What does my prior salary have to do with what I can do for an entirely different company? Also, what if I was drastically underpaid at my previous position?

This isn’t just a rant.

I recently wrote a cover letter for a position listed on a job board. The listing said it required salary history and salary expectations, which I artfully dodged in my letter by writing that “I’d be more than happy to discuss salary information in-person with the hiring manager.”

But no dice. I later received an email asking for my current salary.

What to tell them? I had a few ways to answer the question truthfully—my old salary, my new hourly contract rate (for my former full-time company), or my freelance rate (which is the lowest but factors in a minimum number of guaranteed hours and complete scheduling flexibility)?

I decided to answer with my current hourly rate as a contractor. It’s probably the most honest and straight-forward answer, and it also seems impressive if you multiply my hourly rate x 40 hours per week x 50 weeks per year. Of course, I’m not getting near 40 hours a month from that employer, let alone 40 hours per week, but it stands to reason I would be making that much if I received enough billable hours. I also mentioned that it includes health insurance, which is true—but only for the rest of January.

So how should I answer this question if I get an interview and it comes up in person? What if they ask for more details?

From the Guppie Life

Navigating the Salary History Question

The former full-time company barely assigned me any contracting work in December… I earned less than half of my rent from them last month. When I went to the office for a meeting (and to rescue my office plants), the boss seemed angry at me for not making myself “available.”

Um, I’m sorry, didn’t he just let me go? Did he expect the same level of hand-holding and checking-in and bending-over-backwards now that I’m a lowly contractor? No, sir.

Then after getting reamed out for being a bad, mysterious contractor who doesn’t sign on IM for days at a time (email is obsolete, I guess), I was told my health insurance will end in January. (Only a few weeks ago, I learned that my boss forgot to pay the health insurance bill, so I was without coverage for November.)

Super.

But other than that, things have been pretty blah. I’ve been freelancing for a startup website with an environmental slant, and the founders (a married couple) have been really impressed with my work. I’ve gone from billing on a per-project basis, to 10 hours per week, to now virtually full-time, 9am-5pm. They keep telling me how much they want to hire me as soon as they secure another round of investors… but I’m not holding my breath. We’ll see what happens, it’s a harsh climate for startups.

I also have been sending out a few cover letters. People are definitely posting more now that the holidays are over, but I wouldn’t say there are a lot of high quality jobs out there. Most job postings in web development around here are for government contractors… boo.

Last night I sent a cover letter at 2am and received an email with a follow-up response within 15 minutes. So that’s good… Other than that, I went on one interview before Christmas that ended up not going anywhere.

From the Guppie Life

Hello 2009, Goodbye Health Insurance

I’ve accepted that this blog isn’t going to make me internet famous, so now I just post when I feel like I have news to share with my dedicated internet and real-life acquaintances.

Anywho, onto the subject at hand:

The past few weeks have been trying times.

First, in early November, two of my coworkers were laid off without any advance notice. There were only 9 people in the company, so two people was a huge deal. On the day of the layoffs, I was the only other person in the office besides the two owners. It was spooky, but they took me out for sushi and promised everything was going to be fine. With the layoffs, they said, we’d be saving tens of thousands of dollars in salary and benefits and we’d be okay.

Flash forward to the Tuesday before Thanksgiving: The boss sent out an email to the remaining 5 underlings. He couldn’t afford to keep us all salaried. Effective December 1 we’d all become pay-by-the-hour contractors. Happy holidays, indeed.

Later the boss called a meeting. He explained how the new system would work. We could telecommute 100% of the time. We’d earn our salaries minus three 0’s as our new hourly rate, but we’d be responsible for our own taxes. We’d probably eventually have to shoulder a portion of our health insurance. No more 401(k) match.

He’d understand if we needed to find new jobs, he said. But of course, it’s vital to the company’s success that we all stay on. And he promised he intends to hire each of us back, in order of seniority.

Tomorrow marks the end of the second week of life as a contractor. So far, the company has only given me 2 billable hours of work. Less than $100 before taxes. Much less than $100 after taxes. In two weeks.

And I went to CVS only to learn that my $15 prescription now costs $110. Turns out someone at the office forgot? didn’t pay the health insurance bill.

…

Luckily, a few weeks before, a friend had introduced me to the founder of a new environmental website start-up who needed a freelancer. I’ve been working with her doing some web design and consulting work. The extra money definitely helps, but it’s not enough to live on. She’d like to hire me as a full-time employee, but they don’t have funding yet. (They’ve been operating out of the founder’s McMansion to save money. It’s actually a lot of fun. )

So essentially it’s been two weeks without a real paycheck. How long do I wait, hoping that business turns around? I have an emergency fund (thank god)—but do I want to drain my emergency betting on someone else’s business? I don’t think I do. It’s not like I have equity in the company.

So I’ve decided: I’m looking for another full-time job. In the meantime I’ll keep on contracting and freelancing whenever possible.

But now what the hell do I want to do?

From the Guppie Life

The Economic Downturn Finally Hit Home

What’s your excuse for not voting? Oh, wait. There isn’t one.

From the Guppie Life

I voted…

First, Ian Ayres from Freakonomics compares marriage discrimination to racial segregation:

I view the legal exclusion of gay people from marriage as morally wrong; a form of invidious discrimination. Many people hold different substantive views about marriage equality.

But in this post, I want to focus on a different question: How should people respond to the legal option of taking a benefit that is invidiously denied others? It’s a question that transcends the specific issue of same-sex marriage. You can also ask, for example, whether it would ever have been appropriate for whites to drink from a “whites only” water fountain.

When I ask my students the water fountain question, very few whites say they would drink. But at the same time, heterosexual students who strongly oppose the marriage exclusion nonetheless, like me, choose to take the benefits of marriage that are, to our minds, denied others.

If I were straight and wanted to get married, I don’t think I’d hold out for marriage equality. But that’s just me. I’ve never been much of an activist.

Meanwhile, Clever Dude wonders if government should be involved in marriage at all:

Should the government provide ANY benefits to married couples, regardless of sexual orientation?

I’m questioning the whole foundation of government involvement in the institution of marriage. You see, since marriage just boils down to a contract, much like a business agreement, does government involvement in marriage go against our capitalistic foundation? In a capitalistic society, free enterprise and the market should determine the success or failure of ventures and contractual agreements. Marriages are certainly ventures between two parties, and marriages are contracts. Would you agree?

Personally, I’m fine with any sort of marriage, as long as it’s the same for everyone.

From the Guppie Life

Straight People Think About Gay Marriage, Too

Bloggers are supposed to write about the social issue du jour… and then… something happens? Sounds like an Internet feel-good circle jerk to me.

This year’s theme is poverty, so to celebrate I had some Ramen noodles for dinner.

Woohoo! I’m making a difference!

From the Guppie Life

It’s Blog Action Day! Wait, huh?

Too funny.

(Though I’d probably get addicted to just about anything if it meant getting a sing-along visit from Kristin Chenoweth.)

From the Guppie Life

Everything I Know About Crystal Meth I Learned from Kristin Chenoweth

Of course, so am I, and I do, too.

From the Guppie Life

Sarah Silverman is Offensive and Wants Your Grandparents to Vote for Obama

But I’ve been having a hard time staying motivated.

What’s wrong, you ask? I can’t really complain. I love my new car. I’ve been meeting boys. I’ve even made some meaningful contributions at work.

But Google hates me. More specifically, Google hates the Guppie Life. And I don’t know why.

Want to see for yourself?

See? All the results are talking ABOUT my blog. But Google doesn’t link to the blog itself. Back in the day it used to link to my blog and even my individual posts, but not for 6 months or so.

Sometimes people say Google does this as a punishment if a website owner has done something shady in an attempt to manipulate search rankings. But I haven’t, I swear! And of course, Google is a multi-billion dollar company. They aren’t going to take the time to explain to me why they’ve gone sour on me.

Why is this a big deal to me?

Well, search engine visitors are often the number one source of traffic to a blog. Many sites and blogs get up to as much as 90% of their traffic from search engines. Without appearing in the Google search results, many normal people (i.e. people who are not themselves also bloggers) will never find the Guppie Life. And without them I can’t become internet famous. (Joke.)

Fellow bloggers, I encourage you to read Can Google Be Trusted? from SEOBook.com. It could happen to you, too.

Anyway, I don’t think there’s much I can do about this. I just wanted to vent. Thanks for listening, friends.

From the Guppie Life

What Do You Do When Google Hates You?

I haven’t been blogging.

My gym caught fire.

I called in sick Friday. I felt horrid. The worst part about calling in sick on Friday is that no one believes you’re not just hung over. But I wasn’t.

I still haven’t taken the new (used) car to the shop. It has a few minor things left to be fixed that drive me mad, but it’s completely drivable, so I’ve been putting it off.

Boys are kind of predictable right now. In college, all I wanted was a boyfriend. In the real world, all I want is someone who can hold my interest.

My job is okay. My boss wants me to have input into the hiring process and the business strategy. It’s scary.

I’m the youngest employee. I have to manage work done by people much older than me, and sometimes I have to say things they don’t want to hear.

I try to compensate by keeping gum at my desk. There’s a Post-It that says, “Free Gum :).”

See the smiley face? I’m a friendly guy. Please don’t get mad at me.

This wasn’t a real blog entry.

From the Guppie Life

So I Suck, and Here are the Top Ten Reasons Why