
Transparency at the Office: Psst...This Is What Your Co-Worker Is Paid - coffeegeek
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323644904578272034121941000.html
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vacri
I once did a short stint at a phone survey company that specialised in health
and social welfare surveys. I wasn't on this particular survey crew, but I
remember a colleague telling me that it was strange - a stranger rings up and
with your consent conducts a 20-minute anonymous survery on the subject of
abuse, sexual or otherwise, that the respondant suffered as a child.

It was a delicate survey and required a fair bit of rapport building, and
_lots_ of 'I need to remind you that the next question is voluntary'... but we
were still getting plenty of respondants, and the weird thing was that despite
being a (relatively) anonymous stranger with which you have just shared some
sensitive, deep secrets about childhood abuse, the question that most balked
at was the 'income level' question in the demographic rundown at the end.

~~~
ryanmolden
I think our culture (well, American, capitalist society is all I can really
comment on) has a very strong implied link between income and worth/value. We
have magazines that routinely have lists of the highest paid / richest people.
People give incredible leeway to highly paid execs, as if due to the number of
zeros on their paycheck they clearly have to be right/smart. There are sayings
like "that decision was made above my paygrade", that seem to show there is a
pretty tight linkage, mentally, between income and value as a human.

I don't agree with this mindset at all, mainly because I don't believe most
organizations are truly meritocratic in any objective sense. It's a good PR
story, but people, evolutionarily, tend to "look out for their own", for
whatever traits puts someone in that in-group. I have seen many examples of
people espousing meritocracy but clearly considering those with the most
"merit" as being one in the same with "those they already seem to like",
coincidentally enough. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, with balance. I
think a 100% meritocratic org would be lacking in basic humanity and kind of a
terrible place to work. All humans make mistakes, have struggles, have
setbacks, etc...

Even with that being said, and me not believing in the income -> value/worth
link in general, I would not be comfortable talking about my salary with most
friends/family. I live a comfortable life with little stress about money, but
bragging about that (which even trying to downplay it sounds like a
humblebrag) seems wrong somehow.

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mc32
>I would not be comfortable talking about my salary with most friends/family.

In my family, it was always taboo to talk about money --my father hardly ever
discussed money with friends (that I recall). So it was instilled in me that
"money-talk" was somewhat "vulgar". To this day, I can only guess my siblings'
fiscal positions.

On the other hand, when I lived in the East (Asia), people there openly talked
about money/salary, etc. It was one of the acceptable topics at personal
intrductions, in addition to where are you from, what do you do and have you
eaten.

So, I think it's totally cultural.

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Jack000
That's interesting. I've never felt any reservation in talking about my
income, except to coworkers. I just feel like it invites resentment if mine
happened to be higher, even if on a sub-conscious level.

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dawidw
There's such saying: "Gentlemen don't talk about money..."

~~~
sp332
That saying is so old, it ends "... and women don't touch it."

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dawidw
Probably from that times of James Bond:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRaDQZGFdBs>

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aston
Near the bottom of this article is an interesting post mortem of RethinkDB's
transparent salary policy. When it was posted years ago [1] folks here took
pretty kindly to it, though some were skeptical [2].

I'm kinda disappointed (who doesn't like to know?) but also not very surprised
that it didn't work out. Negotiation doesn't work super well if the other
players have complete information about your strategy.

[1]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20100722162634/http://rethinkdb.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20100722162634/http://rethinkdb.com/jobs/)

[2a] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1210336>

[2b] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1190533>

~~~
coffeemug
Hey, I'm slava @ rethink. If you have questions about how things went, I'm
happy to answer.

~~~
temphn
What if you had front loaded the open salary information in the hiring
process? Something like, "We have a no-haggle policy on engineering roles. In
order to streamline negotiations, please only apply for this job if you are
comfortable with X starting salary and Y options. We are very fair and
promotions are rapid (see our comp ladders here), but want people to join who
share our sense of efficiency."

Law firms manage to pull this off with a standard $160k base, and probably
something similar works in other spaces?

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grecy
I've always felt uncomfortable about how employees are not supposed to talk to
each other about their salaries.

To me, it reeks of manipulation feels just like saying to a child "Here's some
candy, but you have to promise not to tell anyone I gave it to you, OK"

ugh.

~~~
dsymonds
There's nothing stopping you from talking to other employees about salaries.
It's a myth that is propagated by companies in order to keep you in the dark
about what they are paying other people, to deprive you of information, and to
keep you at a disadvantage in any negotiation.

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eshvk
Also, it is very much a western thing. I have a lot of Indian friends and they
happily trade salary information amongst each other. This reduces any
informational asymmetry that exists in such situations.

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zuppy
I don't know if it's only a western thing. I'm in Eastern Europe and we still
consider this subject a taboo (at least in IT).

edit: To be more clear, you can talk about it with friends but not with your
colleagues.

~~~
dawidw
It's not a taboo thing. In my contracts I've had always clause that all the
information are confidential, including salary amount. And I can be sued by
company if I break the agreement.

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Paul_S
How can such a thing be legally binding. Did you tell your wife? Can they sue
for that? What if you're not married to your partner? Your bank and every
person who has seen your bank statement (a lot of people) knows what you're
earning. Can they sue for that?

~~~
dawidw
It's allowed to say that to your spouse. I think the regulation is just to
prevent from publishing on web page or sending email with your real documents.
If there is leak from the bank, the bank is responsible. In practice you talk
about your salaries but in unofficial way, with a beer in a pub, but you never
show the official contract.

The other interesting thing is clause about installing not approved
application on your laptop. Everybody does it - your favourite editor,
messenger, file manager etc. But when they want to fire you, they say that
you've broken the rule and you're going to be sued unless you agree to leave
company immediately without any punishment.

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cmadan
When I was working in New York City, I always found employee secrecy over the
salaries pretty interesting. It seemed like a taboo to tell someone your
salary or ask them what they're paid.

I understand why employers would want to disincentive salary disclosures but
employees? Your peers salary is clear indication of your valuation to the
company and there should be every incentive to share. Back home in India,
pretty much everyone knows each others salaries for all sizes of companies.

~~~
lemming
What I also found weird in NYC is that people can be really cagey about their
rent, because our have a rent ceiling that most landlords won't let you go
past, and that's a multiple of your salary. So if someone's paying X amount of
rent, you know that their salary is at least Y. It's really strange.

~~~
colmvp
Really? I didn't notice this at all while living there. And it's also hard to
peg someones rent with respect to their salary because some people chose to
live beyond their means while others would potentially live 'cheaply' in order
to save enough to buy a place.

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lemming
In my last job I was in a position where I got to see all the salary wrangling
that goes on behind the scenes, and it was pretty awful. You get people with
power dishing out preferential treatment to their mates, you get situations
that are incredibly unfair but for whatever reason can't be easily resolved,
and you get a lot of gossiping and speculation that is wildly unproductive for
a company. I've never worked anywhere with salary transparency but I'd love to
try it - I think with the right people it could work well but I'm sure there's
plenty of scope for petty jealousies of other kinds. But I did come away with
the fact that the secrecy in many cases is often to hide things that your
average worker is going to be offended by, i.e. how much executives are paid.

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thisone
I've worked for a large company where if you know someone's band (and you
generally know that just because you do, not by asking about) and how long
someone has been there, you know within about a grand, how much they get paid.

I now work for a place where I'm told to never talk about my salary, yet 5
members of the (very small) company were invited into my salary review.

I often think that the more they stress to not talk about it, the more likely
it is I'm underpaid compared to my coworkers.

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GIFtheory
This is not too uncommon for government employees, including (e.g.)
professors, coaches, doctors at state schools. For example, I had no idea top
surgeons raked in that kind of dough. Damn. <http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/>

~~~
newman314
If you want to be pissed, look up troopers. Last I looked, there were a whole
bunch making over $200k.

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diminish
there are 2 types of people in the office, happy people and those who know the
salaries of others.

~~~
Nate75Sanders
And the first is exactly what managers want -- engineers who have no idea,
whatsoever, what they're worth.

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onemorepassword
Quite the contrary. If an engineer asks for considerably less than they're
worth, that goes into the "may be out of touch with his profession" column.

With the exception of starters and a few semi-autistic outliers, engineers
that have no idea what they're worth generally aren't the best of engineers.
Not _asking_ for it however is a different matter.

~~~
jackowayed
That's just not true. Many, many engineers severely undervalue themselves for
a variety of reasons. For some, underconfidence. Even for those that are
confident in themselves, for many there's a fairness issue. ("Do I really need
more than 100K?") Also, if they're in one underpaid job, the anchoring effect
is pretty strong. I know someone who was in DC for <70k, applied to work
remotely for a Valley company, and when they said yes, he asked for a big
raise to 90k. They valued retention enough that they decided to actually pay
him what he was worth and what comparable teammates got, tens of thousands a
year more.

People are socialized to try to make others happy, not inconvenience someone
by asking for more than they feel is necessary and fair, etc. This does not
speak to their competence, though it might also mean that they're less
effective at making you realize how competent they are once you hire them
(because they're also the type of people who don't flash all of their
accomplishments in front of you).

Women also tend to fall into this even moreso because of gender socialization.

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greghinch
I can see how this is interesting, but it seems like it would be too easy for
no one to ever be happy. Employees tend to either over or under value
themselves pretty strongly, and while trying to level the playing field seems
like a good idea, it's just inviting confrontation if you have a mix of both
(like a lot of workplaces). Combine that with the proclivity for workplace
lawsuits at even a hint of discrimination (in the US) and I don't see how this
could ever gain wide adoption.

I also think the idea of scheduled raises breeds a sense of complacency.

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nvr219
"...employees are each assigned to one of nine fixed salaries..."

Reminds me of a less-complicated general schedule salary table:
<http://archive.opm.gov/oca/12tables/html/gs.asp>

