New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary
I&#x27;ve recently been on both ends of the table here.  I don&#x27;t share my previous salary but I&#x27;m always willing to share a pay range.  The range being higher than I&#x27;d ever expect to get paid.  I find this to be important when discussing salary with an employer because it gives me a baseline to continue discussions.  If they can&#x27;t meet my bottom line then I&#x27;m not interested.  The reason I give a range is because salary is only a SMALL part of your compensation package.  If there is a yearly bonus program, great medical, 401k matching, vacation, etc.  Each of these things need to be considered when accepting a position.  Hence the range.<p>I&#x27;ve also come to expect that I&#x27;m going to give a candidate a pay range as well.  It is one of the first things I do when trying to on board because if they can&#x27;t afford to live on the range I&#x27;m telling them then I don&#x27;t want to waste either of our time on discussing a position they can&#x27;t live on.  I&#x27;m pretty upfront about this because the worst thing an employee working for me can do is have to start budgeting a lot and be resentful about it.<p>In my mind this law can really hinder that conversation.  I like giving a range and asking a candidate if they can deal with that, but it&#x27;s really nice when a candidate is secure enough to tell me what they are worth up front as well.  I would also recommend against giving anyone a fixed value always always give a range.