6 ms·

It seems that GP did that, and learned that these studies ignore inconvenient factors.

mcny 9y ago
What we should mandate is transparency. We all think we are expert negotiators but we are all idiots. We will all be better off if all salary and all compensation information is public and easily accessible. Sadly, a lot of people think they have something to lose and will never support it.
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  I don't want my salary to be transparent. There is something called privacy. My salary is a private matter. I really don't believe I'm any kind of expert in negotiation.
  - oblio 9y ago
    His point is that your need for privacy is preventing group wins. You want to avoid a bit of shame or envy but by making this decision we, as employees, lose a lot of our leverage. You wouldn’t have to negotiate a better salary if it would be obvious that you are underpaid.
    - sokoloff 9y ago
      I think a "fair" distribution of pay for software engineers would more unequal than it is currently. (This is the logical financial conclusion of believing in the 3x, if not 10x, engineer, which I do.) I have people who work on my teams who are absolutely fantastic and, while already well-paid, probably should make more. I have other people on my team, with the same title, same education, same on-paper responsibilities, same city, same years of experience, who might be below the median pay and are still overpaid based on my estimation of their contributions relative to their peers. You can't look only at a spreadsheet and determine that it's "obvious that you are underpaid", IMO.
      - oblio 9y ago
        That only works the way you think it works if most people agree with you. I doubt that... Plus it's really hard to determine who is actually a 10x contributor, even more so universally (across projects, teams, companies).
        majormajor 9y ago
        It's really not that hard to see, on a single team, who's contributing twice as much as who else. You don't even have to be a manager - sometimes managers are the last to be sure, actually. Generally people who complain about lazy coworkers end up settling on a lot of the same people... Being a manager just gives you official venues like feedback requests to realize "oh everyone else sees it too."
        crdoconnor 9y ago
        Managers are usually terrible at knowing who is contributing on a software team and they're the ones who set pay. This is 100% a red herring as far as pay transparency is concerned anyway. If you're not being unfair you have no reason to hide anything.
    - saiya-jin 9y ago
      ... which is already massively in place. at least in EU it's normal that senior dev salary is maybe 50-100% higher than freshly hired junior. Yet the fresh hire can do at most 10% of the work compared to seasoned one, for many months/years to come. Where is the fairness? This is pure socialism, no reality check of reward for added value. If these things would be REALLY fair, entry level positions would start say 5k, and truly senior/leads/extra talent would be easily having 70-100k of whatever currency you fancy. And this ignores the nice little fact that progressive taxation erases some of this difference, but employer doesn't care about this. Let's be honest - especially in software dev field, which is currently massively overpaid in regard of other engineering professions compared to other engineering fields, there is really not much to complain right now. If you suck at interviews/negotiations, don't envy and cry for some over-equality, but better learn some soft skills, which are much better asset to whole life than just-another-framework-du-jour. People that are able to get salaries they think they deserve don't complain about these things. Things can't be realistically much more equal.
    - ameister14 9y ago
      It would also prevent raises.
      - oblio 9y ago
        You're assuming that I'm a world were transparency goes up, good negotiators go extinct? :)
        ameister14 9y ago
        Logically, if I know that in giving one person a raise, everyone will ask for the same raise, I just won't give anyone a raise that isn't negotiated by the entire group, which takes longer and is less likely to occur without conflict. It actually extends to the whole market, too - if all salaries are transparent, then an RN makes x. They can't make more than that, anywhere they go. It gives a floor, sure - if they get hired, they'll get paid the same as everyone else; it just also makes a ceiling, and, I believe, may slow income growth in general.
        oblio 9y ago
        Salary growth for the past 30 years has been slower than productivity growth. So I'd see your point as already happening, companies have already capped salaries, except for executives, who basically set their own salaries.
        briandear 9y ago
        However consumer prices have gone down over the same period. A refrigerator today costs much less in terms of labor hours than it did 30 years ago. So productivity growth has led to a rise in living standards.
        knightofmars 9y ago
        > So productivity growth has led to a rise in living standards. I love seeing this statement. It's true but the people who post it never follow up evaluating whether or not productivity growth has far out-paced the rise in living standards. If productivity growth has been exponential while the rise in living standards has been linear that's a sign that there's a problem regardless of whether or not living standards have risen.
  - everyone 9y ago
    Why? What benefit does that entail? Is is greater than the benefits of transparency?
    - dingo_bat 9y ago
      Yes. My privacy is not a trivial matter. Think of it like this. Will you be willing to post your entire web browsing history to a publicly available archive regularly? It will help prevent a lot of illegal activity if everyone agreed to do that.
  - jabot 9y ago
    > I really don't believe I'm any kind of expert in negotiation. That means that transparency works _for_ you, not against you.
    - dingo_bat 9y ago
      But that doesn't mean I'm ready to give up my privacy.
      - mcny 9y ago
        That is exactly what they want us to think. I'm glad you at least realize there is information asymmetry at play here. Thank you for keeping an open mind. You have come farther than many people I've talked to. We can get there.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- crusso 9y ago
  It would be an interesting experiment. Has it been done before? That could lead to some unpleasant things: * A lot of unavoidable angst as people of less worth to the business are proven to be paid less in no uncertain terms. * More internal strife as people jockey for identifiable rank within the organization based upon their salaries. "Why is Sue paid $10k more than I am? Sue wasn't at her desk all week last week while I was here busting my butt." * Eventually, many managers and organizations would just sidestep the battle by paying everyone the same thing based upon easy-to-identify metrics like seniority. As a result, the people with more value to the business will find jobs at companies that pay them according to a better measure of their bottom-line worth. With no one left but the lowest-common-denominator employees, the company flounders and fails.
  - fyi1183 9y ago
    In certain Nordic countries (Sweden at least, I believe), all tax data is public. By extension, everybody's income is public as well. It doesn't seem to be an issue.
    - crusso 9y ago
      A quick Google turned up some refutation of your statement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9907147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9907147 Looking further, it appears that Sweden has decreased the amount of transparency by requiring that people make specific requests that notify the taxpayer of the request. http://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-salaries-freely-available-2017-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-salaries-freely-availa... Apparently, there were issues. I'd like to see this experiment run for a longer period of time in more culturally diverse environments, though.
  - majormajor 9y ago
    > Eventually, many managers and organizations would just sidestep the battle by paying everyone the same thing based upon easy-to-identify metrics like seniority. As a result, the people with more value to the business will find jobs at companies that pay them according to a better measure of their bottom-line worth. With no one left but the lowest-common-denominator employees, the company flounders and fails. In most fields, there are already companies which pay wildly different amounts for the same jobs, so the people contributing more in those similar roles are already highly incentivized to leave for higher-paying pastures.

mcny 9y ago

What we should mandate is transparency. We all think we are expert negotiators but we are all idiots. We will all be better off if all salary and all compensation information is public and easily accessible. Sadly, a lot of people think they have something to lose and will never support it.

dingo_bat 9y ago
I don't want my salary to be transparent. There is something called privacy. My salary is a private matter. I really don't believe I'm any kind of expert in negotiation.
- oblio 9y ago
  His point is that your need for privacy is preventing group wins. You want to avoid a bit of shame or envy but by making this decision we, as employees, lose a lot of our leverage. You wouldn’t have to negotiate a better salary if it would be obvious that you are underpaid.
  - sokoloff 9y ago
    I think a "fair" distribution of pay for software engineers would more unequal than it is currently. (This is the logical financial conclusion of believing in the 3x, if not 10x, engineer, which I do.) I have people who work on my teams who are absolutely fantastic and, while already well-paid, probably should make more. I have other people on my team, with the same title, same education, same on-paper responsibilities, same city, same years of experience, who might be below the median pay and are still overpaid based on my estimation of their contributions relative to their peers. You can't look only at a spreadsheet and determine that it's "obvious that you are underpaid", IMO.
    - oblio 9y ago
      That only works the way you think it works if most people agree with you. I doubt that... Plus it's really hard to determine who is actually a 10x contributor, even more so universally (across projects, teams, companies).
      - majormajor 9y ago
        It's really not that hard to see, on a single team, who's contributing twice as much as who else. You don't even have to be a manager - sometimes managers are the last to be sure, actually. Generally people who complain about lazy coworkers end up settling on a lot of the same people... Being a manager just gives you official venues like feedback requests to realize "oh everyone else sees it too."
        crdoconnor 9y ago
        Managers are usually terrible at knowing who is contributing on a software team and they're the ones who set pay. This is 100% a red herring as far as pay transparency is concerned anyway. If you're not being unfair you have no reason to hide anything.
  - saiya-jin 9y ago
    ... which is already massively in place. at least in EU it's normal that senior dev salary is maybe 50-100% higher than freshly hired junior. Yet the fresh hire can do at most 10% of the work compared to seasoned one, for many months/years to come. Where is the fairness? This is pure socialism, no reality check of reward for added value. If these things would be REALLY fair, entry level positions would start say 5k, and truly senior/leads/extra talent would be easily having 70-100k of whatever currency you fancy. And this ignores the nice little fact that progressive taxation erases some of this difference, but employer doesn't care about this. Let's be honest - especially in software dev field, which is currently massively overpaid in regard of other engineering professions compared to other engineering fields, there is really not much to complain right now. If you suck at interviews/negotiations, don't envy and cry for some over-equality, but better learn some soft skills, which are much better asset to whole life than just-another-framework-du-jour. People that are able to get salaries they think they deserve don't complain about these things. Things can't be realistically much more equal.
  - ameister14 9y ago
    It would also prevent raises.
    - oblio 9y ago
      You're assuming that I'm a world were transparency goes up, good negotiators go extinct? :)
      - ameister14 9y ago
        Logically, if I know that in giving one person a raise, everyone will ask for the same raise, I just won't give anyone a raise that isn't negotiated by the entire group, which takes longer and is less likely to occur without conflict. It actually extends to the whole market, too - if all salaries are transparent, then an RN makes x. They can't make more than that, anywhere they go. It gives a floor, sure - if they get hired, they'll get paid the same as everyone else; it just also makes a ceiling, and, I believe, may slow income growth in general.
        oblio 9y ago
        Salary growth for the past 30 years has been slower than productivity growth. So I'd see your point as already happening, companies have already capped salaries, except for executives, who basically set their own salaries.
        briandear 9y ago
        However consumer prices have gone down over the same period. A refrigerator today costs much less in terms of labor hours than it did 30 years ago. So productivity growth has led to a rise in living standards.
        knightofmars 9y ago
        > So productivity growth has led to a rise in living standards. I love seeing this statement. It's true but the people who post it never follow up evaluating whether or not productivity growth has far out-paced the rise in living standards. If productivity growth has been exponential while the rise in living standards has been linear that's a sign that there's a problem regardless of whether or not living standards have risen.
- everyone 9y ago
  Why? What benefit does that entail? Is is greater than the benefits of transparency?
  - dingo_bat 9y ago
    Yes. My privacy is not a trivial matter. Think of it like this. Will you be willing to post your entire web browsing history to a publicly available archive regularly? It will help prevent a lot of illegal activity if everyone agreed to do that.
- jabot 9y ago
  > I really don't believe I'm any kind of expert in negotiation. That means that transparency works _for_ you, not against you.
  - dingo_bat 9y ago
    But that doesn't mean I'm ready to give up my privacy.
    - mcny 9y ago
      That is exactly what they want us to think. I'm glad you at least realize there is information asymmetry at play here. Thank you for keeping an open mind. You have come farther than many people I've talked to. We can get there.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
crusso 9y ago
It would be an interesting experiment. Has it been done before? That could lead to some unpleasant things: * A lot of unavoidable angst as people of less worth to the business are proven to be paid less in no uncertain terms. * More internal strife as people jockey for identifiable rank within the organization based upon their salaries. "Why is Sue paid $10k more than I am? Sue wasn't at her desk all week last week while I was here busting my butt." * Eventually, many managers and organizations would just sidestep the battle by paying everyone the same thing based upon easy-to-identify metrics like seniority. As a result, the people with more value to the business will find jobs at companies that pay them according to a better measure of their bottom-line worth. With no one left but the lowest-common-denominator employees, the company flounders and fails.
- fyi1183 9y ago
  In certain Nordic countries (Sweden at least, I believe), all tax data is public. By extension, everybody's income is public as well. It doesn't seem to be an issue.
  - crusso 9y ago
    A quick Google turned up some refutation of your statement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9907147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9907147 Looking further, it appears that Sweden has decreased the amount of transparency by requiring that people make specific requests that notify the taxpayer of the request. http://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-salaries-freely-available-2017-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-salaries-freely-availa... Apparently, there were issues. I'd like to see this experiment run for a longer period of time in more culturally diverse environments, though.
- majormajor 9y ago
  > Eventually, many managers and organizations would just sidestep the battle by paying everyone the same thing based upon easy-to-identify metrics like seniority. As a result, the people with more value to the business will find jobs at companies that pay them according to a better measure of their bottom-line worth. With no one left but the lowest-common-denominator employees, the company flounders and fails. In most fields, there are already companies which pay wildly different amounts for the same jobs, so the people contributing more in those similar roles are already highly incentivized to leave for higher-paying pastures.