https://www.hrdive.com/news/salary-history-ban-states-list/5...
(p.s. HR Dive is one of my sites and we're hiring https://www.industrydive.com/careers/ I promise we won't ask for salary history :)
Is there any healthy place or way or method "juniors" can learn through experience without being screwed over? Be it low money, blood money, poor experience, terrible managers ... is "let the vile companies get the fresh graduates" the best answer here? What can be the alternative here?
[Edit:] Not everywhere has mentors. In my experience, mentors are a luxury. Saying "but mentors" isn't an end-all True answer. Same thing for Internships -- not all College Universities require them.
Maybe I am in a personal moral or ethical crisis here, but at the moment I'd like to stand by this line of question.
And frankly the market is competitive enough that you can always quit a bad job to find a better one, if you're qualified.
That's a really great point to bring up. Lousy professional experiences are opportunities to learn, or grow. Doesn't make them fun, but it does make them valuable.
>good candidates are apprehensive about bad companies regardless of their experience level.
I'm not certain this is true. There are plenty of smart, motivated people who don't necessarily have the career experience to notice red flags at a potentially negative employer.
That's a great question. I agree that mentors aren't the catch-all answer. I will say, though, having been on both sides of the mentorship divide, that a good mentor is a powerful positive force in your career. Doesn't change the fact that it only gets you so far.
When it comes to money, I'm afraid there isn't a whole lot junior technical candidates can do to get more. In my experience, technical experience and negotiating leverage are the two surest paths to getting paid more. Junior engineers straight out of college have neither of these things. Jobs beget negotiating leverage. If you have a job, a new job has to give you a better deal to convince you to leap. That's something that a fresh college graduate, inconveniently, lacks.
There seems to be a lot of advice here that suggests taking the best job you can straight out of school, and then switching jobs as soon as you reasonably can. That's what I did - I spent a year at a big chip company, decided it wasn't for me, and left for a consumer electronics company. That one year of credible work experience netted me a ~30% raise on switching.
[Edit] To be clear, I would break off the interview instead of playing that game, but I have the good fortune to have a lot of offers. As others have said, it’s a big red flag. But if you’re stuck with it...
She replied: "It's illegal for me to ask anything about your salary history. It's not illegal to ask about your expectations."
A rose by any other name, though...
If I think I've been underpaid in the past, I can just start naming a new salary expectation but I can't rewrite my salary history.
In any event, I think it's also always OK for the applicant to say "I'd rather not say."
This is not talking with a friend, making pleasantries. This is at work, getting paid, by a company, to learn how low an offer they can make for it to be accepted.
Pretending that the conversation is anything except that, is serving the interests of companies who try to do exactly that.
Telling someone that what they perceive is not what it is, that what others can perceive is not what it is, is like flickering the lights on and off, and saying nothing is wrong, and asking why someone is so upset.
My point was that there is still plenty of space within the bounds of law and politeness for you to compromise your negotiating position to a prospective employer. That's all. : )
Perhaps that's the norm where they come from? Maybe they heard Google paid that much? Maybe they were just throwing out a high number to anchor high?
It's funny to imagine the interview game being like the dating game teenagers talk about, where one wrong move, facial expression, or word uttered can wreck everything.