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Ask HN: Why don't people talk specifics about money and salaries?
87 points by nathanbarry on Nov 10, 2012 | hide | past | favorite | 83 comments
Growing up neither my parents or friends of my parents talked about specifics around money. Not only how much everyone was paid, but also how much they paid for a car or a house.

When I went to negotiate my first salaried job I had no idea how much to aim for. Was $30,000 a reasonable salary? $60,000? I realized then that everyone's aversion to talking about money had left me in the dark as to how the business world worked.

Why is everyone so hesitant to share their salaries and other financial information?

Note: I know that it is against company policies, at many companies, to disclose your salary. Is there a reason besides this?

Edit: Has sharing financial information, either personal or about your company, ever caused you problems later? I would love to hear some good stories.




Simple: it only benefits you, not your employer. Here is a personal example from a not so distant past for me. The economy tanked when i graduated from university with my Comp. Sci. degree. It seemed as though every company in the area was on hiring freeze. Relocation didn't seem like a good option at the time. So, i was offered 35K at the place i was interning, when i was supposed to start out at 50/55K considering experience. During my stay there i busted my butt, was praised for my work, got amazing annual reviews, promoted to senior software engineer and over 2 years got bumped to 60K. My manager actually told me i am the best resource on the team. Anyway, i was lead to believe that the company just didn't pay much their software devs. Until one day i was talking to a friend of mine, a very talented web designer who was actually hired at our company to do web design but them got bumped to our engineering team. He told me he was offered 75K and knew that some folks on our team made 85K. My jaw dropped. I left the company 3 weeks later. The new place doubled my salary. I was counter-offered at, again, a much lower number than others on the team. Would any of my hire-ups wanted me to know this? Of course not. They'd lose me earlier. This is how you retain people.


Hey, I downvoted you because of fat fingers and a tablet. I hope someone else will upvote by way of undo, as that is what I intended.

I've been through the same experience. Not once, twice.

On both occasions I resigned the instant I discovered the discrepancy. On both occasions the reaction by the companies was to suddenly offer a wage correction. But the disrespect had already been shown in my opinion.

I'm in favour of transparency now. I'm also in favour of clearly understood titles/levels, with knowledge of how to progress and what it means to be at a level (not a hierarchy, but a personal learning progression).

Whether or not this works for non-engineering roles I've yet to find out.


No biggie. :) I absolutely agree with you. It is a matter of disrespect. When you're promoted you'd better expect same salary as those at your level. Benefits can accumulate with seniority, but salary should be equal for everyone.


The answer is actually pretty simple, it causes a lot of problems and very little is any "good" comes out of it.

The problems seem to originate from two things; first people often judge their own 'worth' by comparing their work output to others, and two, people who don't understand the details of a particular job seem to think it is much easier to do than it really is.

So in the first case person A, who thinks highly of themselves, and very poorly of a co-worker person B, finds that the co-worker is getting more compensation than they are. This triggers a management issue where someone has to explain to person A the discrepancy. There are a number of real explanations (like Person B is actually doing a harder job and/or providing a more valuable role) that Person A, may be unable to accept.

Or person B may have a role that is significantly different, like they are in marketing (vs engineering) or finance or analysis. Can you compare salaries for someone who cranks out a thousand lines of code a day with someone who can tell you precisely which of those lines of code are making the company money and which ones aren't? Both are great skills, that latter is harder to find, you might pay them a bit more. But explain that to the person writing code? Not easy.

When I was at Google it was proposed a number of times (by engineers) that everyone's salary should just be part of the info available. They didn't do that, but I could see someone like the 37Signals folks or some startup doing it from the start.

I've not worked at a company where that was the case so I can only speculate on what it might be like. For folks who were internally OK with their own perception of self worth it wouldn't matter, for the sociopaths it would give them a new game to 'win', for folks who were not OK with their own self worth it would be devastating.

I do know that individuals can change this, so when your out socially talk freely about specific amounts of money you earn, or save, or spend. But be forewarned that it will make them uncomfortable. But if you can get a community built up where its considered the 'norm' then converting your workplace to use it (assuming they have enough of that community employed) can work.


I find a lot of government and academic work operates in the way you described. A lot of times, the job titles are known and have a pay rate or pay scale associated with them.

Everyone knows, for example, that a software consultant level 3 has a pay rate of $XX.

The biggest negative to that type of system, that I've experienced, is that it's hard to incentivize great employees when they are already at their max pay range. For example, you can't give them more money for great work. Also, since everyone knows what everyone else is making, it tends to sometimes create resentment if you think someone else, with the same title or pay scale, is doing sub-standard work compared to you. This generally makes the person less likely to work as hard as before or contemplate other opportunities.

On the positive side though, you don't generally have as many arguments over wages and definitely no surprises when you find out someone's salary. Plus, everyone is well aware of the rungs of progression in their current position, so you tend to know when promotions are warranted and what you'll get as a result which takes a lot of the "I hope they recognize how hard I work" or "I hope I can get $XX more dollars after my next review" out of improving your career. You know exactly what that next rung provides you, and so does everyone else. Therefore, it removes a lot of stress of uncertainty but also possibly diminishes some of the more "go getter" type spirit since you know exactly what it takes to progress, so why go above and beyond?

Here's an example of what I'm talking about, in Ontario (Canada) all public sector salaries > 100K are published publicly. The < 100K public sector salaries are basically public too, just not published on a website :)

http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/publications/salarydisclosure/20...


Definitely true of government. GS-9, GS-11, etc, are are common parlance and everybody can publicly access the range of different government "bands" $(LOW)-$(HIGH). You don't know how much someone earns down to the dollar, but you can probably guess within 20% or so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Schedule_(US_civil_ser...


Interesting, this would be an issue of course "This generally makes the person less likely to work as hard as before or contemplate other opportunities." if it was endemic can you say more about that? Do you see people at the top of the $X range who are 'coasting' (some folks called it 'retired in grade') or a lower performer pulling down the whole group who don't want to work any harder than the guy making the same salary and 'getting away with it' ?


Yeah, in my experience with it, I think the biggest problem was if you were "maxed" out. Taking my example again, say you were Software Consultant Level 3, but there was no Level 4. At that point, the person either just accepts it (and maybe loses some drive) or they look for options for a new ladder such as changing title (manager, supervisor, etc.) or a whole new company altogether.

I think the same thing happens in all work places, but if salaries and titles are more open ended, you never really know what you can achieve so you might stick it out longer. In this type of workplace, you explicitly know, and you explicitly know when you have no where left to progress so you make your career choices knowing exactly where you stand.


Is it really harder to find a great marketer than it is to find a great engineer? Are Google's marketers really on par with their technical talent (from the outside it seems like a clear no).

It's interesting that the engineers wanted salary transparency, that's been my experience as well. I've always thought salary has more to do with perceived class of role in society opposed to value created (in most companies).


"Is it really harder to find a great marketer than it is to find a great engineer?" My experience is that no, they are equally hard to find, mostly because they don't need to "look" for jobs so "finding" consists of identifying them and then recruiting them out of their current job.

That said, I have met engineers who felt their work was 'worth more' than that of a 'marketeer.' Which is not true. But that applies in the general case and not in the specific case.

"I've always thought salary has more to do with perceived class of role in society opposed to value created (in most companies)."

Actually that hasn't been my experience. At least in the SF Bay Area salary budget was managed much as I would imagine a sports team manages their salary budget, which is to say the amount of money the company could spend on salaries was $X and the required business revenue was $Y and the required margin was %Q for everything to 'work'. If the ratio between $X and $Y wasn't there you figured out changes needed to get it into shape. Those challenges could be 'time to ship product' (an engineering problem), 'market visibility' (a marketing problem), 'sales' (a sales problem natch), or sometimes 'cost of goods' (a structural problem). You allocate your $X salary budget to 'fix' the issues.

Class and societal role really never enters the picture in those cases.


Thanks for the debate (I can't reply to your last post). My experience has indeed been that engineers add more value to tech companies than marketers do.

I suspect it's also a matter of company stage (I'm predominantly early stage). If I were given $1M to start a tech company, I wouldn't hire any pure marketers. I'd hire engineers who have proven that they can design products.

I think the problem I have with marketers is that it divorces product definition from product construction. In my experience the best products come from the two being as close as possible. Ideally in one person.


Early startup example Mint vs that Qxxx company. (I cannot remember the name, started with a 'q' and my search engine is failing me (sigh)) There was post mortem where the founder talks about Mint's better marketing being the difference in their success.

[*] Protip you can reply by clicking the <link> at the end of the comment before the reply timer has expired :-)


Wesabe? http://blog.precipice.org/why-wesabe-lost-to-mint


Ah yes, that would be it. Thanks! Sad I so totally mangled that name.


This is something I've encountered before.

The truth is though that most of the best engineers I know are some of the worst at marketing. They can have a great idea and great execution, but they can't effectively sell people on it, and they often simply think people will automatically buy it because it works and provides a useful service. Rationally, that makes sense.

Unfortunately, that's not really how things work most of the time. If you've started a business, you should know that sales and marketing takes work; even if you have the best product, it's not useful if nobody knows about it, or if it is associated with the wrong thing. That's why marketing is valuable.


I think it's interesting that you don't think engineers are worth more than marketers. In as much as product design is a marketing function, it's clear that plenty of engineers play a marketing role in addition to their role of "shipping".

There are also examples of sucessful tech companies with little to no marketing department (Craigslist to use an old example). I don't think he same can be said of the reverse.


I expect our different views come from our experiences. In particular it helps to have the experience of working with a really great marketing person and a really great engineer to understand how they each contribute to the overall success of a company.

"... it's clear that plenty of engineers play a marketing role in addition to their role of 'shipping'."

That is an interesting statement to make. Some really great marketers that I've met started with a CS or EE degree, and some really great engineers I've met started with Economics or physics degrees. It isn't the degree that defines them, it is where (and how) they add value to the goals of the company.

In the 'way back' times there was a video format war, it was called 'betamax' vs 'vhs'. Betamax was a better engineered standard, VHS was a better marketed standard. Then there was the "OSI" vs "TCP/IP" network wars, OSI was heavily marketed, but TCP/IP was better engineered [1]. Word vs WordPerfect, Lotus 123 vs Excel, Firewire vs USB, the road is littered with "products" and "standards" where either good marketing or good engineering determined their success or not in the market place.

Generally it seems that if you have two competitors with equivalent engineering teams, bet on the one with the better marketing. If you have two teams with equivalent marketing bet on the better engineering team. Either marketing or engineering can cover for some weakness in the other team, so yes, I value them equally.

That you don't suggests you haven't experienced really great marketing. There was a great post by Joe Kraus (Google Ventures) on this [2]. Something to think about.

[1] Some (many?) would argue that OSI was over-engineered, but either way it was heavily marketed.

[2] http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/24/you-havent-seen-greatness/


I'd also argue that Engineers are motivated by the technology, Marketeers (broad brush generalisation here) are motivated by the money.


> I could see someone like the 37Signals folks or some startup doing it from the start.

http://lincolnloop.com/blog/2012/may/31/lincoln-loop-everyon...


This is interesting, because it's mainly an American thing. My friends in Sweden, Norway and Germany never hesitate to speak about compensation. Here in the UK, it's sort of in between.

My theory is that American's believe the ability to assess your own salary and worth is largely part of the attributes of success and worth. Other countries believe more in the employer to define this.

Cool fact - In Norway, everyone's income is public domain: http://skattelister.aftenposten.no/skattelister/start.htm


I believe it is the same in Sweden and Finland as well.

In Norway only a few years worth of data is available on line (2007-2010 IIRC) -- after a bit of future shock an amendment was passed to prevent newspapers etc to archive the data and make it available in perpetuity on line. The original intent of the law (when the lists were published in local newspapers) wasn't for the data to be used for other purposes than to check what your peers, your boss, or the prime minister (and other politicians, effectively employed by you) were making.

This whole thing about not discussing compensation seems silly to me -- the only thing I can see come from it is a sort of prisoners dilemma wrt compensation. Your employer knows what everyone's making, but you only know your own salary. End result: Your employer has a stronger bargaining position than you. The whole thing falls apart in the face of unions, of course -- as the union will know what everyone is making anyway.

Either way I think the compensation given to leaders in a company should be know at least internally. Unless they get an unfair share, in which case something should be done either way.

But we are rather strange here in Norway; on a related note, a left-wing newspaper recently made a small splash with its flat salary structure -- everyone earns the same salary, only modified seniority:

http://translate.google.no/translate?sl=no&tl=en&js=...


That's funny because I came here to see if anyone was pointing out how common it was in Sweden for people to avoid the subject.

I'd say it varies from person to person though because me and another guy at my department managed to get others to open up just by being open about it ourselves and joking.

The sad thing that some people can't endure that without turning it into a pissing contest for some sort of imaginary alpha-male position.


Yes, I'd say parent has it wrong. In Denmark it is certainly taboo to discuss salary and I would be rather surprised if there were cultural differences on that point between Denmark and Sweden.

It's very much about context - there are situations/people with whom I wouldn't mind discussing it, but there are also situations where it would be clearly awkward.


These situations do occur where I work because our company is the result of multiple mergers over the past 4 years. So I work with people who feel like they've been there from the start but my entry salary was just as high, or higher, than theirs because I was hired in the new company form.


In Idaho, the US state I live in, all government salaries are public. Many people are shocked to be able to find out how much their neighbors make as teachers, police officers, and bureaucrats.


Idaho data: http://tools.idahostatesman.com/salaries/

Same in Washington: http://data.spokesman.com/salaries/state/2012/

Same in California: http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/

Same for Indiana: http://www.in.gov/itp/2406.htm

I suspect there are online databases for most states.


As a Brit living in Norway, I thought it was strange when I first learned of the tax lists being published for public consumption.

I have to admit to looking up people I know, celebrities, and others on the tax lists. More out of idle curiosity rather than anything else.


Italy is pretty "private" about this. I personally revealed my salary to some of my colleagues, but I see a lot of tension when the subject is talked about.

I think that a big part in the general attitude is due to the very high tax evasion rate here. Many people have something to hide about their revenues...


I'm from Germany and I can only say that everyone I know does not speak openly about compensation. I would never reveal any numbers to anyone else, even close friends.


In the US, mostly worries about social problems from disparities. Parents may not want their kids to know if their family is substantially wealthier or poorer than their friends' families. Heck, adults might not want to know it either. At some level of very-wealthy or very-poor it becomes obvious, but there's a broad set of salaries in the middle that are broadly lumped in as "middle class". Many people in that tier think of themselves as just middle class, and socioeconomically roughly on par with other middle-class people. To maintain that polite fiction, it can help not to know that you actually make 2x as much as your friend, or vice versa (in many middle-class communities, salaries of both $120k and $60k can be found).

Companies similarly worry about a hit to team cohesion that could result if team-members find out that some of them are paid much more than others.


"In the interest of fairness, Fog Creek's compensation policy is open, public, simple, and accountable. Many companies try to obfuscate the rules they use for determining compensation in hopes that they won't get caught paying some people too much and others too little. Some companies actually consider it a firing offense to reveal your salary!

We feel that in the long run, this can only hurt us through negative morale, high turnover, and destructive office politics."

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000038.html


I was just reading that article this morning. At a previous company I worked at salaries weren't revealed, but rumors of salaries went around. Things like "did you hear that x just got a $10k raise?"

It really wasn't good for morale. A lot of time was wasted worrying about salaries rather than building products.


That makes a lot of sense. Especially for younger kids. Though I wonder if, at a certain point, the loss of financial knowledge is worth the tradeoff.


Probably not worth the trade off, however, I think that financial knowledge can be passed on while always stressing humility & not advertising what you make or how much you have.

That being said, I also think that a lot of people are stuck in a bit of a vicious circle. These same people know they don't have a lot of financial knowledge, but they also don't know who to ask or how to ask primarily because no one around them would talk about money or finances.


I had this problem. My parents never talked to me about how much things cost. I had a rude awakening when I learned how much basic rent was, even more so when I learned what my rent was when I was a kid.

My kids will know how much their stuff costs, and they will earn their luxuries.


Your kids probably know better than you if you make more money than their friends' parents. With sleepovers and carpooling and all the time and activities they spend on both sides, there's really no way to hide this, especially at a $120k vs $60k disparity.


I've actually been surprised, more often than not, when I've found out how much people make (including some family friends I knew as a kid). It doesn't correlate all that well with how much I would've guessed they were making. One big reason is that people have wildly different savings rates, and I don't generally have a way to guess that: someone who "looks like" they're living at $70k/yr might actually be making a lot more and banking it for early retirement.

Another reason was that, even when only estimating spending, as a kid I tended to over-emphasize "conspicuous consumption" and gadgets: assumed the people with bigger TVs, new game consoles, better cars, etc. were wealthier. What I massively underestimated was the cost of "nice" vacations (esp. compared to relatively minor items like game consoles), so it was really the people who liked to travel a lot who spent more, but I never saw their spending happen when I was around.

edit: To add one more confound, I think I also put too much emphasis on "class" associations: I assumed parents working blue-collar jobs made less than white-collar, which was not always true, esp. when you took into account that some blue-collar families had 2x incomes.


In my experience, kids can see how much money is going out, or how much their parents care about saving money, buying luxury items, etc., but have no idea how much is coming in. A frugal $120k family can live identically to a profligate/indebted $60k family, and kids will be none the wiser until they gain a more subtle appreciation of earnings by profession.


Kids know if you spend more money than their friends' parents. Not if you make more.


We could talk all day about the various sociological explanations, but there is one very clear economic incentive for the salary taboo:

It enables companies to pay employees as a whole much, much less.

Doesn't need much more explanation than that.


The flip is also true. It allows companies to pay more, too.

If you publish your salaries, and along comes a super-talented programmer who asks for more than standard, but has unique talents that don't really fit on the standard "scale", then you can bring them on board, without creating resentment, etc.

I've worked at a company with standardized salaries, that lost out on hiring the best programmers, simply because their salary system (everybody's titles linked to salary grades everyone knew) was too inflexible.


Yeah, I'm not really buying that.

So you're bringing somebody exceptional on who will create some amount of value, and you're willing to compensate them appropriately for that. But wait, the rest of your team will be resentful!

There are two possibilities here: 1) You're paying everyone else less than they're worth to you, in which case they should be resentful; or, 2) You're paying everyone else what you think they're worth to you, but you're unable to convince them of that, in which case your problem isn't that your employees know each others' salaries, your problem is that your employees don't trust your judgment-- or perhaps that you have poor judgment.

Of course any compensation program which isn't flexible enough to appropriately reward employees for the value they create is flawed, but that has nothing to do with whether or not those rewards are public. In fact, I'd argue that a traditional system where compensation is determined by closed-door negotiations with asymmetric information is uniquely unlikely to do so appropriately.


Fog Creek's salaries are transparent to employees. Spolsky explains how they deal with the qualified new hire who expects a higher-than-market salary: (http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090401/how-hard-could-it-be-em...)

Personally, I've shared my salary with like-minded coworkers willing to help each other negotiate the best terms. Never shared with most people, however, because they've internalized irrational ideological barriers to doing things like this.


Yes, it does. If that is the reason, then what is the motivation for the employees? Explaining why employers want employees to keep it secret doesn't help, because it is the employees keeping it secret that we are talking about. You need to explain why the employees are keeping it secret, given that you've effectively described why employees would not want to keep it secret.

(I'm not saying there isn't such a motivation. Clearly something is at work here. I'm saying you're explaining the motivation of the wrong set of actors.)


It is usually against the company's policy, and sometimes you have to sign some kind of NDA about it. But it's also providing a kind of "comfort zone" to the employees - if you don't speak about it you assume everybody makes almost the same as you so you don't worry about it. Most people don't like changes, and finding that you are underpaid makes you worry about searching another job (where you could be underpaid again, as it's even harder to find the payscale from the outside).


Access to information would also mean that employees lobbying for an increase, would have to justify their performance against their peers. That's a lot more personal and objective than simply stating, "I think I'm doing great."

Essentially what I'm saying is that I'm not sure I agree that open salary information would result in all salaries moving upward.


How does that explain social behavior among people working at different companies?


In case I was unclear, the taboo is real, and has sociological explanations. I'm just saying there's an economic incentive behind it that favors businesses over employees.


Interesting, do you know the sociological explanations, or know what I can read to learn more? (As a sheer guess, I'd imagine it's part of professional conditioning, like that described in Jeff Schmidt's _Disciplined Minds_. Working-class people might not have this taboo. But I don't know.)


Agreed. I would be interested to see a historical analysis of this. I suspect it is a relatively new phenomenon, promoted by corporations themselves.


I dunno, just an American cultural thing, and varies by country. When I was in China, it was just a natural part of conversation: "Where are you from? What do you do? How many brothers/sisters do you have? How much do you make?"

I'm cringing at all the responses in here saying "this is why", as if it's some universal truth, when really it's just rationalizing the particular culture people have been steeped in. Why don't women walk around topless at the beach? Just culture. Some cultures see it as perfectly normal.

I wish people were more okay with it here in America. I make it a point to answer honestly if anyone broaches the subject, and to ask my close friends. Doing my part to change things. :)


> I'm cringing at all the responses in here saying "this is why", as if it's some universal truth, when really it's just rationalizing the particular culture people have been steeped in. Why don't women walk around topless at the beach? Just culture. Some cultures see it as perfectly normal.

Yes, it is cultural, but the answer isn't "it's just culture." There are reasons why it fits in one culture and not in another, and those reasons are interesting.

I realize people saying "it's like this because X" sounds like they are saying something universal. But they aren't. What they are saying is why, given other factors in their culture, things are that way.

Of course it is possible there is no reason for something in one culture. Random things happen. But even if they do, typically those things have effects and other things affect them, and all those things interact in ways that eventually settle down in some fixed point we call "the current culture". And even there, we can say a lot about why that random thing remains and does not vanish, or why it was not changed in a fundamental way, etc.


It's totally cultural. In the US, people who have enough money to get by don't talk about making or spending money. And they don't really want to either, because it allows people who make 60K a year and people who make 250K a year to both call themselves "middle class". Even close friends don't necessarily know each other's salaries.

But all is not lost. It's hard to find a startup job where you won't be working closely with people from cultures where discussing your salary, rent etc. is perfectly normal.

That's how I was able to discover that as a woman I was making 75% of what my male colleagues were making. That's a Pandora's box type discovery, and I did stew on it for a while.

But I liked the company, and I didn't want to leave, so I saved that information for the end-of-year talks. They ended up bringing my salary level with the others', and then I was asked politely not to do that again.

It was quite uncomfortable for my boss - despite what you may think, your boss probably doesn't remember your exact salary - and I think my salary was an oversight (I was one of the earlier employees) rather than an intentional slight or because I'm a woman.

But still - what are the chances that could have happened if I hadn't asked my colleagues?

Don't ask, don't get.


your boss probably doesn't remember your exact salary

I understand that you may be rationalizing it, but I find that hard to believe. I may not have remembered my direct reports' exact salaries, but I certainly knew who made more than who, by approximately what percentage, and why each person was paid what they were.


Why did you wait until the end of the year? I think that approach would backfire, since bringing you up to par probably 'consumed' your raise potential, so you would still be behind your colleagues who would be getting raises at the same time.


If your parents never talked about money, you're lucky - you probably grew up having enough of it not to worry. In poor families, money is a popular topic. I suspect that is one of the reasons why the nouveau riche brag (talk) about money frequently, while those who grew up rich are more discreet.

As for salaries - it's a cultural thing, in the US/UK it is common to mention salaries in job offers (so you could compare easily), in other countries it isn't (or wasn't, like here in Austria, where new laws require mentioning minimum wages ...).


I grew up in a family where money generally wasn't talked about. It wasn't because of a taboo necessarily, but because of a lack of importance in our lifestyle. We had enough, and we learned to get by on what we had. Now that I'm on my own I feel like that has become the baseline. Until evidence suggests I don't have enough and that I can't get by on what I have, it isn't really that important to me. I don't lack ambition, it's just that money has never been a goal and most likely never will.


Actually, I always knew that my family didn't make much money. But didn't know specifics until I was 18 or 19. Most years it was less than $35k per year.


Secrecy around compensation became widespread when anti-discrimination laws came about because it's easy fodder for complaints and lawsuits.

It's pretty trivial to figure out what household income is within 10% if you know a person at all. Your privacy isn't something that employers give a hoot about.


Related: has sharing financial information, either personal or about your company, ever caused you problems?

I am very grateful to everyone who showed me, through their transparency, that it is possible to make a living through self publishing books and software, so I've made a commitment to share my own numbers.

But I'm wondering what problems this transparency has caused as well.


I've shared numbers openly my whole life, never had an issue. I understand why company policies exist though in our own company, we never implemented any such rule. As with the rest of the world, I've never not told. If anything, it irked me a bit that others weren't open about it, especially if they were asking me those same questions.

I can't say my experience speaks for everyone else, but I can't imagine why it'd ever be an issue disclosing these things openly.


People attach a lot of emotion to it. If you make a lot, then it's bragging. If you make very little, it's embarrassing.

I think the more we talk about it, the more we have to gain. It only hurts bad employers.


Yep, there is a lot of self-worth attached to how much you make. Maybe that is something we should fix?

But if it wasn't for a few friends sharing how much they charge for consulting I would never have known it was possible to charge $250/hr (and much more). I would have been stuck charging multiples of the hourly rates I had heard about (Maybe I would have doubled the highest hourly rate I had heard at the time, which was $20 an hour).


I agree, it's a very emotional topic for people. I don't want people to treat me differently if they knew how much I did or didn't make. Things like anonymous polls and glassdoor give you some idea of the market as a whole, but there is a perception of "bragging" if you make more than the other person.

When my friends and I got jobs after going to college, we disclosed how much we were getting as far as offers go. Of course, we were going across the country, and the rates in Atlanta is not the same as New York or San Fran or Seattle. But we also had the same job during college, and knew how much each other made because of that (fixed pay scale for interns).

As a counter to this, my co-workers and I were buying a retirement gift for another co-worker. We had in mind what we were going to get, but on sudden impulse in the store we decided to upgrade the item. It was mentioned that what we had budgeted wouldn't cover the new item, and a co-worker said "it's OK, the boss [also part of this purchase] can handle it, he drives a Mercedes." It's comments like these that make it awkward to share salary information. Outward displays of wealth have no bearing on income, that's simply what they choose to spend their money (or debt) on.


> Why don't people talk specifics about money and salaries?

Writer can't think of an explanation for secrecy about money and salaries.

> When I went to negotiate my first salaried job I had no idea how much to aim for. Was $30,000 a reasonable salary? $60,000? I realized then that everyone's aversion to talking about money had left me in the dark as to how the business world worked.

Writer inexplicably still can't think of a reason for secrecy about money and salary.

The reason is obvious -- keeping you in the dark pays off. The employer benefits from your ignorance. Other people in your approximate position, but who have the job you seek, benefit from your ignorance. Everyone benefits from your ignorance except you.

All I can say is, wait until you actually have some money and/or a salary. Then you'll understand.

> Why is everyone so hesitant to share their salaries and other financial information?

Because information has intrinsic value, and particular kinds of information have high intrinsic value. How many times have you read about a settlement between businesses in which the terms were sealed by a court order? Can you think of a reason why?


Employers have an advantage by discouraging workers from knowing the average wage they can lower the common wage. Its been adaptive culture to not speak of wages, hence the importance of union standard wages as a need to help those less skilled in finance and valuation not get undercut.


Those with information about salaries have power. Those who do not have them do not. Do not tell yourself stories to make you think it's good you don't know everyone's salary. You're disadvantaged by not knowing it.

Just like you're disadvantaged when you fill out the "past salary" boxes on job apps.


It's awkward and not relevant information. You can get on payscale the same as everyone else. Especially in the US where income is really significant in terms of basic needs like healthcare and there is no cultural norm that all sorts of work are respectable and worthy.


It's extremely relevant.

Wouldn't it be interesting to know that you had received a higher offer than your peers because the company wanted to hire you that much?

Or that you were lowballed but your negotiation skills brought your salary in line with averages?

Or that you are being paid 30% less than the other members of your team doing the same job?

All extremely relevant things to learn.


There is an element, as somebody else has pointed out here, of Pandora's box to this.

If you are happy with your current compensation (and I appreciate for some that won't be the case), then do you really want to know? Would you want to go from ignorant bliss to questioning either your own negotiating abilities or the value the company has for you?

I suspect the answer to that depends on the type of person you are, and I don't pretend there's a right one either!


You make a good point.

Salary is tied up with ego and emotion, and self-worth, and a person's assessment of how valued they are by their organization. If a person can evaluate this in an objective and cold-blooded fashion, and see things from management's point of view without taking things personally, they can probably stand to know their salary relative to their peers without obsessing about it.

On the other hand, all of us know some people who would obsess and not be able to let it go, and make others' lives miserable about it ("I get $5000 less than that jerk? All he does is browse 4chan all day" "Ha, I knew I was considered more important to this department than Thompson!")


How is not relevant information?


On a side note, at least in Norway, every publicly traded company has to file a yearly earnings report, with income and expenses. Seeing how much is spent on salaries, divide by the number of employees, and at least you know if you're paid above or below average (just remember to allow for certain tax expenses the employer pays as "part" of the salary, I suspect that would be different in most countries).

Not feasible (or meaningful) if you work for IBM, maybe -- but for a smallish company that should work. If you can't do that math, you probably shouldn't be doing software engineering either...


I think the only thing non disclosure benefits is the company. I lived abroad for many years, and salary was freely discussed. I think doing so is great for an employee.


First, salary is often times the most direct way a company says how much you're worth. Thus salary in our monkey brains equals status, and real or percived differences leads to conflict.

Second, some companies like to get away with underpaying people. I'm not sure it's smart but they do. I know I worked with someone who did the same thing I did for 45% less.


In some cases, it's not just against company policy, but is included in the employment contract the employee signed when they were hired.

I guess the legality of such a clause will depend on where you live, but for people who have something like that in their employment contract, the risk may seem significant enough that it isn't worth violating it.


Technically speaking, a company can't legally fire you for disclosing your compensation. That's an anti-union-busting law.

What this means in practice is that they'll make up "performance" bullshit (unrealistic deadlines, retroactive shortfalls, responsibilities without the support necessary to achieve them) and fire that person over that instead. One of the reason for companies to have "low-performer" witch hunts (also known as stack-ranking) on a periodic basis is to flush out the "troublemakers" they dislike but can't legally fire.

So I don't know how much protection those laws actually provide, but it is technically true in the U.S. that no one can be fired for disclosing his own compensation.


If your an at will employee, which almost everyone is today then the company can fire you for no given reason. In practice disclosing salary isn't going to get your fired unless there are other reasons, but will get you labeled as a bad player.


At-will is far more complicated than most people think.

It gives them the right to terminate employment because of a business event (plant closing, large-scale layoff for strategic reasons) without being liable for payment (as opposed to, e.g., a contract where there would be "kill fees" for early termination). It also gives them the right to fire people individually for criminal behavior, violations of well-understood professional ethics, and falling short of an objective, published performance standard. If the company policy requires 150 widgets per hour and one person's coming in at 130, the company can fire that person. That said, if he can establish that someone else (e.g. the boss's son) had the same title and job, produced 120, and wasn't fired, he has a stronger case.

White-collar firings, which are always dressed up to look like "performance"-related firings, are a major gray area. The reason for the kangaroo court of "performance improvement plans" is to make the case that, at the least, the employee was warned. PIPs don't show that the termination was fair, but establish that the employee "should have seen it coming", and that often decides these he-said/she-said sorts of things in the employer's favor.

Termination endgames can be played to a win. For one thing, a lot of the things that people get fired for can be actionable. Let's say you have a bad boss and try to get away from him using a transfer. In most companies, bosses fire people who try to get away from them. However, if company policy is to allow transfers and you can establish that someone of your rank and seniority was allowed transfer anywhere in the company, but your boss blocked it, you have a harassment claim. You used a legitimate HR measure (transfer) in a legitimate way. You can never prove it was the reason for the termination, but if you document everything you do-- every single thing that can make you look good-- it is to your advantage. (If he lets you transfer and get out of his way, that's better. Getting a better job is always better than playing the termination endgame.)

You're almost always better off getting another job, but if you have some reason to want to stay at the company, there's a lot you can do to make yourself hard to fire. Use all internal recourse you have, including HR. (Be respectful and focus on defending yourself and your reputation, not attacking your boss. HR is not your friend, but you can still use them.) That will make your boss angry, and HR will almost always side with management, but if you document everything you can make it look like the firing is retaliatory. Health problems are often protected, and everyone over 25 has at least one health problem. Disclose it, no matter how minor. (If you're presented with a PIP, sign absolutely nothing, leave the room, and disclose a health problem by email immediately.) If you get put on a PIP, dress up interviews as "doctor visits" and force your boss to change the schedule of the PIP (if he doesn't, then start using words like "emotional distress" and CC someone in HR.) This will exhaust him and draw out the process long enough for you to get a better job. The goal, I should mention, is usually not to sue the company. It's to scare them into either slowing down so you can get out, writing a severance, or agreeing to a good reference so you can move on in your career.

TL;DR: At-will employment is much more complicated than employers want people to believe. The problem is that the termination game is something people (if they're lucky) rarely or never have to play, and people who've been through it don't talk about it and share knowledge.


It is illegal to forbid discussion of salary. Federal law.


Unfortunately, compensation is taken to be like a performance review, but objective, so you often need to change your story later for career reasons. In finance, some firms won't hire analysts who didn't make top bonus, which means you need to figure out what that level is-- and it varies widely. (Top bonus in a shitty year is often less than the lowest-tier in a good year, at least for entry-level roles.) If you let too many people know what you make, it gets harder to reshape your story if you need to do it.

(By the way, this should be obvious, but you should avoid naming numbers unless you absolutely have to. If a future employer asks what bonus you got, just say, regardless of what's true, "I received the highest bonus available for my role and seniority and I'm contractually disallowed to give specific numbers.")

This is also an area where it's hard to tell whether you'll need an upward or downward revision until you're in that situation. Upgrading makes it look like you were a strong performer whereas downgrading gives you a socially acceptable excuse for leaving a job or a better "trend". Of course, the smartest thing to do is not to give these numbers out ever.

I actually think LinkedIn is a bad idea for a lot of people, for the same reason, but pertaining to job titles and dates. Accidental consistency risk is enough of a danger (people who forget their exact job titles 12 years ago) to be cautious, and then consider the fact that, although people don't anticipate ever needing "creative career repair", shit happens and sometimes people do.

Finally, my attitude is just that it's none of anyone's business what I, personally, make. I'll gladly share my estimates of what various levels of engineer can earn on the market as it currently is, and my general sense of what engineers are worth, but strategically important information ought to be safeguarded, especially in this world.


Because most people are insecure. (By talking salary, I helped a co-worker raise his salary at the company by 40%, matching a new hire. It's unbelievable)


This is a US thing. It's not true in many other countries.




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