I'm not seeing how this matters, they were already doing that - the market is a big auction to work out the overlap between lowest salary employees will work for and the highest salary employers will offer. In that process employees also use data to figure out the highest salary that will be offered. The thing forcing employers to pay the salary they do is that if they offer less someone else will gazump them for the employee's time. It has nothing to do with the circumstances of the employees lifestyle. The lifestyle adjusts to the salary.

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darth_avocado an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> the overlap between lowest salary employees will work for and the highest salary employers will offer

There is still an element of unknown because both parties do not know each others numbers, which allows employees to still negotiate. You are now talking about information asymmetry where the party with the information will now have all the bargaining power.

When I went from working a $150K job to getting offers from Meta at $300K, the initial number they offered was $250K, and we worked upwards. I absolutely would’ve taken the job even if they offered $200K and not negotiated. But they did, based on information asymmetry. Now imagine a world where meta knows exactly how much I make and all the other information about me. I’d probably get a minor bump over my previous salary.

Edit: I ended up taking a different offer. I don’t work for and have never worked for Meta.

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roenxi 37 minutes ago | parent [-]

You might want to rethink your example if the counterparty offers you 50% more than you wanted then you reject the deal; it makes adding the framing a bit pointless because it is clear you weren't ever going to accept the job for $200k.

And you're underestimating how much of an impact the broader market is having on Meta's thinking in this scenario. If your silver tongue or secret number was a factor here then everyone would end up being overpaid because they wouldn't reveal that they were happy to work for a reasonable amount. It doesn't matter how much or little Meta knows, they're only going to offer $300k if they have a reasonable belief that you can find a job for $300k somewhere else; informed by a pretty detailed analysis of the employment market. And in fact that appears to be exactly what happened in your story. Nothing about that dynamic has anything to do with your salary history or spending habits and them getting better information on those things doesn't change your negotiating position. Since a key factor is the future, even if they know you'd say yes to $200k, they'd still be best served offering you more money. I've had that happen to me 2 or 3 times because I'm a sloppy negotiator and don't try very hard to optimise salary.

	▲	darth_avocado 19 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> You might want to rethink your example if the counterparty offers you 50% more than you wanted then you reject the deal I rejected the deal because I got even more elsewhere. My framing still stands. In a case when only one employer has the information, sure they’re better served by offering me more money. But in an environment where all of them have the information, this no longer is a problem. At a system level, this is a problem for employees.

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nothercastle an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This allows all sorts of normally illegal discrimination via ai pass through. Never hire pregnant women, sick people or employees over 30 again. Target for race and religion whatever you want. Basically everything that’s scary about chinas social credit score except private run with zero accountability.

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eloisius 41 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

If that’s true and this has a null effect, why would a business pay for it? There must be some utility for them. Like others already pointed out: information asymmetry undermines worker’s ability to negotiate, resulting in lower wages for everyone.