
In Silicon Valley, many want sharing salary info to be less taboo - negrit
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2015/07/21/breaking-the-taboo-of-sharing-salary-info-in-silicon-valley/
======
lemevi
As an engineer in the bay area, I don't really want to share my salary
information. It's very personal. I don't want people to know that I'm making
far less or far more, I just don't even want to think about it. I already have
enough things that cause me social anxiety, I don't really need another. If
I'm happy with my salary, why can't that be good enough? I'm fine with people
being allowed to talk about how much they make, but if I don't want to share
my information, that should be OK too.

I would probably consider not working for a company if they said they made
salaries public. Some people value their privacy to a greater extent I guess.

~~~
diogenescynic
So don't disclose it then. No one is trying to make salary disclosure
mandatory--just more socially acceptable.

~~~
acavailhez
He may have been referencing the choice of Buffer to disclose the salaries of
all employees: [https://open.bufferapp.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-
buff...](https://open.bufferapp.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-buffer-
including-our-transparent-formula-and-all-individual-salaries/)

In that situation, he does not get to choose wether or not his salary is
disclosed

------
icehawk219
The book Predictably Irrational[0] has a good section on how making the
salaries of CEO's of publicly traded companies public information is one of
the things that has helped lead to their salaries spiking so incredibly in
recent years. It's been some time since I read the book but if I remember
correctly the argument is that making them public basically removes any social
embarrassment or taboo around having extravagant salaries. If sharing salary
info becomes more commonplace in other areas I wonder if you'd see the same
thing or the exact opposite.

[0]
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/0061353248](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0061353248)

~~~
skolor
I haven't read that book, but isn't increased negotiating power for CEOs a
more likely explanation than social embarrassment? If I've been chosen as the
lead candidate for a CEO, it's a lot easier to justify a large salary if I can
point at our competitors and say that I should be paid competitively to their
CEOs.

~~~
danieltillett
It is more of a creeping process. Since no boards think their CEO is below
average (if they did they would fire him/her). If their CEO is above average
then the compensation they feel their CEO is due should also be above average.
If everyone starts doing this then the average CEO salary will keep rising and
rising. We end up in a world where all the CEO’s are above average and their
salaries are in the stratosphere.

~~~
dragonwriter
The fact that board members are also themselves either executives in the same
or other firms, or likely to be employed as such in the future, means that
board members also have a self-interest in the trend of rising executive
salaries.

~~~
danieltillett
Well there is this effect as well, but the "above average CEO, above average
pay” is much easier to defend at the annual stockholders meeting.

------
talk_about_pay
I've been open about my salary for years with friends and family and the taboo
is starting to change it seems. When I first started talking about salary in
the early-2000's I met a lot of resistance, but now I've notice friends
dropping how much they make in casual conversation.

For me at least, there is no embarrassment and instead is used to make
decisions about the future. If someone makes more, I ask myself why and how
can I get there? If someone makes significantly less, and they care to know, I
tell them how I got to where I am in hopes of helping them.

Unfortunately, employers trying to squash this has not changed. I remember 15
years ago when I got sat down the first time, by a fortune 100 company, and
told we do not talk about salary. I also remember when the same conversation
happened in a start up just a few months ago. The motivation still hasn't
changed -- keep the worker 'happy' and underpaid whenever possible through
information disparity, intimidation and "right to work" laws.

------
morgante
I really hope this "open salary" trend doesn't continue. It has the effect of
systematically decreasing the standard deviation in developer salaries. Poor
negotiators (and some poor performers), of course, love having access to this
salary information as pointing to a public average is any easy way to ask for
more money without having to put much effort into actually negotiating. Great
negotiators, on the other hand, are getting salaries far above the median for
their positions and the additional information wouldn't help them at all. I
strongly suspect that if salaries were public companies would be far less
willing to give in to great negotiators as a single isolated case could easily
cause cascading demands from other employees.

(Note that salary ranges/averages are irrelevant if you're a great negotiator
except as a story-telling tool. All you should be playing with is your BATNA
and the company's BATNA.)

If you don't think open salaries have a negative effect on top engineer
salaries, look at how little Buffer is paying.[0]

In the status quo, open salaries are a tax on poor negotiators which companies
and good negotiators split. As a pretty good negotiator, I hope we don't go
public.

[0] [https://open.bufferapp.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-
buff...](https://open.bufferapp.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-buffer-
including-our-transparent-formula-and-all-individual-salaries/)

~~~
Chinjut
What is the social value of having negotiation skills be a large determinant
of one's salary? Why not diminish this cause of variance (perhaps relatively
disadvantaging those who currently have anomalously good negotiation skills,
but perhaps benefiting those who have not bothered specifically developing
negotiation skills (or who have erroneously convinced themselves that they
have))?

~~~
morgante
> What is the social value of having negotiation skills be a large determinant
> of one's salary?

Nothing in my comment said there was actually social value in having
negotiation skills.

I'm talking about my personal experience and the drawbacks I see.

Do you think Buffer pays its employees fairly?

~~~
Lazare
Your argument is circular.

You're saying that we shouldn't talk about pay, because when we talk about pay
we get paid like Buffer devs do, which you think is obviously low compared to
other salaries, which we can't actually prove because _we don 't talk about
pay_.

It's a bit like telling someone that you're giving them $100 in a box, but not
to open the box, because if you open it, it'll turn into $20. "You can only
have a high salary if you have no way to verify that it's high." Even if true,
where does that leave us?

~~~
morgante
> which we can't actually prove because we don't talk about pay.

Just because salaries aren't public doesn't mean you can't get any salary
information. Just go on a few interviews, set up an auction, and see what you
can get.

> It's a bit like telling someone that you're giving them $100 in a box, but
> not to open the box, because if you open it, it'll turn into $20.

It's a cute analogy, but the more complete version would include a box market,
where other people with insight into the box market are interested in buying
the box I've been given. In such a scenario, I could shop around my box to see
what it's actually worth without having to open it up.

~~~
Lazare
I dunno, let's try the more complete version:

"There's $100 in this box. You can't open it, or look inside it, but trust me,
it's there. Now you need to go over to my mate George, and give him the box,
and he'll give you $100 for it. But only if you haven't opened it!"

Now it just sounds like you're being recruited as a drug mule. :)

Okay, granted, in your scenario their are multiple box dealers who are willing
to bid on your unopened-but-totally-contains-$100 box. If you work at it, it's
quite possible that you might even get some semblance of a fair offer. But
should you need to work at it? And this still feels like a system which lends
itself to collusion, uncertainty, and unfairness. Nor is that even
hypothetical; we __KNOW __that our industry suffered from a serious wage-
fixing cartel which was only recently busted open.

I feel like any argument against transparency has a high bar to clear.

------
seanconaty
For most companies, the amount of money represented by the difference in
salary of 2 employees is negligible. (Definitely not negligible for the
employees!) It's not even a blip on the cash flow statement. This is
especially true of venture-backed startups whose operating model is going-for-
broke.

What this means is that a person has a price that he or she can command and
it's based less on their work experience/abilities and more on their
experience of getting paid: they get used to a certain standard of living. If
a company wants to hire a person, it will need to meet or beat that standard.

So yeah, the longer a person has been in the workforce, the more they are
probably getting paid. But even this can vary from person to person, depending
on how the person has been managing his or her salary and what companies he or
she has worked at.

"Experience" is a proxy for technical ability and expected standard of living.

Usually a company will decide if it wants to hire a person, first. If yes,
they start to negotiate pay based on a bunch of factors. Really, it's two
parties trying to find each others' comfort zone; there isn't a formula.
Sometimes there is no middle ground and no hire happens. Sometimes, to save
time, recruiters will probe you to find your comfort zone before they even
interview. Most of the time, if a company decides it wants to hire you, it
will do what it can to make that happen. It's the desire to win.

If the candidate is a no-hire, there is no negotiation, he can't say "what if
I work for less!"

Other factors that bear on salary:

* What are the current market conditions? When you were hired? * What is the rate of job churn? * Salary versus equity * Location * Employee demand: well known companies and probably pay less because more people want to work there. * What does your boss make? Can't make more than her * Name recognition on your resume. Did you go to Stanford? Did you work at Google? * Signing bonus?

When I was younger this used to upset me. I guess I got over it as started to
get paid more. But I realize that getting paid a personal and psychological
endeavor, not a simple mathematical formula.

I caveat all this by saying I'm an engineer in SF in 2015: shit's crazy.

------
Mandatum
It's always seemed strange how salary/pay is a "private" thing in American
culture. In NZ, AU and UK it's something that could be brought up at a party
(if talking about work), and no one would think it was rude.

Is this because people feel judged about how much they make in the US? (At
least, more so than other countries?)

------
clamprecht
I just had a realization (seems obvious in hindsight), here's my hypothesis:

The desire to share salary is inversely proportional to the gap between the
top and bottom.

On one extreme, if every engineer were paid exactly the same, there's clearly
no reason to hide salary, since everyone knows it. At the other extreme, where
one engineer is paid $500k/year and another is paid $100k/year where both were
hired on the same date and do the same work, the higher paid one doesn't have
much to gain from publishing salaries. Nor does the company, since they're
getting the same value from both engineers, but saving $400k on the cheaper
engineer.

Reality is somewhere in between these two extremes.

~~~
balls187
> one engineer is paid $500k/year and another is paid $100k/year where both
> were hired on the same date and do the same work, the higher paid one
> doesn't have much to gain from publishing salaries. Nor does the company,
> since they're getting the same value from both engineers, but saving $400k
> on the cheaper engineer.

This makes no sense. The company could fire the enigneer making $500k and hire
2more at $100k, and still save $300k.

I get that you're fitting numbers to the example, but when everything else is
held equally, pay discrepancy is typically 5-10%, based on ones ability to
negotiate.

~~~
plonh
Your huge mistake is in assuming employers have access to a deep pool of
available talent they believe is qualified. Rightly or wrong, employers are
very picky about who they find attractive , and they perceive a shortage.
Hence they pay extra to good negotiatiors.

~~~
balls187
> Hence they pay extra to good negotiatiors.

Yeah, of course companies pay more.

Not 5x to someone who outputs the quality of work and has the same skillset.

------
chollida1
The company I work for makes all salaries and bonuses visible to anyone in the
firm.

Salaries are simple, there are only 3 bands of salaries.

Bonuses are based on the firm's and employee's performance as well as a
multiplier based on how much salary they took. Smaller salary, larger bonus
multiplier and visa versa.

The system works pretty well and I haven't noticed any negative consequences
from having this information internally visible.

Maybe if we get above 100 people at some point this will break down?

Serious question to others... What's the downside of having your fellow team
member's know your salary?

------
pdimitar
Who cares about a "movement"? This reminds me of the hashtags #Together4Her
when somebody shares a tweet about a young woman with cancer, or a woman
attacked by thugs, etc. What _exactly_ will 50k tweets with this hashtag do to
make this woman feel better?

Similarly, what would a "movement" achieve? Would 50k people make a public
announcement of their salaries, risking immediate lay off due to breaking
their promise for silence on the matter when they have signed their labor
contract?

No? Then what is this post even about? Click-bait for more page hits?

Actions > words. If you can't put your wallet where your mouth is, keep the
hell quiet, there's enough noise as it is.

I admire the guy from SumAll, though. Wish more people would do the same as
him -- or join him.

~~~
sakagami0
The "movement" is not the same as one for cancer or attacks, etc. Its a
movement about information where publicity (transparency) is the goal. It
achieves what people want, salary information to be transparent. From there,
people can make their own judgements on how to act given that information. But
without it, they have nothing.

Honestly, I don't see how this is clickbaity at all.

------
the_economist
I haven't put that much thought into people knowing my salary, since it's
private. I went to great lengths to hide the value of the transaction of my
home though. At the time, I was a bit embarrassed about how much I spent and I
didn't want it being public.

~~~
pd1
How did you do that? I though it was (more or less) public information.

~~~
plonh
In most of USA, you can't hide the sale, but you can attach a fictitious name
to it, so people who don't know your address can't just Google your house by
name.

------
reach_kapil
Sharing salary information would give rise to more social inequality, taboo
and bias about type of role, company and growth prospects. It allows HR to
negotiate with you on their terms rather than based on competence. If they
want to make salary sharing info public for all employees, they should also
make it voluntary and pay employees each month for this release of private
info.

------
GauntletWizard
I'm surprised this article didn't mention sites like Glassdoor, which uses
yelp-like reviews and metrics on salary as the lead for it's job search site.
I'm not horribly impressed with Glassdoor - I feel it has some flaws in how it
collects and presents information - but it's a conversation opener, and should
be lauded.

------
BillinghamJ
Is there a non-company-specific place to post salary info? Maybe many of us on
HN could provide data on it. Particularly interested to see salaries outside
the valley, in the UK as well.

~~~
ffumarola
Glassdoor

------
montz1
I created salarytalk.org/h1bdata . Hope that helps some people gain insight as
to where they lie on the salary distribution.

------
andyl
Sharing salaries has become a theme here on HN. I'm curious: Why Now? Who is
pushing these stories, and who benefits from Open Salaries?

~~~
tolmasky
I don't know about recently, but this has _always_ been an obvious way to keep
salaries low. If you restrict the information people have, then of course you
can screw some of them over. Its in corporation's best interest to create
taboos around salary so you feel more ashamed of being ripped off than angry
for being ripped off.

This has already played itself out with price tags. Back when buying things
was a personal negotiation process, it was possible to rip some people off
while you had to work to get a good deal. This of course continues today with
cars. However, its incredibly hard to charge people different prices at a
grocery store when all prices are public. So too it would be very difficult to
underpay someone if salaries were public.

~~~
morgante
The flip side of that is that it's possible for some employees to get very
high salaries which companies wouldn't be willing to offer if all salaries are
public.

~~~
tolmasky
When I worked for a big company, there were people I was absolutely OK with
making a big salary. Some people were just absolute superstars and everyone
knew they were awesome for the team. Of course, I have no idea what they made.
What would actually be harder however is to give underserving people larger
salaries.

This already happens in a fuzzy way now right: most everyone understands that
their boss makes more money. We don't know exactly how much of course, but its
"understood". If we transitioned to a place where people who are doing amazing
work also make more money, I think there'd be no problem at all.

~~~
morgante
The problem is that performance is _much_ fuzzier than salary data. If you're
not working directly with someone and if you don't have a great handle on what
business metrics are, it can be very hard to understand why they're producing
so much more value than you.

This effect can be even more distorted when people start irrationally
factoring in years of experience. If salaries were public, you'd definitely
start to see people who have put in their 10 years gripe about newcomers
earning way more than them (often justifiably).

It also penalizes good negotiators, which might be a socially positive thing
but I certainly wouldn't like it.

~~~
dragonwriter
> It also penalizes good negotiators, which might be a socially positive thing
> but I certainly wouldn't like it.

No, it doesn't penalize good negotiators. It fails to reward them when being a
"good negotiator" isn't relevant to the business metrics for the position they
work in, but the absence of an unearned reward isn't punishment.

And this isn't merely socially positive, but its a positive for the business,
because it increases the incentive for good negotiators to seek positions
where that is relevant to job duties, since it avoids rewarding that skill
where it is not relevant. As such, it increases the alignment between the
incentives provided by compensation with the business interests of the
employing firm.

------
dudul
Using h1b salaries to establish a baseline sounds like the worst possible
idea.

"Let's see how much immigrants with a gun on their head make so I can ask the
same."

~~~
stickydink
Not all H-1B's are treated like that, but regardless, the public data is
inaccurate.

It tells us the amount on the original application, not the amount you're
necessarily getting paid after working there for a while.

I've had my H-1B for several years, and the amount I'm being paid now (I have
never transferred to another company) is more than double the amount listed on
the internet. Same story for the other 2 people in my company (~50-person
startup) currently on a H-1B.

~~~
dudul
Great, let's take 3 cases from the same company and use that to extrapolate
how H1Bs are treated in the US.

I was an H1B too, and I was very well paid, it doesn't change the fact that
the majority of H1Bs are used to underpay foreigners who won't complain by
fear of being let go and sent back home in 24 hours.

~~~
negrit
Sources?

