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Comment by allengeorge | Hacker News Reader

Hopefully LinkedIn won't ask me for my salary in the future. Cause I definitely don't trust them with my salary info. They'll sell it to everyone - recruiters, other companies...

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But that's the whole point and you can turn it to your advantage. Report the salary you want, possibly higher than the one you have and all the recruiters and potential employers will know not to contact you if they cannot pay that much.

I read an article from Lifehacker about being transparent of your salary. Check out what are the benefits.

http://lifehacker.com/this-video-explains-why-you-should-tal...

Adam Ruins Everything - Why You Should Tell Coworkers Your Salary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xH7eGFuSYI

That's why you should lie even to forms when asked for your salary.

Let's just all put down random number between $220,000 - $275,000 as base.

What if the UI is made for "normal" people and the highest option is "$150,000k+" /s

for devs it would actually get our salaries up to the right level, the big tech companies held down wages for 4-5 years.

This reminds me of a funny conversation I had once with a recruiter. He essentially demanded I provide him a salary number to give to a prospective company, as I had been flatly refusing to on the basis that it puts me at a disadvantage.

Eventually I threw out the highest amount I'd ever earned, about $225k a year total comp (partly tongue-in-cheek, partly to make a point), and he got really angry with me, telling me I was wasting his time and that nobody got paid that much. Needless to say, I ended any dealings with him at that point forward.

I've capped out my income at the moment, when recruiters talk to me I always try to force them into the compensation discussion first. Including risk discounts, expected future growth rates, etc. they quickly stop wasting my time.

Serious all developers should actually do that. I would say go beyond the $500k ceiling as well. It is us to blame for the low salary we have accepted from employers and then blame it to the companies.

+no responsibility +unlimited holidays +no office politics

This. If they give this salary to recruiters or do anything to hint at what a candidate's range might be, they will lose whatever trust they might still have.

In fact, I'd love to know what they can offer in the way of assurances against this.

I'd suggest you to read https://engineering.linkedin.com/blog/2016/10/bringing-salar..., the section about privacy.

Here is what the _current_ content says:

  One of the interesting dichotomies with compensation data 
  is that many users want this information, but don’t want to 
  have their individual data exposed or connected back to them.  
  Salary information is personal to each of our members. With 
  this in mind, and consistent with our Members First organizational 
  philosophy, one of the first goals we established when we set out 
  to embark on this project was to provide powerful salary insights 
  in aggregate without risking an individual’s private information. 
  In the end, we built a salary collection system to provide the 
  strongest protections for the anonymity of all of our members—no 
  easy task. Parts of our approach are detailed later in this article.

  Because we proactively separate a member’s submission data from their 
  Member ID when compensation data is submitted, it enables us to 
  secure the system in such a way that we cannot even support the 
  ability for a member to update their previously submitted salary 
  information - they have to resubmit. Furthermore, our system provides 
  protection not just from hackers out in the wild, but also provides 
  access control against unauthorized use by internal users.

If I am reading this correctly, what they seem to say is that as implemented currently, they don't have the ability to track a person's salary information to their profile and hence won't be able to sell that information.

True, but that is not the issue. The clickwrap means nothing to me when they have this rider:

"7. Right to Terminate or Modify Software

    LinkedIn may modify the Software and this EULA with notice to you either in email or by publishing notice on the Website, including but not limited to charging fees for the Software, or changing the functionality or appearance of the Software. In the event LinkedIn modifies the Software or the EULA, you may terminate this EULA and cease use of the Software. LinkedIn may terminate your use of the Software, the EULA or the LinkedIn Service at any time, *with or without notice.*" (emphasis mine)[0]

Fundamentally, I cannot ever trust them.

[0]https://www.linkedin.com/legal/mobile/eula

Until 7 months later they quietly update the ToS.

7 months later they would still not have access to the submitted data that was never stored, only to future submissions.

that's a mighty big hoping that nothing in this regard will change. ever. in for-profit company. that eagerly steals all my contacts from my cell phone (to which I probably unknowingly agreed, but it's amoral).

NO.

Then when someone resubmits new data, how do they know that a previously submitted data point is now stale and shouldn't be used any more?

What I think happens:

1. You submit a salary info struct, which includes time of submission. The struct does not contain a userId.

2. Your account's lastUpdatedSalaryDate gets updated, with only day/week/month level precision.

Someone with access to the entire database may be able to connect the two if the salary set for your job is small enough.

Then they weigh salary information based on how fresh the entry is. Stale entries don't get a good weight, and you updating your salary is just another info point, and it might go into another bucket if you got a title change (ex software eng -> sr. software eng.). If you got promoted, then the old salary info is probably still relevant for people in lower level positions.

When you submit data, your current state and history will form some basis for the entry into the salery database. When you update your information, you have a different state and history, and thus will generate a new entry.

Both should be in the data.

  Because we proactively separate a member’s submission data from their 
  Member ID when compensation data is submitted, it enables us to 
  secure the system in such a way that we cannot even support the 
  ability for a member to update their previously submitted salary 
  information - they have to resubmit.

How is this possible? If the salary data is not associated to the user in any way can't a user submit their salary over and over again drastically swaying the aggregate salaries?

Presumably they're tracking when the user last submitted a salary, but not what they submitted.

I have. I'm aware I have a strong bias against LinkedIn when it comes to their data-handling. The entire company is built around selling me to recruiters, so I'm very wary about their collection of my employment information.

Edit. For example, I'm not sure if this current policy will continue into the future. It's easy for me to get used to handing them my salary information and for them to change the privacy policy under me.

The entire company is built around selling me to recruiters

I think you may have fixed this data accuracy debate/issue. If they ask recruiters only they may get nearly-accurate data.

Yeah, because I trust LinkedIn with privacy.

LinkedIn waited several years without letting me know that my account information had been hacked. For me at least they lost all credibility so reading their "privacy policy" would be a waste of time.

Sure, because the right combination of words somehow overrides LinkedIn's history of violating users' trust, of security breaches, and of sleazy practices.

What do you mean you don't trust them? The need the salary information only to sell to recruiters and companies. Any other value proposition they might come up with is purely bogus.

They'll find another way. It's Linked In. They regularly purchase and merge data from various sources. They'll phone your employer if need be.

"Hey employers, tell us how much your employees earn, so we tell you where you could save!"

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