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So people on HN are pro employers posting their employee salaries publicly but against previous companies asking what their salaries are. WTF. I must be missi

So people on HN are pro employers posting their employee salaries publicly but against previous companies asking what their salaries are. WTF. I must be missing something here. I personally believe your salary is your business. Period. Getting salary information bad, forcing employees to divulge salaries from a position of power is disgusting. Here is me being publicly quartered on HN for pushing back on forcing employees publicly posting salaries: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12805814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12805814

jerf 10y ago
"So [some] people on HN are pro employers posting their employee salaries publicly but [some people on HN are] against previous companies asking what their salaries are. WTF. I must be missing something here." I added some words to your quote in the square brackets that should resolve the confusion for you.
jakob223 10y ago
I'm confused by why these things are so connected for you; I think it benefits potential employees to both not have to talk about past salaries and to be able to know what other employees are being paid.
kesselvon 10y ago
Companies asking for your previous salary means theyre going to try to pay you with your past salary being a benchmark to work with, not necessarily what the position is worth. Companies posting employee salaries publicly aims for employees at said company to be paid at the same level (with similar experience). There's a subtle difference. Every time I've been asked about salary its been an obvious ploy to lowball my salary due to previous experience of working in a lower cost area. Employees literally have zero incentive not to lie, since employers can't verify
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  It's also worth recognizing that things are very different if this becomes universal. If one company asks for your salary at another, they get a chance to underpay. But if every company publishes salaries, they don't get to low-ball no matter what you were getting before.
  - kesselvon 10y ago
    Yep. I find that in the US people are very reluctant to discuss salary amongst themselves, which makes it super hard to figure out if you're getting screwed or not. Europeans tend to be much more open about their earnings.
- notahacker 10y ago
  The obvious consequence of a company publicly posting salaries (or even having clear salary ranges that nearly all the employees at the level of experience fall into) is that a thorough recruiter doesn't even need to ask your previous salary to be able to use it as a benchmark to work with though.
  - kesselvon 10y ago
    I don't think I've ever seen public salaries at places that pay on the lower-end. Usually I've seen it with startups that pay fairly well, but I could be wrong.
    - reneherse 10y ago
      Gitlab is an interesting case: they publish their compensation formula, which yields different pay for the same work depending on the employee's geographic location.
    - daleco 10y ago
      Non for profit salaries are public, they aren't paying top salaries usually.
      - sqeaky 10y ago
        I also don't think this is what was meant. In the US non-profits have to disclose this because the law says so and generally the non-profits do so in the most minimal discrete way possible. Few people, rarely recruiters, know where to go to get the information. This is even a service some background check companies provide. I think the comment was referring to companies that celebrate the high wages they pay as a way to attract the best talent.
- shados 10y ago
  Employers ask for your salary to make sure it makes sense to talk. Everyone mentions it to be lowballing you. But what do you think happens when you mention a higher number than they expect? While it sometimes will end the conversation (because they're unwilling to pay), sometimes they'll match that, leading to a higher salary than what the offer would have been. Of course, often, including in big companies, the background check isn't done by the hiring managers. So you can straight up lie about your salary, get a higher offer, then when they background check they get the real one, and they're none the wiser ::shrugs:: Even without lying, In the couple of occasions where I was underpaid and trying to go up, it's simply what I would say when asked. "My salary was X, but I'm looking for X + Y". It's just not that hard.
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    It's a classic negotiation problem. From the employee's point of view: If you specify a number, you have either A) disqualified yourself due to it being too high or B) set a cap on your potential salary (they may have been willing to pay more). Neither scenario represents upside for you. From the employer's point of view: If the company specifies a number, it has either A) disqualified itself due to it being too low or B) set a minimum that it will have to pay (candidate may have been willing to accept less). Neither scenario represents upside.
    - gdulli 10y ago
      > If you specify a number, you have either A) disqualified yourself due to it being too high or B) set a cap on your potential salary (they may have been willing to pay more). Neither scenario represents upside for you. Those are hardly the only outcomes. An impressive salary history can raise the esteem of a candidate. It's a signal that makes the candidate look good, should the employer attach meaning to it, which they're free to do or not do. But it won't hurt you. The real world is more fluid and complex than just these two rigid outcomes. An employer can put a salary range in writing and then find a great candidate who's simply worth more, and in a market where talent is hard to find you don't turn away great candidates, you reshape the job description. Or maybe the hiring manager passes the employee to a different department or different company with an opening with a higher range. Or maybe the hiring manager passes because they just can't do it but 6 weeks later you get a call back because they haven't found anyone better and the manager got more desperate or fought their boss to increase the hiring budget. And if your previous salary is higher than the absolute range of the job you're interviewing for, you're still free to tell the employer you're okay with that, if you are. I've done it before. You can also use it to negotiate other benefits. Maybe they're inflexible on the top end of the salary range but you can get extra equity or vacation out of it. > If the company specifies a number, it has either A) disqualified itself due to it being too low You must believe ranges have some flexibility or else a company disqualifying itself is upside for them because it saves them the time of interviewing candidates who aren't willing to take the disclosed range.
- gdulli 10y ago
  > Employees literally have zero incentive not to lie, since employers can't verify That assumes you feel lying is wrong only because of the circumstances of getting caught vs. valuing honesty for its own sake.
  - kesselvon 10y ago
    Morals are nice, but if you're being underpaid purely based on your previous salary vs actual worth, then it doesn't do you much good except to feel good.
    - gdulli 10y ago
      If I'm underpaid it's because I took a job with bad pay. Presumably because I failed to demonstrate I was worth more, was incorrect about being worth more, or I chose to accept an offer that didn't match my value. I can take personal responsibility for any of those scenarios. Transparency is not the root cause of them. Taking responsibility is in general a better option than assigning blame. Acting in bad faith because of perceived bad faith just feeds into a downward spiral that makes the world worse for everyone. You don't act right because it feels good, there are practical reasons for it.
      - kesselvon 10y ago
        I think blaming people for letting themselves get screwed is rather egregious when firms have every incentive to screw you. In a lot of situations, its either you take the job offer or you don't eat. How long do you think most people can survive unemployment?
- pm24601 10y ago
  > Employees literally have zero incentive not to lie, since employers can't verify Bad assumption. A previous employer might reveal it. The future employer could ask for W-2's
  - kesselvon 10y ago
    Employers barely check if you have a college diploma, let alone for W2's
lr4444lr 10y ago
Posting salaries anonymously and in aggregate does not disadvantage the employee. HR depts. already have a rough estimate of the average paid by other companies. Those postings merely level the playing field for job seekers. Though I don't support the law, the two points you raised are completely consistent.
Bartweiss 10y ago
Here's one argument: the logic changes if the data is universal. The usual complaint about asking for salaries is that it's a trick to underpay new hires - you can give them the lower of your normal salaries or a 10% raise. That's because they don't know what they're worth, but you know what they got before. If everyone publishes salaries (and they already do in practice, thanks to Glassdoor), that trick goes away. No matter what your previous salary was, you have leverage to say "look, you pay everyone else double that, cough up". So the primary objection to asking for salary is negated. I'm not sure the logic is totally sound - some people will end up moving from published to unpublished employers - but I think there is a distinction.
nommm-nommm 10y ago
It's all about information asymmetry. The employers have information you don't so you can't use that information to your advantage in negotiations. They really don't want that information to get out so they can continue to push salaries lower. The only reason they want to keep that information private is to use it to their advantage. I believe, last time I researched this topic, is that transparent salaries tend to increase pay across the board and make pay more performance based rather than negotiating skills based. EDIT: http://economics.usf.edu/PDF/Asymetric%20Information%20Porter%20Kamp.pdf http://economics.usf.edu/PDF/Asymetric%20Information%20Porte... > Beginning in 1989 the National Hockey League Players’ Association began annually to reveal the salaries of all its members. Over the next five seasons as contracts were renegotiated wages rose precipitously. Over the same period the role of player performance in determining wages gained importance while the identity of the team with which they negotiated lost all significance.
sqeaky 10y ago
> So people on HN are pro employers posting their employee salaries publicly but against previous companies asking what their salaries are. WTF. You are treating a heterogeneous group as though it were a homogeneous individual. I hope Individuals strive to avoid hypocrisy, while groups almost mandate its existence. Consider how easy it is to attack any political party because of their superficially contradictory beliefs.

jerf 10y ago

"So [some] people on HN are pro employers posting their employee salaries publicly but [some people on HN are] against previous companies asking what their salaries are. WTF. I must be missing something here." I added some words to your quote in the square brackets that should resolve the confusion for you.

jakob223 10y ago

I'm confused by why these things are so connected for you; I think it benefits potential employees to both not have to talk about past salaries and to be able to know what other employees are being paid.

kesselvon 10y ago

Companies asking for your previous salary means theyre going to try to pay you with your past salary being a benchmark to work with, not necessarily what the position is worth. Companies posting employee salaries publicly aims for employees at said company to be paid at the same level (with similar experience). There's a subtle difference. Every time I've been asked about salary its been an obvious ploy to lowball my salary due to previous experience of working in a lower cost area. Employees literally have zero incentive not to lie, since employers can't verify

Bartweiss 10y ago
It's also worth recognizing that things are very different if this becomes universal. If one company asks for your salary at another, they get a chance to underpay. But if every company publishes salaries, they don't get to low-ball no matter what you were getting before.
- kesselvon 10y ago
  Yep. I find that in the US people are very reluctant to discuss salary amongst themselves, which makes it super hard to figure out if you're getting screwed or not. Europeans tend to be much more open about their earnings.
notahacker 10y ago
The obvious consequence of a company publicly posting salaries (or even having clear salary ranges that nearly all the employees at the level of experience fall into) is that a thorough recruiter doesn't even need to ask your previous salary to be able to use it as a benchmark to work with though.
- kesselvon 10y ago
  I don't think I've ever seen public salaries at places that pay on the lower-end. Usually I've seen it with startups that pay fairly well, but I could be wrong.
  - reneherse 10y ago
    Gitlab is an interesting case: they publish their compensation formula, which yields different pay for the same work depending on the employee's geographic location.
  - daleco 10y ago
    Non for profit salaries are public, they aren't paying top salaries usually.
    - sqeaky 10y ago
      I also don't think this is what was meant. In the US non-profits have to disclose this because the law says so and generally the non-profits do so in the most minimal discrete way possible. Few people, rarely recruiters, know where to go to get the information. This is even a service some background check companies provide. I think the comment was referring to companies that celebrate the high wages they pay as a way to attract the best talent.
shados 10y ago
Employers ask for your salary to make sure it makes sense to talk. Everyone mentions it to be lowballing you. But what do you think happens when you mention a higher number than they expect? While it sometimes will end the conversation (because they're unwilling to pay), sometimes they'll match that, leading to a higher salary than what the offer would have been. Of course, often, including in big companies, the background check isn't done by the hiring managers. So you can straight up lie about your salary, get a higher offer, then when they background check they get the real one, and they're none the wiser ::shrugs:: Even without lying, In the couple of occasions where I was underpaid and trying to go up, it's simply what I would say when asked. "My salary was X, but I'm looking for X + Y". It's just not that hard.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  It's a classic negotiation problem. From the employee's point of view: If you specify a number, you have either A) disqualified yourself due to it being too high or B) set a cap on your potential salary (they may have been willing to pay more). Neither scenario represents upside for you. From the employer's point of view: If the company specifies a number, it has either A) disqualified itself due to it being too low or B) set a minimum that it will have to pay (candidate may have been willing to accept less). Neither scenario represents upside.
  - gdulli 10y ago
    > If you specify a number, you have either A) disqualified yourself due to it being too high or B) set a cap on your potential salary (they may have been willing to pay more). Neither scenario represents upside for you. Those are hardly the only outcomes. An impressive salary history can raise the esteem of a candidate. It's a signal that makes the candidate look good, should the employer attach meaning to it, which they're free to do or not do. But it won't hurt you. The real world is more fluid and complex than just these two rigid outcomes. An employer can put a salary range in writing and then find a great candidate who's simply worth more, and in a market where talent is hard to find you don't turn away great candidates, you reshape the job description. Or maybe the hiring manager passes the employee to a different department or different company with an opening with a higher range. Or maybe the hiring manager passes because they just can't do it but 6 weeks later you get a call back because they haven't found anyone better and the manager got more desperate or fought their boss to increase the hiring budget. And if your previous salary is higher than the absolute range of the job you're interviewing for, you're still free to tell the employer you're okay with that, if you are. I've done it before. You can also use it to negotiate other benefits. Maybe they're inflexible on the top end of the salary range but you can get extra equity or vacation out of it. > If the company specifies a number, it has either A) disqualified itself due to it being too low You must believe ranges have some flexibility or else a company disqualifying itself is upside for them because it saves them the time of interviewing candidates who aren't willing to take the disclosed range.
gdulli 10y ago
> Employees literally have zero incentive not to lie, since employers can't verify That assumes you feel lying is wrong only because of the circumstances of getting caught vs. valuing honesty for its own sake.
- kesselvon 10y ago
  Morals are nice, but if you're being underpaid purely based on your previous salary vs actual worth, then it doesn't do you much good except to feel good.
  - gdulli 10y ago
    If I'm underpaid it's because I took a job with bad pay. Presumably because I failed to demonstrate I was worth more, was incorrect about being worth more, or I chose to accept an offer that didn't match my value. I can take personal responsibility for any of those scenarios. Transparency is not the root cause of them. Taking responsibility is in general a better option than assigning blame. Acting in bad faith because of perceived bad faith just feeds into a downward spiral that makes the world worse for everyone. You don't act right because it feels good, there are practical reasons for it.
    - kesselvon 10y ago
      I think blaming people for letting themselves get screwed is rather egregious when firms have every incentive to screw you. In a lot of situations, its either you take the job offer or you don't eat. How long do you think most people can survive unemployment?
pm24601 10y ago
> Employees literally have zero incentive not to lie, since employers can't verify Bad assumption. A previous employer might reveal it. The future employer could ask for W-2's
- kesselvon 10y ago
  Employers barely check if you have a college diploma, let alone for W2's

lr4444lr 10y ago

Posting salaries anonymously and in aggregate does not disadvantage the employee. HR depts. already have a rough estimate of the average paid by other companies. Those postings merely level the playing field for job seekers. Though I don't support the law, the two points you raised are completely consistent.

Bartweiss 10y ago

Here's one argument: the logic changes if the data is universal. The usual complaint about asking for salaries is that it's a trick to underpay new hires - you can give them the lower of your normal salaries or a 10% raise. That's because they don't know what they're worth, but you know what they got before. If everyone publishes salaries (and they already do in practice, thanks to Glassdoor), that trick goes away. No matter what your previous salary was, you have leverage to say "look, you pay everyone else double that, cough up". So the primary objection to asking for salary is negated. I'm not sure the logic is totally sound - some people will end up moving from published to unpublished employers - but I think there is a distinction.

nommm-nommm 10y ago

It's all about information asymmetry. The employers have information you don't so you can't use that information to your advantage in negotiations. They really don't want that information to get out so they can continue to push salaries lower. The only reason they want to keep that information private is to use it to their advantage. I believe, last time I researched this topic, is that transparent salaries tend to increase pay across the board and make pay more performance based rather than negotiating skills based. EDIT: http://economics.usf.edu/PDF/Asymetric%20Information%20Porter%20Kamp.pdf http://economics.usf.edu/PDF/Asymetric%20Information%20Porte... > Beginning in 1989 the National Hockey League Players’ Association began annually to reveal the salaries of all its members. Over the next five seasons as contracts were renegotiated wages rose precipitously. Over the same period the role of player performance in determining wages gained importance while the identity of the team with which they negotiated lost all significance.

sqeaky 10y ago

> So people on HN are pro employers posting their employee salaries publicly but against previous companies asking what their salaries are. WTF. You are treating a heterogeneous group as though it were a homogeneous individual. I hope Individuals strive to avoid hypocrisy, while groups almost mandate its existence. Consider how easy it is to attack any political party because of their superficially contradictory beliefs.