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Comment by _huayra_ | Hacker News Reader

Semi-related, but Equifax runs The Work Number, which is basically your "employment credit report / record"; they hoover up the data by agreements with employers that they will share employment info with them.

You can freeze your employment record with them here: https://employees.theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze/

I highly recommend you do this, as any employer could just decide to look you up using this info and you wouldn't be notified at all (unlike, say, a hard pull on your credit in a regular credit report).

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Well I'll be damned. They have everything from my (accurate) current salary to my weekly paychecks from my movie theater job in 2006.

Are there any other sites like this for the other credit agencies? Are there other services that do something like this that aren't the big three credit agencies?

Shockingly, this contains your salary information. Which is pretty dangerous for salary negotiation.

Why? you either have a BATNA or you don't.

Either you have a winning poker hand or you don't - oh wait: bluffing is a thing that people sometimes have to do - even in salary negotiations.

It doesn’t even have to be bluffing. Salary for a new position should be decided based on how much value you can bring to the position, and how much each party is willing to accept. Previous history is the most irrelevant part of the process.

I wish more engineers understood this

If I started hunting for a new job now, I wouldn't take $current*1.05f, I'd go for $MARKET_RATE

That's the only number that really matters here when push comes to shove. It doesn't matter how good you are, no local companies are going to pay you $500k/year to act as an individual contributor in Idaho or Tokyo, because the market rate is ~$90k. On the plus side, if you get an offer for a principal FAANG engineer position in the SF Bay, you can negotiate up to $500ish even if your last job was paying $90k.

You might have a shot about bluffing with competing offers/opportunities.

Do the other credit agencies have a similar program?

In the US at least, you have the right to freeze your credit report at any time. I've done it for the big 3 at least (Transunion, Equifax, Experian). It's all free (finally! it used to cost) and you can temporarily suspend the freeze to let someone run a check (e.g. applying for a new credit card).

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