New York City bans employers from asking potential workers about past salary

Re:New York City bans employers from asking potential worker... by curun1r on Friday April 07, 2017 @07:25PM (#14064235)

Anchoring might work if there wasn't an information asymmetry dynamic at play. But companies have way more data on salaries than applicants do. If you anchor too high, they'll just pass since they know what others are paying and know you won't get that elsewhere. If you anchor too low, the negotiations will be win-win for them. When I was hiring and someone came in too low, I'd often offer well above their anchor since I didn't want them leaving as soon as they found out how much more they were worth. But most employers don't do that.

What you're saying would be true if companies were navigating the process as blindly as candidates are. Then a high anchor could lead the employer to negotiating from a position of weakness. But, armed with data, companies don't do that.

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Re:New York City bans employers from asking potential worker... by marcosdumay on Friday April 07, 2017 @08:04PM (#14064425)

Anchoring requires information asymmetry¹, but it requires the field to be tiled the other way around. A company can easily anchor the salary target in a negotiation. You can't.

1 - With no asymmetry both peers would have a value anchored before negotiations start.

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Re:New York City bans employers from asking potential worker... by infinite8s on Friday April 07, 2017 @09:50PM (#14064815)

Are you sure companies know how much other similar companies are paying?

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Re:New York City bans employers from asking potential worker... by curun1r on Saturday April 08, 2017 @02:17AM (#14065599)

Yes. I managed a team and had to hire many people. My company provided me with a mountain of data that was broken down by location, job title and years of experience. The data was pretty accurate, at least for San Francisco, but I have no way of knowing if the other locations were correct.

Two stupid things on their part...I got headcount, not a budget. So when negotiating salary, it wasn't in my best interest to haggle. I'd rather have happy relationships with my direct reports than know that I screwed them out of a few dollars on behalf of the company. Had they made it my duty to make the numbers add up, I might have been a bit more frugal. Oh, and they didn't filter the data to only show me positions below my title. So I went into my reviews armed with the exact market salary data that the company used to negotiate with me.

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Re:New York City bans employers from asking potential worker... by corin_ on Saturday April 08, 2017 @05:09AM (#14066080)

Maybe your company also wanted their staff to be happy, like you did - is it only stupid for them to do it, but not you?

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