flag so I doubt ive lost any good jobs this way.
My manager told me that when they interview a candidate, they already know how much they currently earn because companies voluntarily share salary data with each other in my country (in Europe). The recruiters still ask candidates for a salary expectation, but they only use that to know how much of a jump the candidate is expecting, or how much extra they expect to get to actually consider a switch... and because positions are nearly never advertised with a salary range, this makes employers have a huge advantage "negotiating" salaries as they have all the information, the candidate has none (it's tabu to ask other people for their salaries, so I, as most people, am almost completely in the dark regarding whether I am being fairly compensated or not).
The only information about salaries I know of is published by the Unions... which is sub-divided into profession, then ranges of years of experience. But because most software developers are not in Unions here, the data they have seems very skewed towards lower pay rates. It's really a nightmare as it seems that when I am looking for a job, all companies pay the same (which you only find out after several interviews to get an actual offer). IT really pisses me off that such an open country as this has this attitude towards salaries.
I wish every position had a salary range and an indication of how much you would expect to earn a certain experience. That surely would be beneficial to employees, who would know whether they could expect to get a better salary, but also to employers who actually want to find the best people and are willing to pay more, I think, as they wouldn't need to pay large amounts of money to join this "secret club" where they share salaries with each other, basically colluding to keep salaries low.
I believe NYC banned companies from asking for salary history a few years back. I was interviewing at a bank in NYC. I attempted to negotiate a salary about $20k - $30k from what I was making at the time, and the response from the interviewer was positive. I was then blindsided by the interviewer (who would've been my boss) after he asked what my current salary is and I let it slip out because I didn't know that it was illegal in NYC at the time to ask salary history. Afterwards, he said "huh, that's a big clip up, I think $X would be a bit more reasonable."
When I have the opportunity, I talk about this kind of thing with young professionals. They think that sounds like a lot of money, because they don't understand that's a rounding error to a large company. It's really cruel the way as a society we take kids making minimum wage at whatever first job, they get a degree, and then they get thrust out into Corporate America with no idea of what things cost or their own value. Unless they have the right mentors to encourage them to ask for more, they get whatever the company gives them.
I was negotiating a contract recently on behalf of a client and they wondered how much they should ask for - I helped them get a meaningful credit because I knew it was an amount of money the other party would be willing to absorb rather than fight about.
When asked for a salary history, do you research and give them a list at what salary you should've gotten. A rude question doesn't deserve a honest answer.
Is it dangerous? If a candidate volunteers their pay history, it's likely because it is high. If they don't, it's likely because it is low.
I also don't see why, if an employer demands a pay history, the candidate is obliged to provide it.
(And also, in my experience, nearly all candidates inflate their salary history by about 10%. Employers know this, and discount the salary history by 10%. Back when I applied for jobs, I provided a pay stub along with the comment that I wasn't lying about my salary.)
Not having a clue about what a candidate formerly earned means risk for the employer, and risk always means that the offer will be lower to account for the risk.
> Not having a clue about what a candidate formerly earned means risk for the employer
It really doesn't. An employee brings their employer some amount of value. The exact amount of value is completely unrelated to that employee's salary at their previous jobs.
The _only_ "risk" here is that the employer might not be able to lowball the candidate as much as they possibly could.
California is one of those states, yet as a state employee, my compensation history is a public record. Anyone who wants my info can find it with a simple search online. I can understand the good in disclosing this info for public figures, but for everyone? It seems a little hypocritical.
I was asked by a recruiter one time. I answered with what my salary requirements were. This caused him to grow quite angry, explain that it didn't matter what my requirements were, and hang up on me. Mostly, I was amused. This was before that question was illegal in California.
> The laws were drafted, in large part, to help close the gender pay gap.
HIRED’s annual recruiting reports found that a significant driver of this were
candidates asking for far lower than other peers. Many times,
companies would then offer that candidate a greater salary, which was still below the bolder or more comfortable peer. The candidate feels like their company is doing them a favor.
So, this aspect should illuminate that many people are not aware that their own company is contributing to pay gaps. Any individual may in fact think the opposite, that it must be some other company with the proverbial bigoted shadow men in a board room disenfranchising everyone that doesn't look like them. When that picture isn't whats happening or isn't necessary, when candidates exacerbate this on their own.
Could it be that the candidate has experience being turned down when asking higher rates? Perhaps.
Could it be that the company doesnt even realize that they arent getting a deal with the candidate, but really just exacerbating pay gaps? That the candidates asking lower may be disproportionately certain genders and ethnicities?
New York City is reducing this to anti-discrimination, making the penalties inherit discrimination frameworks without regard to the circumstances leading up to it. I think thats a great remedy, given how opaque and nuanced the reality really has been.
We don't need to tweak candidate behavior or gradually retrain companies to notice gender and race to conditionally adjust, instead just make the salaries apparent for all.
I don't get why companies play such games when paying someone. I've been interviewing with companies and even after doing well on the on site, they keep trying to skirt the issue of compensation by asking weird questions like "so how do you think you did?" Its like you know that i did well, otherwise you wouldn't even be talking to me, you are just gauging my confidence level so you know how much i'd be willing to bend when it comes to compensation. I wish they just had standard incoming compensation based on titles or something, its exhausting trying to duke it out with HR when all i want is to be paid fairly and write some code. They aren't doing anyone a favor to underpay because when when people find out, and they will find out, their work quality will decline if they feel they are being used and they will most likely not care about ditching the company for better compensation.
It allows both sides to negotiate. If you can convince them you’re worth a premium, you can command a premium relative to your new coworkers.
But if you come across looking like a bargain, employers will gladly pay a bargain to have you.
What it boils down to is agency: standardized wages is just another way to fix the price of labor. People that believe they are worth more also believe they should get paid more, and they can use their individual agency to test that theory on an open job market.
Wouldn't workers better be able to negotiate if salary information were public? Like if you think you're worth more than person X, and you know X is being paid Y, it gives you a floor to ask for.
It could be agency... but it's just a circus. Do you do the same negotiation for a burger? maybe haggle with wendy's over the number of fries in your order?
To be fair on the hiring side, reality is that many job postings are open ended on comp depending on who shows up. Even at large (>10K people) companies, certainly in startups.
The posted job might be for a senior engineer, but if an extremely promising recent grad shows up maybe I'll take a bet on them instead, but they'll start on a lower salary. Or sometimes an extremely experienced person shows interest and they're a perfect fit so they end up getting hired at a distinguished level which wasn't the plan but the stars aligned.
It's not useful to post the job with a range of 50K-400K, but it's sort of what the range really is.
Which is what "standard compensation based on titles" would solve. If you come in for a senior position but you get your hypothetical star college grad you say, "we don't think you're ready for the senior position but we'd hire you as a mid."
I don't get why companies play such games when paying someone.
Because (some of them) are narcissistic jerks and play games with others on general principle, just to test their mettle. Or to separate the wolves from the sheep, as it were.
its much more clear in larger companies where you can see how much people get for a certain role, it is not so clear in smaller startups with not so much public information. In such cases HR do things like "So whats your number".
I live in Colorado. The similar Colorado law about posting salaries is probably great for jobs that don't give RSUs, but given how much bonus / RSUs affect tech pay, it doesn't really help SWEs much - they give a salary range of ~$30k and then mention that this position is eligible for bonus and equity/incentive plan without giving any details on amount.
For remote jobs that hire in CO, there's also some pay discrimination depending on location (one rate for Boulder, another for Denver, and another for "everywhere else").
Lastly, there's a lot of companies that don't follow it if the job is remote across the US, either because they don't know or because the violation is only a couple grand and relies on people reporting the posting in a way that's verifiable or it still being up when enforcement gets around to looking. I will say that I haven't seen any postings that exclude Colorado, even from companies that originally did (DigitalOcean for one), leading me to believe it was more of a temporary measure to immediately comply than a permanent change.
I have a strong distaste for the emphasis on RSUs—I’d be happy having a company pay me more in fiat without the stock even if it’s potentially less overall. I do get that it’s supposed to be incentivizing, but the incentive doesn’t work for me. I just turn it all into cash as soon as possible, and when I leave, I feel no pain whatsoever for money left on the table.
Maybe this is not my absolute best choice option, but it doesn’t matter much to me because I’m not trying to maximize my profits.
One benefit of RSUs that you should consider is that you are granted them at your start date even if they vest years out. This gives you a ton of “time in the market” and they generally appreciate quite significantly if you’ve picked a good company. Salary will never match that.
as someone whose job is made (much) harder by coworker churn and coworkers slacking off, I'm glad my employer cooks some long term incentives and performance based pay into our compensation structure
> I will say that I haven't seen any postings that exclude Colorado, even from companies that originally did (DigitalOcean for one), leading me to believe it was more of a temporary measure to immediately comply than a permanent change.
Colorado passed a law/clarified the law that writing "we exclude people from Colorado" wasn't sufficient to avoid the salary postings. They can probably only enforce it for companies that have any presence in Colorado, but a single employee is sufficient. It would be worrisome that companies would terminate all Colorado operations (if relocatable), but the addition of NYC makes that unlikely.
But that's probably why they stopped using it. It means as much as "NOT MY COPYRIGHT, USED WITH LOVE" in the description on YouTube.
Meanwhile, they should definitely fix the law so that bonuses/RSUs are included (RSUs have a known market price that could be listed)
Part of the issue is you're in a small (relatively) market. In markets that are large enough that ultimately shift corporate behavior everywhere, you'll actually see this improve as a result of what NYC is doing. Imagine how many companies are HQ'd in NY, or have sizable presences. It's a shocking number.
Similar to how California's emissions restrictions are implemented everywhere in the US vs making a separate California-only car, HR will start posting NYC compliant jobs everywhere vs figuring out whether or not they're required. Especially true if LA or SF hop on the bandwagon.
"...they give a salary range of ~$30k and then mention that this position is eligible for bonus and equity/incentive plan without giving any details on amount."
It sounds like they will be incentivized to provide those details or lose candidates to jobs posting higher salaries or detailed numbers.
I can't find my prior comment, but I have seen multiple job postings saying "remote work is available in..." proceeded by every US state but CO and HI.
Rackspace was the company doing it when I posted an example, but I know it happens elsewhere too. Was it SpaceX? I forget.
Let's take this nation wide. Why was everyone's time and interview hoops for jobs that don't pay competitive rates? Why should loyal employees stick with pay rates that are less than new hires?
N'ah. Let states test it out first and work out any wrinkles. When/if >50% of them are successfully employing it, then it might make sense to adopt it nationally.
Why bother having the states roll it out? We can fix it once in a federal law and avoid 50 different hard to undo implementations that are all inconsistent, so HR needs to run a "oh, you're applying from NYC, that means I need to include Health Care premiums but not RSUs" filter vs. "Oh, you're applying from California, so I have to include RSUs at an additional 0.0154% of calculated benefits and..." etc.
Just let the states do state things, having the federal make laws is typically unnecessary. If it benefits business, then companies will do it. If it benefits states, then states will do it.
I'm pretty confident posting wages will suppress wages
Or, the federal government could say, hey here is an idea, here is some money to study it, let’s have a few states test out a couple implements, and then roll out a national plan later?
If you toss out the status quo bullshit, cleansheeting public policy becomes workable!
I can't think of a way this law could be implemented in a way that hurts anyone besides businesses that want to unfairly underpay a portion of an equally qualified cohort of workers.
YMMV but I'm asked for my salary expectations withing first 10 minutes of the first phone interview. Usually it's immediate "no, we don't pay this much" and process don't go any further.
Sounds like a time-saver on both sides. I don't agree to even talk to a company beyond the initial contact without some sense that there's a possible zone of agreement on compensation. Why waste my time (or theirs) on an employment discussion that can't possibly end in employment?
Being at the expected salary level where you even have input on salary already makes one more privileged than the supermajority of workers this would affect; the readers of this board are largely not who this law is for.
You know how capitalism ensures prices are correct by a process of negotiation, and supply and demand? This is exactly that, in labor form. This process of negotiation, over many many many people, is what determines wages.
If you block that process "companies can't negotiate with you, they have to give you a rate and that's it", you will cause a lot of unintended consequences for the labor market.
>If you block that process "companies can't negotiate with you, they have to give you a rate and that's it", you will cause a lot of unintended consequences for the labor market.
What you are describing is the current status quo for the supermajority of workers, except it's the workers who can't negotiate. The company simply gives them a number and they have to accept it. Allowing the companies to hide the number behind the sunk costs of the interview process only tips the scales further in businesses' favor.
This law brings salary negotiation closer to actual supply and demand, not further.
Uh, what? In what other commercial exchange is the value to be paid hidden from one of the parties? I can't think of one. It helps companies to hide it, it's why they do it. If they thought for a second it would be in their interest to disclose it, instead of bragging about "competitive wages", they would.
In this case, companies will need to "negotiate" with each other, by outbidding each other for top (or at least in-demand) talent. That will set the rates, instead of the current system of imperfect information that works mostly against employees. Let management be the one that worries about offering attractive salaries, rather than the much-less-powerful job seekers.
Some extra laws might be required, such as forbidding and heavily fining companies that are shown to be acting like a cartel when setting salaries. At the very least, if salary offers are public, salary fixing conspiracies (of the type several Silicon Valley companies were fined for) will be much harder to pull off again.
How do you figure? They quote a price for labor, and if we don’t like it, they can’t buy labor. If I don’t like the price of a sandwich, I don’t pay for it.
> You know how capitalism ensures prices are correct by a process of negotiation, and supply and demand?
This is true if and only if one defines adopts as the definition of “correct” something like “at whatever levels the particular variant of capitalism in question sets”.
"An applicant would be forced to interview with more than three to six people for up to six months."
Forced? Don't be absurd.
"After the culmination of an arduous, emotionally draining interview process, an offer could be made that is far below the expectations of the eager candidate."
There's nothing whatsoever preventing the candidate from, at the beginning, saying: "hey, before we spend a lot of time on this, what kind of salaries are we talking?"
And at the end, if the candidate gets a lowball offer, there's nothing whatsoever preventing him making a counteroffer.
Those of us who work in tech operate with a lot of privileges compared to many many other workers.
All of these options technically exist, but make a lot of assumptions that aren't true for my non techie friends who are looking for work. It's not unusual in a lot of industries for companies to not continue to interview someone who doesn't let them decide everything about the process.
> It's not unusual in a lot of industries for companies to not continue to interview someone who doesn't let them decide everything about the process.
To put this into perspective, some companies and agencies do group interviews, where there are a few dozen applicants for a role in a large room that are whittled down and told to go home if they don't fit some criteria. Then whoever is left is hired. There's no room for negotiation, literally or figuratively.
If more people simply said "no", that wouldn't work for companies. Even so, I doubt that employers can afford to be that picky. If they could, everyone would be getting minimum wage. Everyone getting above minimum wage obviously has leverage.
Do you have family that struggles financially, or lacks the education and training for anything more than Walmart or if really lucky a mechanic?
The world you live in is nothing like the people this law was designed for, where labor exploitation is rampant and worker desperation so high that you don't have the luxury to wait for new opportunities because you can't feed your family or risk being evicted.
To be really honest here, New York City's labor market is famously exploitative of creatives and depending on the employer the same job can pay $200k or be an illegal internship with a metrocard stipend.
I know an animator who was "interning" full-time for 12 years before someone intervened and made them speak up for themselves to demand a paying job.
Good copywriters are worth every penny you can pay them, but I see loads of legitimate businesses trying to pay minimum wage for fulltimers.
Old people are notorious for exploiting informational asymmetry against the young and innocent or the naive. All of human history shows what a problem this is. Making things more transparent and fair is good for everyone except malicious old people.
> There's nothing whatsoever preventing the candidate from, at the beginning, saying: "hey, before we spend a lot of time on this, what kind of salaries are we talking?"
True, but futile.
Any* enterprise will answer that with "What are your expectations for the role?"
No* enterprise will tell you a number until making the actual offer unless legally obligated.
This is HR 101, where risk aversion informs policy handed down to hiring managers. (In six figure job cases, often hiring manager isn't even allowed to say a number, there's a separate comp team.)
I get informed all the time on HackerNews that I cannot negotiate certain things. But I can, and do it all the time. All these futile attempts are not so futile at all.
For example, I've negotiated price with doctors and dentists. I negotiate with auto shops. I negotiate with employers. I negotiate with department stores.
I used to think like you. Then I had a friend from Iran. He'd haggle everything with everyone. I was shocked he did that. I was further shocked at how successful he was at it! And so I learned.
P.S. There's nothing more mutable than a policy that some business will tell you is non-negotiable. It's all negotiable.
A general comment to the people who replied to me:
There are many books on negotiation you can buy. They aren't hard to find, and are easy reads. Invest a few dollars and a couple hours reading them. It can change your lives for the better. Even a modest effort here can pay off handsomely with $$$ in your pocket. The government isn't going to do it for you.
My interest isn't in wringing the most possible out of my negotiation with a company. I don't want to "win". I want to get what I want (even if that means that I'm not getting the most possible).
More importantly, unrelated to how much I get, I prefer things be fair. I think it is stupid that your ability to negotiate has a larger impact on your compensation than your proficiency in many cases. Reading a book on negotiating doesn't fix that, but getting the law changed does.
I think what would be more effective is to require companies to publicly post salaries for their existing positions, once every 6 months, like:
Support Executive - 30K - 45K
Marketing Manager - 50K
etc. It would reveal someone's salary if there's only one person working at that title in the entire company but I do not see any disadvantages to that.
I think it would enable all employees to negotiate a fair salary, and job seekers to find a fair compensation easier.
In terms of range - why could not the law say "max cannot exceed 130% of min"?
There are many jobs where the range of productivity is higher than 30%. Entertainment and athletics are obvious ones, but whether you think programmers of a given title/scope could be 10x different from each other, it seems like most people would agree that there's at least a 1.5x spread. Same would seem to be true in sales, modeling, acting, music, athletics, writing, film-making, and other fields involving significant creativity or where performance varies greatly.
Think about what this means in practice -- 2 things will happen. (assuming companies have to honor exactly the salary that is advertised)
Companies will:
1) Advertise lower salaries than you're able to otherwise negotiate (if you're a high performer) because they have to advertise this to everyone. People who could've earned more will lose some potential earning due to this measure, or they will not apply to suitable jobs for them that might have paid more on negotiation, and/or
2) Jobs will go unfilled for longer, and people who could've been hired for less will go unemployed or unhired for longer, because companies advertising a job with high salary will have to wait longer until the right person comes along for exactly that salary.
On the other hand, I could also see this becoming to the companies' advantage, as now they're able to openly collude and set standard (lower) wages for certain jobs, that no applicant will be able to negotiate above.
All to say, this is not the slam-dunk policy that you (or those policymakers) think. Lots of unintended consequences that I don't think that they even know yet.
---
And I'm being downvoted for, what, stating reasonable opinions that don't make people feel good?
As always, the cobra effect will be in play and the market will find get its way.
I don't actually think lawmakers are stupid enough to not realize this; it's just that they are not playing the "helping people" game: they are playing the reelection one.
I think you're being downvoted because your assumption is wrong. I'm pretty sure you can negotiate a higher total compensation than the advertised salary. Would love to know if that's wrong though!
Readit News
This is a very dangerous question to ask because it locks in previous pay discrimination based on protected categories.
I only learned about it recently. When I requested a report on my SSN, I saw every bi-weekly payment ever made to me
https://theworknumber.com/solutions/industries/pre-employmen...
> Talent Report™ Income and Employment Provides verification of employment plus verification of a candidate’s income
Most likely they use field Annual Income that you voluntarily provide to banks/cc companies when applying for a loan and that number is reported to Equifax. That number is verified by a lender by inspecting your W-2/paystubs when underwriting car/mortgage/other loan.
So you should never voluntarily provide income info to lenders, because every bit of that info will be sold to other companies and can be used against yiu in the future
Kind of funny that you aren't supposed to share your salary but your employer does.
If you created an personal account in order to get your data, what kind of profile data did you have to give them before you could get to what they have?
They still can use a service like The Work Number to verify candidate-provided numbers as part of a post-hiring background check, with proper consent from the candidate.
Deleted Comment
Even capital gains?
Which is freaking hilarious.
Remember: Whenever someone in HR tells you "this is a standard question", immediately assume that means "we can get away with asking this, and it's strictly to our advantage, so we always do".
One time an HR drone told me it was policy to ask and he didnt know why. I quizzically asked him why as an HR rep he didnt understand the HR policies of the company he worked for. I even asked him if it was policy for HR to not understand HR policy.
I kind of wished I'd told him that I'd recorded this phone call for training purposes :/
It's amazing how sweet and polite you can be with this line of questioning and how humiliating their answers will be (because there is no good answer).
It's a massive red flag so I doubt ive lost any good jobs this way.
The only information about salaries I know of is published by the Unions... which is sub-divided into profession, then ranges of years of experience. But because most software developers are not in Unions here, the data they have seems very skewed towards lower pay rates. It's really a nightmare as it seems that when I am looking for a job, all companies pay the same (which you only find out after several interviews to get an actual offer). IT really pisses me off that such an open country as this has this attitude towards salaries.
I wish every position had a salary range and an indication of how much you would expect to earn a certain experience. That surely would be beneficial to employees, who would know whether they could expect to get a better salary, but also to employers who actually want to find the best people and are willing to pay more, I think, as they wouldn't need to pay large amounts of money to join this "secret club" where they share salaries with each other, basically colluding to keep salaries low.
Was this in a location where asking is prohibited? They shouldn't be able to demand and answer "or cancel".
What's remarkable is not what you told the person, but the notion that you are compelled to answer any question an employer asks.
At least in America, you are not compelled to answer anything you don't want to.
Very true.
I believe NYC banned companies from asking for salary history a few years back. I was interviewing at a bank in NYC. I attempted to negotiate a salary about $20k - $30k from what I was making at the time, and the response from the interviewer was positive. I was then blindsided by the interviewer (who would've been my boss) after he asked what my current salary is and I let it slip out because I didn't know that it was illegal in NYC at the time to ask salary history. Afterwards, he said "huh, that's a big clip up, I think $X would be a bit more reasonable."
When I have the opportunity, I talk about this kind of thing with young professionals. They think that sounds like a lot of money, because they don't understand that's a rounding error to a large company. It's really cruel the way as a society we take kids making minimum wage at whatever first job, they get a degree, and then they get thrust out into Corporate America with no idea of what things cost or their own value. Unless they have the right mentors to encourage them to ask for more, they get whatever the company gives them.
I was negotiating a contract recently on behalf of a client and they wondered how much they should ask for - I helped them get a meaningful credit because I knew it was an amount of money the other party would be willing to absorb rather than fight about.
It covers salary history and much more, all of it useful.
https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/LAB/194-A
I also don't see why, if an employer demands a pay history, the candidate is obliged to provide it.
(And also, in my experience, nearly all candidates inflate their salary history by about 10%. Employers know this, and discount the salary history by 10%. Back when I applied for jobs, I provided a pay stub along with the comment that I wasn't lying about my salary.)
Not having a clue about what a candidate formerly earned means risk for the employer, and risk always means that the offer will be lower to account for the risk.
It really doesn't. An employee brings their employer some amount of value. The exact amount of value is completely unrelated to that employee's salary at their previous jobs.
The _only_ "risk" here is that the employer might not be able to lowball the candidate as much as they possibly could.
I have also sacked an agency over this and they are on my personal "Call First" list so if I am recommending agencies they wont be getting a call.
HIRED’s annual recruiting reports found that a significant driver of this were candidates asking for far lower than other peers. Many times, companies would then offer that candidate a greater salary, which was still below the bolder or more comfortable peer. The candidate feels like their company is doing them a favor.
So, this aspect should illuminate that many people are not aware that their own company is contributing to pay gaps. Any individual may in fact think the opposite, that it must be some other company with the proverbial bigoted shadow men in a board room disenfranchising everyone that doesn't look like them. When that picture isn't whats happening or isn't necessary, when candidates exacerbate this on their own.
Could it be that the candidate has experience being turned down when asking higher rates? Perhaps.
Could it be that the company doesnt even realize that they arent getting a deal with the candidate, but really just exacerbating pay gaps? That the candidates asking lower may be disproportionately certain genders and ethnicities?
New York City is reducing this to anti-discrimination, making the penalties inherit discrimination frameworks without regard to the circumstances leading up to it. I think thats a great remedy, given how opaque and nuanced the reality really has been.
We don't need to tweak candidate behavior or gradually retrain companies to notice gender and race to conditionally adjust, instead just make the salaries apparent for all.
But if you come across looking like a bargain, employers will gladly pay a bargain to have you.
What it boils down to is agency: standardized wages is just another way to fix the price of labor. People that believe they are worth more also believe they should get paid more, and they can use their individual agency to test that theory on an open job market.
The posted job might be for a senior engineer, but if an extremely promising recent grad shows up maybe I'll take a bet on them instead, but they'll start on a lower salary. Or sometimes an extremely experienced person shows interest and they're a perfect fit so they end up getting hired at a distinguished level which wasn't the plan but the stars aligned.
It's not useful to post the job with a range of 50K-400K, but it's sort of what the range really is.
Until then, punish that behavior by job hopping ever year. If they want to play a game, we can play it too
Because (some of them) are narcissistic jerks and play games with others on general principle, just to test their mettle. Or to separate the wolves from the sheep, as it were.
For remote jobs that hire in CO, there's also some pay discrimination depending on location (one rate for Boulder, another for Denver, and another for "everywhere else").
Lastly, there's a lot of companies that don't follow it if the job is remote across the US, either because they don't know or because the violation is only a couple grand and relies on people reporting the posting in a way that's verifiable or it still being up when enforcement gets around to looking. I will say that I haven't seen any postings that exclude Colorado, even from companies that originally did (DigitalOcean for one), leading me to believe it was more of a temporary measure to immediately comply than a permanent change.
Maybe this is not my absolute best choice option, but it doesn’t matter much to me because I’m not trying to maximize my profits.
You should check out Netflix. Their pay is all in cash, and it is very competitive.
I too always sell immediately as I prefer to be diversified (but I also don’t work at an extreme high growth company)
Colorado passed a law/clarified the law that writing "we exclude people from Colorado" wasn't sufficient to avoid the salary postings. They can probably only enforce it for companies that have any presence in Colorado, but a single employee is sufficient. It would be worrisome that companies would terminate all Colorado operations (if relocatable), but the addition of NYC makes that unlikely.
But that's probably why they stopped using it. It means as much as "NOT MY COPYRIGHT, USED WITH LOVE" in the description on YouTube.
Meanwhile, they should definitely fix the law so that bonuses/RSUs are included (RSUs have a known market price that could be listed)
Similar to how California's emissions restrictions are implemented everywhere in the US vs making a separate California-only car, HR will start posting NYC compliant jobs everywhere vs figuring out whether or not they're required. Especially true if LA or SF hop on the bandwagon.
It sounds like they will be incentivized to provide those details or lose candidates to jobs posting higher salaries or detailed numbers.
Rackspace was the company doing it when I posted an example, but I know it happens elsewhere too. Was it SpaceX? I forget.
Take a look here. [1]
1: https://www.coloradoexcluded.com/
Just let the states do state things, having the federal make laws is typically unnecessary. If it benefits business, then companies will do it. If it benefits states, then states will do it.
I'm pretty confident posting wages will suppress wages
If you toss out the status quo bullshit, cleansheeting public policy becomes workable!
I can't think of a way this law could be implemented in a way that hurts anyone besides businesses that want to unfairly underpay a portion of an equally qualified cohort of workers.
If you block that process "companies can't negotiate with you, they have to give you a rate and that's it", you will cause a lot of unintended consequences for the labor market.
Be very very careful making such changes.
What you are describing is the current status quo for the supermajority of workers, except it's the workers who can't negotiate. The company simply gives them a number and they have to accept it. Allowing the companies to hide the number behind the sunk costs of the interview process only tips the scales further in businesses' favor.
This law brings salary negotiation closer to actual supply and demand, not further.
Some extra laws might be required, such as forbidding and heavily fining companies that are shown to be acting like a cartel when setting salaries. At the very least, if salary offers are public, salary fixing conspiracies (of the type several Silicon Valley companies were fined for) will be much harder to pull off again.
This is true if and only if one defines adopts as the definition of “correct” something like “at whatever levels the particular variant of capitalism in question sets”.
Forced? Don't be absurd.
"After the culmination of an arduous, emotionally draining interview process, an offer could be made that is far below the expectations of the eager candidate."
There's nothing whatsoever preventing the candidate from, at the beginning, saying: "hey, before we spend a lot of time on this, what kind of salaries are we talking?"
And at the end, if the candidate gets a lowball offer, there's nothing whatsoever preventing him making a counteroffer.
All of these options technically exist, but make a lot of assumptions that aren't true for my non techie friends who are looking for work. It's not unusual in a lot of industries for companies to not continue to interview someone who doesn't let them decide everything about the process.
To put this into perspective, some companies and agencies do group interviews, where there are a few dozen applicants for a role in a large room that are whittled down and told to go home if they don't fit some criteria. Then whoever is left is hired. There's no room for negotiation, literally or figuratively.
The world you live in is nothing like the people this law was designed for, where labor exploitation is rampant and worker desperation so high that you don't have the luxury to wait for new opportunities because you can't feed your family or risk being evicted.
I know an animator who was "interning" full-time for 12 years before someone intervened and made them speak up for themselves to demand a paying job.
Good copywriters are worth every penny you can pay them, but I see loads of legitimate businesses trying to pay minimum wage for fulltimers.
That's why god invented google. There's no reason you can't find out what people in your position are paid these days. Or use Bing if you like.
Old people are not like what you just laid out.
True, but futile.
Any* enterprise will answer that with "What are your expectations for the role?"
No* enterprise will tell you a number until making the actual offer unless legally obligated.
This is HR 101, where risk aversion informs policy handed down to hiring managers. (In six figure job cases, often hiring manager isn't even allowed to say a number, there's a separate comp team.)
* For 80/20 by-and-large values of "any" and "no"
Try it sometime before quitting in advance.
I get informed all the time on HackerNews that I cannot negotiate certain things. But I can, and do it all the time. All these futile attempts are not so futile at all.
For example, I've negotiated price with doctors and dentists. I negotiate with auto shops. I negotiate with employers. I negotiate with department stores.
I used to think like you. Then I had a friend from Iran. He'd haggle everything with everyone. I was shocked he did that. I was further shocked at how successful he was at it! And so I learned.
P.S. There's nothing more mutable than a policy that some business will tell you is non-negotiable. It's all negotiable.
There are many books on negotiation you can buy. They aren't hard to find, and are easy reads. Invest a few dollars and a couple hours reading them. It can change your lives for the better. Even a modest effort here can pay off handsomely with $$$ in your pocket. The government isn't going to do it for you.
More importantly, unrelated to how much I get, I prefer things be fair. I think it is stupid that your ability to negotiate has a larger impact on your compensation than your proficiency in many cases. Reading a book on negotiating doesn't fix that, but getting the law changed does.
Support Executive - 30K - 45K
Marketing Manager - 50K
etc. It would reveal someone's salary if there's only one person working at that title in the entire company but I do not see any disadvantages to that.
I think it would enable all employees to negotiate a fair salary, and job seekers to find a fair compensation easier.
In terms of range - why could not the law say "max cannot exceed 130% of min"?
https://h1bdata.info
This is already required for H1-B workers through the prevailing wage determination process.
Companies will:
1) Advertise lower salaries than you're able to otherwise negotiate (if you're a high performer) because they have to advertise this to everyone. People who could've earned more will lose some potential earning due to this measure, or they will not apply to suitable jobs for them that might have paid more on negotiation, and/or
2) Jobs will go unfilled for longer, and people who could've been hired for less will go unemployed or unhired for longer, because companies advertising a job with high salary will have to wait longer until the right person comes along for exactly that salary.
On the other hand, I could also see this becoming to the companies' advantage, as now they're able to openly collude and set standard (lower) wages for certain jobs, that no applicant will be able to negotiate above.
All to say, this is not the slam-dunk policy that you (or those policymakers) think. Lots of unintended consequences that I don't think that they even know yet.
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And I'm being downvoted for, what, stating reasonable opinions that don't make people feel good?
It's not even close to an even playing field. Companies have vastly more information than the average job applicant.
So if you are overqualified and confident in yourself, apply and negotiate.
> because companies advertising a job with high salary will have to wait longer
I think you have this backwards
> now they're able to openly collude
That's not a very stable equilibrium. I think they would instead openly compete
I don't actually think lawmakers are stupid enough to not realize this; it's just that they are not playing the "helping people" game: they are playing the reelection one.
Colorado: 5,773,714 people, GDP of $318.6 billion.
I mean, yeah, sure, they can do that, but it's dumb and their competitors will profit from that.