Comment by RodericDay | Hacker News Reader

Comment by RodericDay | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I think your prediction of how things would play out is just wrong.

Employers usually have an HR team that is dedicated to knowing what the labor market looks like. They may not know exactly your previous salary, but they keep very up to date tabs on industry trends. They also know exactly how their current human resources are paid.

You know nothing except your past salary. They have more cards than you do.

Public salary means they know your past salary, but it also means you know what they pay their current employees, and can negotiate accordingly.

The only way this is not beneficial to any given employee is if they think they are a huge positive outlier.

edit bc hn limits me if I post like 3 times in short succession:

I don't think you understand the public policy implications of this.

The vast, vast majority of people aren't negotiating 20k increases. And people who are negotiating far more, like CEOs, do fine even with public information out there.

The equation here is one of giving employees more bargaining power over employers. An insignificant proportion of employees currently benefit from secrecy, and many of them aren't even sure they benefit, they just suspect they do.

If it's all "rounding errors", as you say, consider how this alters the dynamics between you and your bosses, not only between you and your peers.

I think your prediction of how things would play out is just wrong.

Employers usually have an HR team that is dedicated to knowing what the labor market looks like. They may not know exactly your previous salary, but they keep very up to date tabs on industry trends. They also know exactly how their current human resources are paid.

Hm? It's correct in my experience. People can get massive raises on the order of 50% or more just by keeping quiet about their past salary.

If they pull some "We need an answer in order to move forward with the job" nonsense on you, tell them your past salary was $1.

I'm not questioning whether you can get a raise.

I'm questioning whether this raise will usually immediately make you the best paid person on your new team.

Is it hard to believe that the new team's salary fluctuates by as much as $50k solely due to negotiation?

If a company wants someone, and that someone doesn't want to go, negotiation and salary fluctuation is what happens. I think $50k is on the low side of what the disparities could end up being. (See the recent craze of poaching AI talent.)

There's a reason why it's called "a craze".

I'm being hired for my software skills, not my negotiation skills. The fact that negotiation is so important is cargo culting from business-types who benefit from it.

(I happen to be quite savvy at negotiation, but I've seen many shy people exploited because they're not as cocky as me).

More to the point,

1) If my team was hiring a new guy with skills indistinct from mine for 50k extra, and I found out about it, I'd ask for a raise. If they refused, I'd quit on the spot.

2) If the skills are indeed a whole class above mine, they'll probably have a different title, and it's much less of my concern (I wouldn't call it "a fluctuation among members in my team").

Information may not always make things better, but it always -- no exceptions -- makes a market more efficient.

Moreover, stop focusing on two team members fighting against each other. The big prize here is employees finding out how much their bosses make, especially when it comes to "tightening belt" periods. I don't honestly care if Jeff-next-door is getting 20k extra because he plead for his newborn, but I absolutely care if my salary gets frozen and my boss gets a bonus.

Opponents to salary transparency are basically arguing for an inefficiency that favors higher-ups, preying on the ignorance of less resourceful subordinates.

So what you're saying is that there basically is no room for negotiation, because it would deviate too much from the standard scale? e.g. a company needs someone for X, and will fix pay around €XX,000.

At any big company, you need to make sure they want to hire you first. Once you have done that, pay becomes irrelevant because mentally they have already hired you. It's a rounding error on a budget. And it often is not even their own budget.

You would be surprised at how easy it is to negotiate a €20k salary increase by just saying: I'd love to work here, but we need to figure out a salary range that works for both. And if they lowball you (which they probably will), you just counter and take it from there.

There's another scenario that is becoming more common, especially in the company where I work: Changing countries by changing jobs. The markets are dramatically different so any salary comparison makes no sense. Instead you have to compare level and experience, which is what we should be basing salary decisions on in the first place.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com