4 ms·

As a member of academia where our (low) salaries are published in a government website, I find it rather strange to know that in private companies the salaries

As a member of academia where our (low) salaries are published in a government website, I find it rather strange to know that in private companies the salaries are not public. You mean that different people doing the same job earn a different salary? How is that even possible? How do people put up with this bullshit?

altvali 7y ago
There are arguments on both sides. We want to make sure that companies don't offer lower salaries to immigrants, blacks, women etc. On the other hand, productivity varies wildly among different people doing the same job.
- enriquto 7y ago
  > On the other hand, productivity varies wildly among different people doing the same job. But then they are not doing the same job, and it is reasonable that they earn more. In a grocery store, the prices are public and visible to all clients and other stores. You are reasonably sure that the seller is not reaching a "private agreement" with most other clients. This kind of public information is a basic tenet of a market economy. Otherwise the whole thing is taken over by arbiters (aka "negotiators") instead of productive people. I honestly do not understand why such an important part of the economy (the actual salaries!) is not bound by the same rule.
  - hirako2000 7y ago
    It costs less capital hence increase profit (or competitiveness) to keep this private. Retailers would do the same with their price if it was practical. Actually, with b2b sales it is exactly the case, prices are most often kept confidential. I'm not supporting the practice, I just don't see how it could be any different,unless you start forcing key actors in this system to disclose.
    - enriquto 7y ago
      > I'm not supporting the practice, I just don't see how it could be any different,unless you start forcing key actors in this system to disclose. Lest the workers unionize and make it stop.
  - swsieber 7y ago
    > But then they are not doing the same job, and it is reasonable that they earn more The issue is wether everybody realizes they aren't doing the same job. > In a grocery store Comparing performance of people is a lot more subjective than comparing food. Your comparing apples to oranges here. If performance was easy to compare, it'd be a lot easier to push for transparent salary information.
    - enriquto 7y ago
      > If performance was easy to compare, it'd be a lot easier to push for transparent salary information. If performance is not easy to compare, what is the point of assigning different salaries to people?
      - sokoloff 7y ago
        Because people’s performance is different, even if it’s hard to reduce that to a numeric score in a totally objective way. When I look back over my career, I know which 20 or so engineers I’d want to hire for a startup where engineering mattered. Even if I can’t assign an exact percentage how much better they were, I sure know who they are.
  - yibg 7y ago
    The problem is very few people do the same job in software. You're not writing the same code, in the same domain etc. Looking back to jobs I've had in the past, my job was always different even from people on the same team. We specialized in different parts of the code base, or using different technologies or just gravitated towards different focuses. e.g. I was the data guy, we had someone else that was really good at debugging hard problems and someone we'd always consult for API design.
- moralestapia 7y ago
  >We want to make sure that companies don't offer lower salaries to immigrants, blacks, women etc. What? If anything, that would be an argument IN FAVOR of public salaries ...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - fastball 7y ago
    Right. The first part of the comment is a reason in favor, the latter portion is a reason against. > "There are arguments on both sides"
    - moralestapia 7y ago
      You're right. I kind of messed up the message.
- jawns 7y ago
  My job is "software engineer." I work with many other software engineers. Some have 1-2 years of experience. Some have 10+ or 20+. It's possible to create strata -- junior, mid-level, senior, etc. -- and say that for a particular open role, you are hiring for only mid-level engineers. But there's always going to be some wiggle room. Maybe you'll get one applicant with 3 years of experience applying for a mid-level role, and you see a lot of promise in them, but you realize they'll need a higher level of training. And maybe you'll get another applicant with 10 years of experience applying for the same role, and you know they're solid and will need very little ramp-up time or hand-holding. So it makes perfect sense to offer the latter candidate more than the former candidate, even if you're willing to hire them both. (And chances are, the latter candidate will expect more than the former candidate.)
geocar 7y ago
In the private sector, your salary comes from revenue, and your ability to negotiate your salary, that is, your leverage, comes from the impact you can have on that revenue. In government, your salary comes from taxes, or absent sufficient tax revenue, from inflation (i.e. the government just prints more money).
- codingslave 7y ago
  This is often a lie. It's common for revenue generators to make as low as the company will pay them, and management who is producing little value to extract the wealth
  - geocar 7y ago
    Just because you make the donuts doesn't necessarily mean you're responsible for Dunkin' Donuts revenue: If I (management) can hire someone else to make as many donuts as you for less, then of course I will. That means you have little leverage to negotiate a higher salary. However if I can open and hire for ten donut shops per year, I've got their combined revenue as leverage for negotiating my salary. I'm not competing with you, but with my fellow executive who can only open and hire for six per year. What do you think the analogue is for government work?
BeetleB 7y ago
Are you in the US? I ask because in every university I've been to: 1. Salaries were public info. 2. There was a large disparity in pay (even for the same tenure level and same department).
- enriquto 7y ago
  I'm in France. What do you mean by "large diparity" exactly? Here there is not a huge disparity between an entry-level associate professor and an end of career full professor with all possible merits. The ratio between these two salaries is about 3: https://www.emploi-collectivites.fr/grille-indiciaire-etat-maitre-conferences/0/5141.htm https://www.emploi-collectivites.fr/grille-indiciaire-etat-m... https://www.emploi-collectivites.fr/grille-indiciaire-etat-professeur-universites-pu-toutes-disciplines/0/5138.htm https://www.emploi-collectivites.fr/grille-indiciaire-etat-p...
uk_programmer 7y ago
> You mean that different people doing the same job earn a different salary? How is that even possible? Do you mean the same job or the same job title? Unless you are working in a job where it is very well defined what your responsibilities are different people even with the same job title might be doing very different work. I have the same job title as the guy next to me and he can't write a lick of JavaScript and spends all day writing VB / C#. All I do is JavaScript pretty much. I am sure we are paid differently as my skills are less valuable to the business (I believe).
IkmoIkmo 7y ago
> How do people put up with this bullshit? Because the group that gets the highest salaries is also the group that wouldn't put up with lower salaries. And the group that gets the lowest salaries, is also the group that puts up with the lowest salaries. That's why nothing changes. People don't randomly get more money. They get it because they ask for it, demand it, push for it, negotiate, plan, make deals, long-term agreements etc, which results in a pay raise. Others quietly and diligently do their jobs, and don't. Fact is that most managers will not give you a raise by themselves, unless it's standard company policy, which is quite rare outside of government organisations. A manager giving you a raise means two things: either he has to get more budget from his manager, which means asking for a favour, making a business case, spending his political capital within the organisation, time, headaches etc. Or the manager already has budget available, and he'll be most keen to spend it on hiring extra manpower, or spending it on a raise on the other people who are asking for it (and at risk of leaving). That's why there's no reason for a manager to give you a raise, unless there's indications he actually has to. e.g. because you're at risk of leaving to another department or company, or staying with the company but unsatisfied which damages the manager/employee relationship. The fastest way to give your manager this indication is to start up the conversation, be vocal about your career aspirations and expectations. There's a group of people who aren't vocal like that, and they overlap almost entirely with the group of people that doesn't call to arms. It's the same people. That's why the system stays like this.
scarface74 7y ago
> As a member of academia where our (low) salaries are published in a government website, > I find it rather strange to know that in private companies the salaries are not public. Why does this come off as “people still watch TV. I haven’t owned a TV in 20 years”? Are you really saying that you didn’t know that the private sector doesn’t publish salaries on a website? > How do people put up with this bullshit? The same could be said about why academics put up with the “bullshit” of “low” salaries. Why is it so strange that people would make different trade offs than you do?

altvali 7y ago

There are arguments on both sides. We want to make sure that companies don't offer lower salaries to immigrants, blacks, women etc. On the other hand, productivity varies wildly among different people doing the same job.

enriquto 7y ago
> On the other hand, productivity varies wildly among different people doing the same job. But then they are not doing the same job, and it is reasonable that they earn more. In a grocery store, the prices are public and visible to all clients and other stores. You are reasonably sure that the seller is not reaching a "private agreement" with most other clients. This kind of public information is a basic tenet of a market economy. Otherwise the whole thing is taken over by arbiters (aka "negotiators") instead of productive people. I honestly do not understand why such an important part of the economy (the actual salaries!) is not bound by the same rule.
- hirako2000 7y ago
  It costs less capital hence increase profit (or competitiveness) to keep this private. Retailers would do the same with their price if it was practical. Actually, with b2b sales it is exactly the case, prices are most often kept confidential. I'm not supporting the practice, I just don't see how it could be any different,unless you start forcing key actors in this system to disclose.
  - enriquto 7y ago
    > I'm not supporting the practice, I just don't see how it could be any different,unless you start forcing key actors in this system to disclose. Lest the workers unionize and make it stop.
- swsieber 7y ago
  > But then they are not doing the same job, and it is reasonable that they earn more The issue is wether everybody realizes they aren't doing the same job. > In a grocery store Comparing performance of people is a lot more subjective than comparing food. Your comparing apples to oranges here. If performance was easy to compare, it'd be a lot easier to push for transparent salary information.
  - enriquto 7y ago
    > If performance was easy to compare, it'd be a lot easier to push for transparent salary information. If performance is not easy to compare, what is the point of assigning different salaries to people?
    - sokoloff 7y ago
      Because people’s performance is different, even if it’s hard to reduce that to a numeric score in a totally objective way. When I look back over my career, I know which 20 or so engineers I’d want to hire for a startup where engineering mattered. Even if I can’t assign an exact percentage how much better they were, I sure know who they are.
- yibg 7y ago
  The problem is very few people do the same job in software. You're not writing the same code, in the same domain etc. Looking back to jobs I've had in the past, my job was always different even from people on the same team. We specialized in different parts of the code base, or using different technologies or just gravitated towards different focuses. e.g. I was the data guy, we had someone else that was really good at debugging hard problems and someone we'd always consult for API design.
moralestapia 7y ago
>We want to make sure that companies don't offer lower salaries to immigrants, blacks, women etc. What? If anything, that would be an argument IN FAVOR of public salaries ...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- fastball 7y ago
  Right. The first part of the comment is a reason in favor, the latter portion is a reason against. > "There are arguments on both sides"
  - moralestapia 7y ago
    You're right. I kind of messed up the message.
jawns 7y ago
My job is "software engineer." I work with many other software engineers. Some have 1-2 years of experience. Some have 10+ or 20+. It's possible to create strata -- junior, mid-level, senior, etc. -- and say that for a particular open role, you are hiring for only mid-level engineers. But there's always going to be some wiggle room. Maybe you'll get one applicant with 3 years of experience applying for a mid-level role, and you see a lot of promise in them, but you realize they'll need a higher level of training. And maybe you'll get another applicant with 10 years of experience applying for the same role, and you know they're solid and will need very little ramp-up time or hand-holding. So it makes perfect sense to offer the latter candidate more than the former candidate, even if you're willing to hire them both. (And chances are, the latter candidate will expect more than the former candidate.)

geocar 7y ago

In the private sector, your salary comes from revenue, and your ability to negotiate your salary, that is, your leverage, comes from the impact you can have on that revenue. In government, your salary comes from taxes, or absent sufficient tax revenue, from inflation (i.e. the government just prints more money).

codingslave 7y ago
This is often a lie. It's common for revenue generators to make as low as the company will pay them, and management who is producing little value to extract the wealth
- geocar 7y ago
  Just because you make the donuts doesn't necessarily mean you're responsible for Dunkin' Donuts revenue: If I (management) can hire someone else to make as many donuts as you for less, then of course I will. That means you have little leverage to negotiate a higher salary. However if I can open and hire for ten donut shops per year, I've got their combined revenue as leverage for negotiating my salary. I'm not competing with you, but with my fellow executive who can only open and hire for six per year. What do you think the analogue is for government work?

BeetleB 7y ago

Are you in the US? I ask because in every university I've been to: 1. Salaries were public info. 2. There was a large disparity in pay (even for the same tenure level and same department).

enriquto 7y ago
I'm in France. What do you mean by "large diparity" exactly? Here there is not a huge disparity between an entry-level associate professor and an end of career full professor with all possible merits. The ratio between these two salaries is about 3: https://www.emploi-collectivites.fr/grille-indiciaire-etat-maitre-conferences/0/5141.htm https://www.emploi-collectivites.fr/grille-indiciaire-etat-m... https://www.emploi-collectivites.fr/grille-indiciaire-etat-professeur-universites-pu-toutes-disciplines/0/5138.htm https://www.emploi-collectivites.fr/grille-indiciaire-etat-p...

uk_programmer 7y ago

> You mean that different people doing the same job earn a different salary? How is that even possible? Do you mean the same job or the same job title? Unless you are working in a job where it is very well defined what your responsibilities are different people even with the same job title might be doing very different work. I have the same job title as the guy next to me and he can't write a lick of JavaScript and spends all day writing VB / C#. All I do is JavaScript pretty much. I am sure we are paid differently as my skills are less valuable to the business (I believe).

IkmoIkmo 7y ago

> How do people put up with this bullshit? Because the group that gets the highest salaries is also the group that wouldn't put up with lower salaries. And the group that gets the lowest salaries, is also the group that puts up with the lowest salaries. That's why nothing changes. People don't randomly get more money. They get it because they ask for it, demand it, push for it, negotiate, plan, make deals, long-term agreements etc, which results in a pay raise. Others quietly and diligently do their jobs, and don't. Fact is that most managers will not give you a raise by themselves, unless it's standard company policy, which is quite rare outside of government organisations. A manager giving you a raise means two things: either he has to get more budget from his manager, which means asking for a favour, making a business case, spending his political capital within the organisation, time, headaches etc. Or the manager already has budget available, and he'll be most keen to spend it on hiring extra manpower, or spending it on a raise on the other people who are asking for it (and at risk of leaving). That's why there's no reason for a manager to give you a raise, unless there's indications he actually has to. e.g. because you're at risk of leaving to another department or company, or staying with the company but unsatisfied which damages the manager/employee relationship. The fastest way to give your manager this indication is to start up the conversation, be vocal about your career aspirations and expectations. There's a group of people who aren't vocal like that, and they overlap almost entirely with the group of people that doesn't call to arms. It's the same people. That's why the system stays like this.

scarface74 7y ago

> As a member of academia where our (low) salaries are published in a government website, > I find it rather strange to know that in private companies the salaries are not public. Why does this come off as “people still watch TV. I haven’t owned a TV in 20 years”? Are you really saying that you didn’t know that the private sector doesn’t publish salaries on a website? > How do people put up with this bullshit? The same could be said about why academics put up with the “bullshit” of “low” salaries. Why is it so strange that people would make different trade offs than you do?