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Comment by paulcole | Hacker News Reader

Good. Not enough people realize the best way to answer this question is with a straight-up lie.

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.

You have some leeway. If you say "My compensation was $70K" and your salary was $50K, you may well be telling the truth.

Exactly! 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...

Going 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".

There 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).

At 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 :(

There 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.

True, 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.

Raganwald had a good write up on how to do this: https://github.com/raganwald/raganwald.posterous.com/blob/ma...

I'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.

Agree. 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.

> 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.

Careful!!

There's quite a few ways to verify past salary. Specially some employers report employment information to private databases and your potential employer runs a "employment report," like banks run a credit report, as part of a mandatory background check. To see if you lied.

Of course, they can't do that without your permission but agreeing to a background check is a condition of employment.

The database i am thinking of is, IIRC, owned by Lexis Nexis and they claim to have employment data for the majority of Fortune 500 companies.

EDIT: The database I am thinking of is called The Work Number and is owned by Equifax.

http://www.businessinsider.com/salary-information-not-privat...

>One woman interviewed by CNBC had a Work Number report that was a whopping 22 pages long, complete with a copy of all of her paychecks over the years.

They claim to have employment information for over 1/3rd of American adults.

It's a risk I'm willing to take for the potential upside.

Also to add, if you work for a public institution, your salary for the past three years is in public records.

That's why you just say "around" and add 20% to your current salary.

And even if a company does find out, who cares? What I made at a prior job has zero bearing on my next job. If the new company thinks I bring in enough value to be paid X, then they paying X should be fine.

Who cares? There's a -huge- difference between dodging the question with a vague answer, defecting, or refusing to answer and -outright lying- about your previous salary! These reports are run to catch lying. Do the former, don't outright lie.

Similarly, I know part of my job when I do an interview is to sell the company and the position. So I'll put a positive spin on things but I won't outright lie.

Our internal recruiters ask but it's not a deal breaker if someone doesn't answer. You know what is a deal breaker? Lying.

I've personally seen two offers rescinded after it came out that someone added an egregious amount of money to their previous salary (one to the effect of made approx $100k, said they made $185 and took $175 while complaining loudly about their "pay cut").

What sucks for them is:

A) Everyone involved in that process knows they're a liar.

B) They were now unemployed because this was during the post-acceptance background checks

C) They won't be able to work at any company anyone from A is doing hiring stuff for

Wait, so you were ready to pay someone 175k until you found out they only made 100k at their last job and rescinded the offer? How about name the company so people can make sure to avoid them. I hope this company also lists their internal budget for every position, since you know we want to all be honest and everything.

If the user's summary is accurate / I found the correct individual on Linkedin the company is [redacted]. I agree with your assessment that this sounds like a unethical company, not to mention the amount of glee expressed in the post over an individual being screwed by the company is disconcerting.

On HN users aren't allowed to pursue each other's personal details and bring them here as ammunition in an argument. That crosses the line into personal attack, which is emphatically not allowed here, regardless of how wrong you think someone else or their employer may be. Please don't do it again.

How did the recruiters find out?

I'm not a recruiter, nor a hiring manager, but personally, I'd be more concerned about the competence of someone who answered truthfully. Yes, engineers probably aren't hired for being good at salary negotiation, but still.. it isn't hard to figure out that telling the truth isn't beneficial.

I'm probably making $30k less than I could be making right now because I tell the truth! Had no idea so many people lied. Makes sense to do so but didn't seem to be worth the risk to me. I wish I had a way to quanitfy how many companies actually check for this. My last two times out I used the same recruiter so couldn't really lie to him, I think going forward I won't work with his agency and just make up my number.

A rule of thumb is most big companies will utilize big data in employment decisions. I currently work for a mid-size company and I had to go through a whole third party background check.

You obviously don't have what it takes to be a good HR worker.

(I mean that as a compliment.)

Correct: a service called The Work Number by Equifax. http://www.theworknumber.com

My current employer uses that, so I checked my report. It has a 13 year gap. It also neglected the RSU grants that vested at a previous employer.

My preferred technique is to mentally baseline my current total comp, then shoot for that as my base at my next position.

You really shouldn't compare salaries, since benefits can vary so much.

So if I'm making $100k in base now, but have a good bonus structure, a good vacation package, health, retirement, etc., could make that total comp closer to $150. So that's what I say is my current compensation -- most people will anchor to that in salary negotiations.

in tech companies, bonus + equity is usually multiples of the base salary.

1. Parent post was just for illustration, he's probably not talking about his actual salary + equity.

2. Is that really true? Multiples? Maybe for the CEO! I've been in tech for almost 2 decades and have never seen an equity package of more than ~25% or so of base salary. Usually it's about 5-10%, no?

0.05 is a multiplier.

i am talking x >= 1.

I have more than 25% at a public company at the initial offer, but not multiples.

However, I left a company that wasnt liquid which was multiples in equity. But once you risk-adjust it for ever being worth something...

Yea, I'm talking actual, vested, liquid equity, sellable per year. Not monopoly-money options.

Depends on the company; My current employer added 2 times my annual in RSUs.

Please name 5.

The best way to see if your company is willing to give out salary information to random verifiers, is to ask HR yourself.

In most cases they would not give out that sensitive information unless they have a written consent specifically stating that you allow salary information to be given.

It's not as sensitive than your credit history which is bought and sold by credit bureaus. It's also not as sensitive as all sorts of public records like foreclosures, personal bankruptcies, and criminal records.

Anyways, its likely subject to the FCRA which means you can get a copy of your own report once a year to see what it contains.

EDIT: Here you go, you can request a copy right here, https://www.theworknumber.com/Employees/DataReport/index.asp

This points to an interesting method of poverty reduction - identify the little tricks which knowledgeable people use to get ahead in the system, and tweak the system to make the tricks less necessary.

Also, I think salary negotiation is partially responsible for the man / woman wage gap.

I think men are more inclined to agressive negotiate their salaries, and women might be less prone to lie or hide their current salary too.

Yes, there's a whole book about this, Women Don't Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation.

https://www.amazon.com/Women-Dont-Ask-Negotiation-Strategies...

> Yet, as research reveals, men are four times more likely to ask for higher pay than are women with the same qualifications. From career promotions to help with child care, studies show time and again that women don’t ask–and frequently don’t even realize that they can.

One thing I never see studied on this topic is the differing impacts of social expectations on gender roles related to how much someone is willing to work extra for extra salary. At least for the part of society where I live, a man's income influences his perceived value as a partner more than a woman's, and in general there is an expectation that a man is the provider who pays for dates. (I'm not defending this double standard at all, only say it is what I observe.) Wouldn't this create a stronger force for men to do more to increase their salary than for women?

Possibly yes, but it's too easy to create narratives like this. For example, women are more likely to become the caretakers of children and elderly parents, so they have a stronger force to ask for a higher salary now. You can't say how the factors balance out without serious research.

Why lie? Just say you don't provide that information. If they don't like it, move on to another company.

Why are people so blase about lying? I don't get it. It's arguably far more helpful to just wait for the company to state their number first - bearing in mind the fact that there's tens of thousands of other companies out there. Eventually one will budge. In my experience, they all do.

Rather than lie about your salary, which can be verified, lie about something that can't be verified. Just say that your current employer is awesome, amazing, has a great culture, coworkers you consider close friends, and you're sad to leave, but you realize that you can't afford to keep living in $bigCity on your current salary...

Could that be considered fraud?

If lying during a job interview is fraud then lock me up.

Employers lie about salaries all the time. I Know plenty of people who were told their salary was one of the highest of their coworkers where in reality they made less than most. Is that fraud?

No more than "my wife thinks we need to take the children out of school, so I'll need the money to make that possible" is.

No more than:

* We hire only the best

* We value your career progress

* We are transparent about the company's strategies and financials

* We value taking the time to think through the design of features and products

And so on. Most of which are, to be charitable, only very loosely applicable when they aren't outright lies.

* We think of you as family!

The problem is, recruiters/hiring managers will sometimes call your former employer to verify your actual salary.

Do any employers actually provide that information? The most I've ever had any previous employer ever say about my time there is, "Eric worked here from $start_date to $end_date." I understand there to be liability involved if they say anything more.

Yeah that has always been my understanding as well. Past employers are only allowed to say yes or no to you working there if asked.

Where this comes from I don't know. I'm sure there is a law that this common belief comes from.

Past employers can say whatever they want. They open themselves up to legal liability in doing so, though, with basically no value to themselves. Theoretically as long as they're telling the truth, there is no legal liability. In reality it's more nuanced. e.g. An employer who reveals that a former employee was absent a lot might be sued successfully if the absence was within the company's sick day policy, or the reason was a disability.

Saying nothing is the safest choice. Most employers only confirm employment as a courtesy to their former employees.

> Most employers only confirm employment as a courtesy to their former employees.

Lie. It's to cover their arse from lawsuits.

Not sure what you mean. Employers would prefer to give no information about previous employees, specifically "to cover their arse from lawsuits". They confirm employment dates as a courtesy because it can be difficult to get a job without confirmation of previous employment.

Tangentially, it's really abrasive and generally unnecessary to start a comment by calling someone a liar. You can disagree with me here, and that's totally fine. To call me a liar for holding a different opinion than you makes you seem really petty. Arguing about the reason companies will disclose employment history doesn't seem to be the time to break out this sort of accusation.

I've had a reference disclose my salary (UK)

If your former employer releases salary information without your consent, sue them into the ground.

What's the law that says they can't do that?

I've had recruiters on two occassions ask for ph# of former employers, saying they just wanted to verify dates of employment and salary.

Here's what I don't understand about this argument - if you're negotiating for a new job, wouldn't the implication be that your current employer is not aware of it? And that any contact for this kind of information by your potential new employer would be an obvious breach of that secrecy?

Do you all quit your jobs before you find new ones? What am I missing here?

How often do employers give that out? Are you telling me I can tell how much my friends used to make?

a good way to find out is call your previous employers saying you are a recruiter for "Big Company X" and see if they divulge your previous salary. I would bet most (all?) would not.

It's depressing to me how many responses there are on this, without anyone simply saying: "Lying is wrong"

I know there are a lot of purely utilitarian thinkers around here, but is there no moral compass at all?

No. There isn't. Unless it makes you feel good. Then there is.

> is there no moral compass at all?

Yes but potential employers don't get the benefit of the doubt. I'm looking out for myself first.

I am also surprised at how many responses are "Well, just lie". Maybe having integrity is old fashioned? I never lied about my salary - it wouldn't have even crossed my mind to do so.

Yep, take the true answer and inflate it 20% or more. Make them think they're getting a bargain.

If you are going to lie, just pick the number that's best for you. No need to have any relation with any true number.

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