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When I was getting my MBA, one of my professors discussed the idea of a workplace where everyone's compensation was disclosed. The basic conclusion of the discu

When I was getting my MBA, one of my professors discussed the idea of a workplace where everyone's compensation was disclosed. The basic conclusion of the discussion was that since there are virtually no workplaces in which compensation is truly tied to value (and value is impossible to measure anyway), knowing what co-workers make will always lead to morale issues. As far as friends go, I think we will experience feelings of resentment, jealously, inferiority, or superiority to a lesser degree than with coworkers, and are more likely to be happy for a friend who is compensated above what we see as her perceived value, and more willing to try to help someonse who is compensated below what we see as her perceived value. This is at least partly because we are not competing for pieces of the same pie as we are in the workplace.

ryanmahoski 18y ago
As the number of measurable work metrics increases, it becomes (roughly) exponentially more difficult to assess employee net value. If we can triangulate this measured value, we still may have immeasurable metrics--which will always break the formula. To the extent compensation is tied to immeasurable quantities, all employees should resent the system as unfairly hackable. Some work systems are possible to measure and thus compensation may be formulaic and (roughly) just. For example, if I offered you a monetary reward to enter a boolean into a form, you either do the work (by entering a 1 or 0) or you don't. With Mechanical Turk, I can design complex algorithms with failsafe controls that will objectively assess and reward worker value. To the degree I can describe real-world problems and automate inputs and outputs, I can build an efficient and viable organization. Is a fair, transparent system intrinsically "happier"? I am not sure, but I do know the wealth creation potential here is massive.

ryanmahoski 18y ago

As the number of measurable work metrics increases, it becomes (roughly) exponentially more difficult to assess employee net value. If we can triangulate this measured value, we still may have immeasurable metrics--which will always break the formula. To the extent compensation is tied to immeasurable quantities, all employees should resent the system as unfairly hackable. Some work systems are possible to measure and thus compensation may be formulaic and (roughly) just. For example, if I offered you a monetary reward to enter a boolean into a form, you either do the work (by entering a 1 or 0) or you don't. With Mechanical Turk, I can design complex algorithms with failsafe controls that will objectively assess and reward worker value. To the degree I can describe real-world problems and automate inputs and outputs, I can build an efficient and viable organization. Is a fair, transparent system intrinsically "happier"? I am not sure, but I do know the wealth creation potential here is massive.