
Tell Your Co-Workers How Much Money You Make - js2
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/smarter-living/pay-secrecy-national-labor-rights-act.html
======
imh
I strongly agreed with this advice when I made less. Now I agree in principle,
but in practice try to only discuss it with people on about my same tier. As
per usual, disparities in money make for awkward relationships, with the
weirdness increasing as the disparity increases.

It's so damned hard to identify the reasons for these disparities and what
"fair" means, which is the best way to alleviate bad feelings. A couple years
experience at the right companies, a particular project you've done, a team
you've been on, the degree you have, the right people vouching for you, a
lucky day of interviewing, etc. Tiny variations in those can take you from no
offer to a crazy high offer. There's so much noise in the system that leads to
salaries. In this imperfect information game of hiring, I can't fault
companies for paying heed to those factors and paying more/less based on them,
but after that information is revealed and you've been working together for a
while, things usually don't equalize. The initial lucky/unlucky salaries
persist.

The whole thing is weird. To too high a degree, the open salary discussion is
now, "Yeah, I got pretty lucky." Doubly so with the stock comp we get in tech.

~~~
criveros
What if you are a really good negotiator and you got a salary higher than
peers that are technically better than you?

------
Gustomaximus
In Norway the Government publish how much tax you paid for the year. This
makes it fairly simple to know what a PAYE employee is earning.

Having come into this enviroment mid career from another country I considered
whether or not I should look up colleagues. Naturally I was interested.

I decided not to. The main rationale, I was reasonably ok with the salary and
very much enjoyed the job. If I discovered colleagues doing similar work and
getting paid more I would find this demoralising and didn't want to bring that
into a job I enjoyed.

I do understand this knowledge could be a negotiation tactic, but 1) happiness
is more important than money to me and 2) my personal experience is most
companies are reluctant to significantly change salary without promotion, and
even at promotion they tend to bump you up under market rate. So maybe I could
have gotten more money, but at the risk of reducing the enjoyability of a job
I really liked. So if you are going to announce your salary, I would suggest
you do it in an enviroment where you know the other people want to hear it.

For me I've found the best way to make more money is change companies.

And side point: A bit disappointed the article had this like '“Let’s face it,
it’s 2018 and there’s still serious disparities in pay based on race and
gender,”"

Regarding gender I believe this has been fairly comprehensive debunked with
multi-varied analysis. Once accounting for careers choice, age, occupation and
personality-type etc and the commonly quoted 18% gap reduces to 2% on gender,
and currently under 30's men are paid less than women.

~~~
js8
Another comment here states: "all this idea will create is animosity, jealousy
and politics at work"

Based on your experience, do you think this characterizes the workplace in
Norway?

(I am honestly interested in hearing the answer, although I don't think so.
There are so many things you can be jealous at which are completely in the
open at work - company perks, travel, type of work, team.. And nobody ever
claims the same problems here. I think it's pretty much a non-issue, basically
jealous people will be jealous and catch straws if they don't have the
information and normal people will be normal regardless whether they have the
information or not.)

~~~
smueller1234
Not GP. Having worked in a number of countries and having managed people from
many tens of countries, I do think there is a pretty strong cultural bias
around competitiveness/ambition and the degree to which it is considered good
form to show it. (Of course, any individual can behave and feel vastly
differently from any cultural stereotypes!)

So for example, just because this sort of thing works reasonably well for a
Scandinavian country wouldn't mean it would necessarily work well in, say,
California.

~~~
js8
That's an interesting point about culture. But then it raises a question -
many people here judge others, how they will be resentful and so on if they
talk openly about salaries, and they do it based on the culture they are in.
But shouldn't we judge people as individuals rather as members of the culture?

In other words, maybe the people who want to talk about salaries openly are
sort of "scandinavian" subculture in "californian" culture.. We cannot really
judge them from the "californian" vantage point.

------
missingcolours
The thing about this is that people are bad at objectively analyzing
contributions, especially their own. Some aspects of value to an
employer/manager include your regular work output quantity and quality,
ability to learn new skills quickly (thus being dependable in unexpected
situations), willingness to jump in to new challenges, mentoring other team
members, etc. People often overlook these factors in others and say "I do the
same work as them, or more!" and get upset about different compensation. I
mean, certainly sometimes there is value in sharing this information, but
there are also plenty of situations where it causes discord more than it helps
the people involved, so I don't know that "discuss your salary!" is
universally good advice.

------
squiggy22
Its probably easiest to do this as a departing gift to colleagues you are
leaving behind.

------
Fezzik
I like sharing my salary just to be open about what I make and give people
something to (possibly) work for. The reasons in the NYT article don’t really
apply to my gig directly as it is a government job with a rigid tiered
payscale based on years in practice, but many of my peers just do not get how
much they can make in pretty cool government legal jobs. I do not make a ton -
just a smidge over that magical six-figure mark, but I have too many friends
who are much smarter than I earning far, far less. That saddens me a little
bit, and government legal work has an odd reputation for having poor
compensation, which is just not the case.

On the other side of the coin: when I was a law clerk I accidentally was given
a pay-stub for another clerk. Said clerk was notoriously incompetant, but
somehow making almost double what many other clerks were making. I said
something to our senior administrator, and he did not even know why she was
making so much. Likely, when she was hired a judge asked for her to start at
her salary and she started there. Her contract was running out and she ended
up not being re-hired. I felt like a jerk, and that was not my intention, but
had I not known her salary nothing would have happened. Or if I could have
kept my mouth shut, but that is difficult when I see such pay disparities.

edit: grammar

------
sashokbg
I do not agree at all with this article. Most people are jealous haters and it
is perfectly normal to have a lower salary if you don't have the guts to ask
for more.

~~~
js8
In other words, it's OK not to be paid according how well you do your job, but
according to your negotiating skills?

~~~
HunOL
1\. Negotiating skill is a skill as any other soft skill.

2\. If somebody consider that he doing the same job (have the same skill) it
doesn't mean that it's true.

~~~
Thiez
If negotiation is not a skill that affects your job performance it seems
unfair that it has such a big influence on your pay.

------
hardwaresofton
A corollary point: Unionize.

------
viach
And don't forget to prepare your CV in advance. Just in case.

~~~
Buge
In case you get fired for discussing salary? It's generally illegal to fire
you for that.

~~~
viach
People do illegal things all the time, especially if they are sure there will
be no penalty.

------
da_murvel
I've always felt like, in situations where I earn less than the people I'm
talking to, that I'm earning less than them simply because I'm not worth to
earn more. This feeling occurs especially when talking to people within my own
field, software development, but regardless of how much experience I have
versus them. And maybe that's the truth, sure someone with 30 years of
experience might be better at their job than someone with 5 years of
experience, but the also might not. Just because you've been doing something
all your life doesn't automatically mean you've done it right.

~~~
JokerDan
As a bit of an extension to the experience thing. I recently changed jobs and
they hired somebody else, to the same team, for the same work as me at the
same time.

I had 0 experience with this software stack/language but I am an extremely
fast learner. The other guy boasted 30 years of software experience and 8/9 in
this specific tech stack.

After ~2 months he was let go in his probation period and people had told me
that I had already picked up, was doing more work and knew more than what he
was showing in the same role.

He was on just under double my salary - my salary did not change. I believe
people should be evaluated and have salary adjusted based on merit and value
over time

\----

As an extension to the merit thing, I changed to this new job because my old
one had the directors of the company, who didn't really have a huge
understanding of individuals roles across the 150-200 person software section
employees, telling us they pay on merit.

Yet I had joined and quickly become one of the more knowledgeable people on
the team, so much so that people would often come to me. I did a lot of the
software releases, worked (unpaid) overtime a lot, especially around said
releases, worked to improve processes and in my spare time worked on tooling.
No recognition other than from the team and one of the principal developers.
All while someone who had half my throughput with daily work but had worked
there for 30 years, had about 1.8* my salary.

What was it more, loyalty, that they meant?

\----

Overall, me knowing other peoples salaries in similar/the same position just
demotivates me (partly due to my mindset at the moment) in that some people
can have such well paid positions while blagging, or doing little in
comparison. Why do I even bother trying? At the same time, I am always at home
teaching myself something new, learning something to better myself for my
career, but that is more my nature than to do with knowing salaries.

------
eanzenberg
Most people don't understand risk and expected value. Let's say we go ahead
and report each others' salaries. There's a non-1 chance you would be able to
bump up some modest amount and a non-0 chance you'd be let go. The expected
value of the move may put you below "doing nothing", not even considering the
added stress of being out of a job.

Also, all this idea will create is animosity, jealousy and politics at work.
Everyone thinks they're hot shit, the egos in the bay are out of this world.

~~~
nandemo
Where I live permanent employees are protected, so the probability of being
legally fired for disclosing my salary is 0, and the probability of illegally
being fired should be very close to 0. However, the probability of my salary
going up is also very close to 0. In fact, the probability of my salary
decreasing is arguably higher than the probability of my salary increasing,
since bonuses vary and are decided semi-arbitrarily. :-)

In any case I know a much more effective way to increase my salary: getting a
green card and moving to the US. The flipside is that my American wife would
have a hard time finding a good job in her field in the US.

~~~
drukenemo
Let me guess: the Netherlands?

~~~
nandemo
Japan.

------
femto
Might be a job for a website, along the lines of a crowd funding site? People
would post their salaries, but they would only be revealed (anonymously or
not?) if a certain number of fellow employees also posted theirs (by a certain
date?) Surely someone has already built this? It might include an mechanism to
send an anonymous invitation email to a list of fellow employees?

There are already salary survey sites, but they seem removed from the
individual's situation, as the results are averaged over so many people and
the underlying assumptions aren't clear. Knowing your immediate coworkers'
salaries seems much more immediate.

Trust and privacy would have to be absolute, so people have complete control
over the spread of any information they submit, which rules out most existing
websites.

\--- Edit:

On further thought, I'm not sure that I agree with my own proposal, in that
it's a complicated solution. Wouldn't it be better to establish the necessary
level of trust with your coworkers in real life and talk about it? There's
also less of a paper trail and information leakage that way.

------
nostromo95
Definitely a tragedy of the commons or first mover disadvantage situation we
have here: systemically it'd be better for everyone to discuss their salaries,
but individually I'd never be the first one to start that discussion.

~~~
some_account
What are you afraid of will happen?

~~~
recursive
Speaking for myself, I'm afraid, that I'd lower morale and create division in
my well-running and competent team.

~~~
some_account
Yeah it will. Often people are sad someone is leaning, and they may start to
look for other jobs themselves.

But all this is actually in the interest of the people working there. They may
get higher salary and better work somewhere else.

~~~
biql
Or worse scenario: an employer, knowing about potential consequences, would be
more interested in lowering salaries of high payed workers to avoid low payed
ones leaving the job or losing productivity ("Why should I try harder?").

~~~
ap3
Does not compute - Why would the high earner stick around if their salary was
lower?

~~~
biql
If transparency was applied everywhere, the new employer would have the same
incentive to keep it lower? They would still earn more but despite the
transparency, not because of it.

------
beardyw
In the 1980s I worked for CMG, an IT consultany here in London. Salaries were
completely open, and openly discussed. However the culture was that you were
expected to perform to that salary,not that the salary was a reward for
performance.

Every year all staff were ranked, completely ignoring current salary, and then
new salaries were set from that. Some would see a decrease.

I got used to it quickly and it felt very liberating.

------
grakker
The local paper makes an information request every year and puts up on their
website what everyone was paid who works for the school district. I work for
that school district. It really makes me laugh from the asshats on both sides
of the argument. I just don't care if people know what I make, or what I
drive. Although I tend to have a rather low opinion of people who value stuff
over anything else.

------
speedplane
It would be great if everyone knew what everyone was making, it would
definitely help with salary negotiations, but it's horrible to ask. It
introduces such awkwardness, and can invite jealousy and comparisons.

Just do what everyone else does... snoop around on the network drive and try
to find unsecured documents that list compensation.

------
orionblastar
Not really as they tend to get jealous and sabotage my work if I am paid more
than them.

Someone hacked the password to the HR account and dumped the database for IS I
was the highest paid programmer at $50k for a $150k average job. It made me
unpopular and people did not want to work with me after that. I had more
experience than the other programmers is why.

~~~
usaphp
> It made me unpopular and people did not want to work with me after that.

What if there was some other reason people did not want to work with you? I
know plenty of people who work more than I do for the same work that I do,
however it does not make me hate working with them or something.

~~~
orionblastar
Different personalities I guess? They worked with me until my salary was
leaked.

------
CaliforniaKarl
I suggest checking out Tom Scott's "In Norway, Everyone Can Know How Much You
Earn", at [https://youtu.be/1bO8zEaSuWg](https://youtu.be/1bO8zEaSuWg)

And then, have a look at the bibliography in the video description!

------
microDude
Companies want to have a bilateral agreement with each employee and have all
the information.

The best strategy is to use competitor salary information, taken from the
likes of Glassdoor or similar.

------
pmlnr
Yes, please. It would make the world a much fairer place.

------
endymi0n
Having seen this topic from both sides of the tables, I'm not sure if I agree.
Don't get me wrong, I'm generally all for transparency, and I've also seen my
share of cases (including my own) where someone was treated unfairly and it
would have been good to talk about it.

But there's a few important and complex psychological factors at work here:

\- Self-serving bias. There's a study that about 80% of employees think
they're better than average. Obviously, that's impossible, but it already sets
the stage on a path to unhappiness.

\- Group bias and Dunning-Kruger. People mostly don't know _why_ exactly
someone else earns more than them. Excluding real unfairness or the points
below, there are often time cases where people really don't get the importance
of some roles in the company or think they can do as good or the company can
do without. As a techie, I've personally ridiculed the "business side" until
I've witnessed the importance myself (and how much difference a bad to a good
execution in this regard matters).

\- Global and local unfairness and market development. Firstly, local markets
develop for hotly contested skills, sometimes very fast. Also, it makes a heck
of a difference in which company stage someone is hired. A year later, I might
have to pay someone much more to get into the same team.

\- Lastly, there can even be unfairness in fairness, hidden in plain view:
Does someone getting relocated into a hot market really have to suffer paying
double the rent as someone living there for years? Is having a family a
personal luxury or partly beared by a socially responsible employer? Does
someone with a PhD who's being outperformed by a young smart college dropout
earn the same? More? Less? I don't know the answer to these questions, but all
possible answers have some merit. Often times, I try to factor something about
this in when deciding salary. In any case, it's freakishly hard to develop
such thing as a "fair" salary over a whole company as an employer.

\- In most countries including mine, it's prohibited to _lower_ someone's
salary, so the only way you can ever adjust local or global unfairness is to
raise wages.

What's following is this: _All of these factors work together to create a
lose-lose case to talking salary with others_. The chances are enormously high
you'll get demotivated. Most likely from your own salary, but even if you earn
more than the others, it's awkward and hard to handle emotionally.

Although it's probably good for your brain and overall heuristics development
to do so, it will be bad for your heart. Proceed with care — and if you want
my personal 2 cents: Don't keep what you learned from always giving your best
and optimizing for learning. Keep up your spirits, stay positive and don't get
into a defensive attitude. Search for like-minded people who see your real
value and you'll keep reaping your fruits later on, trust me.

~~~
tomp
> Self-serving bias. There's a study that about 80% of employees think they're
> better than average. Obviously, that's impossible, but it already sets the
> stage on a path to unhappiness.

It’s not impossible.

If Bill Gates walks into a room, most other people in that room (99%?) will
have below average wealth.

------
toomanybeersies
I accidentally got paid my Indian colleague's salary as well as mine a few
months back. Rather awkwardly, I discovered that despite being more junior
than him, I actually got paid more.

Obviously I'm not complaining, because I want to earn as much as possible, but
it does seem a bit unfair. On one hand, I guess I'm better at negotiating a
higher salary (mine's not _that_ much higher, maybe 5-10%), but at the same
time, it seems unfair that he does the same work and gets paid less.

How would discussing my salary with him benefit me (in a purely capitalistic
sense)?

~~~
dancek
Your colleague would be very grateful to you. If you don't know the value of
grateful people, you're not much of a capitalist.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _If you don 't know the value of grateful people, you're not much of a
> capitalist._

Rule of Acquisition no. 1 says: "Once you have their money, you never give it
back".

But if you did, the next best thing is suggested by Rule 111: "Treat people in
your debt like family... exploit them".

~~~
dancek
Maybe you just saw a nice opportunity to make a reference.

But if you also downvoted me, maybe you missed both my pun (a capitalist
should be able to assess the value of _everything_ ) and my point.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Only the former. I did not downvote you.

Hence the penultimate rule in the HN guidelines - "Please don't comment about
the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

You have no way of knowing who downvoted you, or why, unless they step
forward.

------
TangoTrotFox
How is this supposed to be a good idea? At best it's going to lead to jealousy
and other issues. And having lived in a country where salary discussion is not
so taboo, while also being privy to what those people make, a fair number of
people lie about their compensation which adds even more issues and
antagonism.

------
purplezooey
It's OK to jump on the OSPF bandwagon though. Nobody wants to run RIP.

------
jfornear
HR professionals will tell you that many people lie about their compensation.
This is probably not worth talking about without sharing your pay stubs or tax
returns.

~~~
some_account
HR alis there to protect the company. They consist of smiling faces who know
they are snakes. I would not take their advice on anything.

~~~
NamTaf
This. HR's actions make more sense when you realise the R is the operative
term in that description and the H is the adjective.

------
js8
I sometimes (although not very often) do tell people unilaterally. Usually,
it's a good way to tell a coward. If the other person is a coward, they won't
share theirs. That's a good thing to know about a person. Although I often
regret knowing that they are a coward, mostly they are good people.

I like to joke that my company is ashamed about what it pays me, therefore I
shouldn't talk about it. And I am a nice guy, and don't want the company to
feel the shame without a good reason.

~~~
PhilWright
Maybe they do not reciprocate because they earn much more for doing the same
job and do not want to depress you with that knowledge. Maybe they earn much
less for the same job and are embarrassed about that. There are many reasons
someone would not share their salary with you and being a coward is unlikely
to be the main one.

~~~
js8
I don't mean the word "coward" in a judgemental way. Think about what you just
said for a minute. These people don't want to reciprocate honesty because they
are afraid of my emotional reaction.

That means, how can I trust them with other things? For example, something
goes wrong and they mess up. Will they be afraid to tell me, because they will
be worried that I am going to be angry or depressed?

Now, it's perfectly fine to be afraid of other person's emotional reaction
(that's why it's non-judgemental). But if you are still afraid _after_ I made
the first step, then it's a good thing for me to know about you.

~~~
pluto9
I'm going to DM you all of my medical records. I'm also going to send you a
homemade porno I made with my girlfriend. If you don't reciprocate, you're a
coward. But don't worry, I'm not judging you.

~~~
js8
Thanks, I look forward to see it! But I think you're missing the point -
medical records or homemade porn are not subject to decision of external human
power against which we might consider to conspire by exchanging information.

~~~
pluto9
I think _you 're_ missing the point--someone can choose not to share personal
information with you because they've deemed it _none of your business_ , not
because they're "afraid of your reaction". The fact that you chose to share
said information places absolutely no moral obligation on anyone else
whatsoever.

~~~
js8
Except it is my business. The whole free market and negotiations for better
salaries thing relies on participants having enough information.

See, it's a prisoner's dilemma type of deal (actually, it's a different game).
I offer cooperation - you can either decide to deny it (by keeping your salary
private) or cooperate also (by stating your salary back). If you decide to
reciprocate useful information, then we might cooperate more in the future for
mutual benefit.

So it's useful information whether you want to get into coalition with me. I
don't care the same way about your health or your porn.

~~~
pluto9
> Except it is my business. The whole free market and negotiations for better
> salaries thing relies on participants having enough information.

> See, it's a prisoner's dilemma type of deal (actually, it's a different
> game).

All of this is your opinion. Has it ever occurred to you that others might not
see salary negotiation this way, and therefore could have other reasons for
not joining your "coalition" besides cowardice?

I and many others see salary negotiation differently than you do. I negotiated
my salary with my employer when I started my job. That means I consider it
worth my while to do the job for that amount and my employer thinks it's worth
that amount to employ me. Otherwise one of us would have walked away. The
fairness of my salary is independent of whether the guy next to me makes twice
as much or half as much. I couldn't give two shits how much he makes.

I would not "get into a coalition" with you because I would find it irritating
to know that I helped you in your entirely self-interested crusade to raise
your own salary in the name of "fairness" or "mutual benefit" or "fighting the
man" or however you might characterize it. I also simply don't like to
associate with people who use words like "coward" to describe anyone who has
more of a social filter than they do (you sound like you're seventeen). You
can attribute that to spite if you want, but cowardice would be quite a leap.

~~~
js8
"Has it ever occurred to you that others might not see salary negotiation this
way"

Yes, it totally did! That's why I am not judging them. I am afraid though you
don't want to understand where I am coming from, either.

I understand that people want to have their lives and don't want to fight,
politically or economically. It's just good to know who they are.

Frankly, I find it curious that people do not want to openly discuss salaries.
It's not like the stakes are very high (in Western societies, anyway). But
maybe in the U.S. they actually are higher than, say, Norway. It's almost as
if collective bargaining is a taboo topic in the U.S.

The word "coward" is probably not ideal, but I don't know of a better
equivalent. You could take my example, and change "discussing salaries" into
"discussing government" in a society which (relatively softly) represses
freedom of speech (like for example, communist society in Eastern Europe,
where I do come from).

So in these hypothetical circumstance, you can make a certain statement, which
can be interpreted as being critical of the government, which is a taboo in
that society. The other people can either take the bait and break a taboo
slightly too, or they might not. It's useful information for you to know
whether or not they are willing to break the taboo, because if the push ever
comes to shove, for example you would suddenly find yourself in some
uncomfortable situation, say somebody from dissent would ask you for help, and
you would need help of another person, then you would naturally choose
somebody who you know was willing to break the taboo before. So that's the
meaning of the word "coward" in that context.

It's not being judgemental, because as I said, it would be immoral to force
the people to participate (in activity that is considered bad by society and
thus taboo). It's a simple test of boundaries, you want to participate or not.

"The fairness of my salary is independent of whether the guy next to me makes
twice as much or half as much. I couldn't give two shits how much he makes."

I don't think it's quite true, because if it truly had been the case, then you
wouldn't consider it taboo to discuss it. Just like, you know, we don't
consider it taboo to talk about whether or not we have kids or cars and how
many.

