Transparency at the Office: Psst...This Is What Your Co-Worker Is Paid

[vacri]

I once did a short stint at a phone survey company that specialised in health and social welfare surveys. I wasn't on this particular survey crew, but I remember a colleague telling me that it was strange - a stranger rings up and with your consent conducts a 20-minute anonymous survery on the subject of abuse, sexual or otherwise, that the respondant suffered as a child.

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

[ryanmolden]

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

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

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

[aston]

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

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

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20100722162634/http://rethinkdb.c...

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

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

[coffeemug]

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

[tehwalrus]

"Negotiation doesn't work super well if the other players have complete information about your strategy."

Economist's point: perfect markets don't work if anyone has restricted information. Employees can't sell their labour at the market rate if they can't see every other salary in the economy... :)

[rorrr]

Looking at their salary model, I think they got it very very wrong:

    Position       | Salary        | Stock Options
    ———————————————+———————————————+————————————————
    Intern         | 50K - 60K,    | prorated	N/A
    Engineer I     | 70K - 80K     | 0.25% - 0.75%
    Engineer II    | 85K - 100K    | 1.0% - 1.5%
    Engineer III   | 105K - 125K   | 1.75% - 2.25%

Your highest-level engineer makes only twice as much as your intern (stocks are worthless, on average). That makes zero sense to me. True senior level engineers are dozens of times more productive than interns, make infinitely fewer mistakes, and know infinitely more. To max out your engineer salaries at 125K in Mountain View, CA is just crazy. No surprise it didn't work out.

[grecy]

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

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

ugh.

[dsymonds]

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

[cmadan]

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

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

[lemming]

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

[the1]

asking what you make is like asking how often you get laid. and whom.

[lemming]

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

[thisone]

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

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

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

[GIFtheory]

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

[newman314]

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

[diminish]

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

[Nate75Sanders]

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

[cmadan]

Well, I wasn't happy in my last salaried job and I didn't know the salaries of my colleagues.

[greghinch]

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

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

[nvr219]

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

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