
Should You Tell the World How Much Money You Make? - 1PlayerOne
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/10/business/salary-transparency-ask-a-manager.html
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ergothus
I worked in a state govt office in Virginia some years ago and the local paper
did a FOIA request for everyone's salaries in the state...and published an
online database of the upper 50%.
[http://data.richmond.com/salaries/](http://data.richmond.com/salaries/)

My coworkers, by-and-large, were furious. I found it really helpful. I found
out where I was relative to my peers (I was only behind by a few hundred
bucks/year - we were all basically equal if we had the same title, except for
one guy that had abused the state 10% raise when switching departments). One
guy in our DBA/Ops team discovered he was getting a relatively paltry amount
while his peers were all getting 6 digits (which was all on the bosses - his
peers were also bothered by this). One or two people had very questionably
high salaries and were suddenly held by others to be delivering at that level.
Mostly, though, it calmed people down about salary differences.

Honestly, it was awkward for some people, but honestly I think the benefits
outweighed the costs, at least within the office. Much of my coworkers'
outrage was about people OUTSIDE the office finding their salaries, such as
friends, family, neighbors, people wanting money, etc.

~~~
Consultant32452
I prefer the way my current employer handles it. They publish a service where
you can search by your job title and region. It tells you what the max and min
for current employees. I don't care to know what any particular person makes,
but I like knowing where I am in the range.

~~~
chucksmash
That's a great way to handle it, especially if the job titles are at least
somewhat stratified.

Don't think it'd be that useful at a "we don't do seniority rituals, everybody
is a software engineer" type place, where you just see you're in a band from
$60k-$480k. If the bucket is large, distribution information would be more
useful.

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Zaheer
[https://www.Levels.fyi](https://www.Levels.fyi) started very similar to the
'Ask a Manager' survey in the article. We had a Google Form / Spreadsheet to
collect salaries in tech. In fact, they still underpin our UI today. We've had
folks mention that our data is more accurate than Glassdoor, etc. We're
working on several features to ensure our data continues to remain accurate,
fresh and easy to analyze. Ping me at my email in profile if you have
feedback!

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pavlov
In Nordic countries, everyone's tax return bottom line is public information.
You can look up your neighbour or co-worker or the average celebrity if you
want to know how much income and capital gains they reported. Societies
haven't yet collapsed from unbridled jealousy.

Meanwhile in America the topic is taboo. Apparently you can get five years of
jail for leaking someone's tax information — in the same country where
personal information privacy barely exists otherwise. Strange.

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arcticbull
There's already a huge database of your coworkers' salaries, assuming you work
with any H-1B visa holders
([https://h1bsalary.online](https://h1bsalary.online)). I seem to recall the
government had a portal you can search by name too.

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hn_throwaway_99
There are lots of comments to this effect in the NYTimes article, but large
swaths of the population already have their salary data public: many (most?)
public sector workers' salary is public knowledge, oftentimes searchable on a
website, military pay grades are public, highly paid executives report most of
their compensation in SEC docs, etc.

Thus, I don't really buy the myriad of reasons presented here for why this is
such a bad idea.

~~~
ip26
Perhaps the strongest argument against is basically that if you're the only
one telling, you are at a disadvantage. It's a prisoner's dilemma.

By comparison, in the public sector & military, _everyone 's_ is public, and
on top of that there is no salary negotiation.

~~~
astura
... there is salary negotiation in the public sector ...

And even if every pay grade was fixed, a salary negotiation can take the form
of "I deserve to be moved to a higher pay grade because XYZ." People don't get
promoted on a fixed schedule.

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dahart
> There is no law that stops employees from sharing salary information, but
> myths persist at many workplaces that sharing is forbidden

This is failing to address the scenario where not sharing salary is company
policy and/or part of the employment agreement or contract. If my personal
experience is any indicator, I would speculate that this is quite common at
large companies.

And, I don't know, having other people share their salary information is good
for me, but sharing mine can certainly be used against me in a variety of
subtle ways. People are consciously and unconsciously judgemental by nature.
Sometimes I have a relatively good deal and I know it, so sometimes I don't
want to share salary because I know it would only make other people feel bad.
Sometimes I don't want to know that someone makes more than me because it
would make me feel bad, when ultimately it doesn't matter.

I am genuinely interested in the idea of sharing, but I really want some
stronger reasons of why it's to my actual personal benefit today to share that
information, assuming my employment agreement allows it. I didn't see any in
this article.

~~~
astura
It's against the law to prevent employees from disclosing and discussing
salary. The The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 protects employees rights
to discuss conditions of employment, which, obviously includes salary.

[https://www.nlrb.gov/resources/faq/nlrb#t38n3180](https://www.nlrb.gov/resources/faq/nlrb#t38n3180)

Adults can absolutely handle _fair_ pay discrepancies without "feeling bad,"
and if they can't then they are so immature that I doubt they'd otherwise make
a good employee. It works plenty fine in many industries where salary is
public information and even in whole countries where salary is public.

~~~
dahart
Indeed, but I've seen & had plenty of contracts that state what they want and
then at the end have a clause disclaiming anything that conflicts with
existing laws. It's then the onus of the employee to figure out their actual
rights.

BTW I realize I may have some of my experience with contract work mixed into
my fallible memory. But, that's another reasonable point here, more people are
turning into independent contractors, and they're not subject to employee
rights protection, it's perfectly legal to have a compensation non-disclosure
in a work-for-hire contract.

> Adults can absolutely handle fair pay discrepancies without "feeling bad,"
> and if they can't then they are so immature that I doubt they'd otherwise
> make a good employee.

I think this might be too dismissive and perhaps over-simplified. Everybody,
including "adults" wants fairness in their life. Most people don't know what
actually constitutes the range of "fair" pay even within their own company,
and there are often situations - it is _very_ common - where someone is paid
more or less than others not due to experience or skill but due to
circumstances, timings, negotiating power, specialized company requirements,
and a variety of other things.

Still, even if sharing didn't cause me any large problems, why is it in my
interest to share?

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Havoc
Within the office...most people know/can guess each other's fairly accurately.

I stopped talking to family about it though. Different countries and CoL means
my raises end up being more than their total package. So discussing that leads
to nothing wholesome. Instead I try to silently absorb more of the family
costs than proportionate.

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blhack
It depends on who you’re telling. People treat you differently when they find
out how much money you make, both on the upper and lower ends.

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waterside81
The government of Ontario releases the salaries of all public employees every
year if they make over 100k. So called sunshine list
[https://www.ontario.ca/page/public-sector-salary-
disclosure](https://www.ontario.ca/page/public-sector-salary-disclosure)

~~~
username223
Isn't this true for all provinces? A friend of mine is a government medical
researcher in Alberta, so he makes good money, but is hardly what I would call
"rich," at least not in the SV sense. Still, his salary is posted online.

I think this goes overboard: a min/mean/median/max for each job title would be
good enough to know where I stand in a salary negotiation. I also like Ms.
Zaloom's idea from the article to share salaries among close friends and
family.

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Hoasi
It's not as easy a question as it sounds. Sharing this information within a
company usually means trouble. So it doesn't look like a good idea to share it
with society at large. At the same time, honesty and transparency is the best
policy... Privacy, security, and psychological issues are at stake when it
comes to money.

> the gig economy has made salary comparing a near necessity for many.

Obviously, most freelancers would love if this information was public. If
rates are public, you know where you are standing and where to start if you
want to provide a service. That is not exactly the same as telling how much
money one makes—one can only infer so much. Despite this, most freelancers are
still secretive about their rate—as if this was always an advantage.

~~~
zwkrt
I think the reasons it causes trouble in the workplace and more generally are
exactly why it should be shared with everyone. Sharing salaries/wages is only
an issue if the wages themselves cannot be justified. The issue is that very
few people's wages CAN be justified (either in terms of scalar dollar amount
or in relation to the value one produces), and sharing incomes just shines
light on the ugly reality that income disparity is mostly senseless. I think a
lot of societal problems would be solved if we all had a sign over our head
showing stats about how much we make and how we spend that money.

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jvalencia
It seems to me like there's a potentially privacy sensitive way to share the
information. For any role with more than N employees, the mean and standard
deviation are published: simple, equitable, and private.

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max76
Knowing other people's salaries gives you a stronger negotiating position.
Other people knowing your salary gives you a weaker negotiating position.

Should you tell the world how much money you make? Are you altruistic?

~~~
joe_the_user
Employees at a workplace knowing each others' salaries puts them in a better
position in bargaining with management but it also makes it harder for
management to selectively give certain employees higher salaries - because the
employees are talented or because the management happens to want to keep said
(maybe talented) employees or because management just like certain employees
or because management just wants bargain each employee down to minimum
management thinks they'll take.

So the question is what situation would someone think better serves their
interests? Of course, whether one person describing their salary would evoke
reciprocity or not is a question, whether another person would tell the truth
is a question.

~~~
kradroy
I'm normally fine with employees sharing their salary info. Since I'm a
manager of individual contributors I can't do much myself in granting
compensation changes. I can make recommendations, but I'm not the final
approver.

That being said - if an employee were to come to me and say "I want $X because
so-and-so (or 'others on the team') are making that much", I would deny their
request outright. That's a childish way to ask for a raise. It doesn't
highlight what you're bringing to the team; only what you want to take from
it.

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czbond
Are sites likes Glassdoor (for most companies), Linkedin jobs (with salary
ranges), and tech (levelsfyi, etc) already doing this in an anonymous way?

~~~
Zaheer
Yup, we recently added salary ranges on levels.fyi as well. Would love
feedback on presentation format and other other graphs folks would find
useful:
[https://www.levels.fyi/charts.html](https://www.levels.fyi/charts.html)

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xfitm3
You should talk to colleagues about salaries, but avoid telling friends,
family, and the general public.

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2sk21
This is a real eye-opener - tech salaries seem ridiculously high compared to
what most people make.

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JohnFen
I'm not going to tell the world how much I make. That seems foolish. I don't
mind sharing it with family, friends, and coworkers, though.

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verttii
Here in Finland all personal tax records are public so we don't even need to
contemplate on this question.

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malux85
Absolutely not.

~~~
EGreg
Why not

~~~
segmondy
Why don't you tell us how much you make?

People get killed in some places for $100. $1000 is enough to kidnapped in
some places. Besides if people know how much you make, you will get custom
pricing. Do you know there are countries that have 2 menus, one for foreigners
and one for locals? Because they foreigners make much money so are charged
higher prices?

~~~
r3bl
Well it's a good thing that this article talks about sharing salary info
_between colleagues_ , and makes no arguments for "telling the world" other
than in the clickbaity title.

That's why it ends with a question mark, so that it makes the title not-
technically-incorrect (author is "just asking a question"), while driving the
engagements that have nothing to do with its content.

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EGreg
Absolutely yes

