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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

I'm not seeing how this matters, they were already doing that - the market is a big auction to work out the overlap between lowest salary employees will work for and the highest salary employers will offer. In that process employees also use data to figure out the highest salary that will be offered. The thing forcing employers to pay the salary they do is that if they offer less someone else will gazump them for the employee's time. It has nothing to do with the circumstances of the employees lifestyle. The lifestyle adjusts to the salary.

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> the overlap between lowest salary employees will work for and the highest salary employers will offer

There is still an element of unknown because both parties do not know each others numbers, which allows employees to still negotiate. You are now talking about information asymmetry where the party with the information will now have all the bargaining power.

When I went from working a $150K job to getting offers from Meta at $300K, the initial number they offered was $250K, and we worked upwards. I absolutely would’ve taken the job even if they offered $200K and not negotiated. But they did, based on information asymmetry. Now imagine a world where meta knows exactly how much I make and all the other information about me. I’d probably get a minor bump over my previous salary.

Edit: I ended up taking a different offer. I don’t work for and have never worked for Meta.

You might want to rethink your example if the counterparty offers you 50% more than you wanted then you reject the deal; it makes adding the framing a bit pointless because it is clear you weren't ever going to accept the job for $200k.

And you're underestimating how much of an impact the broader market is having on Meta's thinking in this scenario. If your silver tongue or secret number was a factor here then everyone would end up being overpaid because they wouldn't reveal that they were happy to work for a reasonable amount. It doesn't matter how much or little Meta knows, they're only going to offer $300k if they have a reasonable belief that you can find a job for $300k somewhere else; informed by a pretty detailed analysis of the employment market. And in fact that appears to be exactly what happened in your story. Nothing about that dynamic has anything to do with your salary history or spending habits and them getting better information on those things doesn't change your negotiating position. Since a key factor is the future, even if they know you'd say yes to $200k, they'd still be best served offering you more money. I've had that happen to me 2 or 3 times because I'm a sloppy negotiator and don't try very hard to optimise salary.

> You might want to rethink your example if the counterparty offers you 50% more than you wanted then you reject the deal

I rejected the deal because I got even more elsewhere. My framing still stands. In a case when only one employer has the information, sure they’re better served by offering me more money. But in an environment where all of them have the information, this no longer is a problem. At a system level, this is a problem for employees.

But if Meta wanted to hire you and had perfect information, it sounds like they'd discover they needed to offer you salaries in the $350-400k range? That sounds like it might be good for you.

The story you seem to have told is they just wasted time low-balling you because they didn't have enough information to offer a competitive salary. You weren't ever going to settle for $250k, they didn't have enough leverage and they lacked the information to identify that. I'm not sure how you're seeing this story as one where more information to Meta leads to them offering you a lower salary. It seems like you'd have rejected them regardless unless they went higher.

All the employers knowing that you'd have "taken the job even if they offered $200K" seems to be completely useless to them. They're locked in an auction and the market price for your time is nowhere near $200k.

> they'd discover they needed to offer you salaries in the $350-400k range?

No, such a discovery wouldn't be possible, because nobody would pay that amount to someone who was willing to accept $200K.

> They're locked in an auction and the market price for your time is nowhere near $200k.

There is no magical market price that exists outside the market dynamics. When bidders know that one's current salary is $150K, their willingness to offer higher salaries will diminish accordingly.

>Now imagine a world where meta knows exactly how much I make and all the other information about me. I’d probably get a minor bump over my previous salary.

Not necessarily. People don't change companies for just any value greater than current TC. There is a big cost to switching companies -- it's going to shake up your lifestyle, you might lose some relationships, reset your company-internal network and reputation, reset technical and organization context etc. Possibly even moving your home (even if a new job is in the same city, people often move to be closer to it anyway).

As a matter of policy I wouldn't switch companies for less than a 30% monetary premium over my current TC (I'm a SWE), and other soft criteria like type of work and company culture. In my early career I've gotten 50-100% premiums each time I made a hop.

My policy is the opposite – I switch companies every two years. Especially if I get too comfortable. Usually because I’m bored or because the company grows too much (>100 people is too much for me).

Are you worried that you never get to see the results of architectural decisions you make? Two years is not much time to make an impact and see it through if you’re senior+

This is usually a nonsense argument unless you're in a very slow-moving company. Two years is not only enough to see the results of your architectural decisions, but by that point the architecture would already be due for change.

1-1.5 years in a fast-paced software team is plenty enough to learn 95% of everything you're ever going to learn there and live through one major system lifecycle.

This allows all sorts of normally illegal discrimination via ai pass through. Never hire pregnant women, sick people or employees over 30 again. Target for race and religion whatever you want. Basically everything that’s scary about chinas social credit score except private run with zero accountability.

If that’s true and this has a null effect, why would a business pay for it? There must be some utility for them. Like others already pointed out: information asymmetry undermines worker’s ability to negotiate, resulting in lower wages for everyone.

> I'm not seeing how this matters

Same. This is how any market works. I think one of the problems (US only maybe?) is that talking about salary is generally taboo. The first thing you should do with all your friends is be open about how much you make, and then go online and look for more data. That way you start with some good data points. Next is talk about negotiating. I was taught growing up that everything is negotiable, but later in life I learned that not everyone knows that.

It's still a case of asymmetric information.

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