Back in 2018, Mary Elizabeth and I recorded an episode of PM Debate on a question that’s aged better than most: is a candidate’s current salary a real signal of whether they’ll succeed as a project manager?
I argued yes. Not because it’s fair, it’s not, but because the job market had already become too noisy to screen any other way. Once hiring stopped being local and started being global, recruiters lost the built-in filter that geography and reputation used to provide. Compensation became a blunt but practical proxy.
Mary Elizabeth argued no, and made the harder case. Current salary reflects history, not fitness, a project manager coming from a lower cost-of-living market, a different industry, or a season of deliberately choosing less responsibility will always look “wrong” on paper by that measure alone. She also pointed to something a lot of PMs still don’t clock: the wage gap doesn’t just create inequity, it launders that inequity forward every time compensation is used to screen the next role.
We went back and forth on it in the full episode, including a story about an offer that came in 40% higher than expected, and one that came in 50% lower than a VP title implied.
The debate holds up. If anything, the industry has moved further in Mary Elizabeth’s direction since we recorded it, more jurisdictions have banned the salary-history question outright.
This was one of the last conversations we recorded in that run of the show. We may bring PM Debate back in a different format down the line, but for now, the archive is worth revisiting on its own merits.
Where do you land: is current salary a useful filter, or a lazy one?
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