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Comment by jbarciauskas | Hacker News Reader

What a bizarre concept. Both HR and the applicant should have done market research and come to similar conclusions about the appropriate salary range. If the applicant is qualified, what on earth does it matter if he was lowballed by his previous employer? Similarly, if the applicant did his research properly and is still applying for the job, clearly he is indicating that he is prepared to take a pay cut.

Also, the self-righteousness of claiming "privileged information" is patently absurd. I'll tell anyone who asks what I make. More transparency gives power to employees. Companies want you to keep your salary a secret for their own reasons.

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Because:

(a) HR's job is to hire you for the lowest possible price.

(b) By telling them your previous salary, you've conceded a great deal of information about what your negotiating floor is.

Two very basic rules of salary negotiation, which process could not be further from market research:

* Don't name a number first (whatever number you give is the highest number that will occur during negotiation, even if their range went higher).

* Don't give up your "invoice price" --- the cost for them to move from your previous job without you taking a pay cut, or, worse, if you're unemployed, the price at which you'll think they're still doing you a favor.

You're first point strikes me as incredibly jaded. That may be the case at poorly run companies, but hasn't been my experience. As in most business relationships, the goal is not to screw the other party. The goal is to arrive at a win-win, where both sides can be happy.

Let's look at what I can expect if I screw someone over with the lowest possible salary:

* An employee who can justify doing the bare minimum it takes to get the job done, because after all, he's being paid the bare minimum

* Low morale. Can I not expect the individual to bitch about how poorly the company treats its employees?

* High turnover / no loyalty. How much money am I going to waste bringing people up to speed, only to see them hop to the next job as soon as possible? How can I expect to retain valuable employees when I don't treat them as valuable from the start?

It's a poorly run business that screws over it's employees, customers, and / or partners just because it can. I like to think most good business people recognize that that sort of approach does not yield the best results over the long term.

Frankly, I have no concerns about revealing salary requirements or providing salary history. If a company doesn't treat me fairly during negotiations that's a huge signal that it's not the sort of company I want to work for.

I agree with all of the things you've just said in principle, but none of them apply in the real world. A company that loudly embraced just one of those bullet points you just gave would top the "best places to work" lists.

The problem isn't top-down corporate strategy; it's the concept of HR departments. When you:

* establish an entire business unit apart from the real work of a company,

* give it a mandate to meddle in the affairs of every other business unit in the company, and then

* measure its performance in raw numbers,

you get the systemic inefficiency almost every large company sees. It's not the people or their ideas that are messed up, it's the system.

However, apart from all that --- if you think what I'm saying is "jaded", try being a vendor to large companies sometime. Prospective employees deal with HR. Vendors deal with Purchasing. At least HR tries to pretend to be nice to you. Purchasing departments (for consultants, or for products) are overtly intended to screw you.

Finally, this isn't about whether you feel like you're being treated fairly. It's about whether you're best representing your interests during negotiation. The idea is not to lose leverage by conceding an advantage in information to your counterparty.

An HR person would be fired if they revealed the salary history of the last 20 people hired into your group in the company. Under no circumstances would a company ever reveal that kind of information. But you concede it willingly. Why?

I think our opinions are informed by very different "real world" experiences. I've worked mainly at small companies where HR had very little power over staffing or other important decisions. When I have had hiring responsibilities, I worked very hard to balance the interests of the company with the interests of the future employee. I care deeply about the happiness of both parties, because I think happy, successful employees are the foundation of a healthy, successful company.

It sounds like you've worked often (mostly?) with larger companies. Companies staffed with people who think life / business is somehow a game. That in order to win, someone else must lose.

I don't doubt that such companies exist. They may even represent a majority. But, not every company is run that way, and I hope you are fortunate enough to work for a better sort of company someday.

You still shouldn't cough up your salary history to a startup hiring manager.

Your principle is sound, and you are right, until you run into a code sweatshop type of job/company. Companies that are seeking bright talent will always form their compensation around such, but there are even more companies out there who just "need an engineer" - i.e. they desire no more than the minimum, and know that they're not hiring top talent. In which case they are certainly hiring to a strict budget.

A company that treats its employees like interchangeable parts will invariably begin compensating them as such.

For my first job, my boss negociated a salary much lower than what they could give me (I learned it soon after starting by talking with the secretary) As a result, I never made much effort for this job and tried to find a better paying job as soon as possible (I quit after 6 month)

It's not jaded - it's just reality.

I don't disagree that HR's job is to hire you for the lowest possible price. However, I see the information you concede as largely irrelevant if you are knowledgeable about the state of the market. As in stocks, past prices don't matter, only what someone else will pay right now.

Two bad things that can happen to you if you give up your salary history, even if both parties are rational:

(1) You can convince HR that it's not worth negotiating with you because your salary demands will end up too high.

(2) You can convince HR that it's worth lowballing you and then waiting you out as long as possible because your salary history demonstrates your negotiating floor is much lower than you think it is.

It's that simple. Of course, you don't have to take a crappy offer, but part of the point of salary negotiation is not to get crappy offers.

> You can convince HR that it's not worth negotiating with you because your salary demands will end up too high.

Why would you want to work somewhere for less than you've earned in the past?

Because you might be desperate.

If the opposing party in a negotiation knows you're desperate, you'll never win.

And a good way to imply that you're desperate is to give them lots of details about where you were working, when you were working, and how much you were making.

On the other hand, why would you want to work for just as much as you've earned in the past?

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