Workers are often told not to talk about pay. That's not legal(usatoday.com)
usatoday.com
Workers are often told not to talk about pay. That's not legal
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2021/09/21/north-carolina-workers-discuss-wages-despite-workplace-rule/5796705001/
257 comments
Frankly, I'll never work for a company with public pay. I don't want equality, I want to be able to negotiate my value to the company whether that is more or less than others. This is why I became a freelancer years ago and have vastly increased my income. I'm paid for the value I provided the company's bottom line, not some arbitrary "equal" amount based on an arbitrary title as a cog in the machine.
> I'm paid for the value I provided the company's bottom line
Nope. You're paid for your ability to negotiate. Big difference. It's very obvious in some companies where it's easy to find higher paid people who are mediocre compared to their colleagues. They get paid more not because they bring in more value, but because they negotiated better.
And, seriously: Except for a few cases (2 person business or something) no one has an accurate amount of how much you add to the bottom line. It's a safe bet you don't. So the notion that either party knows your value is just flawed.
Nope. You're paid for your ability to negotiate. Big difference. It's very obvious in some companies where it's easy to find higher paid people who are mediocre compared to their colleagues. They get paid more not because they bring in more value, but because they negotiated better.
And, seriously: Except for a few cases (2 person business or something) no one has an accurate amount of how much you add to the bottom line. It's a safe bet you don't. So the notion that either party knows your value is just flawed.
This is pretty much the long and short of it entirely. And it’s why there shouldn’t be secrecy in salary. The idea that you’re paid your value to the company on-balance gets even more absurd the larger it is. You aren’t an exact quantified line item on revenue vs expense. That isn’t even the criteria except in the abstract or in a very, very small business.
I absolutely agree that people doing ostensibly the same role or with the same job title (but not necessarily responsibilities or time investment) can be deserving of a pretty wide gap in pay based on the particulars but that isn’t the purpose or the reality of trying to keep pay a secret.
Also even if you think you deserve whatever you negotiate, having more information instead of less is probably a good idea during your negotiations.
The only motivation for keeping them a secret at that point is so that your coworkers don’t realize you’re being grossly overpaid for what you do compared to the rest of them and honestly I’m okay with that. Additionally once you get high enough in a company the salary isn’t even what matters or where the money is really made.
I absolutely agree that people doing ostensibly the same role or with the same job title (but not necessarily responsibilities or time investment) can be deserving of a pretty wide gap in pay based on the particulars but that isn’t the purpose or the reality of trying to keep pay a secret.
Also even if you think you deserve whatever you negotiate, having more information instead of less is probably a good idea during your negotiations.
The only motivation for keeping them a secret at that point is so that your coworkers don’t realize you’re being grossly overpaid for what you do compared to the rest of them and honestly I’m okay with that. Additionally once you get high enough in a company the salary isn’t even what matters or where the money is really made.
> no one has an accurate amount of how much you add to the bottom line. It's a safe bet you don't.
+1. This is extra impossible at tech companies that "give away" products. How much do you add to the bottom line for improving google search algo? Its directly 0 because a better algo doesnt mean more money (it would at a hedge fund!) and indirectly it could be billions if it means more people use the product (or it could be zero if one thinks that google's 98% market share means the algo is irrelevant)
How much does an employee on Alexa add to amazon's bottom line? Its a huge project that is important to the company, but it makes almost $0 and is obviously not free to run... so should you lose money to be an alexa employee?
How do you measure this at any real company?
+1. This is extra impossible at tech companies that "give away" products. How much do you add to the bottom line for improving google search algo? Its directly 0 because a better algo doesnt mean more money (it would at a hedge fund!) and indirectly it could be billions if it means more people use the product (or it could be zero if one thinks that google's 98% market share means the algo is irrelevant)
How much does an employee on Alexa add to amazon's bottom line? Its a huge project that is important to the company, but it makes almost $0 and is obviously not free to run... so should you lose money to be an alexa employee?
How do you measure this at any real company?
Also, it doesn’t take into account skilled/hard-to-hire roles that are effectively cost centers, like security. How much revenue am I responsible for as a security engineer? Probably none, especially since the consequences for a breach are usually negligible.
It is most definitely not impossible. How do you think companies decide on budgets? They're not just guessing; they're predicting how different projects will impact revenue. Alexa isn't important to Amazon because it's "cool" — it's important because they've put an actual dollar amount to its return on investment.
> How do you think companies decide on budgets?
With great effort and generally mediocre results. Figuring out the contribution of an individual project is hard. An individual person even more so. And this isn't because we're not smart enough, it's because the idea of an individual contribution when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts is not coherent.
So how do you split the returns? Well, the entire field of cooperative game theory has something to say about that, and the answer is complicated but the gist is that it depends less on contribution and more on negotiating power.
Are you willing and able to just leave if you don't get what you want? Are you hard to replace? Can you do your stuff with a different company if you leave? All that is much more important than how much your presence benefits the common enterprise compared to the counterfactual where nobody did your job.
With great effort and generally mediocre results. Figuring out the contribution of an individual project is hard. An individual person even more so. And this isn't because we're not smart enough, it's because the idea of an individual contribution when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts is not coherent.
So how do you split the returns? Well, the entire field of cooperative game theory has something to say about that, and the answer is complicated but the gist is that it depends less on contribution and more on negotiating power.
Are you willing and able to just leave if you don't get what you want? Are you hard to replace? Can you do your stuff with a different company if you leave? All that is much more important than how much your presence benefits the common enterprise compared to the counterfactual where nobody did your job.
> How do you think companies decide on budgets?
From what I've seen, by horse-trading, and fighting highly political, bitter, zero-sum turf wars that depend way too much on how charming department heads/directors are, and how well they relate to the CxO's and/or board. Its not uncommon for the CEO's pet-project to get a budget completely disconnected from the its value (current or future).
Companies - like anything collective that relies on human judgement - are terrible at digging deeper than first-order effects; which is why sales people tend to get paid much more than the engineers who developed the product: "I closed a $X million deal, so I get Y% of it". The engineers get paid a flat rate, because it's impossible to quantify how much value they added, and when. Baseline engineer salaries are broadly determined by how much other companies are paying, and more specifically by how good the individual engineers are able to negotiate.
From what I've seen, by horse-trading, and fighting highly political, bitter, zero-sum turf wars that depend way too much on how charming department heads/directors are, and how well they relate to the CxO's and/or board. Its not uncommon for the CEO's pet-project to get a budget completely disconnected from the its value (current or future).
Companies - like anything collective that relies on human judgement - are terrible at digging deeper than first-order effects; which is why sales people tend to get paid much more than the engineers who developed the product: "I closed a $X million deal, so I get Y% of it". The engineers get paid a flat rate, because it's impossible to quantify how much value they added, and when. Baseline engineer salaries are broadly determined by how much other companies are paying, and more specifically by how good the individual engineers are able to negotiate.
I have never seen these things come from anything other than guesswork. It's educated guesses, but guesses nonetheless. It's why products get killed too early or too late. Measuring these things properly and causally is hard and sometimes infeasible.
I make planning software at a quantitatively sophisticated tech company, and it’s quite ironic to me that we don’t have a precise understanding of the expected impact of our software on the company. But that’s normal. We don’t build software that will barely break even. We build software that we expect can be massively successful, and the resource allocation is more about opportunity cost and uncorrelated bets than predicted outcomes.
Companies that make low margin highly competitive products, like paper mills, are the ones with a rigorous understanding of the costs and benefits of every activity.
Companies that make low margin highly competitive products, like paper mills, are the ones with a rigorous understanding of the costs and benefits of every activity.
> it's important because they've put an actual dollar amount to its return on investment.
The issue isn't whether you can put a dollar amount, but on the confidence in accuracy. I've seen how this is done in my company: Construct a narrative, assign numbers to that narrative (with some justification that doesn't always involve real world data), and come up with a total. They are incentivized to inflate the numbers as their goal is to increase their budget - not be accurate. If all departments did this, and you add the numbers they come up with, we'd easily end up with a number 10x our annual revenue, which is ridiculous.
Some folks who are not vested in this will aim for accuracy. And even then, they will have a large confidence interval - easily off by 2x.
How are you going to go from there and estimate an employee's value? Even if the project's value was 100% accurate, you still need to break that down to each employee. And since most employees don't work independently, you need to model the interaction effects (my work depends on your work - if you perform poorly, my contribution to the bottom line is reduced).
If the estimate of the value of the project is off by 2x, then you've already got a pathetic lower bound on the interval length of your confidence interval.
Alexa is actually an easier case to model. My job is to improve the internal communications infrastructure so that important messages get delivered (IT announcements, CEO communications, etc). How will you model my contribution to the bottom line?
I can assure everyone: At any decent sized company, no one is trying to come up with your value to the company.
The issue isn't whether you can put a dollar amount, but on the confidence in accuracy. I've seen how this is done in my company: Construct a narrative, assign numbers to that narrative (with some justification that doesn't always involve real world data), and come up with a total. They are incentivized to inflate the numbers as their goal is to increase their budget - not be accurate. If all departments did this, and you add the numbers they come up with, we'd easily end up with a number 10x our annual revenue, which is ridiculous.
Some folks who are not vested in this will aim for accuracy. And even then, they will have a large confidence interval - easily off by 2x.
How are you going to go from there and estimate an employee's value? Even if the project's value was 100% accurate, you still need to break that down to each employee. And since most employees don't work independently, you need to model the interaction effects (my work depends on your work - if you perform poorly, my contribution to the bottom line is reduced).
If the estimate of the value of the project is off by 2x, then you've already got a pathetic lower bound on the interval length of your confidence interval.
Alexa is actually an easier case to model. My job is to improve the internal communications infrastructure so that important messages get delivered (IT announcements, CEO communications, etc). How will you model my contribution to the bottom line?
I can assure everyone: At any decent sized company, no one is trying to come up with your value to the company.
They don't need to put a dollar amount on ROI of Alexa to develop it. Alexa is a loyalty-generating machine. Even if you never use it to make a purchase, it helps the brand, and it keeps you using Amazon products.
On top of that, it does also provide a sales channel that nobody else has. Practically nobody else has a voice-activated robot sitting in people's kitchens that buys paper towels and plays Spotify. It's the difference between all your competitors making sales via telegraph, and you introducing a home telephone just to make orders with your company. Funding it is a no-brainer.
On top of that, it does also provide a sales channel that nobody else has. Practically nobody else has a voice-activated robot sitting in people's kitchens that buys paper towels and plays Spotify. It's the difference between all your competitors making sales via telegraph, and you introducing a home telephone just to make orders with your company. Funding it is a no-brainer.
Hate to break it to you, but any accountant with any data savvy can you give a more or less accurate ballpark figure with the right details. (This is also why you should be chummy with Tim in Accounting; you'll be amazed the things you can pick up shooting the shit with the finance department).
BI, in fact, is almost entirely the artform of synthesizing the answer to that very question for the purposes of executive decisionmaking.
BI, in fact, is almost entirely the artform of synthesizing the answer to that very question for the purposes of executive decisionmaking.
Your negotiation, but also your perceived value. During my time as a manager I was shocked by the difference in salaries. I mean one person making 60k another 120k. I mean, same job, same experience.
Actually the 60k guy was the most talented on my 15 person team. The reason is simply when the 60k guy came on they asked him how much do you need, and he said 60k. He never asked for a raise, but they actually bumped him up anyway cause they thought he may be a flight risk if he ever checked out the marketplace.
I also found, people are much more likely to underestimate themselves than overestimate.
Only 10% of employees would consistently ask for more money every year. Everyone else almost never asked for a raise.
Now its not solely just negotiation cause if they were a star they probably got it. If they sucked it just made management like them less. When management doesn't like you, and comes time someone needs to be cut. That's who gets cut.
Actually the 60k guy was the most talented on my 15 person team. The reason is simply when the 60k guy came on they asked him how much do you need, and he said 60k. He never asked for a raise, but they actually bumped him up anyway cause they thought he may be a flight risk if he ever checked out the marketplace.
I also found, people are much more likely to underestimate themselves than overestimate.
Only 10% of employees would consistently ask for more money every year. Everyone else almost never asked for a raise.
Now its not solely just negotiation cause if they were a star they probably got it. If they sucked it just made management like them less. When management doesn't like you, and comes time someone needs to be cut. That's who gets cut.
You're 100% right and they seem to know that but not realize that they know that. This quote before saying "I'm paid for the value I provide" spills the beans...
> I want to be able to negotiate my value to the company
> I want to be able to negotiate my value to the company
You seem to be thinking these are contradictory things. In fact, they are complementary. The payment depends both on value (of course, that's subjective, market-driven, influenced by fashions and passions, insert all disclaimers here) and on negotiation skill. If you're a fresh intern knowing next to nothing, no negotiating skill would give you the position of a senior architect with accompanying salary. Bad negotiating skills though can harm you, even though extreme lowballing is dangerous for the employer too - people know what are general salary levels and if you lowball to the extreme, they'd get pissed off and leave for better pastures in exactly the worst moment. Because other employers have interest in high-value people too (or even in cheap moderate-value people).
Do you really think the average marketer at a company is poorer at negotiating than the average SWE, and what do you think their comparative salaries are?
Not necessarily.
Another way SWE's got into a better position is the environment not their own ability.
One way this could happen: Let's say that a lot of companies want SWEs and there aren't that many SWEs available. So, you go try and hire and any SWE has a bunch of potential offers. They don't negotiate much, but still have to say no to many people. Those people may then say, well, what if we offer you more? SWE says yes. Have that happen all over and constantly and all of a sudden SWEs are by standard paid more rather than purposefully negotiating higher because their negotiation happened for them in the past based on the environment they were in rather than negotiations.
Another way SWE's got into a better position is the environment not their own ability.
One way this could happen: Let's say that a lot of companies want SWEs and there aren't that many SWEs available. So, you go try and hire and any SWE has a bunch of potential offers. They don't negotiate much, but still have to say no to many people. Those people may then say, well, what if we offer you more? SWE says yes. Have that happen all over and constantly and all of a sudden SWEs are by standard paid more rather than purposefully negotiating higher because their negotiation happened for them in the past based on the environment they were in rather than negotiations.
If you actually wanted to be paid for the value you bring, you should look for profit sharing/commission rather than freelance work
I worked for a trading firm that had public pay & it certainly wasn’t about equality. It was simply recognition that people will talk about pay and it was easier to get in front of any ill will & miscommunication.
There were extremely wide pay bands there for the same function and it worked fine because the company was perfectly happy to tell people “that other person is paid more because they are worth more to us”. I find that a whole lot more palatable to the nonsense pay bands I see at the regular tech company.
Don’t lie to people about why your pay is secret (it’s always for information asymmetry in negotiations) and be honest to your employees about their value to the company and everything seems to sort itself out.
There were extremely wide pay bands there for the same function and it worked fine because the company was perfectly happy to tell people “that other person is paid more because they are worth more to us”. I find that a whole lot more palatable to the nonsense pay bands I see at the regular tech company.
Don’t lie to people about why your pay is secret (it’s always for information asymmetry in negotiations) and be honest to your employees about their value to the company and everything seems to sort itself out.
>"it’s always for information asymmetry in negotiations"
There are other reasons; depending on how varied the roles and responsibilities are in an organization, and the people working there (partly 'culture'), this kind of information can make some people get embarrassed or envious. This is obviously most true for company with wider ranges of operations (highly paid engineers vs. lower paid manufacturing workers and/or customer service personnel,) in areas where 'value to company' is not a widely-shared outlook.
There are other reasons; depending on how varied the roles and responsibilities are in an organization, and the people working there (partly 'culture'), this kind of information can make some people get embarrassed or envious. This is obviously most true for company with wider ranges of operations (highly paid engineers vs. lower paid manufacturing workers and/or customer service personnel,) in areas where 'value to company' is not a widely-shared outlook.
Public pay information doesn’t require equality.
If you actually are better then you’ll negotiate better pay.
You’re saying the equivalent of “I don’t want a free market. If other people have the same information I do then I won’t be able to benefit off the information disparity and have to compete on merit”
If you actually are better then you’ll negotiate better pay.
You’re saying the equivalent of “I don’t want a free market. If other people have the same information I do then I won’t be able to benefit off the information disparity and have to compete on merit”
> Public pay information doesn’t require equality.
That's absolutely NOT how it works in practice. It is widely studied that there are HUGE differences in programmer productivity. While the theoretical "10x" programmer may not be that common, I see "2x" programmers all the time.
But you hardly ever see 2x differences in salaries, even though this would be the fair thing if you were looking at output. Once pay becomes public, management is basically constrained to keep people in relatively tight bands because it's trivial for anyone on the lower end of a pay scale to complain that Programmer X gets paid more money, even if Programmer X gets shit out the door 2x faster.
That's absolutely NOT how it works in practice. It is widely studied that there are HUGE differences in programmer productivity. While the theoretical "10x" programmer may not be that common, I see "2x" programmers all the time.
But you hardly ever see 2x differences in salaries, even though this would be the fair thing if you were looking at output. Once pay becomes public, management is basically constrained to keep people in relatively tight bands because it's trivial for anyone on the lower end of a pay scale to complain that Programmer X gets paid more money, even if Programmer X gets shit out the door 2x faster.
You don't see differences in salaries perfectly correspond to differences in outputs for the same reasons that companies want to pay less for remote work. Pay in general doesn't correspond that great to value provided. Potential complaints about pay comparisons are way down the list of reasons.
That tracks latency, but not throughput. Sure, a programmer may get a given ticket out the door 2x faster, but they may create 3x as much technical debt that winds up being addressed as separate tickets. That's a useful skill if you need one particular feature urgently for a deadline, but less useful for steady-state development.
While I agree that there can be or at least seem to be that overall difference in productivity between people, utilizing a single metric to make that conclusion is simplifying a much more complex issue.
Or a senior dev may wind up only getting a few tickets done, but it's because they're dealing with meetings and planning to determine the correct course of action for a project that may take a month or more. Or they may be a useful 'repository of knowledge' for the rest of the team, and spend a lot of their time enabling multiple other people to be more effective than they would be otherwise.
While I agree that there can be or at least seem to be that overall difference in productivity between people, utilizing a single metric to make that conclusion is simplifying a much more complex issue.
Or a senior dev may wind up only getting a few tickets done, but it's because they're dealing with meetings and planning to determine the correct course of action for a project that may take a month or more. Or they may be a useful 'repository of knowledge' for the rest of the team, and spend a lot of their time enabling multiple other people to be more effective than they would be otherwise.
At your large, in vogue, non-neflix companies, pay often has fairly well known bands, and approximately doubles (or more) every two levels (well not at Microsoft). This holds true at Amazon, Facebook, Google, Uber, Snap, Apple, Stripe, etc.
If you mean that, between people in the same role, there is usually huge differences in productivity, I honestly haven't seen that, except perhaps for brief periods where someone is late to a deserved promotion.
If you mean that, between people in the same role, there is usually huge differences in productivity, I honestly haven't seen that, except perhaps for brief periods where someone is late to a deserved promotion.
The problem, I believe is in objectively measuring said "productivity". Yes, you say person A is 2X productive than person B. But that's just arbitrary from your POV. Someone in the same team may mark them as 1.5X productive. Heck, the same person you saw working 2X one week might not work the same amount the next.
If you have any suggestion on ways of measuring productivity. That'll be cool to hear.
Some people consistently outperform most others in their clique. Fair compensation is a problem without a great solution there, but denial is not the answer.
I'm not disagreeing that is a problem, and the reason this is a thorny issue is that there is no reliable way to measure programming productivity: https://martinfowler.com/bliki/CannotMeasureProductivity.htm...
That said, while it can't be measured, I also don't think anyone would disagree that it does exist, in that I've easily see engineers that can produce reams of quality code in a fraction of the time other engineers can produce buggy code.
But yes, I do think there is an amount of judgment at the end of the day, which is why this is a tricky subject.
That said, while it can't be measured, I also don't think anyone would disagree that it does exist, in that I've easily see engineers that can produce reams of quality code in a fraction of the time other engineers can produce buggy code.
But yes, I do think there is an amount of judgment at the end of the day, which is why this is a tricky subject.
I agree, measuring productivity is very difficult. And as you said, it can be a moving target as well.
But I don't think you are claiming there are not significant differences in productivity? Given that, it's not unreasonable for the more productive people to ask for more compensation, even if it is difficult to identify who they are.
It's definitely a hard problem. There is probably a lot of room for improvement in general for how we approach this.
But I don't think you are claiming there are not significant differences in productivity? Given that, it's not unreasonable for the more productive people to ask for more compensation, even if it is difficult to identify who they are.
It's definitely a hard problem. There is probably a lot of room for improvement in general for how we approach this.
It is trivial to complain in general.
If a trivial complaint from a colleague who, in your theoretical here, is less productive than you can make your employer not pay you more then that means you are only trivially more productive or negotiating pay based on something other than productivity.
Labor is told repeatedly that wages are based on market forces and companies have to act at a sociopathic level of responding to economics.
Why does the narrative always flip to employers having to act emotionally whenever labor would get an up like decreasing the information asymmetry between employers and employees?
If a trivial complaint from a colleague who, in your theoretical here, is less productive than you can make your employer not pay you more then that means you are only trivially more productive or negotiating pay based on something other than productivity.
Labor is told repeatedly that wages are based on market forces and companies have to act at a sociopathic level of responding to economics.
Why does the narrative always flip to employers having to act emotionally whenever labor would get an up like decreasing the information asymmetry between employers and employees?
If 2x programmers are paid ~2x then the company is using some performance metric to influence pay, but then for pay to remain secret the performance metric also has to be secret.
If one can't make a compelling case to be in a higher "band," and therefore get paid more, then I'm failing to see how they could possibly make the case that they are actually 2x productive.
At most companies I worked for, I'm sure there is 2x-3x difference in "raw" dev productivity, or even 10x once we keep in mind the affects of the correct prioritization and technical solution, but the salary difference is almost always within 50% band. The most productive people could never negotiate 5x salaries.
I'm not saying there would be a 5x, or even 2x, salary. Only that if one cannot even negotiate for oneself, on the basis of some self-perceived productivity disparity, a higher salary (of literally any meaningful magnitude), then it seems quite dubious that such a productivity disparity even exists (especially at the perceived magnitude), given how flawed comparing "raw" productivity often is.
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Let's assume that is true, what has that to do with public pay information. You say yourself you hardly see 2x differences in salary, and I assume you are not only talking about public pay companies (I certainly have not seen it much either even in non public pay companies).
I'm interested to know how having access to information, which the opposing party in said negotiation has access to, would hurt you?
It seems unlikely that it hurts you directly in your own negotiation, and more likely is a benefit. It might hurt you indirectly - in that it helps other employees, who are making less than you, potentially make more, and thereby reduce your own theoretical maximum pay (this doesn't seem very compelling though)... But, it seems naively egocentric to believe that, over the course of one's career, that indirect harm would be greater than the potential direct benefit...
What am I missing here?
It seems unlikely that it hurts you directly in your own negotiation, and more likely is a benefit. It might hurt you indirectly - in that it helps other employees, who are making less than you, potentially make more, and thereby reduce your own theoretical maximum pay (this doesn't seem very compelling though)... But, it seems naively egocentric to believe that, over the course of one's career, that indirect harm would be greater than the potential direct benefit...
What am I missing here?
There tends to be an assumption that more information is always better but it ultimately depends on how one interprets and uses that information (time and absorptive capacity is important). Most models that push for more information assume perfect decision making (utilizing all the information effectively and optimally). That is not always the case (I might even argue often).
Information overload can lead to analysis paralysis, adding complexity to properly weighing information, and ultimately land into poor decision making processes. In the case of salary information, perhaps I perceive that I'm a below average worker. When handed the average, I might be willing to low ball myself because my thought process may think pay is directly correlated to skill or value given to a company and if I perceive my ability to produce as lower than others, I may be willing, during a negotiation process, to accept low balled values.
In the era of the data deluge, we're learning it's not always the case that more information is better. More and even high quality information needs high quality decision making. If you think of human decision making as flawed (hint: we all make flawed decisions so it is), then our processes will not always make good use of new information, even with high quality concise information. It's very possible for more information to result in undesired or negative effects.
We like to pretend we have all sorts of oracle systems out there but we really don't. In the case of knowing salaries I tend to agree with you: knowing what your competition make is better, most of the time.
Information overload can lead to analysis paralysis, adding complexity to properly weighing information, and ultimately land into poor decision making processes. In the case of salary information, perhaps I perceive that I'm a below average worker. When handed the average, I might be willing to low ball myself because my thought process may think pay is directly correlated to skill or value given to a company and if I perceive my ability to produce as lower than others, I may be willing, during a negotiation process, to accept low balled values.
In the era of the data deluge, we're learning it's not always the case that more information is better. More and even high quality information needs high quality decision making. If you think of human decision making as flawed (hint: we all make flawed decisions so it is), then our processes will not always make good use of new information, even with high quality concise information. It's very possible for more information to result in undesired or negative effects.
We like to pretend we have all sorts of oracle systems out there but we really don't. In the case of knowing salaries I tend to agree with you: knowing what your competition make is better, most of the time.
>It's very possible for more information to result in undesired or negative effects
The possibility that something won't help applies to every possible advantage. So reject all of them?
The possibility that something won't help applies to every possible advantage. So reject all of them?
The point is that we assume positive effects of more information and ignore negative effects of more information. I wanted to point out that more information is not always better and can lead to degraded decision making. I see it happen often enough. We bombard people with good information and assume it helps, it can, but it doesn't necessarily. Signal to noise, both from information provided and absorptive capacity are important.
I'm not saying we shouldn't provide good information, I'm saying we shouldn't assume providing good information is always beneficial (which a lot of people and models do).
I'm not saying we shouldn't provide good information, I'm saying we shouldn't assume providing good information is always beneficial (which a lot of people and models do).
Your example, while potentially leading to a lower salary, is not actually an argument against public salary information, unless you assume the goal is universally higher salaries... Which, in your example, you explicitly state is not the goal of the worker... The prior is, in my opinion, generally the safer assumed goal.
Regardless, yes, more information yields the possibility of incorrect analysis, but I don't think that it's obvious that the information in this instance, the salaries of one's peers, would be of such complexity that knowing it would result in frequent misinterpretation to the detriment of the worker. In fact, given the stated goals of the worker in your example, even they use such information to their own (personal) moral, if not their financial, benefit.
Regardless, yes, more information yields the possibility of incorrect analysis, but I don't think that it's obvious that the information in this instance, the salaries of one's peers, would be of such complexity that knowing it would result in frequent misinterpretation to the detriment of the worker. In fact, given the stated goals of the worker in your example, even they use such information to their own (personal) moral, if not their financial, benefit.
I don't think public pay means you can't negotiate your salary to get paid what you believe you deserve.
Did you ever wonder if maybe your negotiation skills aren't as good as you think? Public pay could be a way of finding out if you are selling yourself short.
Did you ever wonder if maybe your negotiation skills aren't as good as you think? Public pay could be a way of finding out if you are selling yourself short.
It's easy to contact salary services to know what the market rate is for your position. If anything, people with better "negotiation skills" do this proactively, while other people wander and complain without realizing much of this information is already publicly available.
> It's easy to contact salary services to know what the market rate is for your position.
This would be easier and more accessible if the data was just available.
This would be easier and more accessible if the data was just available.
You mean like on levels.fyi? In my experience (as an employee and an employer), their data seems very well aligned to reality. Its main flaw is that it’s US-heavy.
You're conflating openness with equality. Public salaries don't mean they have to be the same salary for all, because people are not the same.
It's frequent that the salary of a freelancer working for a company becomes public among its employees. That doesn't mean similar employees will ask the same salary, because they know the freelancer can do something they can't, or they can't do it as well.
It's frequent that the salary of a freelancer working for a company becomes public among its employees. That doesn't mean similar employees will ask the same salary, because they know the freelancer can do something they can't, or they can't do it as well.
Or more literally, you can't take a freelancer on a 3 month contract at 700 a day and say, "well based on what they're being paid, my salary should be 170k!"
> I'm paid for the value I provided the company's bottom line
Completely untrue. Imagine you spend three years building an app. You'll produce zero revenue during those years, and even after it ships, it'll take years more to pay off the money invested.
In reality, like any other good, your pay is determined by what someone is willing to pay for you.
Completely untrue. Imagine you spend three years building an app. You'll produce zero revenue during those years, and even after it ships, it'll take years more to pay off the money invested.
In reality, like any other good, your pay is determined by what someone is willing to pay for you.
Arguably, freelancing or starting your own business will continue to be the best way to achieve this (and it comes with considerable risk), as your negotiation skills and business acumen will contribute to your income, as well every other skill not directly connected to the job description for a specific role.
At a full-time, salaried job, though? Do you get a higher salary because of your demonstrable value, or just because you've become a great salesman? The latter being why tech companies throw up barrier after barrier in their hiring process to try and differentiate between smooth talking and genuine skill (or value).
The point being, would you even work for a company at all knowing where you stand as a freelancer, or a consultant? From where I'm standing, publishing the payroll wouldn't make a jot of a difference.
At a full-time, salaried job, though? Do you get a higher salary because of your demonstrable value, or just because you've become a great salesman? The latter being why tech companies throw up barrier after barrier in their hiring process to try and differentiate between smooth talking and genuine skill (or value).
The point being, would you even work for a company at all knowing where you stand as a freelancer, or a consultant? From where I'm standing, publishing the payroll wouldn't make a jot of a difference.
This is why equality often ends up being a race to the bottom. If you disallow rewarding exceptional behavior and people, or only let everyone have the same thing, then there's just no way around the reality of limited resources and the inherent inequality of genetics and interest/effort.
I don't see calls for equality as meaning that you can't make more money by performing better. I see calls for equality meaning that the basis on which pay rates are decided are applied to all equally.
Maybe we see different things. Many people, including on HN, argue for things like lottery systems for universities, i.e. "you can't get into a better university by performing better in grade school".
I wouldn't want my to work at such a company either, but not because of negotiation power. I'd avoid it because I think it would lead to a sense of competition with coworkers over pay, complete with resentments, and that would be irritating.
> Frankly, I'll never work for a company with public pay. I don't want equality,
Public pay does not mean equality. Most public institutions have public pay, but the janitor does not make as much as the CEO.
> I want to be able to negotiate my value to the company whether that is more or less than others.
In which case, public pay is an incredibly important bit of information for you to frame your negotiation around.
Being unhappy with public pay is like going to a car dealership and being unhappy that there are prices written on the windows of the car its selling. You can still negotiate from those prices. In fact, you're expected to.
Public pay does not mean equality. Most public institutions have public pay, but the janitor does not make as much as the CEO.
> I want to be able to negotiate my value to the company whether that is more or less than others.
In which case, public pay is an incredibly important bit of information for you to frame your negotiation around.
Being unhappy with public pay is like going to a car dealership and being unhappy that there are prices written on the windows of the car its selling. You can still negotiate from those prices. In fact, you're expected to.
>Being unhappy with public pay is like going to a car dealership and being unhappy that there are prices written on the windows of the car its selling.
Not only that, but more information on costs is still better, even if you have the MSRP.
You want to know the invoice, you want to know the holdback if any, you want to know the average selling price in your area, you certainly want to know how much sales tax is, you probably take for granted the gas mileage is disclosed, is there an extra/excessive "documentation" fee...
Not only that, but more information on costs is still better, even if you have the MSRP.
You want to know the invoice, you want to know the holdback if any, you want to know the average selling price in your area, you certainly want to know how much sales tax is, you probably take for granted the gas mileage is disclosed, is there an extra/excessive "documentation" fee...
As an employee, if you consistently deliver measurable and outsized impact, you get high ratings and promotions that will increase your pay dramatically.
And as freelance developer, how do you know you're not underpaid? For example, a client offered you $x to build a system, how do you know that's a fair amount without market data?
And as freelance developer, how do you know you're not underpaid? For example, a client offered you $x to build a system, how do you know that's a fair amount without market data?
Public salaries don't mean that everybody gets paid the same. It just brings the differences to light. If you have the same job title as somebody else but you manage twice as many projects, there's no reason you should both earn the same. But if you contribute the same value to the firm, management should have to explain why you earn more.
Shouldn't your performance influence the title you end up having? Just because your pay is based on your title doesn't mean your relative performance level can't be rewarded. Perform better = increase grade in career track.
I completely agree. My pay is based on a private agreement between me and my employer. It has nothing to do with other employees, just as their pay has nothing to do with me.
> I'll never work for a company with public pay. I don't want equality, I want to be able to negotiate my value to the company whether that is more or less than others.
I don't understand how this affects your ability to "negotiate your value" in the first place. The party you're negotiating with already has this data, regardless of whether you yourself have it as well or not.
I don't understand how this affects your ability to "negotiate your value" in the first place. The party you're negotiating with already has this data, regardless of whether you yourself have it as well or not.
I wouldn't say never but I'd prefer not to.
My compensation information to me is private. I never felt like sharing it either when I was poor or now when I'm better off.
It's like having an open sex life. It's not for me. I don't want to know how often you get laid, nor do I have the need to share my sex life either.
Neither is "wrong" they're just not things I want to share.
My compensation information to me is private. I never felt like sharing it either when I was poor or now when I'm better off.
It's like having an open sex life. It's not for me. I don't want to know how often you get laid, nor do I have the need to share my sex life either.
Neither is "wrong" they're just not things I want to share.
Do you want to know how much other people paid for a car, when you're shopping for one, or any other big ticket item?
Would you be ok with nobody posting MSRPs anywhere?
Would you be ok with nobody posting MSRPs anywhere?
Anonymous? Sure. Do I need to know what Jane Blow paid? No.
What does that mean? The average is enough and you would actively avoid information about the distribution if you could get it?
No they can give me the distribution, I just don’t need to know what Jane Blow paid.
So I don’t need to know what Jane, or my boss or whomever paid for their F-150 and none of them need to know what I paid. But I don’t mind knowing the distribution so long as none of the data points can be tied to any particular person.
So I don’t need to know what Jane, or my boss or whomever paid for their F-150 and none of them need to know what I paid. But I don’t mind knowing the distribution so long as none of the data points can be tied to any particular person.
>so long as none of the data points can be tied to any particular person
Does that mean you are against salaries being published beside names, or you feel any possibility of identifying people should prevent a dataset being released?
Does that mean you are against salaries being published beside names, or you feel any possibility of identifying people should prevent a dataset being released?
It's not the ability to negotiate that you want, because that wouldn't go away just by public pay. You think that in an information-scarce negotiating environment, you can do a better job than your colleagues. You don't want them being able to reference you in their negotiations.
I’ve never understood why people think this is a good idea. If you share your salary with someone, it will go one of two ways - either they will be angry that you make more or you will be resentful that they make more than you. I don’t see what good can come of sharing salaries.
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You can more accurately ascertain the true market value of your work by knowing the salaries of your peers. It has nothing to do with equality.
Also, even in companies that don't post their salaries have pay grades and bands.
Also, even in companies that don't post their salaries have pay grades and bands.
Are you actually able to do that in any typical company. Usually your stuck in a pay band ime
You are making the argument that public pay reduces the upper window on merit-based compensation. This may even be true!
However, consider the other group of people this helps. Minorities, H1B holders, other commonly discriminated classes, who discover they are doing the same work as a colleague and being payed 1/3 the rate. Should these folks get screwed over so you can get your negotiated high pay? Has the trade off even been considered?
I'm not saying you're wrong. I just want to make clear what the other side is arguing for - and it's not some evil plot to screw you in particular. It's to help a different group.
However, consider the other group of people this helps. Minorities, H1B holders, other commonly discriminated classes, who discover they are doing the same work as a colleague and being payed 1/3 the rate. Should these folks get screwed over so you can get your negotiated high pay? Has the trade off even been considered?
I'm not saying you're wrong. I just want to make clear what the other side is arguing for - and it's not some evil plot to screw you in particular. It's to help a different group.
> it's not some evil plot to screw you in particular
It might not be an ‘evil plot’, but corporations routinely support wage suppressing measures.
It might not be an ‘evil plot’, but corporations routinely support wage suppressing measures.
> Should these folks get screwed over so you can get your negotiated high pay?
They’re not getting screwed over. They’re getting paid what they agreed to when they took the job, just like everyone else is.
They’re not getting screwed over. They’re getting paid what they agreed to when they took the job, just like everyone else is.
And it's an unethical system where people who have leverage end up able to negotiate more pay for the same output than people who do not. I suspect that if you weren't in a privileged position, you'd be upset about the disparity too.
You don't know you're "privileged" until you get the data.
You're commenting as though this person somehow has proof of what they apparently do not want to know.
You're commenting as though this person somehow has proof of what they apparently do not want to know.
Leverage is skill and results. Skill and results do not come from "privilege", it is earned through years of hard work, practice and dedication.
Leverage means having the life situation that allows you to walk away. That's something you can build, later in life; but having it from the start can build a huge advantage.
Ah come on, we know that this is not true. For example we know that many CEOs come from very select few universities, have typically unique connections through families etc.. So not really hard work practice and dedication
I generally agree with what you're saying, but it's often more simple than that. The greatest leverage in a salary negotiation comes from the freedom to actually quit, a freedom, especially in the United States, that many do not have (and never "earn"). While, on the other hand, the privileged are born with this freedom.
>The greatest leverage in a salary negotiation comes from the freedom to actually quit
Leverage comes from alternatives to an agreement.
The asymmetry in negotiations is that in most circumstances, employees or candidates tend to have zero (remaining unemployed) or one (remaining at a job) alternatives.
People think they have more alternatives, but there's a huge difference between an alternative at an exact moment, and alternatives that are theoretical within days, weeks or months.
Employers have alternatives, even if they aren't great, right now. So you're not on an equal footing whether you are interviewing or talking to your current employer.
Not to mention, when you do have leverage, exploiting it to the hilt can poison or destroy a future relationship.
Leverage comes from alternatives to an agreement.
The asymmetry in negotiations is that in most circumstances, employees or candidates tend to have zero (remaining unemployed) or one (remaining at a job) alternatives.
People think they have more alternatives, but there's a huge difference between an alternative at an exact moment, and alternatives that are theoretical within days, weeks or months.
Employers have alternatives, even if they aren't great, right now. So you're not on an equal footing whether you are interviewing or talking to your current employer.
Not to mention, when you do have leverage, exploiting it to the hilt can poison or destroy a future relationship.
They don’t last long if they can’t do the job though, even if they had an advantage in their climb to the top.
"At my last job, all salaries were public record, and some dude even put together a website (https://umsalary.info) to make searching easier."
State employers, such as state universities, are generally1 required by state law to make data they generate, including salary data, available for public inspection. The penalties for non-compliance may be criminal as well as civil.2 Thus the incentives to make salary data available, as well as its purpose, are clear (the purpose is government transparency, not employees personal interests around their careers). This rationale for making salaries public and the incentive for complying pre-date the emergence of "diversity and inclusion" policies.
In contrast, private entities are under no such legal obligation to make salary data available. Perhaps that may change in the future but it will never be the same as what is required by "open government" laws, like the one that required the parents salary to be public information.
As for the OP, US labour laws do not place any affirmative obligation on private entities to share salary data. It is true that its illegal to prevent employees from sharing data, but how much much incentive is there to comply when the only "penalty" is reinstatement and backpay. There is arguably more incentive to make employees believe they should keep quiet about their salaries. Historically, that has not been difficult to do in the US since it has been part of the culture.
1 I would guess there are no exceptions but I have not checked every state.
2 http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/openmtg.pdf
State employers, such as state universities, are generally1 required by state law to make data they generate, including salary data, available for public inspection. The penalties for non-compliance may be criminal as well as civil.2 Thus the incentives to make salary data available, as well as its purpose, are clear (the purpose is government transparency, not employees personal interests around their careers). This rationale for making salaries public and the incentive for complying pre-date the emergence of "diversity and inclusion" policies.
In contrast, private entities are under no such legal obligation to make salary data available. Perhaps that may change in the future but it will never be the same as what is required by "open government" laws, like the one that required the parents salary to be public information.
As for the OP, US labour laws do not place any affirmative obligation on private entities to share salary data. It is true that its illegal to prevent employees from sharing data, but how much much incentive is there to comply when the only "penalty" is reinstatement and backpay. There is arguably more incentive to make employees believe they should keep quiet about their salaries. Historically, that has not been difficult to do in the US since it has been part of the culture.
1 I would guess there are no exceptions but I have not checked every state.
2 http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/openmtg.pdf
One thing that surprised me is that the highest salaried employees seem to be in Athletics ( https://umsalary.info/numbers.php ). Is it something specific to that particular university or a normal thing in the US universities?
Athletics typically brings in the most revenue and exposure for a university. I do not agree with these programs being so handsomely rewarded. But it seems most of America disagrees based on college football viewership.
At many schools, the football and/or basketball programs literally fund all other athletics programs...including the scholarships for those other athletes.
Some schools, like LSU, have reported a 100x return or greater on their investment in their football coaches salaries, with respect to increased alumni donations, memorabilia sales, etc.
Some schools, like LSU, have reported a 100x return or greater on their investment in their football coaches salaries, with respect to increased alumni donations, memorabilia sales, etc.
LSU alum here, and I can confirm that our athletic performance is a rising tide. It's my understanding though that LSU athletics pays employees from its own revenue. So it's not like LSU is diverting funds meant for academics to athletics (in the macro sense). As an alum I frequently get asked to donate to the LSU Foundation which is an entity separate from the Tiger Athletic Foundation, which is where you can donate specifically to the athletic department.
Technically only men's football and men's basketball are usually profitable for universities. Most other sports programs are run at a loss, and funded by football and basketball.
Extremely typical. There are cases where the highest paid employee in an entire _state_ is an athletics coach at a state university.
I was flabbergasted to learn Nick Saban from University of Alabama makes $9.3 million annually(2019)[0].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Saban
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Saban
I think the broader point for the HN crowd is this is a great example of why you want to be part of a profit center instead of a cost center in a business. If it's easy for management to try a direct line from incoming revenue to the work you do (like a sales person or, in this case, a football coach), you are in a great negotiating position. If you are in a cost center, management will do everything possible to reduce your salary, even if it the grand scheme of things that cost center is critical to running the business.
The irony is that the people who do the central work for the business, academics at the University, engineers designing the next products, even factory workers often are often cost centres. This leads to the somewhat perverse insentive to remove more and more of your central workers to hire managers and administrators.
One can also try to work for companies that properly appreciate the value of all necessary components of the business, even if one can't directly tally their contribution. Most important factors to success are not easily measurable.
too much or too little?
Too much - universities obviously benefit a lot from the revenue that sports bring in but it'd be nice to see that benefit spread a bit more evenly across professors.
> universities obviously benefit a lot from the revenue that sports bring in but it'd be nice to see that benefit spread a bit more evenly across professors
Professors can't do what he does: bring in big-ticket spending, sponsorships and donations.
Professors can't do what he does: bring in big-ticket spending, sponsorships and donations.
This is true - but professors provide the real value that students retain over time - so admissions fees should pretty much all be funneled to them. This is a problem with how hard to market the value professors provide is - a lot of admissions care more about a good sports team than a good set of professors even though the later factor will be much more important to them two years in.
Basically, people don't act rationally so the market is irrational.
Basically, people don't act rationally so the market is irrational.
> professors provide the real value that students retain over time - so admissions fees should pretty much all be funneled to them
I wouldn't so quickly ignore the additional tuition revenue athletics departments bring in at non-Tier 1 schools.
University athletics are a weird thing. But if the pay bothers you, think of it as a commission. Going cheap on that will likely cost more than it saves.
I wouldn't so quickly ignore the additional tuition revenue athletics departments bring in at non-Tier 1 schools.
University athletics are a weird thing. But if the pay bothers you, think of it as a commission. Going cheap on that will likely cost more than it saves.
...or the Athletic Director. Unfortunately that can usually cost the state long after they are gone as the retirement system is usually setup based on final salaries. In the case of the State of Oregon the 3rd highest paid PERS recipient is Mike Belotti who was the head football coach for 13 years and then AD for 2 years. He gets almost $50K/month in retirement. The only two higher recipients are doctors that worked for the state more than twice as long as Belotti.
https://gov.oregonlive.com/pers/
https://gov.oregonlive.com/pers/
Yea it is pretty common in US universities, coaches are also often the highest paid in the state.
https://moneywise.com/managing-money/employment/the-10-highe...
https://moneywise.com/managing-money/employment/the-10-highe...
College athletics are an entertainment industry grafted onto an educational institution. They bring in an enormous amount of revenue, and must employ star power to compete. Star power costs money.
It's best to not think of athletics as part of the university at all, except when they start to lose money and become parasitic.
It's best to not think of athletics as part of the university at all, except when they start to lose money and become parasitic.
Normal - a reminder that US Football probably brings in a LOT more money than a soccer club at an german university.
ESPN is doing something like $5B (billion) at maybe $450M per year going forward for the SEC conference? Some parts of that deal are going up 3x+.
https://www.sportico.com/leagues/college-sports/2020/sec-esp...
So it's been going up like crazy. The key thing is to get the athletes paid in my view.
These sports are not your average rec league type pickup games.
That ties into massive fundraising by university that rides the back of these games.
ESPN is doing something like $5B (billion) at maybe $450M per year going forward for the SEC conference? Some parts of that deal are going up 3x+.
https://www.sportico.com/leagues/college-sports/2020/sec-esp...
So it's been going up like crazy. The key thing is to get the athletes paid in my view.
These sports are not your average rec league type pickup games.
That ties into massive fundraising by university that rides the back of these games.
Collegiate athletics, especially at the highest division (which University of Michigan is in), can be lucrative revenue streams, particularly in football/basketball; top positions within are compensated nicely.
The basketball or (American) football coach will be the most highly compensated individual at most tier 1 athletics schools
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I found a similar website for a different university a few weeks ago and have been shocked by the same thing. Some of the people had total compensation listed at over $3 million which is a completely insane number if you're not from the US.
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In universities with teaching hospitals, it's common for doctors or medical directors within the hospital to be very well-compensated (>$1M/year, say).
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A simple rule for negotiations is that whoever has more information has an advantage. That means if workers don’t know the exact pay scales they are almost by definition at a disadvantage while the company has the full info.
To the people who think they negotiated really well and want this to be kept from their coworkers I say that a lot of you have been lied to and you are making what everybody else makes or even less. I still remember a guy proudly telling me about his great contract and his face when I told him that I made almost twice as him.
To the people who think they negotiated really well and want this to be kept from their coworkers I say that a lot of you have been lied to and you are making what everybody else makes or even less. I still remember a guy proudly telling me about his great contract and his face when I told him that I made almost twice as him.
I've found a few years ago some people were making more than me at generally lower skill and abilities. So I started giving my other colleagues my past pay history and raise %s and it turns out they were getting significantly less pay. I'm glad for them to be brought up so that my party doesn't seem drastically higher as well when I all for mine.
I've changed job positions and let them know my previous pay since they are in that role now. Sadly I think their pay is generally smaller since I negotiate until I embarrass myself and my friends are women and I understand that the negotiations are less aggressive from that population in general.
I made 12% more than them at the same job role.
And at my current I'm also about that much higher than the bottom paid (a guy internal promotion).
I asked for 12% raise citing my usefulness to the team as a whole. Still waiting on the results of that. It seems I negotiate in a very clumsy manner but still getting better results than those I know about.
Possibly those that get paid less share their pay, but those that get paid more do not?
I've changed job positions and let them know my previous pay since they are in that role now. Sadly I think their pay is generally smaller since I negotiate until I embarrass myself and my friends are women and I understand that the negotiations are less aggressive from that population in general.
I made 12% more than them at the same job role.
And at my current I'm also about that much higher than the bottom paid (a guy internal promotion).
I asked for 12% raise citing my usefulness to the team as a whole. Still waiting on the results of that. It seems I negotiate in a very clumsy manner but still getting better results than those I know about.
Possibly those that get paid less share their pay, but those that get paid more do not?
This sort of illustrates why I dislike talking about salary. This person went from super happy with his life to unhappy, and nothing is any different in his life. I understand that this unhappiness is part of what drives income equality, so I’m glad more people are having these conversations, but I was once in a job for a number of years, where for several reasons I just needed to weather the storm, and I certainly didn’t need to know what my coworkers were making at the time.
So basically — if you're getting exploited, ignorance is bliss?
No, just that a sense of happiness is a relative measure. Do you think you'd be happier earning 50K when everyone else is earning 25K, or 100K where everyone else is earning 200K? Everyone believes he is the latter, but in reality, over time, the former group people probably are happier, I wager.
It’s not really about the dollar amounts. It’s the fact that my employer is using an information asymmetry to arbitrage my labor.
Here’s an analogy. Say I wait tables at a restaurant. If I discover my boss has been skimming off my tips, I’m going to be upset — even if I was perfectly happy with my pay before I learned that.
Here’s an analogy. Say I wait tables at a restaurant. If I discover my boss has been skimming off my tips, I’m going to be upset — even if I was perfectly happy with my pay before I learned that.
Not comparable. That's outright wage theft, not informational asymmetry.
What do you think wage theft is? If you’re getting paid half as much as someone else doing the same job, I’d call that “outright wage theft” too.
That's a negotiation you were disadvantaged in: not something you can literally be sued for in court, and possibly even face criminal charges for.
That's not really germane to the discussion though. The only reason you can be sued or charged for skimming tips is that we decided to make a law against it. It has nothing to do with whether they're comparable in a moral sense.
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If you're happy with what you're getting, are you being exploited?
Personally: I've reached the point where I don't want to know what my colleagues make. I know many of them make significantly more, but that's fine. In some cases I'm outright happy for them.
Personally: I've reached the point where I don't want to know what my colleagues make. I know many of them make significantly more, but that's fine. In some cases I'm outright happy for them.
Exploitation is a tax that your boss (and their boss) is hiding from you. Literally just taking right out of your pocket before you ever even see it, just like a gangster would do.
“If you're happy with what you're getting, are you being exploited?”
Yes you are exploited if you don’t know what would be possible.
Yes you are exploited if you don’t know what would be possible.
The more information you have the better a position you'll be in - always. If you have an extremely stressful event in your life then making sure that finances isn't also a stressor is important for your mental health and, by extension, your physical health. A perfectly valid way to react to being underpaid is to say "the job security is worth this difference in salary while I sort out this other problem in my life" - but in that case it's you that's making the choice that the difference is acceptable. Everyone staying mum on salary only causes companies to be able to get away with exploiting introverts and people with low self-confidence.
If salaries are public it isn't a super rare case where friendly coworkers will help to build you up to asking for that promotion.
If salaries are public it isn't a super rare case where friendly coworkers will help to build you up to asking for that promotion.
> The more information you have the better a position you'll be in - always.
I agree with this 90%. More information is very useful most of the time, as long as it is high quality.
However, given that we humans do not have infinite processing power or infinite emotional capacity, there are obviously limits to the amount of information we want to have at any point in time. And these limits will change depending on the situation and our own internal state.
I agree with this 90%. More information is very useful most of the time, as long as it is high quality.
However, given that we humans do not have infinite processing power or infinite emotional capacity, there are obviously limits to the amount of information we want to have at any point in time. And these limits will change depending on the situation and our own internal state.
This is why I don't discuss pay with anyone. I don't want them to feel bad, and I certainly don't want to feel bad myself.
Are you by any chance ex Google, ex Facebook, multi millionaire tech lead?
You wish! Just a lowly contractor at the time.
> A simple rule for negotiations is that whoever has more information has an advantage
Outside of some progressive companies, what jobs exist where everyone's salary is public at the time of negotiation (when hired?) and people can negotiate salaries 2x or more for the same position?
Do you think you deserve to make 2x what your colleague does?
Did you tell your colleague why you think you deserve 2x their salary?
Outside of some progressive companies, what jobs exist where everyone's salary is public at the time of negotiation (when hired?) and people can negotiate salaries 2x or more for the same position?
Do you think you deserve to make 2x what your colleague does?
Did you tell your colleague why you think you deserve 2x their salary?
It’s not my job to justify my salary to colleagues or reduce. Once they have the info they can ask for more money and management has to justify why one person is higher paid than the other or raise pay. In this particular case I was actually charging less than the contracting companies that often kept 70% of that money for themselves.
But the main point is that knowledge is power. Ignorance may protect your fragile ego from inconvenient truths but it’s not bliss.
But the main point is that knowledge is power. Ignorance may protect your fragile ego from inconvenient truths but it’s not bliss.
> and management has to justify why one person is higher paid than the other
And when they can't, do you think they will raise your coworkers salary to match yours, or bring yours down? (I know what I'd bet on) Persons who benefit from that asymmetry of information may not even know it. I'm not saying you are one of those people, but if your first reaction wasn't "Yes I deserve to get paid 2x my coworker", then I suspect you won't continue to be in a transparent system.
You also skipped over my first question in my previous reply. I am interested in your feedback on that. You claim that "knowledge is power". Can you point to an industry or large segment of jobs where this sort of salary negotiation (such as yours) takes place in a transparent system. Alternatively, can you point to any study/research that backs up your claim?
And when they can't, do you think they will raise your coworkers salary to match yours, or bring yours down? (I know what I'd bet on) Persons who benefit from that asymmetry of information may not even know it. I'm not saying you are one of those people, but if your first reaction wasn't "Yes I deserve to get paid 2x my coworker", then I suspect you won't continue to be in a transparent system.
You also skipped over my first question in my previous reply. I am interested in your feedback on that. You claim that "knowledge is power". Can you point to an industry or large segment of jobs where this sort of salary negotiation (such as yours) takes place in a transparent system. Alternatively, can you point to any study/research that backs up your claim?
"Can you point to an industry or large segment of jobs where this sort of salary negotiation (such as yours) takes place in a transparent system. Alternatively, can you point to any study/research that backs up your claim?
"
One example is CEOs and top execs. Their salaries are public and have shot through the roof in the last few decades. Pro sports also comes to mind. It's much easier to ask for more when you know how much your peers are making.
"
One example is CEOs and top execs. Their salaries are public and have shot through the roof in the last few decades. Pro sports also comes to mind. It's much easier to ask for more when you know how much your peers are making.
Cheeky
I really like how this was handled at Boeing.
Every year, the local SPEEA rep would post an anonymous graph showing compensation compared to experience. The org was large enough that you couldn’t pinpoint everyone, but you could easily see where you stood WRT your peers.
Every year, the local SPEEA rep would post an anonymous graph showing compensation compared to experience. The org was large enough that you couldn’t pinpoint everyone, but you could easily see where you stood WRT your peers.
Yeah, that's actually a key thing I miss from my previous bigcorp job many years ago.
Pay was tied to numerical career grades. Everyone's numerical career grade was public information. Salary ranges (fairly broad and overlapping for each grade) for each were published each cycle. While there was a ton of griping along the lines "seriously, X got promoted to 23!? They just suck up!", it was at least consistent across disciplines and clearly tied listed job responsibilities to a pay range to make justifications for a promotion easier.
I know it's a very common system, but my current company doesn't have that, and I quite miss it.
We somewhat do via titles. E.g. I know the 25 year old engineers who have the title "principle staff engineer" despite not being trusted to do anything directly are absurdly overpaid, but it's really murky and not consistent. E.g. If your title says "software engineer" you're on a completely different scale than someone who's title says "data engineer". And if you have actual experience in the field, you'll be considered a "scientist" or a "technician" instead of an "engineer" depending on the exact role you're hired into.
At any rate, it's really, really, really unclear how anything relates, and going from a "staff X" position to a "junior Y" position is often a pay raise.
Pay was tied to numerical career grades. Everyone's numerical career grade was public information. Salary ranges (fairly broad and overlapping for each grade) for each were published each cycle. While there was a ton of griping along the lines "seriously, X got promoted to 23!? They just suck up!", it was at least consistent across disciplines and clearly tied listed job responsibilities to a pay range to make justifications for a promotion easier.
I know it's a very common system, but my current company doesn't have that, and I quite miss it.
We somewhat do via titles. E.g. I know the 25 year old engineers who have the title "principle staff engineer" despite not being trusted to do anything directly are absurdly overpaid, but it's really murky and not consistent. E.g. If your title says "software engineer" you're on a completely different scale than someone who's title says "data engineer". And if you have actual experience in the field, you'll be considered a "scientist" or a "technician" instead of an "engineer" depending on the exact role you're hired into.
At any rate, it's really, really, really unclear how anything relates, and going from a "staff X" position to a "junior Y" position is often a pay raise.
Boeing is also large enough to pay people reasonable salaries seeing as they're the largest contractor of the DoD.
First thing a union does when they enter a workplace is talk about what everyone is paid.
My last job had very strict rules against sharing how much you got paid. There's only 1 reason, they are underpaying someone. They propose that it's to my benefit because they can then pay me more.
Then a coworker got a better job and told everyone how much he was being paid. This angered lots of people because they were being paid much less and did much more.
What blows my mind. Minimum wage is $15/hr and they were getting $24/hr as senior sysadmins with tons of experience. Soon as they decided to get a new job, they got a nice raise near instantly and they were gone. Yet their time was billed out above $100/hr. It was literally the greed of our employer who kept their wages low begging for someone to offer more money and steal them. Such a high risk for minimal benefit in greed.
My last job had very strict rules against sharing how much you got paid. There's only 1 reason, they are underpaying someone. They propose that it's to my benefit because they can then pay me more.
Then a coworker got a better job and told everyone how much he was being paid. This angered lots of people because they were being paid much less and did much more.
What blows my mind. Minimum wage is $15/hr and they were getting $24/hr as senior sysadmins with tons of experience. Soon as they decided to get a new job, they got a nice raise near instantly and they were gone. Yet their time was billed out above $100/hr. It was literally the greed of our employer who kept their wages low begging for someone to offer more money and steal them. Such a high risk for minimal benefit in greed.
> My last job had very strict rules against sharing how much you got paid.
If you're in the US, I'm pretty sure that's illegal?
If you're in the US, I'm pretty sure that's illegal?
>If you're in the US, I'm pretty sure that's illegal?
Not in the US, but you know whats funny. The timeline of this job was outgoing government who passed the law making it illegal. Then a very short period of time, the incoming government deleted all the previous government's labour laws. So in fact during that time, it was in fact illegal.
Though in context, nobody was punished. We were 2 senior staff down already. They had no opportunity to punish anyone.
It's back to legal today. Your employer can have such a rule.
Not in the US, but you know whats funny. The timeline of this job was outgoing government who passed the law making it illegal. Then a very short period of time, the incoming government deleted all the previous government's labour laws. So in fact during that time, it was in fact illegal.
Though in context, nobody was punished. We were 2 senior staff down already. They had no opportunity to punish anyone.
It's back to legal today. Your employer can have such a rule.
One neat little tip. If you work for a large employer that has h1bs, you can see their starting salary:
https://h1bdata.info/index.php
This assumes of course, that they pay those employees fairly. At my company, we do, so it's a useful source of salary info when negotiating salary.
This assumes of course, that they pay those employees fairly. At my company, we do, so it's a useful source of salary info when negotiating salary.
These numbers do not seem to correspond to actual salaries. If I look up my company I can see multiple entries for job titles that I have specific knowledge of, and the quoted salary is much much lower than anyone's base salary has ever been.
I’m in my 50s. When I was younger, no one talked about pay ever. It was never ever broached.
These days, all my younger coworkers openly discuss pay. I really like the openness today. It’s shared in a way that you’re trying to help your coworker, like “dude you’re totally underpaid I made $20k more than that! Go ask for a raise or find a new job!”
It’s a different sense of camaraderie that people share these days instead of the zero-sum game from when I was younger.
These days, all my younger coworkers openly discuss pay. I really like the openness today. It’s shared in a way that you’re trying to help your coworker, like “dude you’re totally underpaid I made $20k more than that! Go ask for a raise or find a new job!”
It’s a different sense of camaraderie that people share these days instead of the zero-sum game from when I was younger.
I'm also in my 50s and recall when it was completely taboo. Except I worked at a startup a few years back where I was told going in that we were all making the exact same pay from engineers to CTO. We all knew it was below-market pay, but it was supposedly so the company could bootstrap. One day I was having a conversation with a Russian co-worker (on an H1-B, I think) and I said something along the lines of "we're all making $XK/month which is about 25% below market, but hopefully we'll get some funding and that will change soon...". The look on his face told me that something was wrong. "You're making $Xk/month?!" he said. "Yeah, you are too, right... right?" "No, he replied, $2K/month less." I was really surprised because this guy was doing pretty much all of our hardware development and he was pretty brilliant. Shortly after he went to the CEO and (rightly) demanded parity.
At my first US startup the CTO told me that all engineers are making the same slightly below market salaries and receiving same options. A few months later I found that most actually made almost twice and had way more options. I fix this quickly but i still don’t understand how people seem to think that it’s ok to blatantly to somebody
It doesn't even have to be a hand-to-mouth startup to blatantly lie to folks, it can be a multi-billion-dollar multi-national corporation. For instance, when I was a manager at Microsoft I had more than one newly-hired report tell me that their onboard training said there was no stack ranking, which we all now know wasn't even remotely true in the early 2000s.
(New hires would mention this, because one of the first things I'd tell new hires on my team was how stack ranking worked, amongst other parts of the performance review process.)
(New hires would mention this, because one of the first things I'd tell new hires on my team was how stack ranking worked, amongst other parts of the performance review process.)
All companies are required by law to post all H1-B employee salaries, so you don't even have to ask:
https://h1bdata.info/
https://h1bdata.info/
He should've also demanded the compensation for the past time.
That's why it's discouraged from the company perspective. Everyone would realize they're underpaid. :)
Millennials certainly seem more willing to openly discuss salaries, which is a promising trend. I've also noticed that people in NY are much more eager to discuss specific salary numbers than people in SF.
On the east coast you're nobody if you're not rich. On the west coast you're nobody if you're not trying to get rich.
As a New Yorker, that's interesting. Just curious -- do you find people in NY are also more willing to discuss what they pay in rent?
Rent was a hot topic in SF in recent years because costs skyrocketed, so it was actually talked about a lot. I live in NY now and I haven't noticed people talking about rent as much. But I can give you a ballpark figure (if not an exact figure) of how much most of my friends here earn, even though I have never once asked!
How many of those millenials were earning minimum wage?
Cost/benefit analysis says there is nothing for me to gain by discussing my salary with my co-workers and only potential downsides.
Everyone wants to be paid more than they are of course and I'm no exception, but overall I feel like I am being paid pretty close to what I am worth. After accounting for the fact that I work for company with a decent culture, don't take part in an on-call rotation and pretty much get to pick my hours outside of scheduled meetings. I know what the market rate is in my area for my skills and experience, and I negotiate my pay (and raises) with my employer according to that data.
What _would_ hurt me (or at least my image) is if someone who does similar work to me went to their manager and said, "hey manager, bityard says he makes $x more than me, please give me a raise." Now maybe the manager is a completely reasonable guy and agrees completely. But it's a small company and maybe that particular manager isn't so reasonable. Now I'm the bad guy in that manager's eyes for "bragging" about my take-home pay and making him do the work to convince _his_ managers to approve the raise and justify the increased operating costs, passing along my name discreetly to them as well. Or maybe the raise is denied, and the guy quits. Then I'm the bad guy. Or the raise is denied and the guy is fired for something unrelated. It all gets murky and resentful real quick.
Further, if you ask someone at work what their pay is, how do you know they are telling the truth? I can think of several reasons people might lie about what they make by shifting the number in either direction.
At the end of the day, going to your boss and saying you and the other employees compared salaries is frankly a pretty lazy (and likely ineffective) way to ask for a raise. The _right_ way to ask for a raise is to do your own research on market rates, and then _prove_ to your employer why you deserve the going rate (or higher) based on your work performance and other relevant factors. As it always has been.
Everyone wants to be paid more than they are of course and I'm no exception, but overall I feel like I am being paid pretty close to what I am worth. After accounting for the fact that I work for company with a decent culture, don't take part in an on-call rotation and pretty much get to pick my hours outside of scheduled meetings. I know what the market rate is in my area for my skills and experience, and I negotiate my pay (and raises) with my employer according to that data.
What _would_ hurt me (or at least my image) is if someone who does similar work to me went to their manager and said, "hey manager, bityard says he makes $x more than me, please give me a raise." Now maybe the manager is a completely reasonable guy and agrees completely. But it's a small company and maybe that particular manager isn't so reasonable. Now I'm the bad guy in that manager's eyes for "bragging" about my take-home pay and making him do the work to convince _his_ managers to approve the raise and justify the increased operating costs, passing along my name discreetly to them as well. Or maybe the raise is denied, and the guy quits. Then I'm the bad guy. Or the raise is denied and the guy is fired for something unrelated. It all gets murky and resentful real quick.
Further, if you ask someone at work what their pay is, how do you know they are telling the truth? I can think of several reasons people might lie about what they make by shifting the number in either direction.
At the end of the day, going to your boss and saying you and the other employees compared salaries is frankly a pretty lazy (and likely ineffective) way to ask for a raise. The _right_ way to ask for a raise is to do your own research on market rates, and then _prove_ to your employer why you deserve the going rate (or higher) based on your work performance and other relevant factors. As it always has been.
> nothing for me to gain by discussing my salary with my co-workers and only potential downsides
That sort of makes sense from a social consequences standpoint. But, if the data is open, the only real solution for employers is to correct upwards. They aren't going to lower the salary of high salary outliers. It seems like it would raise the water level for everyone.
It's also useful as a way to know you should ask for a raise. You don't have to necessarily mention it when asking.
That sort of makes sense from a social consequences standpoint. But, if the data is open, the only real solution for employers is to correct upwards. They aren't going to lower the salary of high salary outliers. It seems like it would raise the water level for everyone.
It's also useful as a way to know you should ask for a raise. You don't have to necessarily mention it when asking.
> They aren't going to lower the salary of high salary outliers.
True, probably not. But I have worked for companies that would simply stop giving meaningful annual raises if forced to for some reason, which would be the same net result.
> You don't have to necessarily mention it when asking.
Also true, but if person A tells person B what they are being paid, person A has no guarantees that person B will keep their identity a secret. I like my co-workers but I don't trust them as much as I trust my family and friends so it's just not worth the risk.
True, probably not. But I have worked for companies that would simply stop giving meaningful annual raises if forced to for some reason, which would be the same net result.
> You don't have to necessarily mention it when asking.
Also true, but if person A tells person B what they are being paid, person A has no guarantees that person B will keep their identity a secret. I like my co-workers but I don't trust them as much as I trust my family and friends so it's just not worth the risk.
I appreciate your pragmatism, but it falls apart in the statement "do your own research on market rates". How do you discover those without openness about salaries? You could interview at other companies, but then you'd only find other employers' opinions on what they could pay specifically you, not what they could pay someone else like you.
There are lots of ways to do this. Interviews with other companies are certainly a high-effort but valid strategy.
The easier route:
* Lots of web sites report aggregate salary information by profession and location. Often these are not to be trusted because {algorithms and marketing} but can still be a useful data point.
* Look for job listings with compensation information in them.
* In-person networking with your peers in other companies. Every decent-size city has meetups for developers and other tech professionals. Not everyone is going to be willing to share what they make with a near-complete stranger (especially if friends are nearby) but some might. This is pretty much the only time I would voluntarily share my earnings with another person besides my wife. There's no reason for me to fib, and unless I'm being profiled for identity theft or something, there are no downsides.
* Virtual networking, a.k.a. join a Slack, Discord, or other kind of forum with people like you and just ask what someone with your experience and skills should make. Since you (probably) don't know any of these people, there is little consequence.
These are all data points to gather and consider in combination in order to arrive at some kind of ballpark figure. You don't have to show any of your research to your employer, but trust me when I say that it's a crucial step because your employer absolutely does already have a very good idea of what you are worth to them. This is data for you to make sure your number is accurate.
The easier route:
* Lots of web sites report aggregate salary information by profession and location. Often these are not to be trusted because {algorithms and marketing} but can still be a useful data point.
* Look for job listings with compensation information in them.
* In-person networking with your peers in other companies. Every decent-size city has meetups for developers and other tech professionals. Not everyone is going to be willing to share what they make with a near-complete stranger (especially if friends are nearby) but some might. This is pretty much the only time I would voluntarily share my earnings with another person besides my wife. There's no reason for me to fib, and unless I'm being profiled for identity theft or something, there are no downsides.
* Virtual networking, a.k.a. join a Slack, Discord, or other kind of forum with people like you and just ask what someone with your experience and skills should make. Since you (probably) don't know any of these people, there is little consequence.
These are all data points to gather and consider in combination in order to arrive at some kind of ballpark figure. You don't have to show any of your research to your employer, but trust me when I say that it's a crucial step because your employer absolutely does already have a very good idea of what you are worth to them. This is data for you to make sure your number is accurate.
> The _right_ way to ask for a raise is to do your own research on market rates,
This only works until some point. I showed my employer that they pay me around 15% less than median for software engineers in general (there’s public data here on this from taxes). The result was that they told me that 15% is too much offered me “even” an inflation-adjustment and in the end didn’t give me anything. All while also telling me they want to keep me and how I’m one of their best developers.
Often getting a proper raise only works through jumping the ship.
This only works until some point. I showed my employer that they pay me around 15% less than median for software engineers in general (there’s public data here on this from taxes). The result was that they told me that 15% is too much offered me “even” an inflation-adjustment and in the end didn’t give me anything. All while also telling me they want to keep me and how I’m one of their best developers.
Often getting a proper raise only works through jumping the ship.
I want to talk about pay, and make choices based on what I know about other people's pay. I've attempted to do this several times with friends, but for a lot of people pay is just too intimate a number to discuss objectively.
In one case, we discovered that one friend was getting paid $30k less per year than I was, which seemed mostly to be related to the fact his parents convinced him that no one was actually getting the insane tech salaries people talk about here and thus he didn't negotiate. Maybe he took that information with him to his employer and successfully negotiated up, maybe he didn't. I don't know because he started treating me differently and eventually stopped talking to me altogether.
It's not like job title maps to the actual work anyways. Some companies only expect SWEs to work various parts of a huge monolith that magically gets deployed somewhere. Some companies only expect SWEs to own every single part of the process for getting an application from a whiteboard to prod. Some companies have different expectations depending on your org. Some companies vary these expectations based on what they sense they can get individuals to do. That's not even discussing the idea that people can be better (and thus take less time) than others even if they are doing the "same" task. How is pay a useful number in that context?
I'm just soured on the whole idea, I don't see how a system based on this kind of radical transparency doesn't result in either completely leveled salaries or pay reflecting (and enforcing) social hierarchies. I just see people using different social tools based on group perceptions more than the modicum of individual agency I have when I'm able to advocate for my specific contribution's value during negotiations.
In one case, we discovered that one friend was getting paid $30k less per year than I was, which seemed mostly to be related to the fact his parents convinced him that no one was actually getting the insane tech salaries people talk about here and thus he didn't negotiate. Maybe he took that information with him to his employer and successfully negotiated up, maybe he didn't. I don't know because he started treating me differently and eventually stopped talking to me altogether.
It's not like job title maps to the actual work anyways. Some companies only expect SWEs to work various parts of a huge monolith that magically gets deployed somewhere. Some companies only expect SWEs to own every single part of the process for getting an application from a whiteboard to prod. Some companies have different expectations depending on your org. Some companies vary these expectations based on what they sense they can get individuals to do. That's not even discussing the idea that people can be better (and thus take less time) than others even if they are doing the "same" task. How is pay a useful number in that context?
I'm just soured on the whole idea, I don't see how a system based on this kind of radical transparency doesn't result in either completely leveled salaries or pay reflecting (and enforcing) social hierarchies. I just see people using different social tools based on group perceptions more than the modicum of individual agency I have when I'm able to advocate for my specific contribution's value during negotiations.
The problem is that you don't know the value of your contribution - unless you're in accounting or the CFO. At least with knowledge of what other people make, you can know the ratio of relative contributions to compensation.
Without that, you know nothing. You'll be making the case that your performance deserves a 20% raise, and they'll negotiate you down to a 10% raise. Meanwhile everyone else is making twice as much as you. Your estimate of 20% was not based on your value it was an estimate that you made of what sounded reasonable, and what you thought you might be able to get away with. That's easily nullified by the boss always playing hardball, and always giving the impression that they're paying you as much as you possibly can.
How can you possibly know how much you should be paid if you both don't know how much other people are paid, and you don't have access to the books?
Without that, you know nothing. You'll be making the case that your performance deserves a 20% raise, and they'll negotiate you down to a 10% raise. Meanwhile everyone else is making twice as much as you. Your estimate of 20% was not based on your value it was an estimate that you made of what sounded reasonable, and what you thought you might be able to get away with. That's easily nullified by the boss always playing hardball, and always giving the impression that they're paying you as much as you possibly can.
How can you possibly know how much you should be paid if you both don't know how much other people are paid, and you don't have access to the books?
> How can you possibly know how much you should be paid if you both don't know how much other people are paid, and you don't have access to the books?
Surveys & data on job sites, staying plugged into places like this where people discuss salaries semi-anonymously, getting to the offer stage at other companies and seeing what they propose. It's not a perfect strategy, but I'd rather have individual agency over giving companies an excuse to level salaries.
Surveys & data on job sites, staying plugged into places like this where people discuss salaries semi-anonymously, getting to the offer stage at other companies and seeing what they propose. It's not a perfect strategy, but I'd rather have individual agency over giving companies an excuse to level salaries.
A friend of mine worked as an editor for a news paper. He was a new hire, and a woman who has been working as an editor at the same news paper for 9 years asked him what his salary offer was. It turned out she after 9 years was getting paid $3k less than what he was offered as a new hire.
Similar situations arise constantly in the tech sector. If you stay with a company for a few years, you'll probably get surpassed in salary by new college grads depending on the market at the time.
If you let it go too long before you bring it up, when you finally do, you'll get some BS about how they "can't" bump you up because they "can't" authorize that large of a salary bump. A purely BS, arbitrary, rule.
If you let it go too long before you bring it up, when you finally do, you'll get some BS about how they "can't" bump you up because they "can't" authorize that large of a salary bump. A purely BS, arbitrary, rule.
If you find yourself in a situation like that and want to remedy it then get a competing offer. If you're making 80k and sit down with your manager to talk about the possibility of leaving for a 120k position that you're clearly qualified for then a lot of companies will respond with a counter offer. It sucks but you often need to turn your employment rate into a bidding war.
Oh - just FYI - be prepared to jump ship if you do this. Some people are manipulative assholes that react strongly and quickly to any employees standing up for themselves - and other companies are legitimately failing and can't afford the pay bump. In either case you're better off at the new shop. Having an actual job offer to another shop should give you the confidence to risk your current position.
Oh - just FYI - be prepared to jump ship if you do this. Some people are manipulative assholes that react strongly and quickly to any employees standing up for themselves - and other companies are legitimately failing and can't afford the pay bump. In either case you're better off at the new shop. Having an actual job offer to another shop should give you the confidence to risk your current position.
It's best to just go. Once you've accepted the counter offer you've already indicated to your superiors that you're ready to leave
Use competing offers as leverage for as long as possible. You owe the company nothing.
You could accept the counter offer and then be replaced by someone who's willing to work for less (you might even have to train them before you're dismissed). It's just easier to take the new gig and get paid more with a clean political slate
It really depends - sometimes the team I'm working for is worth the hairiness of negotiating the pay raise - other times it's nothing to write home about and jumping ship is easier.
Then I guess you "can't" be bothered to keep working at that company. Pity.
This is business as usual in all industries. Companies don’t value tenure and you’re often better off changing companies for promotion, salary increases, etc.
To be honest, $3k sounds like a tiny variance. I frequently see 20-30k differences on middle management roles. Often 10%-30% differences. Getting several years of 3% increases can put you well behind the market.
This is one of the reasons salary bands are so wide. Employers don’t want to bring current staff up to market but want the ability to hire top talent. Also, there’s a fair bit of budget exceptions that get made when a great candidate comes along (whether they’re great or not, TBD)
To be honest, $3k sounds like a tiny variance. I frequently see 20-30k differences on middle management roles. Often 10%-30% differences. Getting several years of 3% increases can put you well behind the market.
This is one of the reasons salary bands are so wide. Employers don’t want to bring current staff up to market but want the ability to hire top talent. Also, there’s a fair bit of budget exceptions that get made when a great candidate comes along (whether they’re great or not, TBD)
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This is why switching jobs to a new employer is the single best way to get a salary increase. The chances that you will get an increase from an employer's pay schedule (or by active request) is far lower than simply applying somewhere else for the going rate, in the US.
Experience is valuable. Experience with what specifically your current employer does is not.
> Companies don’t value tenure
This is very true. They value your ability to do a job. If you've been around a long time and aren't being valuable in your current job they often won't value you. But, if you are being useful in your current job they will value you.
Tenure is not valued. Usefulness to the company is. Whether you're 20 or 60 this same thing applies.
> you’re often better off changing companies for promotion, salary increases, etc.
This depends.
Companies often view their people as expenses. They often want to get the maximum they can out of someone at the least expense. There are exceptions to this but it's the rule.
So, you need to learn to maximize the thing you value if you want that. Things like position and compensation.
When being courted by a new company they will use these to pull you in. But, if you learn the system at your current employer you can use that system to your benefit as well. Your current company doesn't often see benefit from paying people more and promotions. In some cases, they're looking for the people motivated enough to seek them and not wait for them to be given. Especially at the higher levels.
Of course, using your current companies system to your benefit means you want to stay there.
> 10%-30% differences
Hiring companies are looking for that number which will pull people away. Even from a job they like. What they initially offer is almost always lower than they are able to go.
Just my 2 cents after many years in the systems.
This is very true. They value your ability to do a job. If you've been around a long time and aren't being valuable in your current job they often won't value you. But, if you are being useful in your current job they will value you.
Tenure is not valued. Usefulness to the company is. Whether you're 20 or 60 this same thing applies.
> you’re often better off changing companies for promotion, salary increases, etc.
This depends.
Companies often view their people as expenses. They often want to get the maximum they can out of someone at the least expense. There are exceptions to this but it's the rule.
So, you need to learn to maximize the thing you value if you want that. Things like position and compensation.
When being courted by a new company they will use these to pull you in. But, if you learn the system at your current employer you can use that system to your benefit as well. Your current company doesn't often see benefit from paying people more and promotions. In some cases, they're looking for the people motivated enough to seek them and not wait for them to be given. Especially at the higher levels.
Of course, using your current companies system to your benefit means you want to stay there.
> 10%-30% differences
Hiring companies are looking for that number which will pull people away. Even from a job they like. What they initially offer is almost always lower than they are able to go.
Just my 2 cents after many years in the systems.
> This is very true. They value your ability to do a job. If you've been around a long time and aren't being valuable in your current job they often won't value you. But, if you are being useful in your current job they will value you.
I think this point is correct - but I think a more important point is that companies forget how much value an employee that prevents fires creates. If you work in a position where you reduce risk to the company you'll need to work hard to constantly remind the company of how much risk you're helping them evade.
> Hiring companies are looking for that number which will pull people away. Even from a job they like. What they initially offer is almost always lower than they are able to go.
That's absolutely a core truth - nobody wants to pay more than they have to and salary negotiation is one of the only fields where (in western cultures) we actually haggle over prices. Employees almost never have significant experience advocating for themselves since haggling is a very rare activity.
I think this point is correct - but I think a more important point is that companies forget how much value an employee that prevents fires creates. If you work in a position where you reduce risk to the company you'll need to work hard to constantly remind the company of how much risk you're helping them evade.
> Hiring companies are looking for that number which will pull people away. Even from a job they like. What they initially offer is almost always lower than they are able to go.
That's absolutely a core truth - nobody wants to pay more than they have to and salary negotiation is one of the only fields where (in western cultures) we actually haggle over prices. Employees almost never have significant experience advocating for themselves since haggling is a very rare activity.
There is a sort of stagnancy that can surround people who have been there for years though.
For many devs, the first 3ish months you lack context to be super useful, then that first 2-4 years of hard work and enthusiasm are probably your peak productivity. It gets harder to maintain enthusiasm as the years go by, so some devs who are cruising with 5+ years might actually provide less long term value than a new hire.
For many devs, the first 3ish months you lack context to be super useful, then that first 2-4 years of hard work and enthusiasm are probably your peak productivity. It gets harder to maintain enthusiasm as the years go by, so some devs who are cruising with 5+ years might actually provide less long term value than a new hire.
The 5+ year workers understand, and have experienced, that the promotion system is designed to extract the most value from the greenest thumbs. Tenure is rarely rewarded. Why work harder and harder for nothing?
A friend screened a female candidate years ago. She was highly qualified, with serious experience. When asked what her salary expectations were, she said what she made, but confessed she doubted the prospective employer could possibly pay that.
The reality was she was quite under paid. It's quite saddening that her prior employer seemed to have convinced her that such low pay was top of the industry mark.
The reality was she was quite under paid. It's quite saddening that her prior employer seemed to have convinced her that such low pay was top of the industry mark.
Even as a man this has happened to me. In my case at least (and I think in many cases) is that the market price of labor changes, which requires employers to pay more for new hires, but they don't go back and adjust the salaries of existing employees.
Which basically means they don't value experience in their own company. What better reason to say sayonara?
Given the ongoing inflation in the US is 5.4% so far this year, everyone has gotten their 5.4% cost of living increase for 2021, right?
In another life I worked in a warehouse, eventually I was promoted to Warehouse Manager, one of the first things I did was to try and get everyone a pay raise.
And there was a lady worked in the warehouse who was basically waiting till she could retire, and she'd worked there longer than I'd been alive and she was on an absolute pittance, we literally got guys in off the street (from an agency) and paid them twice what she was on.
She accepted it, and because not talking about salary's was encouraged no-one knew, I don't think even the directors knew how little she was on. But when I brought it up and encourage everyone to talk about pay, she realised, and I got her a raise.
Treat your workers like people and respect them. Look after them and they'll look after your business, I don't understand why so many businesses seem to struggle with understanding that.
And there was a lady worked in the warehouse who was basically waiting till she could retire, and she'd worked there longer than I'd been alive and she was on an absolute pittance, we literally got guys in off the street (from an agency) and paid them twice what she was on.
She accepted it, and because not talking about salary's was encouraged no-one knew, I don't think even the directors knew how little she was on. But when I brought it up and encourage everyone to talk about pay, she realised, and I got her a raise.
Treat your workers like people and respect them. Look after them and they'll look after your business, I don't understand why so many businesses seem to struggle with understanding that.
My company was purchased a few years ago and everyone had to sign new contracts. The contracts included language prohibiting people from discussing their compensation with others.
Someone pointed out that this was just straight-up prohibited, so the contracts were rewritten to remove the clause. The funny thing is that nobody that I know of has shared, or wants to share, information about their compensation. They just wanted the option to do so should they choose.
Someone pointed out that this was just straight-up prohibited, so the contracts were rewritten to remove the clause. The funny thing is that nobody that I know of has shared, or wants to share, information about their compensation. They just wanted the option to do so should they choose.
No, but good luck proving that's why[0] you were fired.
[0] Discussing your salary.
[0] Discussing your salary.
Worker protections have no teeth in the US. It's to the point where factory management can literally be caught on camera saying they fired a worker for trying to organize a union (see American Factory) and the company gets nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Nothing is 'illegal' if it's not enforced.
That hasn't been my experience. In two different companies I worked at (none of them companies I ran myself), the company settled quickly over claims, at least one of which was candidly pretty frivolous. It's annoying to have to find and retain an attorney to get this done, but my expectation is that if you had an attorney bring a credible claim, you'd likely get some degree of satisfaction.
That's nice, but for another point of anecdata I've seen more companies flagrantly break laws, than ones who follow them, especially when it's in the best interest of the company.
Most workers cannot afford to take their employers to court, and the businesses know this and take advantage of it every single day.
Most workers cannot afford to take their employers to court, and the businesses know this and take advantage of it every single day.
Does the situation in the United States seem to back up this anecdote? Do we see companies fail or suffer extreme setbacks from workers exercising their rights across the land? Or do we see companies growing at massive rates while employee compensation has stagnated?
No. They suffer no setbacks, admit to nothing, and there isn't even a record left that can establish a precedent for the next person to get screwed. You can tell through the pathetic press releases of the various agencies responsible, esp. the EEOC: these are the best settlements they're getting.
Your best option is to find the sleaziest, most experienced lawyer possible. A lawyer who is adept at delay, distraction, and costly legal requests. The company will settle for a moderate amount (maybe a couple years salary in exchange for your silence.) You'll give half to the lawyer.
I'm pretty sure that in a lot of cases it's the same lawyers threatening to sue the same companies over the same behavior, and getting the same settlements in return for the same NDA. It can become a relationship between lawyer and company functioning like an external severance pay arbitration department.
Your best option is to find the sleaziest, most experienced lawyer possible. A lawyer who is adept at delay, distraction, and costly legal requests. The company will settle for a moderate amount (maybe a couple years salary in exchange for your silence.) You'll give half to the lawyer.
I'm pretty sure that in a lot of cases it's the same lawyers threatening to sue the same companies over the same behavior, and getting the same settlements in return for the same NDA. It can become a relationship between lawyer and company functioning like an external severance pay arbitration department.
In the US, it's entirely legal to fire someone because of the side they part their hair on, or because you're too attracted to them[*]. As the asshole, I mean person who was fired, your obligation is to eliminate every possible cause other than belonging to a protected class or some specific labor law corner case. If they didn't write about you in an email, you're in trouble.
[*] https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/17/opinion/fired-for-being-b...
[*] https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/17/opinion/fired-for-being-b...
Even if you want to maintain an old-style decorum about keeping salaries private, reaching out to people leaving the company is a great way to get an idea of your coworkers' pay.
I am starting work at a DAO (distributed autonomous organization).
Governance is done with a token and all votes are on the block chain. "Departments" ask the token holders for a budget and must get buy-in to get their proposal approved.
Everything is public because there is no legal entity to hold anything private. All payments to any address's are visible on the chain and can be easily traced.
As an engineering group we recently sat down to discuss what budget we would like to request which required us to specify how much each person would be receiving from the treasury each month we found that everyone preferred the transparency of knowing how much each person or position was making and people felt that their pay was more fair when they knew that it meant how it matched up with other engineers.
Governance is done with a token and all votes are on the block chain. "Departments" ask the token holders for a budget and must get buy-in to get their proposal approved.
Everything is public because there is no legal entity to hold anything private. All payments to any address's are visible on the chain and can be easily traced.
As an engineering group we recently sat down to discuss what budget we would like to request which required us to specify how much each person would be receiving from the treasury each month we found that everyone preferred the transparency of knowing how much each person or position was making and people felt that their pay was more fair when they knew that it meant how it matched up with other engineers.
That’s why we created https://levels.fyi to collectively help people understand compensation and leveling across companies. While individually sharing data points is great, our goal is to help bring all this information completely into the public sphere so even people that don’t have a network or are starting their first tech job have a resource to ensure they’re not getting lowballed.
I do believe anonymous pay transparency is very different from full individual pay transparency too. Anonymously contributing even partially can mitigate a lot of the social stigma around attaching your real identity to compensation figures. That said, it’s still always a good idea to discuss these things with friends!
I do believe anonymous pay transparency is very different from full individual pay transparency too. Anonymously contributing even partially can mitigate a lot of the social stigma around attaching your real identity to compensation figures. That said, it’s still always a good idea to discuss these things with friends!
I was able to really negotiate a meaningful increase in compensation the last time I interviewed around based on the insight from levels.fyi. Thanks!
I've started posting my salary history, prompted by the situation with Apple and a lot of friends on the job market - had some mixed feedback, but positive from my peers at least
https://www.jvt.me/posts/2021/09/09/public-salary-history/
https://www.jvt.me/posts/2021/09/09/public-salary-history/
I actually recently did a blog post in which i talked pretty openly about my pay, earnings, savings and how purchasing power parity fits into all of that (or doesn't): https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/on-finances-and-savings
That said, it always feels a bit shameful to talk about how much you earn, in part due to social conditioning, because of which you correlate how much you earn with your worth. No one wants to be told that their work is worth 10-20x times less than that of someone else (even if knowing that is also useful), which is a revelation that stares me in the face after comparing my salary with that of people abroad.
Oh well, i don't see why openness would be a bad thing, apart from me deciding to be open about this stuff, potential employers deciding that they can underpay me because of these figures, which would put me at a disadvantage compared to the other people who wouldn't talk about that stuff - a problem, that's there in the first place because everyone's salaries aren't public to begin with. It feels like some sort of a catch 22.
That said, it always feels a bit shameful to talk about how much you earn, in part due to social conditioning, because of which you correlate how much you earn with your worth. No one wants to be told that their work is worth 10-20x times less than that of someone else (even if knowing that is also useful), which is a revelation that stares me in the face after comparing my salary with that of people abroad.
Oh well, i don't see why openness would be a bad thing, apart from me deciding to be open about this stuff, potential employers deciding that they can underpay me because of these figures, which would put me at a disadvantage compared to the other people who wouldn't talk about that stuff - a problem, that's there in the first place because everyone's salaries aren't public to begin with. It feels like some sort of a catch 22.
I think that telling your workers not to discuss pay is BS.
I also think publicly posting pay is BS as well.
They are opposite ends of the spectrum of extreme secrecy to extreme openness.
I have a few friends in the industry that candidly discuss compensation, and it's great to understand where one stands/what is achievable.
Besides pay for performance, experience and seniority..
Compensation is very path dependent.
PersonX stayed in a job paying low raises for 10 years keeping their head down until they got cut, then took the first job they could find.
PersonY actively manages their career, moves every 5-7 years, moving proactively when a new firm entices them with better pay.. not when they are desperate to get out of current role / in between jobs.
Of course if these two people land in the same firm in a similar role, they are going to come in at different salaries. It's more than just negotiation. PersonY may value themselves, in terms of compensation, more than PersonX because the path they've taken them has lead to higher salary. They therefore require an even higher salary to be enticed to move.
I have a few friends in the industry that candidly discuss compensation, and it's great to understand where one stands/what is achievable.
Besides pay for performance, experience and seniority..
Compensation is very path dependent.
PersonX stayed in a job paying low raises for 10 years keeping their head down until they got cut, then took the first job they could find.
PersonY actively manages their career, moves every 5-7 years, moving proactively when a new firm entices them with better pay.. not when they are desperate to get out of current role / in between jobs.
Of course if these two people land in the same firm in a similar role, they are going to come in at different salaries. It's more than just negotiation. PersonY may value themselves, in terms of compensation, more than PersonX because the path they've taken them has lead to higher salary. They therefore require an even higher salary to be enticed to move.
In freelance networks I've worked in this is par for the course. I understand the rationale- they'd like their network to be more valuable by being the gatekeeper on everything- but it's extremely off-putting to hear you're never allowed to mention rates. In general, I mistrust services and systems that derive value from opacity.
Information assymetry definitely skews things in employer's favour. Is there any reason the government doesn't require public salary disclosure?
They already do this for stock trading for example, via NBBO. Yet the two largest asset classes: salaries and real estate are entirely in the shadows, traded over the counter as if it's a meat market.
They already do this for stock trading for example, via NBBO. Yet the two largest asset classes: salaries and real estate are entirely in the shadows, traded over the counter as if it's a meat market.
I was surprised to find out that these contract provisions are legal in Australia.
I'm not sure if there has been much discussion on the topic here, but it's something I would definitely like to see changed.
At least there is no provision in the contract that I can't talk about provisions in the contract...
I'm not sure if there has been much discussion on the topic here, but it's something I would definitely like to see changed.
At least there is no provision in the contract that I can't talk about provisions in the contract...
One thing that is frequently overlooked in discussions of publicizing salaries is that there is also a strong social stigma to flaunting wealth or talking about affluence.
Personally I think that this is a good thing since it encourages humility and a sense of equality. I realize that there is a clear market case for publishing salary information, but I also think that we should be considerate of why people generally frown upon such conversations in interpersonal contexts (anonymous listings like levels.fyi are different).
> encourages humility and a sense of equality
You know what encourages equality? Open verification that there is actual equality.
You know what encourages equality? Open verification that there is actual equality.
Indeed. Sense of equality != equality. The OP almost suggests it's better for people to live under a false sense of equality.
A sense of equality is very important for a variety of good reasons. Whether this is more important than equality is a complicated question that is made more complicated by the fact that equality is hard to measure.
True equality is generally rare in a high dimension space. People bring a lot of different things to the table so it is unlikely that two people are doing the exact same - hence differences in pay will always exist. Add to this the fact that people may feel that they are better than average (most people do) and thus entitled to a bump over their peers. Having approximate equality is more realistic. If you accept this, then a comparison against a distribution rather than against a specific individual comparison is a more realistic evaluation.
Like striving for just a sense of low-corruption. A big PR coverup of something bad is a huge win under this goal.
Verification of parity in compensation encourages equality only if there is a clear mechanism to equalize levels. In general there will be mismatches in market forces, budgets, and the like (as well as seniority, the difference between people's opinions of themselves and their opinions of others, etc...).
Having some ambiguity about such levels is also an effective social mechanism that allows us to see each other as equals without needing to get out a ruler. Again, having an anonymous reporting scheme like levels.fyi strikes me as a very good idea, but open and interpersonal salary discussions strike me as a potentially bad idea.
> One thing that is frequently overlooked in discussions of publicizing salaries is that there is also a strong social stigma to flaunting wealth or talking about affluence.
That makes it inappropriate to bring up in a random conversation, but not inappropriate to have on record, or to provide within the shared context of helping each other.
That makes it inappropriate to bring up in a random conversation, but not inappropriate to have on record, or to provide within the shared context of helping each other.
Agreed, I mention that a service like levels.fyi is a very good idea. My point is more that a peer to peer discussion of salary has some potentially serious downsides and it offers an unrealistic comparison relative to a distribution of salaries.
You're not encouraged to talk about salaries but instead try and guess how much people make from social clues like what kind of car they drive, what brand clothes they wear, where they go on holiday, how new their phone is...
Interesting. I find that very few people care enough about what other people make to put any effort into deciphering such clues.
And wealthy people around here don't tend to offer many. Being flashy is considered a bit trashy.
And wealthy people around here don't tend to offer many. Being flashy is considered a bit trashy.
>guess how much people make from social clues like what kind of car they drive, what brand clothes they wear, where they go on holiday, how new their phone is...
All poor indicators IMHO.
All poor indicators IMHO.
This makes it worse, of course, as people go into debt in order to appear wealthier than they are.
Indeed, towards the end of the piece, the author acknowledges this:
"Of course, many workers don’t withhold their salaries out of respect for their supervisors’ wishes but because it can be deeply awkward.
“We have a culture that discourages it,” Pardo said. “People don’t want to talk about money. It’s like talking about religion and politics. It’s uncomfortable.”
As a result, many may be unaware of what the person in the other cubicle or on the other end of the Zoom call earns.
While employer review websites like Glassdoor offer a window into company pay, UNC’s Hirsch pointed out this data is often incomplete and certainly not uploaded for all companies."
"Of course, many workers don’t withhold their salaries out of respect for their supervisors’ wishes but because it can be deeply awkward.
“We have a culture that discourages it,” Pardo said. “People don’t want to talk about money. It’s like talking about religion and politics. It’s uncomfortable.”
As a result, many may be unaware of what the person in the other cubicle or on the other end of the Zoom call earns.
While employer review websites like Glassdoor offer a window into company pay, UNC’s Hirsch pointed out this data is often incomplete and certainly not uploaded for all companies."
To what extent was this cultural stigma created by companies who wanted to discourage their workers from discussing pay, though? It seems more like an effect than a cause to me.
I think that this is a much older sentiment than modern corporations. For one thing the aversion to discussing wealth is more potent in contexts where the information is less related to market forces - people are more open to information about salaries when it is related to their line of work. Saying how much money you make in public (even among friends) is seen as a jerk thing to do. Instead people will say things like 'the starting salary in my field is...', or 'a senior level employee doing this makes around...' - a actual number for them personally is seldom offered (nor should it be outside of very intimate contexts (family). From an informal observation this prohibition is common across Protestant societies, though I think it also shows up around the globe. Talking about money publicly is seen as vulgar and viewing people in terms of money is seen as demeaning to their fundamental worth. You can find religious antecedents to such sentiments from thousands of years ago, so it is unlikely that these were promulgated by corporate interests.
It's completely cultural. Talking about money is considered by many to be crass. I mean, one might as well have tattoos!
Or we should change social norms so that people stop seeing that as a good thing and start seeing it as a bad thing.
If you want to practice some pretty deep humility consider that your opinions about what is right/wrong/polite/impolite might be on the wrong side of history.
If you want to practice some pretty deep humility consider that your opinions about what is right/wrong/polite/impolite might be on the wrong side of history.
> Personally I think that this is a good thing since it encourages humility and a sense of equality.
For whom? The richer ones who know they’re richer and not equal? That’s a really weird way of putting it, as pointed out on other comments.
For whom? The richer ones who know they’re richer and not equal? That’s a really weird way of putting it, as pointed out on other comments.
The right way to respond if any member of management at your company tells you not to discuss pay or working conditions with your coworkers is "Can I get that in writing?" Full stop.
As someone who has spent a most of my life working and was never told what to say or not say about his pay by his employer, my bullshit detector went into the redzone after reading the story that says 50% of employers tell workers not to discuss pay. Was I such an odd exception?
So I dug deeper, and discovered this was an activism piece, not a scientific study, by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research - not a group well known for objectivity.
They commissioned a poll but did not disclose the details of the poll such as the exact questions asked and the responses for each question, which is the basic minimum required to take a poll seriously.
Instead, they published a glossy "brief" - https://iwpr.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Pay-Secrecy-Poli... - which claims 12% of employers prohibit discussing pay -- that's much more plausible than 50%. So how do you get to the headline 50%? Because that is how many people reported being "discouraged" -- but were they discouraged by their employer, by their peers, or by their own conscience? Here is where knowing the actual questions to the poll would be useful.
Please do not listen to any reports of a poll when only the summary results are provided but the specific questions and breakdowns of the answers are not provided. Particularly when the poll is commissioned by a pressure group not known for objectivity.
If you can afford to put together a big glossy "brief" then you have the bandwidth to host result text files that disclose what the questions were and the poll methodology. This is the minimum bar for credibility, an outfit like USA today used to be aware of this, and so is any think tank worth their salt.
Thus my spidey senses detected there is a good chance this is an activism piece that is intentionally misleading to promote some "greater cause".
A good approach is to look at what other stories the same author wrote, to see if there is a track record of spreading propaganda in the name of some moral cause or whether it's just shoddy work.
And indeed the author is a crusading reporter, that is, one who focuses on moral causes and issues rather than news. Real news is messy. Sometimes it supports your beliefs and other times it doesn't. But a look at his articles (as well as their social media presence) reveals an activist who cannot be objective or professional. E.g. the "news" story about racism causing food deserts and creating food "injustice". I get that this is an issue that many on the left are passionate about. But it's not news. it's a cause. And when you start reporting your causes as news stories, then you lose credibility and also hurt your cause.
Here the problem is the general compression: There is a process of learning the truth about a situation, coming to some conclusion about it, and then figuring out the appropriate course of action.
These can be separated into information gathering, issue debate, and then solution advocacy, and are best done by different people with different skillsets. Everyone must do their part well, which means everyone must have integrity. The reporter must seek the truth of the facts, not whatever servers their agenda, and the think tank must have integrity and a commitment to look deeply into issues.
Reporters are supposed to be uncovering hidden information. Not advocating well known issues like food deserts or that many people don't like to reveal their exact pay to their coworkers.
Think tanks who employ PhDs are supposed to be thinking through solutions and advocating solutions. Not pretending to uncover "news".
So when the reporter with a bachelors degree skips over the news gathering part and dives into synthesis or solution advocacy, you can be sure it is a poorly thought out synthesis or solution.
Just as when the think tank tries to create "news", you can be sure the think tank's press release is not newsworthy and sacrifices were made to try to make it "news". It's not like we get a steady stream of new issues to put on a newspaper.
Thus they both do a shoddy job because they lack professionalism and discipline, which unfortunately is the current state of both modern news as well as think tanks. Everyone wants a podium to stand on and shout about the injustice of the world, rather than, you know, being good at a job so that progress can be made.
For example, with this type of misinformation we don't even know what the problem is. If the study had been done right and the actual questions posted, we could have had useful breakdowns of how big of a problem this really is, what industries it's concentrated in, and the methods used by employers. This could then provide real actionable intelligence. But it wouldn't grab headlines. So this is an interesting area that a think tank can do a real study in. But we don't know the results -- all that useful information was sacrificed in order to inflate the problem to make it "news worthy".
So I dug deeper, and discovered this was an activism piece, not a scientific study, by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research - not a group well known for objectivity.
They commissioned a poll but did not disclose the details of the poll such as the exact questions asked and the responses for each question, which is the basic minimum required to take a poll seriously.
Instead, they published a glossy "brief" - https://iwpr.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Pay-Secrecy-Poli... - which claims 12% of employers prohibit discussing pay -- that's much more plausible than 50%. So how do you get to the headline 50%? Because that is how many people reported being "discouraged" -- but were they discouraged by their employer, by their peers, or by their own conscience? Here is where knowing the actual questions to the poll would be useful.
Please do not listen to any reports of a poll when only the summary results are provided but the specific questions and breakdowns of the answers are not provided. Particularly when the poll is commissioned by a pressure group not known for objectivity.
If you can afford to put together a big glossy "brief" then you have the bandwidth to host result text files that disclose what the questions were and the poll methodology. This is the minimum bar for credibility, an outfit like USA today used to be aware of this, and so is any think tank worth their salt.
Thus my spidey senses detected there is a good chance this is an activism piece that is intentionally misleading to promote some "greater cause".
A good approach is to look at what other stories the same author wrote, to see if there is a track record of spreading propaganda in the name of some moral cause or whether it's just shoddy work.
And indeed the author is a crusading reporter, that is, one who focuses on moral causes and issues rather than news. Real news is messy. Sometimes it supports your beliefs and other times it doesn't. But a look at his articles (as well as their social media presence) reveals an activist who cannot be objective or professional. E.g. the "news" story about racism causing food deserts and creating food "injustice". I get that this is an issue that many on the left are passionate about. But it's not news. it's a cause. And when you start reporting your causes as news stories, then you lose credibility and also hurt your cause.
Here the problem is the general compression: There is a process of learning the truth about a situation, coming to some conclusion about it, and then figuring out the appropriate course of action.
These can be separated into information gathering, issue debate, and then solution advocacy, and are best done by different people with different skillsets. Everyone must do their part well, which means everyone must have integrity. The reporter must seek the truth of the facts, not whatever servers their agenda, and the think tank must have integrity and a commitment to look deeply into issues.
Reporters are supposed to be uncovering hidden information. Not advocating well known issues like food deserts or that many people don't like to reveal their exact pay to their coworkers.
Think tanks who employ PhDs are supposed to be thinking through solutions and advocating solutions. Not pretending to uncover "news".
So when the reporter with a bachelors degree skips over the news gathering part and dives into synthesis or solution advocacy, you can be sure it is a poorly thought out synthesis or solution.
Just as when the think tank tries to create "news", you can be sure the think tank's press release is not newsworthy and sacrifices were made to try to make it "news". It's not like we get a steady stream of new issues to put on a newspaper.
Thus they both do a shoddy job because they lack professionalism and discipline, which unfortunately is the current state of both modern news as well as think tanks. Everyone wants a podium to stand on and shout about the injustice of the world, rather than, you know, being good at a job so that progress can be made.
For example, with this type of misinformation we don't even know what the problem is. If the study had been done right and the actual questions posted, we could have had useful breakdowns of how big of a problem this really is, what industries it's concentrated in, and the methods used by employers. This could then provide real actionable intelligence. But it wouldn't grab headlines. So this is an interesting area that a think tank can do a real study in. But we don't know the results -- all that useful information was sacrificed in order to inflate the problem to make it "news worthy".
I have been told at every job but my current one to not discuss pay.
I have been told this formally only once. Every other time was an informal meeting over dinner or at a bar, or being told some nebulous statement like “that’s not really part of our culture here” when a manager discovered that I would freely discuss pay with coworkers.
It is explicitly illegal to require employees to not discuss pay. Of course you’re going to find that most people who were instructed to not discuss it felt “discouraged” and can’t point to some paperwork where it was official
I have been told this formally only once. Every other time was an informal meeting over dinner or at a bar, or being told some nebulous statement like “that’s not really part of our culture here” when a manager discovered that I would freely discuss pay with coworkers.
It is explicitly illegal to require employees to not discuss pay. Of course you’re going to find that most people who were instructed to not discuss it felt “discouraged” and can’t point to some paperwork where it was official
Well now we have two anecdotes. Don't you wish there was an unbiased, trustworthy study we could look at it to resolve this?
I upvoted this because, while there's a lot to unpack in this comment, I think it's valuable to have some criticism of the methodology here. People could easily have interpreted this question differently and that really skews the results.
I also don't know how representative my own experience is. I've only worked a few kinds of jobs, so whether or not I've been told explicitly not to discuss pay isn't relevant to most of the population.
I also don't know how representative my own experience is. I've only worked a few kinds of jobs, so whether or not I've been told explicitly not to discuss pay isn't relevant to most of the population.
At my previous company, we didn't stop anyone from discussing pay. That's obviously illegal. What we did instead is make sure that everyone, including new college hires, understood that talking about pay almost always leads to interpersonal friction, resentment, conflict, lower work productivity, and slower progress of our company toward an IPO. In short, talking about pay would actively damage their bottom line, which is in not something in anyone's best interest. It's not a threat if you just explain how the real world works and that actions have consequences.
Is this satire?
Talking about salaries have always resulted in better or equal pay for everyone involved (except the higher ups, like you) in my experience, and the experience of everyone I know.
Your post sounds like companies claiming that unions would actually hurt you.
If you're underpaying people in order to get to an IPO, people deserve to be aware of that and know the risks involved.
Talking about salaries have always resulted in better or equal pay for everyone involved (except the higher ups, like you) in my experience, and the experience of everyone I know.
Your post sounds like companies claiming that unions would actually hurt you.
If you're underpaying people in order to get to an IPO, people deserve to be aware of that and know the risks involved.
I think the person you're responding to is referring to the social (not economic) outcomes that result when people realize they're paid differently than their peers. Depending on how diverse a team is (in terms of ability, experience, performance) this can open up discussions about what "equal pay" really means.
If ability, experience, and performance are part of how you pay your employees, then a discussion about comparative pay of employees inherently means you are opening up a discussion about the comparative ability, experience, and performance of employees.
I'm not saying that's a bad thing -- but -- some feelings might get hurt in the process.
If ability, experience, and performance are part of how you pay your employees, then a discussion about comparative pay of employees inherently means you are opening up a discussion about the comparative ability, experience, and performance of employees.
I'm not saying that's a bad thing -- but -- some feelings might get hurt in the process.
Mostly agree, but I think there's a companion reason for the triggering of discomfort. The idea that pay is completely merit-based -- as you say "in terms of ability, experience, performance" -- is a comforting lie that we tell ourselves, in my experience. No company has truly objective decisions for salary. There is always a large handful of historical accident and personal relationships stirred in. (If nothing else, in tech a person's salary is partly determined by their previous salary at other companies!)
Discussing the raw numbers of pay exposes that fact as well.
Discussing the raw numbers of pay exposes that fact as well.
For sure, pay is much more driven by immediate staffing needs for retention or hiring. This has more to do with the labor markets and work pipeline than anything about an individual employee.
But people say they should be paid based on ability, performance, and experience. So this is what the conversation will be centered around, whether it is the complete reality for the considerations made by the employer or not.
Alice won’t care that Bob was hired for $10K more because there was a labor shortage and the company was going to lose a contract if they couldn’t hire another person. She just wants her $10K. So, the marginal cost of hiring an additional employee is not only the cost of that employee, but the additional wage demand that would result from the rest of your workforce. This is likely why we see many companies giving bonuses in this labor crunch rather than higher base wages.
But people say they should be paid based on ability, performance, and experience. So this is what the conversation will be centered around, whether it is the complete reality for the considerations made by the employer or not.
Alice won’t care that Bob was hired for $10K more because there was a labor shortage and the company was going to lose a contract if they couldn’t hire another person. She just wants her $10K. So, the marginal cost of hiring an additional employee is not only the cost of that employee, but the additional wage demand that would result from the rest of your workforce. This is likely why we see many companies giving bonuses in this labor crunch rather than higher base wages.
I'm not sure why you are interpreting the parent's comment as similar to "claiming that unions would actually hurt you". It's just a post talking about how management in companies works around the illegality of telling employees not to talk to about pay. It's in the first sentence.
It's not like the parent comment is defending the practice, just how it's done in practice to discourage employees. Yes, groups of employees that don't band together believe that it will hurt their own bottom line if they talk about pay.
It's not like the parent comment is defending the practice, just how it's done in practice to discourage employees. Yes, groups of employees that don't band together believe that it will hurt their own bottom line if they talk about pay.
Are you saying that the poster is saying that they lie to their employees?
I'm honestly not sure what you're saying.
I'm honestly not sure what you're saying.
"Talking about salaries have always resulted in better or equal pay for everyone involved"
What is the exact source on this? I highly doubt every company in existence has the budget to pay everyone "better or equal"
What is the exact source on this? I highly doubt every company in existence has the budget to pay everyone "better or equal"
I address that in the second half of the sentence: "in my experience, and the experience of everyone I know."
I'm not claiming a universal truth. I do think that the original post is much farther away from the truth than my claim, though.
I'm not claiming a universal truth. I do think that the original post is much farther away from the truth than my claim, though.
Have you done an actual survey? I doubt you know the inner workings of every workplace of everyone you know.
You’ll need pretty solid justifications to lower salaries. In a case where a bunch of employees realize they’re underpaid, there’s only three natural outcomes:
- lower paid employees don’t get anything, and start looking for a better paying job
- lower paid employees get compensatory raises
- lower paid employees get nothing and the higher paid members are expected to get lower pays. They proceed to leave for greener pastures (and they only need to find at least equal paying jobs to make it worth it)
The scenario where salaries go down and employees don’t do anything is unrealistic.
- lower paid employees don’t get anything, and start looking for a better paying job
- lower paid employees get compensatory raises
- lower paid employees get nothing and the higher paid members are expected to get lower pays. They proceed to leave for greener pastures (and they only need to find at least equal paying jobs to make it worth it)
The scenario where salaries go down and employees don’t do anything is unrealistic.
This approach works for all kinds of destructive conversations in the workplace.
You don't need to explicitly stop people from complaining about a manager's behavior or other toxic workplace features, you just need to explain to people how discussions around how they feel about a particular management style almost always leads to interpersonal friction, resentment, conflict, lower work productivity, and slower progress of our company toward an IPO.
You see, it's not a threat if you just explain how the real world works and that actions have consequences. /s
You don't need to explicitly stop people from complaining about a manager's behavior or other toxic workplace features, you just need to explain to people how discussions around how they feel about a particular management style almost always leads to interpersonal friction, resentment, conflict, lower work productivity, and slower progress of our company toward an IPO.
You see, it's not a threat if you just explain how the real world works and that actions have consequences. /s
I don't think I ever talked about pay with my coworkers, but the first thing I'd do if someone gave me that speech would be talk about pay. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
> talking about pay almost always leads to interpersonal friction, resentment, conflict
You could take this as an indication that your pay scale is screwed up.
But I guess it's easier to just bully your employees.
You could take this as an indication that your pay scale is screwed up.
But I guess it's easier to just bully your employees.
Telling—being very generous—a lie couched in exaggerated hypotheticals (the lie: if sharing comp harms the company, it's the fault of the person who shared it, not management; exaggeration: this will have some huge and harmful effect on the company such that employees are significantly harmed) to your employees to keep them from acting in their own best interest is—still being very generous—kinda shitty.
Sorry but this is complete bullshit. Everyone should be on an even playing field. Keeping secrets only helps the execs control the peons. The best places I’ve worked at was very open and transparent. I mentioned below that sharing salary helps everyone. It doesn’t hurt the company at all unless the owners want to save every penny they have for themselves.
> What we did instead is make sure that everyone, including new college hires, understood that talking about pay almost always leads to interpersonal friction, resentment, conflict, lower work productivity, and slower progress of our company toward an IPO.
I hope you've provided some very concrete examples how talking about pay delayed an IPO by a certain period of time, and quantified how much exactly hires were losing because of it, in exact dollar values.
Because otherwise, it's just a gaslighting scare tactic.
> It's not a threat if you just explain how the real world works and that actions have consequences.
One of the consequences of bullshitting new hires with vague examples of how the real world works is that you end up with people willing to drink the kool-aid, regardless of their skills and ability. Now maybe that was your primary goal in the first place, but somehow I doubt it.
I hope you've provided some very concrete examples how talking about pay delayed an IPO by a certain period of time, and quantified how much exactly hires were losing because of it, in exact dollar values.
Because otherwise, it's just a gaslighting scare tactic.
> It's not a threat if you just explain how the real world works and that actions have consequences.
One of the consequences of bullshitting new hires with vague examples of how the real world works is that you end up with people willing to drink the kool-aid, regardless of their skills and ability. Now maybe that was your primary goal in the first place, but somehow I doubt it.
> talking about pay almost always leads to interpersonal friction, resentment, conflict, lower work productivity, and slower progress of our company toward an IPO
Try this one with your SO:
"Talking about chores almost always leads to interpersonal friction, resentment, conflict, lower work productivity, and slower progress of our relationship towards marriage"
Try this one with your SO:
"Talking about chores almost always leads to interpersonal friction, resentment, conflict, lower work productivity, and slower progress of our relationship towards marriage"
Ah so you gaslighted them, nice.
Pro athletes' contracts are fairly public knowledge. Does that affect how professional sports teams perform?
Yes? Teams lose valuable players all the time, often to everyone's detriment, over failed contract negotiations. Pay in professional sports is an extremely sore topic. See US women's soccer last year.
> Teams lose valuable players all the time
If they were that valuable, they should've paid them accordingly. Compensation is the most direct marker of "value". If you're valued more, you get paid more.
> often to everyone's detriment
Presumably not the acquiring team's.
> See US women's soccer last year
They played 1 game in 2020, which they won. This year, their W-D-L record reads 15-3-2, which is pretty damn good.[1] Their contract negotiations might have been fractious, but they still performed on the field.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_women%27s_nation...
If they were that valuable, they should've paid them accordingly. Compensation is the most direct marker of "value". If you're valued more, you get paid more.
> often to everyone's detriment
Presumably not the acquiring team's.
> See US women's soccer last year
They played 1 game in 2020, which they won. This year, their W-D-L record reads 15-3-2, which is pretty damn good.[1] Their contract negotiations might have been fractious, but they still performed on the field.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_women%27s_nation...
I make it a point to talk about pay on the regular. I want to know if I'm getting fucked or not.
This is hilarious!
Want to know what some internal career change might look like? Just take a look. Want to see what career path got someone else to where they are? Take a look. Want to know if you are being underpaid/discriminated against? Click on the job title next to your name and see where you stand compared to all employees with the same role.
At a place where Diversity Equity and Inclusion is a stated goal I think this works well. I also know that people don't always get paid the same amount, and (as I often explain to my six-year-old) fair doesn't mean the everything has to be equal, but it is very useful to know where you stand.
At my new job, the information on Levels seemed accurate based on my offer, and I was very happy with it.