16 ms·

I'd prefer to see this go in the other direction and make all salary information public. Right now, employers have far more information than employees, and I d

• cracell 9y ago
  No thank you. My salary is private. I do not want my family and friends to know how much I make. I also have never told a potential employer my salary. I believe it stopped things from going on to the interview stage but the way they took my refusal made me assume they paid under market rate.
  • oh_sigh 9y ago
    Ok, but know that completely rational nations have decided to go with OPs way(like Norway)
    • ianai 9y ago
      All such information is public there?
      • marvin 9y ago
        What you pay in taxes is public (anyone can look it up), and it's normally easy to calculate taxable income from that. (Not always, there could be various events that throws the calculation off). Although in recent years, all lookups are logged and displayed to the other party, which has a chilling effect. I would like the old system back.
        • dsacco 9y ago
          So you want the data to be public, but you don't want the data about who accesses the data to be public?
          • geebee 9y ago
            You bring up a very good point, but I'm not sure I see an inconsistency here, Tax records are records owned and controlled by the government. It's information that has already been collected, and is accessible by some institutions, but not others, creating an imbalance in information. I want government to be transparent, and I generally support initiatives to make information public. But I'm not sure I like the idea of the government or some other big brother type knowing who is accessing what information. I say that as a general principle, with notable exceptions.
    • taurath 9y ago
      I'd laugh my ass off if the CEO/upper management of any company in the US had to actually report to their employees how much they made, and not just through salary. There would be an uprising.
      • cellshade 9y ago
        The full compensation for the officers of any public company is available publicly in their filings.
      • harryh 9y ago
        Compensation packages for CEOs and upper management for public companies are, in fact, public in formation (in most cases, there are some exceptions). This sort of thing is routinely reported on by the press. This has been true for a long time.
      • jmcgough 9y ago
        People already know CEO salaries for publicly traded companies, and there's been no uprising.
      • falcolas 9y ago
        No uprising, but there has been an upwelling of CEO compensation, as nobody wants to lose their CEO due to a lack of compensation. IIRC, it's been one of the biggest driving forces in CEO's salaries skyrocketing. I don't think, however, that it would have a similar effect on our (i.e. employees) salaries.
        • secabeen 9y ago
          It's the Lake Wobegon effect. No company wants to say their CEO is below the mean, and pay is a signal of CEO quality, so every company is always trying to pay above the mean, and so the mean inexorably rises and rises.
        • krupan 9y ago
          "I don't think, however, that it would have a similar effect on our (i.e. employees) salaries." Why not?
    • literallycancer 9y ago
      I believe that's part of the reason it's not really possible to get numbers like 5 times the average salary in Norway, while it definitely is as a software engineer in the US.
    • icelancer 9y ago
      "completely rational nations" Ah yes, of course, Norway is a rational nation and others are not. For whatever value of "rational" there is. Maybe you mean Norway exceptionally tightening immigration rules after the Swedish terror attacks? Or is it just public reporting of salary you like so much?
      • oh_sigh 9y ago
        I like tightening immigration too. I wasn't saying that the US or other western nation wasn't rational. I was just saying that other countries that have their shit together as well make the exact opposite decision about salary transparency(or more correctly tax transparency).
    • marcoperaza 9y ago
      Yes, and excellence is not rewarded in such societies. Edit: Look at how pay works in countries where such information is public (i.e. Scandinavia). My understanding is that within a given line of work, everyone makes just about the same amount, adjusted for seniority, regardless of performance.
      • Karunamon 9y ago
        Could you elaborate? This looks like a very throw-away, pithy comment. Edit: Thanks
        • marcoperaza 9y ago
          See my edit.
          • Karunamon 9y ago
            That's a bit different than "excellence not being rewarded" isn't it? Salaries in general seem to be very non-meritocratic, and there are other ways of compensating exceptional people that don't wind up in the check.
            • marcoperaza 9y ago
              I want money for my work, thank you very much. And if I provide more value to my employer, I expect more money than the guy who provides less. Yes, it's up to me to make sure I'm getting my fair share. If I'm too insecure to get what I'm worth, that seems like my problem, not anyone else's.
      • conanbatt 9y ago
        This happens also in germany and spain and europe in general. Its just america that pays so damn much for developers, because of the competing capital. Price transparency is definitely not harming employees, and its also not harming companies in the long run.
  • matt_wulfeck 9y ago
    They don’t need to ask you anymore. You self-reported it to a credit agency and friends, family, potential employers can get that plus other financial information from these agencies.
    • nightski 9y ago
      Where are you seeing this? There is zero income information on any of my credit reports. In addition, if it was so easy to obtain how come my credit card bank still constantly begs me to update my income information?
      • swamp40 9y ago
        https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/10/equifax-breach-fallout-your-salary-history/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/10/equifax-breach-fallout-y...
      • oddlyaromatic 9y ago
        > In addition, if it was so easy to obtain how come my credit card bank still constantly begs me to update my income information? I suspect this one has more to do with trying to engage you so that they may sell you more credit.
      • falcolas 9y ago
        The info is supplemental to what is considered to be a credit report, and thus does not have to appear on your pulled credit reports. Similar to how your FICO score is not part of your credit report; it's a separate paid service that the credit unions pay for so they can charge their own customers.
        • nightski 9y ago
          Right, but this information is easily accessible from family & friends as the parent aluded? If so can you provide a link?
          • 9y ago
  • Sangermaine 9y ago
    >No thank you. >My salary is private. I do not want my family and friends to know how much I make. But have you thought about why you feel this way? I assume you are American, as am I, and so I understand we've been socialized by our culture to feel this way, but it really makes no sense. It's just a way to harm workers by keeping us from seeing when we're being screwed. I'd even go so far as to wager that this entire concept of salary being private was fostered and encouraged by employers for that very reason, because it gives them enormous leverage.
    • icelancer 9y ago
      >>But have you thought about why you feel this way? Yes. I don't want to increase my attractiveness regarding a house robbery, as I live well below my means in a developing neighborhood, amongst other reasons. I very much understand the concept of leverage and have no problems privately discussing my salary amongst groups that I trust. That doesn't include the entire Internet.
      • tclancy 9y ago
        >I live well below my means in a developing neighborhood, amongst other reasons. And what, hide cash in your mattress?
        • icelancer 9y ago
          Not really sure how I store my money is relevant; are you insinuating that my neighbors and potential regionally-available criminals can get my demand deposit and IRA balances at will? EDIT: Ah, I see, you were making a snarky joke about them breaking into my house and stealing stuff. I do have nice things in my house, yes, not cash under my mattress. Just because I live below my means doesn't mean I don't have things I wouldn't want them to steal. Expensive laptops, computing resources for work, and, oh, I don't know, just not a fan of people breaking into my house in general regardless of what I have?
          • throw-away-8 9y ago
  • bearcobra 9y ago
    We could still do a better job of sharing this kind of information in an anonymized way. It definitely gets tough when it's a small organization, but simply knowing what the salaries are for every employee in a department could make a huge difference.
    • ben_jones 9y ago
      Just thinking, but could you pool the anonymized salaries of all small orgs together? For instance what if all YC start-ups pooled salary info together under normalized job titles? Then they wouldn't be able to pay under market, but the data could be made public without ruining anyone.
  • Swizec 9y ago
    As a counterpoint, if it wasn't for all the friendly people on HackerNews and similar places talking about how big their salaries are, I would still be stuck in Eastern Europe happy to write code for $7/hour. The biggest capitalist victory has been convincing people that sharing salary information is impolite. It benefits "the ruling class" in several ways. First it prevents people from realizing they're underpaid and encouraging each other to get better rates. Second it encourages people to spend money on luxury and luxury-ish goods as a way to signal their welloffness to each other. Because at the end of the day, everyone is still curious about this info and almost everyone likes to feel like they're even just a little better off than those around them. It soothes the ego.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    • dnautics 9y ago
      It benefits the "ruling class" because it benefits people who know how to negotiate and use information asymmetry, and those people tend to wind up in the "ruling class".
      • TillE 9y ago
        Nah, you can't exploit information effectively unless you already have capital.
  • stale2002 9y ago
    Would you be OK with anonymized salaries, published only by companies above a certain size?
  • jdavis703 9y ago
    Certain visas such as the E3 publicly disclose what the salary is for a given position. Workers in the federal government also have a public record of their salary.
  • softwarefounder 9y ago
    "No thank you...My salary is private." Only on HN, would the same crowd that ferociously defends data privacy, decide to play devil's advocate on this comment. (Regarding the thread under the parent post)
    • conanbatt 9y ago
      The prize is so tempting. Wage increases galore.
  • tathougies 9y ago
    Some American culture is really weird.
    • dang 9y ago
      Please don't post unsubstantive comments like this.
  • conanbatt 9y ago
    Its easy to make an argument that salary is not private. The employer knows it and the state knows it. Trying to gauge the value of this privacy to you, what % of your wage would you be willing to pay for keep it private, or get to make it public?
  • xupybd 9y ago
    Your salary is, but if anonymised data it need not reveal your salary.
• maxxxxx 9y ago
  I remember seeing a table of salaries for each H-1 visa. I think the information is public.
  • geebee 9y ago
    Yeah, but not with names, and not for every employee (ie., including non H1B workers), right?
    • jogjayr 9y ago
      For H1B workers years of education and education is also provided. In most cases it's enough information for de-anonymization. On the whole you may be right about making salaries public. Norway's made tax return public [1] across the board and the sky hasn't fallen in. Though to be fair in the Norwegian model you find out who has been looking at your salary info. The counter-argument is that a system like that could allow criminals to target their victims more easily. Kidnappers could steal an SSN or other identifier to scope out victims (without a trail leading back to themselves). I also saw a scary article on HN a week ago about the guardianship industry in FL and how it targets seniors with assets to drain. 1. https://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2016/apr/11/when-it-comes-to-tax-transparency-norway-leads-the-field https://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2016/apr/11/when-it-c...
      • maxxxxx 9y ago
        Salaries in US Congress are also public and it's not a big deal. A lot of people don't like the idea of public salaries but I am pretty sure it would be to the benefit of the employee. Salary negotiation as an accountant should be pretty since you know exactly how much people make.
        • Lev1a 9y ago
          The main reason for public salaries for gov employees/law makers/etc. is that they are payed through taxes, employees of other companies (unless they do contract work for gov most of the time) are not.
• ianai 9y ago
  Actually in this case it’s the buyers of labor (employers) that have all the market power. Denything them this additional information gives the producers of labor an edge through asymmetric information, theoretically. In practice, I don’t buy it. Sophisticated entities with lots of resources (aka employers) will always find a way to game any situation to their benefit. They could simply use this as a reason to pay everyone less. I’m all for empowering employees but this doesn’t seem like quite an improvement.
  • cortesoft 9y ago
    It isn't just an information problem, it is a leverage problem. Suppose a company has 100 employees; if an employee leaves, they are down 1/100 of their productivity while they find a replacement. If an employee if fired, they are down somewhere between 50% and 100% of their income, depending on family status. A single job is simply more vital to an employee than it is to a company, so the company has the leverage.
    • ianai 9y ago
      Yet another reason I don’t think this will make a dent into anything.
    • ryandrake 9y ago
      Also, when an employee leaves a company, there's usually a line of 100 others out the door who would love to have the job. The reverse isn't as often true--that there's a line of 100 employers fighting to pick up that employee.
• mirrormind 9y ago
  h1b salary data is public. here you go: https://lcr-pjr.doleta.gov/index.cfm?event=ehLCJRExternal.dspLCRLanding https://lcr-pjr.doleta.gov/index.cfm?event=ehLCJRExternal.ds... btw, its not just shortage of "workers". Like it or not.. some h1b workers do have skills that you lack
  • michaelmrose 9y ago
    Mostly skills like the power of being able to work for under market wages for headhunting firms that make campaign contributions or who provide employees for firms that make campaign contributions.
  • manfredo 9y ago
    Actually this is the salary of the H1B (and some other types of work visas) applications, which specifies a minimum salary. They may make more.
• santaclaus 9y ago
  Salary information, with names and job titles, is public for most (all?) state employees. You can, for instance, look up the salaries of Berkeley professors.
  • FreakyT 9y ago
    Exactly this—we've essentially already done parent's suggestion for public employees, and nothing negative has come of it. It's amazing how many of the comments here are making hyperbolic suggestions about all the terrible things that would happen if salary data were public -- considering the data, these comments are not only misguided, but experimentally proven to be incorrect.
    • danso 9y ago
      What do you mean "nothing negative" has come of it? I agree that the scenarios of robbers targeting folks based on an income database are far-fetched, but I interpret "negative" to include more subtle, systemic impacts, such as furthering the bias against haves/have-nots, or at least making it easier to shame/doxx people. It's also important to note that public employee salaries are within a specific domain with specific features. Among the most important: public agencies already have to publish pay schedules, so it's always been possible to guesstimate what someone makes given their job title. And there's the moral argument that citizens have a right to know how their tax dollars are spent.
• hota_mazi 9y ago
  > make all salary information public. It's a disastrous idea. First of all, if you mean public as in "the whole world can know", I can't imagine anyone being comfortable with that. Advertisers, family members, people who don't like you, etc... surely you see the problem here. If by public you mean "only within the company", even this approach will create resentment and hundreds of hours wasted in discussions and negotiations instead of doing productive work. People will constantly argue that they should be paid as much as "X", and then "X" will complain that she needs to be paid as much as "Y", etc... As someone running a large organization, this is also a logistical nightmare since I usually have very good reasons to compensate X more than Y even if Y might think they should be paid the same amount. Back to the topic, I've never cared what someone was paid at a previous employer, mainly because they can lie and there's no way to know. Besides, even as a hiring manager, I really think it's none of my business how much that previous employer valued this person. What matters is here and now. I just ask people how much they want then I counter with what we're comfortable paying, and then we negotiate. The only thing from past employers that matter is what the person used to do there.
  • secfirstmd 9y ago
    Interestingly in Norway every tax return is public https://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2016/apr/11/when-it-comes-to-tax-transparency-norway-leads-the-field https://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2016/apr/11/when-it-c...
    • adventured 9y ago
      Scandinavia broadly has a culture that isn't replicated anywhere else on earth. There's a strong argument to be had that such very long established cultures cannot easily be shared or adopted, that they build up over hundreds or thousands of years from thousands of impossible to duplicate events and contributions. There are various traits that Scandinavian people also take with them in regards to culture. For example, second and third generation Scandinavian people in the US have been known to do particularly well financially, beyond what the typical person in either America or Scandinavia does. It's not unique to Scandinavia of course. Japan as another example has their own highly distinct, long established culture that leads them to behave in numerous unique ways vs other developed nations. Simply put, due to its culture Norway may be entirely comfortable with one of its norms, while few other nations will be. People aren't just people, so to speak, they're products of the cultures they grow up in; the learned and preferred things acquired in that process, tend to be extremely difficult to alter, even under conscious effort.
• DINKDINK 9y ago
  >I work for a public institution and my salary, and the salary of all my coworkers, is public. This disclosure is a measure put in place to audit some of the spending of the government. Because citizens are compelled through threat of violence or denial of liberty to pay tax it's pretty reasonable for citizens to have access to what their tax money is being used for.
• cm2187 9y ago
  Or a slight variant. Base salary grids, and confidential discretionary compensation. Whatever gets negotiated on hiring in term of variable comp rolls off relatively quickly and then it's up to individual performance. Salary grids remove any curiosity, jealousy and other distractions on that topic for employees. It also avoids a negotiation on hiring, or leaving too much discretion to the employee making the hiring (and possible discrimination). Lets you still reward performance while eliminating discrimination on hiring.
• jeena 9y ago
  In Sweden all this information is for everyone to get for a small fee after two years.
• marcoperaza 9y ago
  This is how you empower the envious to bring everyone down to their level of mediocrity. The vitriol directed at the successful is already damaging us, why should we further encourage it?
  • acty1 9y ago
    Agreed. I just counter this by offering up my Salary during the first few interactions unprompted. Example: Hi Mr. Nice Recruiter/Employer, Thanks for getting in touch. My current position pays X/year and offers (1 very important perk to me). It sounds like a great opportunity and I would love to learn more ... See how easy it is? The best will give them the "Premium Pricing" advantage and everyone else will now fight from rock bottom. I can't wait to see the results in a few years time when meaningful studies have been done. My prediction: - Total pay goes down (inflation adjusted). - It will create a larger gender eage gap since aggressive and ambitious males will game these bullshit red tape. Date of measurement: December 1 2021.
• dcow 9y ago
  Visa salaries and job titles already are public, but anonymized. It's also not too hard to connect the dots when you've only got one Application Security Cloud Architect because you had to make up a position specific enough to disqualify domestic applicants.
• kafkaesq 9y ago
  For what it's worth, I work for a public institution and my salary, and the salary of all my coworkers, is public. That's a choice you've chosen to make. Not everyone else would be comfortable with that choice, for a whole lot of (hopefully obvious) reasons. The sky hasn't fallen. Just because something doesn't, literally, bring the whole sky crashing down doesn't mean it's a... good idea. Or even not a pretty bad idea.
• analog31 9y ago
  >>> This law won't do much, if anything, to change the basic dynamic. For what it's worth, I work for a public institution and my salary, and the salary of all my coworkers, is public. The sky hasn't fallen. Are you a schoolteacher? There is a widespread public backlash against the salaries of schoolteachers, which are perceived to be too high. This has dramatically affected the ability to attract good people. I think that how public perception affects public sector salaries varies from one job to another. The public loves the salary that we pay to our state's college football coach.
• kccqzy 9y ago
  California has something similar for “state employees” which include university professors and high school teachers among others. It’s called Transparent California.
• funkjunky 9y ago
  Um last I checked this same law also requires employers to provide the salary range for the position if requested.
• MarkPNeyer 9y ago
  You don't need to attach names - just job titles should be sufficient to dramatically reduce the information asymmetry.
  • lr 9y ago
    All salaries for everyone should be public. Come up with whatever excuse you want, and it can be countered. And I am a socialist, not a libertarian. The more data that comes to light, the more we will have equality for equal work.