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I think it would quite quickly turn into yet another source of conflict between employees. The problem with "equal pay" is direct comparisons only work in jobs

by xienze 8y ago

I think it would quite quickly turn into yet another source of conflict between employees. The problem with "equal pay" is direct comparisons only work in jobs that are essentially assembly line work, e.g., person A and person B do exactly the same thing every single day, and their output can be measured in exactly the same way, namely how many widgets each person produces in a given time period. Finding a difference in pay in that situation is cause for concern. But that's not how a lot of jobs, software development included, work. It's entirely possible for someone fresh out of school to be a far more valuable team member than someone with ten years experience... yet we would point to a disparity in pay between those two people as [sexist, ageist, whatever-ist]. Now let an experienced employee find out they're getting paid less than someone with far less experience? Hooo boy, talk about creating a toxic environment.

chillacy 8y ago
Performance is one explanation between differences between two people but will it explain differences between one sample of thousands and another sample of thousands? Are men really less performant than women on aggregate?
- xienze 8y ago
  > Are men really less performant than women on aggregate? I don't think that's the conclusion being reached here. What I'm getting at is performance is a VERY hard thing to quantify to everyone's satisfaction (after all, I doubt anyone thinks that they aren't a valuable employee, and everyone has numerous examples of "well this other guy sucks, I'm much better than him"), but it has a major impact on pay. But for this specific case, there's one of two things happening: 1. As another poster said, "men" is code for "men working under H1-B visas." 2. In an effort to not look sexist, Google let the pendulum swing the other way and pay women more out of general principle.
munk-a 8y ago
I think this only really comes up when pay disparity is as extreme as it is now, when some people at a company (outside of C-level) are making 300k and others are making 32k there is a good reason to be aggressive about fixing pay disparity.
- alasdair_ 8y ago
  I don’t have a problem with a spinal surgeon making over 10X what her receptionist makes.
- EpicEng 8y ago
  >when some people at a company (outside of C-level) are making 300k and others are making 32k there is a good reason to be aggressive about fixing pay disparity Why? That's far too simplistic. Are you comparing e.g. a senior engineer to a part time janitor? Why should their pay be closer? Look at the position and demand for it. Comparing salary without context is a waste of time (unless you truly believe market forces shouldn't be relevant, but I think you'll have a hard time convincing people in the US to join your side.)
- renholder 8y ago
  >...when some people at a company (outside of C-level) are making 300k and others are making 32k there is a good reason to be aggressive about fixing pay disparity. You're completely throwing context out of the window, though, and that's a dangerous precedent. Is the person making 300k in sales? Is the person making 32k merely the frontline helpdesk? To try to "even it out, to decrease the dispairity, and - thus - the inequality" would mean the sales person and the helpdesk person making around 150k but only one of them is performing highly skilled, desired, sought-after work and the other is a generalist whom can easily be replaced. You intentionally devalue the sales person to add unwarranted value to the frontline helpdesk person. So, your sales person leaves and your helpdesk person stays with your company until they either die or company runs under or what-have-you. They could improve themselves to move up the ranks but where's the onus for that, if they're already making gold bars, without having had to have done anything to actually earn that value? The entire premise is wrought with problems because it doesn't address the principal fact that the desparities probably exist for a reason...
maxxxxx 8y ago
"I think it would quite quickly turn into yet another source of conflict between employees. " there are plenty of environments where salaries are known and there is not more conflict than anywhere else. For example Congress staffers' salaries are public, there are huge pay differences for the same position but it sill works. I think most arguments against transparency are spread by employers to keep the information asymmmwetry.In most markets the party that has more information will have the advantage.
derefr 8y ago
> direct comparisons only work in jobs that are essentially assembly line work Counter-example: pay on commission. Salespeople are "directly compared", but are not doing exactly the same work. Still, the work they are doing is fungible—you can compute the value in dollars both of closing one big account, or ten small accounts, and compare those. This is essentially how a very small subset of IT people get paid, as well: vulnerability researchers, who make a living off of bug bounty programs. Attempts have been made to expand this approach. Some FOSS projects have bounties on each issue, where whoever submits a PR for that issue (that gets merged) gets paid the bounty. The question is how to scale this approach to work that requires more than a single person to complete. (I.e. how to distribute the "spoils" of a bounty among a team.) There are historical examples one could look at of bounty programs where the entrants were teams (e.g. the Netflix Prize), but IIRC in none of them were any of the teams really motivated by the bounty above all; rather, they were just in competition with the other teams to be the first ones to solve an eminently-achievable-but-challenging problem, and it was competition for competition's sake—essentially, a sport.
- NotATroll 8y ago
  I don't think that's realistic to try and implement at many people's places of work. Stable incomes are essential for most people's sanity. Always being at risk of having projects shift away from work you do, and to work other people do directly conflicts with that stability most people are looking for. You could be spending an incredible amount of time trying to catch up with another project, while still maintaining your own, all the while having the looming threat of not being able to pay your bills over you head. Freelancer type pay isn't for everyone. Which goes back to that issue of not having an objective measurement to pay by.
eli_gottlieb 8y ago
>I think it would quite quickly turn into yet another source of conflict between employees. The problem with "equal pay" is direct comparisons only work in jobs that are essentially assembly line work, e.g., person A and person B do exactly the same thing every single day, and their output can be measured in exactly the same way, namely how many widgets each person produces in a given time period. Finding a difference in pay in that situation is cause for concern. When I was in industry, our company was a 20-person R&D house that paid everyone equally, from new hires like me to founders of the company. And it worked great!
- deleted 8y ago
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deleted 8y ago
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sct202 8y ago
The first company I worked for did equal pay for all new hires, but pay raises and promotions were variable and the raise percentages varied on company performance (so a promotion could be +7% on quarter and then +6.5% the next quarter). We would all occasionally compare over the years and it would always come up that there would be a small difference (<$1k) where someone happened to hit a lucky streak of getting promoted in a better % year, and people's feelings would be hurt.
astura 8y ago
Many organizations function just fine with salary transparency- professional sports, governments, military, etc.
bjourne 8y ago
In reality, the person fresh out of school is likely being underpaid and would benefit greatly from salary transparency. I.e your example is working against the point you are trying to make.

by xienze 8y ago

chillacy 8y ago

Performance is one explanation between differences between two people but will it explain differences between one sample of thousands and another sample of thousands? Are men really less performant than women on aggregate?

xienze 8y ago
> Are men really less performant than women on aggregate? I don't think that's the conclusion being reached here. What I'm getting at is performance is a VERY hard thing to quantify to everyone's satisfaction (after all, I doubt anyone thinks that they aren't a valuable employee, and everyone has numerous examples of "well this other guy sucks, I'm much better than him"), but it has a major impact on pay. But for this specific case, there's one of two things happening: 1. As another poster said, "men" is code for "men working under H1-B visas." 2. In an effort to not look sexist, Google let the pendulum swing the other way and pay women more out of general principle.

munk-a 8y ago

I think this only really comes up when pay disparity is as extreme as it is now, when some people at a company (outside of C-level) are making 300k and others are making 32k there is a good reason to be aggressive about fixing pay disparity.

alasdair_ 8y ago
I don’t have a problem with a spinal surgeon making over 10X what her receptionist makes.
EpicEng 8y ago
>when some people at a company (outside of C-level) are making 300k and others are making 32k there is a good reason to be aggressive about fixing pay disparity Why? That's far too simplistic. Are you comparing e.g. a senior engineer to a part time janitor? Why should their pay be closer? Look at the position and demand for it. Comparing salary without context is a waste of time (unless you truly believe market forces shouldn't be relevant, but I think you'll have a hard time convincing people in the US to join your side.)
renholder 8y ago
>...when some people at a company (outside of C-level) are making 300k and others are making 32k there is a good reason to be aggressive about fixing pay disparity. You're completely throwing context out of the window, though, and that's a dangerous precedent. Is the person making 300k in sales? Is the person making 32k merely the frontline helpdesk? To try to "even it out, to decrease the dispairity, and - thus - the inequality" would mean the sales person and the helpdesk person making around 150k but only one of them is performing highly skilled, desired, sought-after work and the other is a generalist whom can easily be replaced. You intentionally devalue the sales person to add unwarranted value to the frontline helpdesk person. So, your sales person leaves and your helpdesk person stays with your company until they either die or company runs under or what-have-you. They could improve themselves to move up the ranks but where's the onus for that, if they're already making gold bars, without having had to have done anything to actually earn that value? The entire premise is wrought with problems because it doesn't address the principal fact that the desparities probably exist for a reason...

maxxxxx 8y ago

"I think it would quite quickly turn into yet another source of conflict between employees. " there are plenty of environments where salaries are known and there is not more conflict than anywhere else. For example Congress staffers' salaries are public, there are huge pay differences for the same position but it sill works. I think most arguments against transparency are spread by employers to keep the information asymmmwetry.In most markets the party that has more information will have the advantage.

derefr 8y ago

> direct comparisons only work in jobs that are essentially assembly line work Counter-example: pay on commission. Salespeople are "directly compared", but are not doing exactly the same work. Still, the work they are doing is fungible—you can compute the value in dollars both of closing one big account, or ten small accounts, and compare those. This is essentially how a very small subset of IT people get paid, as well: vulnerability researchers, who make a living off of bug bounty programs. Attempts have been made to expand this approach. Some FOSS projects have bounties on each issue, where whoever submits a PR for that issue (that gets merged) gets paid the bounty. The question is how to scale this approach to work that requires more than a single person to complete. (I.e. how to distribute the "spoils" of a bounty among a team.) There are historical examples one could look at of bounty programs where the entrants were teams (e.g. the Netflix Prize), but IIRC in none of them were any of the teams really motivated by the bounty above all; rather, they were just in competition with the other teams to be the first ones to solve an eminently-achievable-but-challenging problem, and it was competition for competition's sake—essentially, a sport.

NotATroll 8y ago
I don't think that's realistic to try and implement at many people's places of work. Stable incomes are essential for most people's sanity. Always being at risk of having projects shift away from work you do, and to work other people do directly conflicts with that stability most people are looking for. You could be spending an incredible amount of time trying to catch up with another project, while still maintaining your own, all the while having the looming threat of not being able to pay your bills over you head. Freelancer type pay isn't for everyone. Which goes back to that issue of not having an objective measurement to pay by.

eli_gottlieb 8y ago

>I think it would quite quickly turn into yet another source of conflict between employees. The problem with "equal pay" is direct comparisons only work in jobs that are essentially assembly line work, e.g., person A and person B do exactly the same thing every single day, and their output can be measured in exactly the same way, namely how many widgets each person produces in a given time period. Finding a difference in pay in that situation is cause for concern. When I was in industry, our company was a 20-person R&D house that paid everyone equally, from new hires like me to founders of the company. And it worked great!

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

sct202 8y ago

The first company I worked for did equal pay for all new hires, but pay raises and promotions were variable and the raise percentages varied on company performance (so a promotion could be +7% on quarter and then +6.5% the next quarter). We would all occasionally compare over the years and it would always come up that there would be a small difference (<$1k) where someone happened to hit a lucky streak of getting promoted in a better % year, and people's feelings would be hurt.

astura 8y ago

Many organizations function just fine with salary transparency- professional sports, governments, military, etc.

bjourne 8y ago

In reality, the person fresh out of school is likely being underpaid and would benefit greatly from salary transparency. I.e your example is working against the point you are trying to make.