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It took me a while to understand that most people don't realize you can lie on this with almost zero downside. Very few employers are checking, and very few ti
by phil21 10y ago
It took me a while to understand that most people don't realize you can lie on this with almost zero downside. Very few employers are checking, and very few times is that information legally available to them.
The most they can typically get is the "typical" salary for a given position at a large company. There are exceptions of course, and the good ole' boys network can sometimes run deep.
But in the end, if you are let go or not hired because you lied about a salary they were otherwise willing to pay you? You dodged a bullet. Who would want to work in such an environment to begin with?
The correct answer is to say with what you think the current position is worth and what you want to get paid. There is no upside to being truthful here.
This is legitimately hard for a lot of folks to understand, the same type of folks who equate violating corporate policy as being "illegal".
I'd even go so far to say it's close to immoral not to lie on this question given the power imbalance when it comes to hiring.
- josh_fyi 10y agoYou have some leeway. If you say "My compensation was $70K" and your salary was $50K, you may well be telling the truth.
- vwcx 10y agoExactly! My company's internal benefits page tells me my compensation is "salary + employer side of medical, dental, vision + employer 401k match". I always chuckle at how high that number is compared to my actual paycheck...
- southphillyman 10y agoGoing forward I'm including calculations for free lunch, the relatively excessive amount of PTO days I get every year (30+), and the relatively affordable insurance I have ($140 per monthly for a family). Locally I think it will be hard to get a similar benefit package so I'm going to quantify those benefits and bake them into my "salary".
- eric_h 10y agoThere was a post on hacker news a few months ago that explained exactly this. I believe it's a fair way of calculating it (if you feel that you must disclose something for whatever reason).
- tbomb 10y agoAt a previous company I found an internal excel document with everyone's salary, from the CEO down to his assistant. On the doc my salary was inflated ~25K to what my actual gross was, I can only assume these perks/benefits were included on top of the salary. But it shows they see that on paper that's how they saw my salary hit. I think it would be wise to include these in your previous "salary". I never did find any more details on the document though :(
- matwood 10y agoThere is a fully loaded cost for an employee. It includes the salary, the companies portion of taxes, benefits, etc... The employee may not know those numbers exactly, but the employer must because that is real cash leaving the door every month.
- throwaway_374 10y agoTrue, and on the flip side many employees don't factor this in when asking for salary raises and negotiations. A $20K bump is viewed as a fraction of your "fully loaded cost" as opposed to your base salary which you will be benchmarking against.
- mavelikara 10y agoRaganwald had a good write up on how to do this: https://github.com/raganwald/raganwald.posterous.com/blob/master/raw/onthesubjectofdisclosingyourcompensation.md https://github.com/raganwald/raganwald.posterous.com/blob/ma...
- Taylor_OD 10y agoI've worked with 100's of people in the offer stage with companies and the only companies I've had check in the past are financial companies.
- woogiewonka 10y agoAgree. I do this every time and always get a nice salary bump. Stating what your salary should be as previous pay is perfectly ok in my book.
- pesfandiar 10y ago> The correct answer is to say with what you think the current position is worth and what you want to get paid. There is no upside to being truthful here. No. The correct answer is nothing. Maybe ask what their budget for the position is, but never give a number first.