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In late 2017 California amended its labor laws to forbid employers from inquiring into previous compensation and to compel employers to provide candidates with pay range information upon reasonable request. I refer to Assembly Bills(AB) 168 and 2282, both of which passed and were approved by the Governor:
Assembly Bill 168 ("Employers: salary information") added Section 432.3 to the California Labor Code.
Assembly Bill 2282 ("Salary history information") amended Sections 432.3 and 1197.5 of the Labor Code to provide clarification on AB 168.
A brief summary of the changes brought about by AB 2282 is available on JDSupra: California Clarifies its Salary History Ban.
The California Labor Code is available on-line and you can use these links to read the text of Section 432.3 and of Section 1197.5
If you are a candidate, applying for a job in California:
- How do you see the recruiters you are working with handling your requests for compensation information?
- Do they drop you like a hot potato?
- Do they answer your questions, like a legitimate business partner?
- How do you see recruiters working from outside California dealing with this issue?
- Do they even know that the law exists?
- Do they care?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by julian on Monday October 22 2018, @07:14AM (4 children)
I asked for an amount; they said it was too high for the position. So I said thank you for the consideration but I was withdrawing my application because the compensation was not acceptable for the cost of living in the area. I also mentioned, verbatim, "Anyone you hire at this rate is going to be so miserable they'll barely be able to function, and will leave as soon as they get a better offer elsewhere." I got a reply back with what I asked for the next week.
Thankfully, I am a millennial and we don't care about having candid discussions about money. Also, I'm not embarrassed to go back to living with my parent in my 30s. You won't low-ball us. I don't need much to survive but I know what I am worth, and health care simply cannot be automated with current technology--and when it can be automated so will literally everything else and I'll either be dead or being waited on by robot servants
...or leading a brigade to depose them. Depends how much Marx our leaders have read and actually understood.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday October 22 2018, @07:59AM
Have you done the same like 5-7 years ago (when negotiation for a job)?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ledow on Monday October 22 2018, @08:36AM (1 child)
I see it as quite a common occurrence... even in the UK.
If you advertise such a laughably low wage, what do you think you're going to get?
If you advertise a decent wage, you can easily justify your rejections by saying "Sorry, but we were looking for someone a little more".
Trying to constantly minimise wages tells you what kind of company they are going to be with regards holiday, bonuses, budgets, etc.
That said, even when I'm working for a company, I know the market rates intimately (because I'm applying to other places just to see... if you don't try, you have no idea if there's anything better out there, and you can always say "Sorry, no, I'm not interested" even if they offer it to you while you're working for an employer you like). If I feel undervalued, that's not a situation that you want... because I will likely go elsewhere for your lack of care, not just the lack of wages. If I feel like you just don't give a shit, I'll look for something better (which doesn't mean more money necessarily).
However, in an interview, asking me what I used to get is literally unconnected. I don't care what I'm earning now. If you do, it means you just want to pay minimum. Chances are, I wouldn't apply for a job that was "cheaper" than the one I'm already in, but that's because I wouldn't look at them really. But the right job, sure, I'd take less for you if I was sure it was right.
The wage I demand, however, is set by me. If you can't or don't want to meet that demand (either in the job advert or in negotiations once an offer is made), then it barely matters whether you know what I used to have or not.
The biggest problem I see is not "what did you used to earn at your previous job" but "what are the company going to do a year after we have you at a price we agree?".
I'm pretty certain that if you look back at everything I've ever done, I've walked out of more interviews / job offers / negotiations than I've ever accepted for the same kinds of reasons as you - sometimes I've literally spotted something mid-interview and decided "Nah, not for me" and ended it there and then. It's a two-way street, and I'm fortunate enough to be good enough to have the choice. It could be a clash of personalities, a focus on entirely the wrong things (which suggests that the working life there is going to be very painful... one place got annoyed at me because I hadn't memorised their corporate "brand inspiration" word-for-word, and random statistics off their web page... we literally didn't even get to talking about the job in any way. Have fun with all your employers that know that stuff off-by-heart but have no clue how to do their job!), or just unrealistic expectations. Interviews are tests for the job, and if you test on things not related to the job (which includes "what did you used to earn"), then you're going to hire people who are "good" in your interview eyes, but bog-useless at the job itself.
But my previous salary is not only "not secret" (it's totally legal to ask in my country, but I could easily say I'm subject to an NDA), but it's not actually a good basis on which to start. I state the price I want, if I'm not worth that to you, let's not waste each other's time. What I earned now / before / historically is really neither here nor there. It's what I want to earn and "can I do that?". Using a previously-high salary as an indication that you "can do the job" is a really poor indicator. I'd make an exception for if someone ran their own business (i.e. they made all that money themselves from a successful business) but apart from it really has little correlation to their abilities.
People are too frightened to say what they actually need, refuse to accept less, or raise a concern. I'll happily "embarrass" myself mid-interview by saying "I'm sorry, but this isn't at all what I thought..." or "I'd need a lot more than that" or "I think you'll struggle to fill this role with a competent person as it stands".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday October 23 2018, @08:45AM
If they actually have one I ask to see it.
One place I worked at - before I thought to ask about these - absolutely _required all its comments to be preceeded and followed by eighty asterisks.
But that particular place had never even heard of C++ exception safety, despite that their product was an industrial control system that was used in ways where exception-unsafe code could get a factory worker killed.
Another thing I've learned to ask to see is their break room. Almost all the places I've worked had the usual dull and functional break rooms, with endless coffee and sometimes an appealing variety of tea bags. But one place I worked had the recycling bin overflowing with beer bottles onto the floor, and on the top of the cabinets were ten or so lovingly displayed two-liter hard liquor bottles.
What actually led me to broadcast my letter of immediate resignation was not that the owner devoted a solid hour at the end of each workday to yelling at me in private, but that he once made the mistake to so yell at me in the direct presence of a coworker.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday October 23 2018, @08:19AM
My client from 2001-2002 was a hedge fund in the Bahamas, which invested two hundred million dollars of just one guy's money.
He mostly hired British coders "Because they work cheap".
Their Director Of Research - really their head coder - asked me what a certain unfamiliar construction was in my C++ source. "That's an initialization list", then I explained that Initialization Lists are part of what enables C++ data initialization to have Transactional Commit-Rollback Semantics, just like databases.
He and I chatted about this for an hour or so, because their codebase had at least one hundred man-years of C++ source in it, yet I was the very first engineer to even know what an Initialization List was. Perhaps it's no coincidence that their system was always dropping dead. It took days to weeks to restart it, because they had to re-sync their model with real trade price history.
So what kind of sense does this make?
That guy who was worth $200M? He emailed me one day to say I should come down on my rate by three grand per month, because I lived in Maine. The going rate for Maine coders was quite a lot less than for Silicon Valley coders. My reply?
"When I lived in Santa Cruz" - not actually in The Valley, but for business purposes it was - "My code was worth ten grand a month. I'm writing the very same high quality code for you now, so my code is _still_ worth ten grand a month".
He griped about it every time he paid me, but he did continue to pay me ten grand. However, he tried to stiff me out of half my last paycheck. It took a lawsuit threat to get him to cough up. That only worked because hedge funds are very secretive about their methods, in his cause, secretive about his fund's very existence. He didn't want the lawsuit transcript to become public knowledge.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]