57 replies
3h16m
I have never heard of Pave before, but this just sounds like yet another copy of Equifax's "The Work Number" [1]. Basically, HR at many companies gives your salary and employment history data to Equifax, who then sells access to the information to certain parties with supposed need to access it, including potential and current employers and creditors. This report is likely one of the most invasive consumer files out there for many people.
I cannot comment on the legality of this kind of data sharing, but as I and others have pointed out, it has existed for a while. I do agree that it is concerning. You can freeze your Equifax The Work Number report at least, just like other credit reports.
I downloaded a personal report from the work number website and found to my horror that my employer was reporting every. single. paystub. gross and net, to equifax.
That felt like a huge breach of privacy. Given that equifax had already proven incompetent at keeping my data secure, I immediately sent HR a request to stop sending my supposedly 'confidential' pay info. They politely told me to kick rocks, so I went on TWN's website and froze that report so no one would be able to request it, and it will be a cold day in hell before I thaw it.
Don't ever work in the public sector then. Your salary is public record, open to anyone who is curious enough to look.
I think that's widely understood and part of the job description of being a public servant. What's not widely understood is HR secretly selling your data while working at a private company.
Is it yours though? The employer could probably argue that it's theirs. Devil's advocate: I think it's widely understood that entities can be transparent with their data if they choose, other than NDA scenarios.
Most companies request people not share pay information. Information asymmetry is a huge deal in negotiations.
They can request it, but can't stop you if you do.
You can also request them to do likewise, with similar recourse.
A request is nothing without teeth behind it.
Teeth like employment at-will?
It's generally quite unlikely that sharing your salary is going to result in getting bitten by that. You'd need to do labour organization (or be completely surrounded by rats and snitches and other vermin at your workplace, who already have an axe to grind) to actually get blowback for this stuff.
Most of the taboo around it is cultural, because people here attach their self-worth to their paycheck.
You could also always do it anonymously or pseudonymously. You'd have almost no chances of retaliation in that case.
Such a “requirement” is illegal. https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-right...
And pot was illegal in the 70s.
It still is.
But in the US, federal labor law makes it illegal for employers to prevent employees from sharing pay information (at least for employees who are entitled to unionize).
Well, if we're discussing whose data it is the information about how much I pay you, even from a devi's advocate perspective, you can't do better than arguing that this data pertains to both of us. So we should share the property of that data somehow. I don't see how you could argue that that data would be solely the employer's data.
If I administer a survey, collect responses, and put them into a spreadsheet, is the data in that spreadsheet not mine despite the fact that it consists of things that other people told me? I can't share it without the permission of those surveyed, assuming I didn't promise not to?
Technically sure, but the sort of people who live that way don't get invited out anywhere.
A key distinction is that people need employment. People don't need to fill out surveys. That's why there are many things companies aren't allowed to require of their employees, that they are allowed to require of other parties.
So while, in many jurisdictions, it's fine for companies to sell data collected on their employees, and it could be argued that those employees consented to this data sharing by working there, one could also easily argue for an employee protection law that prevents companies from requiring their employees to consent to this.
It really depends on which kind of data you're collecting. If you're collecting health related data that is linkable to the people it pertains to, the GDPR would prevent you from sharing that data with third parties without one of the admissible legal basis, the most common of which is the consent of the people whose data you collected. In the case of health data, maybe even USA laws would prevent you from sharing it.
Edit: it is now some time since I studied the GDPR, so I'm actually unsure if, for healt-related data, it can be used any legal basis other than consent. The reason being that health, together with a few other categories, has special protections.
These are answered questions. If you are talking about the raw data, you have to get the respondents to agree that their answers become your property (either implicitly or explicitly, there are rules around both), or no, you do not own the data in the spreadsheet.
The employer requires this data to do payroll correctly. Apart from that, it sound only be used for expressly authorized purposes. But maybe that's a european GDPR-influenced way of seeing this issue.
In a market-first values system, where we rely on the labor market to largely self-regulate given the promises that free market idealogues & corporate actors made us, colluding on wages like this should lead to scorched-earth retribution from the FTC.
Not "Oh hey there, you're not allowed to do that, stop that", but "We are diluting your stock by a quarter and distributing it to your workers" type shit.
[delayed]
... should companies be nervous about this also though? Is the decision for their payroll info to be visible to unknown buyers an intentional, well-considered one? Is this effectively leaking potentially strategically important info?
Like, I haven't seen this happen, but could a recruiting team buy the compensation data on staff at a competing firm, identify those that look like a good deal, and poach them starting with a "we'll offer you k% more than your current employer"?
Could market analysts use this data to notice when a company starts firing more people, or starts giving fewer/smaller raises? What if the next time your company showed up in a Gartner or Forrester report, it came along with a caveat "however given decreased investment in staff, their pace of product development or quality of client services may be at risk."
Yeah I used to work for the navy. Pay was standardized under the GS pay schedule and anybody could have looked that up. I was fine with that.
In the private sector, your comp is determined by a negotiation undermined by an asymmetric information disparity. HR at a hiring company has way more information around market comp as it is without having your exact current comp when they make an offer.
What I find particularly egregious about this is that management at this company had admonished me that my comp was 'confidential' and that I shouldn't discuss it, while simultaneously selling it to equifax.
There are countries (Sweden IIRC) where the salary record is public, probably to eliminate this information asymmetry.
Some jobs fall under this "public sector" transparency but work much more like a private employer when it comes to salary negotiation. For example a state university recruits staff and negotiates compensation much like a private employer (no equity options of course) but your salary will be public if you are hired.
Why would that be a widely understood part of the job description? Almost every American teacher, firefighter, planner, street engineer, health inspector, police officer, train conductor, bus driver, along with the managers, office administrative staff, janitors, and groundskeepers that support those activities are public sector employees. What do they have in common that would suggest they deserve less privacy than you do?
Most of these jobs are not special or meaningfully "public". They're just normal jobs for firms that happen to be public bodies. I don't think it's at all obvious that people are knowingly and deliberately making these tradeoffs by working there.
The information available via the public record is not as detailed (typically annual salary)and not definitively tied to any person. The Work Number is tied to your SSN and is much more detailed than the public record (each paycheck and a breakdown of different compensation).
In the US, most municipalities will publish each employee's compensation every year. You can literally look them up by name.
Public servants do not make enough money to be useful targets. The meaningful threat comes from large compensation tied to other asset information (tying an online person to that income, not difficult). You can buy lists of these already tied up and ready to download for your scheming pleasure. From English Rolex robbers to Florida kidnappers, they all enjoy the data.
I do not think it can be stopped, but the days when a wealthy person could safely live in a suburb and have the kids imagine that they are middle class is long gone. It is terrifying. The best thing for a wealthy discrete person to do is move to Singapore or Australia, or somewhere with a sufficiently low crime rate to feel comfortable, or get quality security, which sucks.
The security minded can move to a gated community, which are all over the place and have existed for a very long time, and don't require moving to Singapore or Australia to live in one.
or live in Sweden (where your earnings as well as your address and property, car or pet ownership are public record)
I’ve read about that. Is ipen to ANYbody? Is there a link?
Thanks
I am an investor in equifax. Let me clear up a misconception on where the data comes from. Half the data comes from large enterprise customers, who “sell” the data in exchange for Equifax doing I-9 verification for free. The other half comes from 39 payroll companies. Every single payroll company except for Rippling and Gusto sell paystub data to Euifax. (Rippling will start next year). Those are exclusive revenue share deals. You cannot be a competitive payroll provider without the revenue share from Equifax. So before you blame your employer, they might not be selling it directly and even if they opted out, your payroll company will sell it anyway.
You make an excellent argument here for tight regulation of the industry.
… and the usage?
Most highly-paid people have no idea how much privilege this affords them.
You wonder why so many businesses are nice to you? It’s because they’ve already looked you up and know you’ve got a high income and are a millionaire.
Write a personal check for your next automobile? Sure thing, you can drive it off the lot a few minutes later. They won’t even bother cashing the check for a week or two.
Try doing something like that as an hourly worker, even if you’ve got the money in the bank.
No thank you. I value my privacy and my negotiating ability more than I value a 'service' I didn't even ask for.
Nobody asked for it. But it’s part of the world we live in. And we’re all walking around oblivious to the advantages and disadvantages it gives us.
Personal check? What year is this?!? :-)
I did this for my recent automobile purchase. It's very convenient from my perspective to simply write a check and hand it to them.
Personal check? You can buy a car in full with a credit card if you pass the vibe check.
A personal check is much less secure because it’s not linked up to the network anti fraud systems.
That sounds like the most unappealing exchange imaginable. Yes, let me lose both bargaining power with new jobs while simultaneously painting a target on my back, all in exchange for companies being more willing to take my money.
This is also why certain homes get hit in high-end burglary crews. There are multiple crews hitting those who purchase precious metals with physical delivery (like gold American Eagle coins). It is not all positive. Considering how few victims even bother to report such crimes, it is terrifying.
From what I understand from my cousin, a career criminal, there are entire theft rings working off of databases such as these. He knew mostly of car-related theft rings, but I hear about safe-cracking burglaries quite often, usually stealing Rolex watches or precious metals.
This is the view from a bubble I am not familiar with, and really don't care about.
The finance companies are nice enough that it doesn't really matter.
Bought mine with cash but realized it was Sunday and I didn't have a way to get a cashier's check from a savings account.
They offered to put the down payment on a credit card and finance. Paid it off once I had access to the account.
Ended up being a wash, the points were worth a little more than the percentage charge.
Do you have a sense of why, according to you Gusto will remain the only company that doesn't sell payroll data to Equifax?
Gusto is still pre-revenue?
Many if not most companies outsource employment verification to The Work Number. When you get a new job, a frozen report will complicate your background check.
They don't give out salary info in employment checks though. AFAIK they require your explicit permission except for government agencies who use it to verify your eligibility for benefits. I would be surprised if they are not selling aggregate salary data though
If they want my info, they can ask me. I would rather them not have this info before an offer is made.
That's normally how it goes. At least, I've always had the background check happen after an offer is signed. It's usually a separate company and they just report back whether your job titles/employment dates match your resume
As a datapoint for how I've seen this used in the real world, I've spoken to startups who will defer to Pave regarding how much they'll offer to pay. The startup I spoke to said 'We pay you the 85th percentile for your YOE and role based on Pave data'.
Then I want 99th.
These services feel not dissimilar to the Realpagr case that is ongoing now with rent price fixing.
How does this ultimately not end up having a depressing impact on salaries?
I froze the report, and I also told my employer not to report anything to Equifax (which luckily my employer allows).
This made getting approved for a mortgage more difficult. These days, loan officers just expect to be able to hit a button and get all your info.
We're losing the privacy battle.
The freeze is mostly ineffective for when you actually want it to work. From what I remember (even for the credit freezes) is that if you provide written consent to, say, a background check, then that overrides your freeze. So if you're applying for a job (basically the major instance where you'd want your salary information private) they're going to ask for your consent to do a background check and bingo they'll know how much money you make.
IMO this type of information should be illegal to sell or request.
Pave is a company that has been snapping up other existing companies that performed this kind of aggregation of compensation data. Basically companies look at this benchmarking data to figure out what they should pay for different jobs and levels. Just some extent companies genuinely need this kind of data to figure out what to do. But I also think it breaks supply and demand. Companies are not discovering price of labor but just using each other’s signals to decide what to pay collectively
https://www.pave.com/blog-posts/announcing-paves-series-c-an...
In case folks want to quickly know how to start a freeze, heres the info from the website:
To communicate a freeze request, send an email to the address below requesting a Freeze Placement Form: TWNFreeze@equifax.com