Noah<p>I saw this article a while back about the “Equifax Work Number” and I figured while I was going through freezing my credit, I might as well freeze the work number as well. </p><p>Now, to start off, I don’t know that the info from the work number is a useful attack vector for identity theft, maybe one of my friends in infosec could chime in on that, but I will say that it was disturbing what kind of data a company can collect in a routine background check during the interview and hiring process. </p><p>I grabbed a report from the site and it had most of the jobs I’d worked, all the way back to my first job in high school working for Waldenbooks. What was interesting was that it also had my title as well as my pay at each job. I rolled that one around in my head a bit and the longer I thought about that the more annoyed I became.</p><p>As of this year I’ve been in some flavor of <a href="https://10base2.dev/tags/engineering" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>engineering</span></a>, <a href="https://10base2.dev/tags/it" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>it</span></a>, <a href="https://10base2.dev/tags/devops" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>devops</span></a>, or <a href="https://10base2.dev/tags/sre" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>sre</span></a> for 25 years. When I interview for a job, part of the privilege that comes with those 25 years is the ability to say “this is how much I’m willing to work for in order to do this job” and many companies will pay that if you’re who they want and you’re still in the range they’re willing or able to afford.</p><p>Junior folks in <a href="https://10base2.dev/tags/tech" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>tech</span></a> when negotiating <a href="https://10base2.dev/tags/salary" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>salary</span></a>, I could *easily* see this screwing them over. “Ah yes, I see you have three years of Python programming experience, but now I know that you only got paid $15 per hour for that in your last job so this position you’re interested in now magically pays $40K a year instead of the $75K we originally thought we would have to pay.” </p><p>And maybe that’s just pure speculation, pessimism, and the jadedness that comes from working in tech for 25 years. I’m curious if folks have any experience into that work information playing into their salary negotiations and/or if anyone has experience with going through an interview process with their work experience frozen from being queried without their express consent and if that kept them from being offered a job. I know it can impact things like applying for a credit card or financial assistance but I was interested in hearing personal experience with this.</p>