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Knowing your colleagues' salaries
- ax0n 16y agoMeh. I took a 15% paycut when I got my new job after being laid off. I'm pretty sure my new peers who've been at my new job longer are making close to what I used to pull in. And I don't care. My new co-workers are awesome, my commute is 1/3 the distance, and I feel like I'm making a real difference rather than being a tiny cog whose only purpose was to make the red part of a pie graph get very small.
- staunch 16y agoNow fast forward 2 years. By now all your co-workers agree that you're far more effective than most, and way ahead of Bob. Now you find out Bob is making 75% more than you in the same role. It's going to boil your cabbage, I promise you.
- ax0n 16y agoI had a similar situation at my last job, but my heart wasn't totally in it (if you can't tell) - This small company acts and feels a lot like a start-up, even though it's been around for 13 years and was just purchased by a F500 company in NYC. Not only is my role pretty niche, but as long as I can provide for my family and I keep loving what I do, I really couldn't care if someone else on my team is making six figures. That said, I know even my boss isn't making 75% more than me, and my VP likely isn't, either. I guess you really have to love your job to fully grasp it.
- greyman 16y agoI personally don't know how it feels when you know your colleagues salaries. In all the companies I worked it was forbidden to reveal one's salary. But I can't think of any rational reason why I would want to know it.
- kapilkaisare 16y agoPerhaps. But knowing that someone doing the same work as you, and arguably not as well, is drawing more than you can be disturbing. What you don't know doesn't effect you at all, in this case; what you do know does.
- mansr 16y agoIn this case, what you don't know, you'll suspect. That's at least as bad.
- gaius 16y agoI once interviewed at a company where not only were everyone's salaries published internally, but there were processes in place for challenging them if you thought anyone was paid too much or too little. Not a bad idea. But consider that a policy of forbidding one to reveal one salary is one-sided; the company knows what it's paying everyone. What's their motivation for it, exactly? It's not in your best interest, that's for certain.
- spuz 16y agoThere is no rational reason but that's exactly the point. People are irrational when it comes to judging how much they think they or their colleagues should be paid. Most people think they deserve or at least try to get paid better than the average of their colleagues. Salaries should either be totally opaque or totally transparent. You don't want the situation where the politics of compensation damages a company as noted in this recent HN article: http://bhorowitz.com/2010/08/23/how-to-minimize-politics-in-your-company/ http://bhorowitz.com/2010/08/23/how-to-minimize-politics-in-...
- robryan 16y agoWell keeping your bosses honest would be the main thing, forcing the figures to be published would mean that they can't single out people to pay more or less without providing some kind of reason. Keeping them secret allows them to take advantage of company loyalty and those that don't make a big fuss.