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New Law Bans California Employers From Asking Applicants Their Prior Salary (sfgate.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: California employers can no longer ask job applicants about their prior salary and -- if applicants ask -- must give them a pay range for the job they are seeking, under a new state law that takes effect Jan. 1. AB168, signed Thursday by Gov. Jerry Brown, applies to all public- and private-sector California employers of any size. 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. Last year, the state passed a weaker law that said prior compensation, by itself, cannot justify any disparity in compensation. The new bill goes further by prohibiting employers, "orally or in writing, personally or through an agent," from asking about an applicant's previous pay. However, if the applicant "voluntarily and without prompting" provides this information, the employer may use it "in determining the salary for that applicant."
I used to have spitting matches with recruiters because they wanted to know how much I'm earning, because my ask wasn't getting many hits on their job portfolio. Sometimes I gave in and told them, only for them to reply that I shouldn't be asking for as much as I was, because the jump is too high. They were making the decision of how much I'm worth for me. But I did push back and got what I wanted in the end, every time. I'm sure they were happy with the commission afterwards.
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
I foresee a lot of voluntary disclosure. :(
one where pro-worker laws actually make it onto the books. Then again this law mostly helps professionals. I can't remember the last time I saw a law that swung in favor of the blue collar types.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I must have been lucky -- I've never been asked that. I get asked what soft of salary I'm looking for instead.
Virtually every employment application I've ever filled out has asked me for my start & end salary at previous work places, along with start & end date of employment, plus why I left that position. I think those questions are pretty standard.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
I'm job-seeking right now and they always ask. ALWAYS.
I love how this was passed thru (the law) because of male/female pay issues.
the REAL issue is that it makes negotiating a one-way street, with the company having all the power and you have nearly none.
'the first one to mention a number, loses'
that's how the old saying goes when you are haggling.
and yet, there's few ways out of this game, especially since you can't just mark 'market rate' on the online hr forms.
its all about keeping you in your place. the god damned 'job creators' that we have been worshipping really don't have our needs in mind; they could not care less if we all starved and died on the streets. lots of indians to come over and work for a fraction of what a US person needs to live on.
good that this passed thru; but sad that it had to be couched as a male/female thing instead of 'strong company/weak worker' negotiation balancing.
either way, I expect companies to find loopholes to work around this 'unpleasent' rebalance of power.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Virtually every employment application I've ever filled out has asked me for my start & end salary at previous work places, along with start & end date of employment, plus why I left that position. I think those questions are pretty standard.
Yes many places ask for that information. I almost never provide any salary information (not usually relevant) as there is no upside to me in providing that information. Where I worked and when is fair game to ask but what I made at my last job really has no relevance in almost every case and providing that data really can only hurt me in most cases.
Gotta give the progressive morons in Sacramento credit for this one..This should be the law everywhere...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
Recruiters love to pigeonhole people. If you did the same kind of work for the last three positions and/or last three years, they assume that you want to do that kind of work forever. Never mind that the position you're applying for may be completely different.
Why not just make up a number?
For example, when I'm applying for a position, I've already computed a salary that I want to get (yes, I have a formula for this). You could do the same, and tell them that was what you made in your last position.
I've been asked the question by recruiters at major tech companies. It's been pretty quickly shut down by "I'm not in the Bay Area currently, I don't think what I'm on just now is in any way relevant to how much I should be paid over there".
I had a friend who instead of putting his last salary added up all his benefits with his salary and provided them with that. It bumped his "wage" by a considerable margin. Ironically, it was a law firm that he went to, working in IT. He argued that if they found out they would actually be impressed with how he framed it to his favor instead of giving his base salary. I think he's right.
That's still better than telling them your previous salary.
I mean, let's say you're interviewing for a position that pays $65k - $80k (and it was advertised as such), depending on experience. If you tell them that at your last job, you were making $60k, they're going to start negotiating at $65k.
But if the question is, how much do you expect to earn here, it puts you in a better position for negotiation. Maybe you have enough experience to flat out say "$80k". Or maybe, you want to give them a little wiggle room for negotiation so you don't come across as a hard-ass, and you say "$75k".
But you still have a better starting point for the salary negotiation.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
if they found out they would actually be impressed
He was just being honest. Your compensation is usually more than the amount written on the paycheck.
But, how would they find out? No employer is going to tell how much they paid any employees, as that opens them up to lawsuits.
Anything that prevents companies from playing HR compensation games when they hire new employees or promote from within is a good thing. Most big company HR departments absolutely will not entertain offers if the salary is over x% of what the person says they were previously making. Almost all companies enforce this rule when promoting someone too -- they want to pay as little as possible, not how much the job is worth.
I imagine this rule comes from California due to the extremely distorted labor market that SF/SV has now. I know the official reason is gender equality, which does need to be addressed, but the side effect is a more level playing field for all job applicants. If you can convince an employer that you're worth $250K as a rockstar Rust developer, but you're making $100K doing JavaScript, then companies will just have to do a better job figuring out whether the candidates are lying.
Leave it to California to come up with yet another piece of legislation that the other 49 states didn't feel a need for.... Hope they're all happy with themselves.
My experience in the job market (both in the midwest and now on the east coast) is pretty much the same. SOME employers will ask your previous salary. Others won't. It's always been the case that you're free to fudge the numbers if you think it's to your advantage to do so, when they ask for this information. (For example ... your previous salary may well have been X number of dollars, but did you receive any bonuses like a Christmas bonus perhaps? You can add all of that in to the total you give them and you're not lying -- and it wouldn't be a big deal if you rounded that estimated number up a bit, because of an assumption you'd get higher bonuses in following years if you stayed where you were instead of taking this new job.)
I get that nobody likes that uncertainty of trying to figure out how much to demand, without pricing yourself out of the range of what the person hiring wants to pay. But come on! Pretending employers hold ALL the cards here just isn't reality in the Internet age. You have web sites like GlassDoor you can use to get all sorts of info in advance about what an employer was paying other people, as well as how they liked it there. You can scope out the average salaries paid for your job title in your area by browsing listings on sites like Monster or Dice. I never felt like I need the LAW to force employers to stop asking the previous salary question in order to get a fair interview.
They were making the decision of how much I'm worth for me.
They already have that number figured out, their bonuses are determined based on how far they can widdle you down below that. Headhunters are fucking deplorable (and not in the happy-go-lucky MAGA way) - they tend to take 15% minimum (so if you get in the door at 85k you can bet the company you end up working for is paying 100k - which makes them expect more while you don't actually see it all.) At the same time they work for companies which are just as bad, and they might make $1k as a one-time bonus if they can get another 10k off. You "won" because they follow a script, most of them don't know how to negotiate but they work for absolute sociopathic pieces of garbage who have negotiating down so well they can train anyone to do it with a script. I've actually interviewed with headhunters who never looked up from the (quite literal) script through the entire 30-60 minute interview.
Because then they will verify this as a condition of your job offer, find out you were lying, and disqualify you. Dishonesty is always a high-risk lay where one mistake will cost you.
Who needs to ask the employee when you can ask Equifax or Transunion the same question?
--
"Ask me once, you a fool. Ask me twice, wait, What?" -- J. Muamma
I admire the honesty of people. I'd simply lie to their face.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Now that you mention it, I do remember such questions from a couple of lifetimes ago when I was applying for unskilled jobs. That was so long ago that I forgot. Those questions stopped when I started in engineering, though.
I've worked as an engineer for 20 years in the very best companies out there. All of them asked that. Some require a drug test, others don't. It's silly, I am not going to be operating a bus, I'm going to be driving a keyboard and mouse, maybe an oscilloscope if I get suckered into lab work. All ask for your previous salary on the job application.
These days I leave it blank, but often HR will ask directly. I give them a number that is defensible but misleading, and what I want them to beat to work there. So far nobody has ever called me on it.
They should not ask though. First, it is usually considered confidential information from current employers. Second, the should be paying me what they think I'm worth, not based on what the other guy thought I was worth, or via some fixing scheme where everyone agrees this is what we pay engineers, and when they get pissed we give them a few % more.
How can they verify it?
The best they could do is tax records, but that's sufficiently imprecise to cover you. They could do a credit check, but that only gives them a general range, not an exact salary.
But, if you don't want to lie, then just don't answer the question.
There's exactly no chance that I'm going to tell potential employers what previous employers paid me. That's very personal information that they have no legitimate need to know.
If that means I won't get hired for the position, that's fine -- if the information is that important to them, that's an excellent indication that I wouldn't fit in well in that company anyway.
Not in the US. When they ask me, I tell them that I am sure that they will be offering a fair salary and that the job will be sufficient different, so that comparing would be unfair to both them and myself. And if it turns out the the job is identical that moving companies would not be in either of our interests.
I know I could lie about being pregnant if they ever would ask, even if I am male and I am sure that I would be allowed to lie if I said a random number to increase my value.
Also if they call my (current or previous) company and they tell them, they would be in breach of several laws. They could ask for my pay slip, but I am pretty sure that that would be an issue for them as well.
At one job interview they asked and I just said 'Not enough, that is why I am sitting here where I would expect to get X with the experience I have and the job you offer.' Yes, I got the job.
But then talking about money is a big no anyway.
But most will ask "What do you want to earn?" and have a pretty fixed amount in their head. Other places will have a fixed amount per function and age. I have called HR departments, asked if they would be willing to pay X before wasting our time and some said yes and others no. I have companies tell me, we pay Y, are you interested.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
A few years ago, I worked at a job that I absolutely hated. The hours were bad, management was brutal and oppressive, etc. One day I got a call out of the blue from a recruiter about a job at AIG. I interviewed, they liked me, we progressed to the offer stage. Part of AIG's offer process, and I've heard a number of other companies require this, involves you providing their HR rep with a recent paystub. I'm sure there's some perfect excuse one could offer to get out of this requirement, but for most people the options are submit the paystub or lose the opportunity. Or maybe there's a third option of mocking up a fake paystub, but there's the risk of eventually being found out and getting fired or accused of fraud. It is incredibly one sided, and laws like the one recently passed in California are a good start to making the negotiations a bit more equal.
...salaries are public information by law. Curious what your professor or government-employed neighbor makes? Just look it up.
Why not just make up a number?
Giving them a fake number might not work out the way you expect it to. With the recent disclosure of the Experian compromise, there are reports that the data contains salary history. Perspective employers don't need to ask you what you made, they already have those numbers from credit reporting agencies. The company I retired from after 33 years viewed any discrepancy between what they knew and found out (via various reporting entities) vs. what they were told by applicants as 'lies', and in most cases refused to hire that person. While some small percentage increase for reported salary was usually permitted, anything more than a few percent was grounds for rejection. One reason being that a large number of people would apply for a single position (I've literally seen hundreds apply for a single job), HR wanted to hire the the cheapest applicant they could, and could easily move on the the next applicant if the one they were looking at wanted (or even previously made) more than the next. Being honest with your previous salary was much more likely to get you in to an interview than misreporting it. This caused endless problems in the departments that were hiring, usually hiring applicants at rates both lower AND higher than everyone else for open positions.
I would have voted for Johnson, too. I mean, we liked our Presidents to be real men, and not be afraid of whipping out their, um, Johnsons. Nowadays you get crucified for saying that women would let you "grab them". In the good old days, our Presidents were horn dogs, gettin' it on with mobster's girlfriends and we liked it that way.
Wait, which Johnson?
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
How does that make it a one-way street? All you have to do is ask "how much does this position pay?" And demand an answer to that question before you'll reveal your current pay. Then you both know where the other stands and can negotiate from there. Heck, most job listings already tell you that before you even apply for the job, so if anything the employer has already showed you their cards and is just asking for you to do the same.
Until you've been on both sides (employee, employer - I have), you don't truly understand what's at play during salary negotiations. As a job applicant, you're paranoid that if you ask for too much the company can just hire someone else, so you're tempted to lowball your salary requirements. But as an employer, when you finally find the hiree you want to offer the job to, you're paranoid that s/he'll accept a job elsewhere if you don't offer enough, so you're tempted to offer a higher salary than you really want to give up. The pressure to give up more than you want goes both ways.
That's how it's supposed to work. During the negotiation phase, you're not supposed to care if the company you're interviewing with goes bankrupt either. People (both employees and employers) signaling to each other what they want and what they're willing to give up to get what they want, irrespective of how "expensive" it will be to the other party, is how a market economy determines the "proper" pricing for labor.
Once you agree to work with each other, that's when you're supposed to start watching out for each other. Not before.
You just admitted to illegal age discrimination in a permanent public forum.
No. No, they don't. Most of them do, but believing all do is wrong. I'm a hiring manager, and I determine comp for my candidates. I don't ask them what they're making right now, and I don't particularly care what they're making right now -- Our compensation strategy is "pay top of market," so I offer them what I think is top of market for their position. If they say "I don't think that's top of market," I ask for datapoints. If they say "well, you're offering me $X, but I have an offer from Google for $X+20, or I currently get paid $X+30," then great -- they just helped me figure out what top of market is. I adjust my offer, we move on. Never been turned down on comp yet.
49 other states didn't want it? And yet the article says this is following Delaware, Massachusetts and Oregon who passed similar laws recently. Do you want to revise your opinion after reading the article or persist in your ignorance?
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
There's a company called The Work Number that collected detailed salary info from employers. Freescale supplied them, and when I requested the consumer report from TWN, it had every detail.
So don't lie, perhaps just put a range, or show it as approximately: $90k - $100k, or ~$100k.
My answer would be ... "I'll provide my pay stub the moment you provide me with a genuine offer. If this unacceptable, would you be willing to propose an alternative that is fair to both sides?"
There is no way for them to answer the question without giving up something. If they don't propose something, they are admitting that they are being unfair. If they do offer something, that is just a continuation of the negotiation. The moment they refuse to be "fair" then you don't want to work for them anyways.
Assuming you're powerless is the greatest weakness in negotiations. You have a lot more power than you realize, simply by asking the other side to be "fair".
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Is there a theoretical gap in pay? Yes. However, when you look at the real numbers, it's quickly shown that the difference is because there is also a difference is time actually worked - IOW - a difference in experience levels, and once adjusted for that the gap goes away to within the normative ranges.
So yes, if you look at a man and a woman who are both 35 years old and say "oh, there's a $20k difference in their pay", but then...
- failed to account for work experience differences
- failed to account for time-off differences
Oh, and pretty much every employer - especially large employers - are pushed to have all people (regardless of age, sex, etc) at a given position level to be within a certain spread. If you're in the upper end of the spread, then HR pushes for a promotion so they can keep the numbers relatively close together. If you're at the bottom of the spread, then HR pushes for pay raises. Essentially, the position might have a spread of $20k, but HR pushes to keep folks within $5-10k of each other.
Still thing there's a gender pay gap? Take a look at the demographics of HR departments (it's highly skewed - opposite the general tech field).
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
You mean the fact that Single Women just out of college earn more than their male counterparts, but an average of 8%?
"Census data from 2008 show that single, childless women in their 20s now earn 8 percent more on average than their male counterparts in metropolitan areas."
http://www.politifact.com/pund...
The wage gap myth is based on the idea that men and women make equal choices, and doesn't account for career choices, family choices, and other meaningful criteria. But hey, it fits the narrative.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
California resident here. I have worked in the high tech industry for about 20 years and I applaud the new law.
This is great news. I have always hated this question when coming to the negotiation (or even starting a job application) as it puts the applicant in an awkward position. Obviously a "job offer" is a mutually beneficial affair, yet the employer's agent is always in a position of power while the applicant always comes around as asking.
Consider. You are just starting the usual song and dance with the recruiter who has a list of open jobs, thinks that they can understand bullet points on an engineer's resume and feels that he/she is qualified to "vet". The first question they ask after the the introduction is "So, how much are you currently making?". What can the applicant do at this point? Really, you don't want to close down, weaseling out is awkward and there is no good way to say "well, a market, yet I am looking for you to impress me". I've tried, this just backfires as there are other (easier) conversations that the recruiter would rather be having. Another few, more grounded points that are excluded from this $$$ question: what about the X units or stock that I received over the last year? What about the value of the private company and my exercised stock's value? What about the RSUs of the public company that I got, sold and made some extra money? Or kept in order to minimize the income tax? They never ask about total compensation, just the core salary.
So, yes, this is a very useful question for the recruiter to ask, yet is a pain for the applicant. I am very happy that the Governor has just signed this bill and I will not have to wince during my next interview.
I guarantee this will have unintended consequences. Interviews will be much longer. We'll hear stories of people who BS their way through interviews to much higher positions than they're actually qualified for. It's going to be a learning process for companies. I know I've already shared this with other managers on my team...many of us hire folks in CA.
Or.... how about you offer the salary that you think is reasonable for the position? Interview the skill-level of the candidate? Rather than trying to judge it based on what someone else previously thought they were worth. You've no idea how good the previous employer was at judging their worth.
a) Progressive companies generally have a 90-day probation period for new hires. If their performance is not commensurate with what your offer is then let them go or make them renegotiate.
b) Asking for previous salaries unilaterally removes a lot of leverage from candidates' salary negotiations. HR departments use this with salary bands to great effect to depress wages of workers in the US. It's part of the reason why real average hourly wages have stagnated since 1980.
Just because they know your prior salary doesn't mean you have to accept what they offer. Quit being a loser and fight for what you want. Be ready to walk away if it's not as much as you want. If you take it because you can't afford to be out of work or whatever then you are stating implicitly that you are only worth that much. Don't EVER rely on government regulation to save you. That's a fragile safety net to put your self worth on. You can use it if you want, but if you rely on it, you're destined for disappointment and failure.
Having just completed the process of searching for a new job, I can tell you that you often (nearly 100% of the time) can't even submit a job application without providing this information. Those fields are typically marked as required.
The Obama administration did push through an update to the Federal overtime regulations to make the majority of blue collar workers, especially retail/restaurant managers eligible for OT again, because they mostly get salaries around $24k/yr whereas a $12/hr worker would get OT without question, but its been blocked in court and the Trump administration is trying to kill it.
If not caring for others is a flaw in the morality of 'job creators', then it's a flaw in 99% of humanity. In practically any given question (automotive or workplace safety; educational quality be it primary, secondary or post-secondary; health services; commute times; etc) the only time people actually think about the problem and seek the "best" choice is when their own outcome [or that of close friends/family] is clearly affected.
The reason I have inverted commas in that last sentence is the critical factor here: only the scant minority of choices are ones where either you expect that everyone will want the same thing (a safe workplace, for example), or the only practical way to have certain choices (safe driving conditions) is to restrict what choices other people make. For all others, there isn't a singular, universally agreed-upon answer which everyone desires. If you're a parent, the "best" house might be in a excellent school district; a retiree won't care that much about schools, but might prefer being close to their regular places of activity instead; for someone with limited mobility, the primary factor might be finding one which doesn't have any stairs. Jobs are another prime example of this: most people may want to maximize their pay, but perhaps you'd be willing to take a job which pays only 90% of the "going market rate" if it maximizes your personal/family time by guaranteeing limited overtime, or the location cuts your commute time in half.
So whenever I hear something like "Job creators don't care about employee pay" I have to ask: why should they-- or anybody else for that matter? Unlike the choice of a single person to drive a hazardous vehicle making the roads less safe for everyone, that same singular person taking a lower-paying job (for any reason whatsoever!) doesn't prevent you from affording your bills, or negotiating for the sort of salary you desire. [If enough people are underpaid that it does become a problem, then it's the job of unions -- not the business owners -- to fix the problem.] If you claim that other people need to care about the outcome of your decisions, you are in fact claiming that everyone needs to care about the outcome of every decision -- which either assumes a priori that only one outcome is permitted, or erects a psychologically unreachable standard.
Do you like Japanese imports?
some people will take a pay cut to work some where for more then a few different thinks.
If you show up in a suit for tech position in CA, you'll be asked to leave.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
What if I have a bad immune system and get sick more often than others? What if I have had cancer and might relapse? What if I have high cholesterol and might have a heart attack as I age? What if I have a history of depression? What if I have a long commute to work (and am more likely to be in a car crash)? What if I have a history of drug use or alcoholism but am currently sober? What if I might get pregnant? What if I take legal opiates for back pain? Or a variety of Valium to help me sleep or deal with anxiety? What if I've gotten a ticket for texting while driving? What if I belong to a non-standard religion and might celebrate holidays that aren't normally days off? Why single out the few things that can be discovered with a drug screen for discrimination? Not to mention that drug screens do not remotely prove that a person is going to actually come to work while on drugs.
I do not have a signature
I've been an engineer for 35+ years, and managing and hiring engineers for about half that time. Your opinion on the drug testing being silly is fine, but I guarantee that many people disagree, and would prefer not working next to someone who's using.
If you suspect your employee is using anything on the job and it is hurting his performance or causing disruption, that is fireable. Performance firing is slower I admit, but if he's outright being disruptive, you can fire him on the spot. Based on what I've seen and heard, most of my peers are using some form of what they perceive to be performance enhancing amphetamines, usually legally prescribed but not always. I choose not to, but I don't care, they do what they do and I can't differentiate eccentric personalities from drug abuse in this case, so whatever.
My current employer literally told me "Whatever drug you were using in the interview, keep using it", so there's that.
As far as lying on the application, that's flat out fire able.
Only if I get caught, and my previous employer has no incentive to tell you the truth. And if you read carefully, I said defensible but misleading. Employers always, always use every sort of equivocation, prevarication and dissimulation available when discussing the job, when managing employees on the job, and when representing themselves. I am not sure why I wouldn't do that as well. I do not strictly lie, but I have every incentive to create my own reality and sell it to you. I do that on many things, not just salary. It is literally the most important part of any job to leave the boss feeling like a better job was done than actually was.
My salary history is none of your business. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
So, now the interviews will get longer, and more in depth, and you could argue that they should have been that way before
Right now they are 8 hour interviews. You want to make it a week? Do you honestly think this will help you evaluate my on the job behavior?
The interview bullshit is about one thing: justifying offshoring. In every case it has not been about my work ethic, my attitudes, my ability to live up to expectations or even my verbal agreement to meet those expectations.
What it has been is an 8 hour long final exam on selected topics in electrical & computer engineering, computer science and occasionally math. On a few occasions the questions I'm asked have borne some form of semblance to the job I accepted, but usually it's just people in a pissing contest. The reason this is allowed to go on is so that you as an employer can justify not hiring some fraction of us, and allow H1Bs or offshored labor to replace us. You can run up to your favorite politician and say "We just can't hire enough engineers". Then the H1B notice appears in our employee kitchen (as required by law) that says so and so is being brought in for his technical expertise at some pay rate that is usually a fraction of what I really, truly make.
I would argue when you are hiring engineers in high cost regions, you are getting the cream of the crop intellectually. When they let you down, it has nothing to do with technical skills, it's because of work ethic and missed expectations. And from my experience, employers are quick to correct this, particularly employers who are paying top dollar. It's the ones that are trying to pay the absolute minimum that sometimes have to retain losers longer than they'd like. As it should be.
So in general what I'm saying here is that you are doing the maximum possible to underpay everyone you hire. We are doing the maximum possible to make sure you pay as much as possible. At the end of the day you will offer as much as you want to pay, and I will take it or leave it. And if you feel like I'm overpayed, you will toss me on my ass...assuming you think you can get someone better for what you want to pay. This sounds like the sort of business practices we've all come to accept.
You'll also end up seeing