When I've applied for jobs and done salary negotiations, I try pretty hard to find out the max I can get using as many variables that I think are relevant (e.g. years of experience, previous companies I've worked for, projects I've contributed to, etc). No one is writing an article trying to expose me for this.
I think the concern is how invasive they can be when doing this. It's one thing to quickly search your name on Google or something, but they can do creepier stuff. They can look at many, many more variables that I can, and it's a little creepy. It seems a little wrong to use peoples' credit scores in order to squeeze down a lower salary. I don't think there's anything even remotely comparable that a prospective employee can do.
A public company’s overall situation is laid bare. Unless you’re pretty close to the C suite, it has little to no relevance on your salary negotiation.
As we’ve seen time and again this year, highly profitable companies will often lay off workers. So the overall health of a company has little to do with how much it necessarily values employees.
And the tech industry has a record of both using machine learning to skirt laws and a history of illegally colluding to suppress wages. This feels like a greatest hits album for both.
That is my concern: that all of this data combines with some black-box invasive “AI” model and then, magically, all my offers end up being lowball. Not whether I can decline to accept a specific lowball offer.
This was exposed because the colluders were cheating on their agreements with each other. That's the perennial problem with colluding - there is no enforcement of it. That's why cartels are unstable.
> lowball
When you enter a negotiation, you are always going to get a lowball offer. That's why it's a negotiation. There are many resources on how to negotiate. It's worth your while (literally) to study them.
> So the overall health of a company has little to do with how much it necessarily values employees.
Employees are valued according to the value they contribute to the company. Not the profits or losses to the company.
Companies are not a jobs program, nor a social welfare organization, nor one's parents. The only thing a company owes you is what the terms of the contract you signed with them says they owe you.
A company exists to make money for its owners. The employees are hired because they produce value in excess of what they cost.
Maybe on an infinite timescale, but there are plenty of examples of cartels that have been stable for decades or longer.
Hell, even the SV wage collusion was stable long enough to affect plenty of salaries for years.
> There are many resources on how to negotiate. It's worth your while (literally) to study them.
I am not new to this game, and your perfunctory advice of “learn to negotiate” is neither helpful nor relevant to the issue of collusion-through-algorithm.
> Employees are valued according to the value they contribute to the company. Not the profits or losses to the company.
So we agree then the overall financial state of the company is almost completely irrelevant to a salary negotiation. Good.
Which means your equivocation of quarterly filings with past salary information is entirely disingenuous.
They are different, and the company is entering into negotiation with you with asymmetric information. That’s always been the case in a general sense; it’s more so if they know your detailed salary info.
> Companies are not a jobs program, nor a social welfare organization, nor one's parents.
I’m not sure you could be more patronizing if you tried.
We’re all adults here. I don’t think pointing out the disconnect between employer financial status and layoffs / salary negotiation at all implied that I thought anyone was owed a job.
It sure does put perspective on the lie that “a rising tide will raise all ships” though.
Many (the majority?) companies are not public, so even if I agreed with your point about publicly traded companies that doesn't really change my point, since we could very easily (without it being contrived) limit ourself purely to the scope of private companies.
Of course no one is obligated to accept a job they don't want (unless the whispers of Trump bringing back the draft end up being true...sigh...), but I'm not entirely sure what your point is? I don't think anyone is saying that these companies are committing crimes, just that it's kind of crappy to take advantage of people that you know are desperate.
I'm not saying there should be a law against it, I'm not saying that the FTC should get involved, I'm not saying that you shouldn't apply to companies that are doing this, but I am saying that it's kind of shitty to try and see if someone you're hiring is struggling, and then use that as a means of lowballing. It's a dick move. The court of public opinion, in my mind, has a lower bar than anything involving "enforcement".
I think the concern is how invasive they can be when doing this. It's one thing to quickly search your name on Google or something, but they can do creepier stuff. They can look at many, many more variables that I can, and it's a little creepy. It seems a little wrong to use peoples' credit scores in order to squeeze down a lower salary. I don't think there's anything even remotely comparable that a prospective employee can do.