Fair market negotiations should be informationally symmetric.
I think that is essentially impossible. And not a good idea anyway. If I know I will take a job for $75,000 but am anticipating getting $110,000, why should I have to reveal that to the company? Information symmetry would require this.
You don’t need to know everything that the company knows about the job in order to negotiate effectively and reasonably. What you need to know is at least something about what your choices are. You accomplish this by applying for more than one job at once. You don’t need to know anything about any of the companies, except what they are offering you, and how they respond when you “hold them up” by talking about the other jobs you are considering.
As to disclosing my previous salary? I am virtually positive that I am well paid in my current job, and if I thought proof of this would get me a higher offer at a new job, then I would disclose it. If they asked for proof and I thought it was in my interest to provide it, I would. If they made me an offer I considered too low, I might explain to them that no matter what I was making in my previous job, that for my own reasons, the amount they needed to get me is X, and what did they think of that? If they called my bluff, so be it. If they tried to call my bluff and I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t take the job.
Considerations of whether I am supporting a family or not have to be irrelevant! My urgency to get a job should make me apply for more jobs at a time, which means I am going to do a better job of maximizing my outcome by having competing offers. My urgency or not to get a job is irrelevant just as their urgency to hire someone should not cause a moral obligation on me to behave differently in making it easier for them to hire me.
I think there should be a name for a cognitive bias whereby a story about your self-interest gets turned in to a moral argument that the other parties “should” do the thing that is more in your self-interest. Maybe this is named already and I’m just not aware of it.
As to disclosing my previous salary? I am virtually positive that I am well paid in my current job, and if I thought proof of this would get me a higher offer at a new job, then I would disclose it. If they asked for proof and I thought it was in my interest to provide it, I would.
In other words, you don’t have what we call “morals”? Morals being rules of behavior agreed on by a group of agents for their mutual self-interest. If everyone who believes it’s in their interest to disclose former salary does so, management will realize that anyone who doesn’t has a low salary and can be lowballed.
In other words, you don’t have what we call “morals”? Morals being rules of behavior agreed on by a group of agents for their mutual self-interest
I am openly disclosing what I would and wouldn’t do. So as an agent in a group, this statement is me telling you what I would not agree to. My statement expressing transparently what I would not agree to is evidence that, by the definition you give, that I do have morals.
I think that is essentially impossible. And not a good idea anyway. If I know I will take a job for $75,000 but am anticipating getting $110,000, why should I have to reveal that to the company? Information symmetry would require this.
You don’t need to know everything that the company knows about the job in order to negotiate effectively and reasonably. What you need to know is at least something about what your choices are. You accomplish this by applying for more than one job at once. You don’t need to know anything about any of the companies, except what they are offering you, and how they respond when you “hold them up” by talking about the other jobs you are considering.
As to disclosing my previous salary? I am virtually positive that I am well paid in my current job, and if I thought proof of this would get me a higher offer at a new job, then I would disclose it. If they asked for proof and I thought it was in my interest to provide it, I would. If they made me an offer I considered too low, I might explain to them that no matter what I was making in my previous job, that for my own reasons, the amount they needed to get me is X, and what did they think of that? If they called my bluff, so be it. If they tried to call my bluff and I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t take the job.
Considerations of whether I am supporting a family or not have to be irrelevant! My urgency to get a job should make me apply for more jobs at a time, which means I am going to do a better job of maximizing my outcome by having competing offers. My urgency or not to get a job is irrelevant just as their urgency to hire someone should not cause a moral obligation on me to behave differently in making it easier for them to hire me.
I think there should be a name for a cognitive bias whereby a story about your self-interest gets turned in to a moral argument that the other parties “should” do the thing that is more in your self-interest. Maybe this is named already and I’m just not aware of it.
“guilt trip” ?
In other words, you don’t have what we call “morals”? Morals being rules of behavior agreed on by a group of agents for their mutual self-interest. If everyone who believes it’s in their interest to disclose former salary does so, management will realize that anyone who doesn’t has a low salary and can be lowballed.
I am openly disclosing what I would and wouldn’t do. So as an agent in a group, this statement is me telling you what I would not agree to. My statement expressing transparently what I would not agree to is evidence that, by the definition you give, that I do have morals.