Honest question for people who are concerned about this - why is it troubling? If another company wants to hire you, obviously they'll need to offer stronger compensation than you currently have to convince you to ditch a comfortable position.
The fact that employers want employees to stay quiet about their compensation so they don't have to start handing out raises doesn't seem like a good reason to be concerned about this to me. From an employers perspective, that taboo makes sense to push - I'm not saying it's right, just that it makes sense from a business perspective. Quite frankly, we've all seen proof that some people are just much more proficient at certain tasks than others. Management could spend all day explaining to someone why that person gets paid way more than the next person, but the simple fact that they have been getting paid more for years speaks for itself in my opinion.
Imagine that your new employer knows your past salary. They can offer you 10% above it and this might be sufficient in enough cases. However, if they don't know it, they will be in the fog of war and they will have to guess much more and be ready for a wider salary range. In such scenarios the new offer might not be 10% but something like 30%. Now, imagine the accumulated effect over 2-3 employers over time.
I've had pretty good success being completely honest about my salary requirements. A 10% raise just won't cut for me, because I care about my team. The only way I'm willing to leave is for a <your_number_here>% raise, and comparable benefits.
Edit: I'm probably biased, because I've been shown a lot of love the past few years by my current employer, in the form of money.
Those were example numbers. The key part is the asimetric information: the new company knows your rock bottom, while you have no way to know their upper limit.
Yeah, I get it, and you're not wrong - you'll probably end up with a higher salary operating that way. It's just not for me. I've already reached my "good enough" salary (the hard way), and at this point I'm more focused on what I can give back.
Statistically, with this setup, companies will constantly underpay. Yes, there will be some outliers being overpaid or those happy with their salary, but most will be in fact underpaid.
a) Lots of people consider their salary quite private/personal. Equifax are, in the eyes of myself and many others, a pretty awful company, AND proven to be terrible at data security. Them hoovering up all sorts of private data that nobody wants them to have, and then selling it off, is gross
b) A potential new employer knowing your current/previous salary is bad for your negotiating position, not good
There have been stories about people who graduated in 2008 who had an awful time finding a job despite getting "useful" degrees because the economy was in shambles. Their salaries _x_ years out of school were notably lower than similar groups a bit older or younger. Many of them took any job they could get.
Now think about someone who got a job in their degree field, but at a 30% reduced salary than typical (because that's the only way a company could justify hiring someone). If each successive company knows the current salary of their future employee and offers 15% more to be compelling, the employee is still far behind an employee following the same path starting 2 years earlier/later. Add in the opaque nature of salary bands that are basically never widely disclosed to employees and a really rough narrative is formed for a group of people.
> The fact that employers want employees to stay quiet about their compensation so they don't have to start handing out raises doesn't seem like a good reason to be concerned about this to me. From an employers perspective, that taboo makes sense to push
In the US, pushing that taboo can be illegal if employers prevent workers from engaging in legally protected acts, like discussing their compensation while at work, or if employers retaliate against workers for doing so. Congress enshrined those rights into law nearly a century ago, and the National Labor Relations Board exists to protect those rights for workers.
The fact that employers want employees to stay quiet about their compensation so they don't have to start handing out raises doesn't seem like a good reason to be concerned about this to me. From an employers perspective, that taboo makes sense to push - I'm not saying it's right, just that it makes sense from a business perspective. Quite frankly, we've all seen proof that some people are just much more proficient at certain tasks than others. Management could spend all day explaining to someone why that person gets paid way more than the next person, but the simple fact that they have been getting paid more for years speaks for itself in my opinion.