Replies

” I’m going to guess that you don’t supervise people”

I manage executives, engineers, and scientists. Unlike you, I’m not an entry level supervisor of minimum wage workers.

I use business and executive-level strategies to determine salaries. I am not a brain dead HR bimbo that believes someone’s prior company dictates what I should pay them.

I am able to ascertain value against market wages and pay accordingly. I do not rely upon inaccurate self-disclosures by candidates of their prior wages to determine what I should pay them. You do, but thinking professionals do not. We have more intelligent and accurate strategies.

What someone else paid a candidate is useless information to me. When I am looking to pay someone $140k, I don’t look at an implied worth statement that if they were only making $85k at their prior company that they couldn’t possibly be qualified. I see it that the prior company is losing a great individual and I can land them with my higher salary. I don’t want to pay them a maximum of 10% more than their prior salary as they will continue to look for higher salaries from someone else.

You obviously do not understand such concepts and try to be the person paying no more than 10% over their prior salary. Doom on you. I get the better employees, you can keep the low paid underperformers.

I manage executives, engineers, and scientists. Unlike you, I’m not an entry level supervisor of minimum wage workers.
I use business and executive-level strategies to determine salaries. I am not a brain dead HR bimbo that believes someone’s prior company dictates what I should pay them.

I sense a lot of outright sexism here. After disparaging me as an "entry level supervisor of minimum wage workers," you go on to call me a "brain dead HR bimbo." Clearly, you know nothing about me and seem to have some poor reading comprehension skills on top of that. Is it really that difficult for you to accept that some women happen to be ambitious enough to climb the ladder into mid-level and upper management?

I wouldn't expect you to tell me what your company is, but I really would like to know because when I retire a couple of years from now, I do not want to make the mistake of dropping my CV at your company.

Well, you got me there--I rarely look at market values, and the salaries we pay are a matter of public law. I work within a fairly rigid framework, and I am unaware of private sector wage practices.

With that large of a disparity, I would have all kinds of questions. A salary of $140k is the salary of someone who has a few years of experience as a PhD level scientist. A salary of $85k is either a Master's level technician with several years of experience, or a post-doc. The only way it would make sense for someone to be jumping from an $85k job to a $140k job is if that person has been jumping from post-doc to post-doc and finally found a permanent scientist level position.

You make a lot of assumptions there. Where did I say that I'm trying to pay them no more than 10% over their prior salary? What I said is that prospective employees sometimes want to negotiate the terms of their compensation, and that one piece of evidence they provide is proof of their former or current salary. If, for example, they want to make the case that I should pay at least $65k because their current employer is paying them that much, why should I not have the right to ask for validation of that claim? Oh, and FYI--my employees are the best of the best at what they do.