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> It doesn't benefit top earners to share salary information Maybe one of the biggest myths is that we can appraise performance objectively and that pay is not

> It doesn't benefit top earners to share salary information Maybe one of the biggest myths is that we can appraise performance objectively and that pay is nothing but a function of that performance. In reality, this is nothing but price discrimination for the price of labor; just like it would be in an airline's best interest to squeeze the most individual dollar amounts out of every individual passenger for the same flight, it is in employer's best interest to pay the absolute minimum that can convince each particular employee to do the same work. Information symmetry or collective bargaining destroys that advantage. What Blizzard workers did might feel like a revolt in the US, but there are countries where total income and taxation information of each individual must be publicly listed annually.

pandaman 6y ago
The employer is buying labor and "price discrimination" is a seller's strategy. Offering different salaries to different people is just regular shopping around. You are likely guilty of it yourself. Do you buy the first airline ticket to your destination you get in the search or do you choose among several alternatives with the pricing in mind? Do you ask businesses for quotes? Do you go to a particular store for some specific products? Oh horror, you are shopping for the best offer too!
- acituan 6y ago
  > The employer is buying labor and "price discrimination" is a seller's strategy This doesn't matter at all, information asymmetry based extraction is still there. The employer is buying labor in large quantities from many sellers, and because they don't appraise all units of labor individually (they can't), they are individually negotiating the least amount of money they can get away with. The fact that prices are concealed between these individual sellers (candidates/employers) is the only way this can work (information asymmetry). When a buyer is shopping for a airplane ticket, they are shopping for the relatively same service from many providers, but they know these different prices and choose the cheapest (no information asymmetry). When, however, the airlines are using personalized pricing and the buyer doesn't know this (information asymmetry), the buyer is screwed over because they pay the maximum they would for the same flight, while the next guy is potentially getting a steep discount. In both cases, if the information asymmetry is cured (as in sharing your salary or what money you paid for a ticket), the strategy no longer works because this changes the individual price points (people have huge loss aversion bias and they definitely react to the idea of being screwed over). The fact that they are buyers vs sellers in these transactions doesn't matter at all. "Shopping for the best offer" depends on knowing what offers were available to you and the others to begin with.
  - pandaman 6y ago
    >The fact that prices are concealed between these individual sellers (candidates/employers) is the only way this can work (information asymmetry). This would work if all sellers were selling the same goods. Such as in case of hourly labor. Incidentally, in these cases, the salary is known and is same for the laborers with the same skill set and responsibilities. In case of salaried jobs, such as in Blizzard, the labor of each employee is unique and you cannot sensibly price it wholesale thus there are salary negotiations for both sides to come to an agreement. I personally do not see how knowing other people salaries is going to help you in a negotiation as this does not give you any additional leverage but if you think it will - go ahead and disclose your salary to your coworkers, see how it will go. >"Shopping for the best offer" depends on knowing what offers were available to you and the others to begin with. And who is preventing you from asking? I don't see how asking your coworker salary is going to help you to learn what offer you can get in another place without applying there.
    - acituan 6y ago
      > the labor of each employee is unique and you cannot sensibly price it wholesale thus there are salary negotiations for both sides to come to an agreement Yes, that is exactly what I am claiming to be a myth. That unique price point is not a result of appraising the worth of that unique labor. Anyone involved from interviewing to making the hiring offer so don’t give a crap about finding your unique value, let alone your expected value, nor they have the means necessarily. Which means price points are mainly a result of negotiation power of the each party, which is severely handicapped for the candidates, because they don’t know the offers made to others in comparable experience and education. So they don’t know the best counter offer they could make and still get hired. That unexploited margin goes to the employer which has tons of data on past rejections and acceptances so that they can better minimize the offer they make. In some labor markets, the non-negotiable salary is advertised with the job ads. Not claiming that is an infallible solution, but it makes for a drastically different labor market.
      - pandaman 6y ago
        Indeed, nobody cares about the exact appraisal of your value. It's a market transaction - if both the seller and the buyer are satisfied with the price then the deal goes through at that price. >which is severely handicapped for the candidates, because they don’t know the offers made to others in comparable experience and education It does not matter. If you are not satisfied with the offer - ask for more or walk away. If you are - then it does not matter what others got especially to you, who have not evaluated them at all. What you think is "comparable" might be far from that in my view and vice versa. >In some labor markets, the non-negotiable salary is advertised with the job ads. Not claiming that is an infallible solution, but it makes for a drastically different labor market. Yeah, I gave an example in the post you replied to: the unskilled labor market. Amazon pays the same rate to every warehouse drone and it's known in advance. Same as many retail jobs, same as many trades.
sgerenser 6y ago
But isn’t it true that that software developer salaries in many countries in Europe are much lower than the U.S.?
- pandaman 6y ago
  It's true for all countries and not just Europe from what I know. However, for people who espouse these ideas, being paid well is irrelevant. Their concern is that nobody else is being paid more than them. I think it's a type of personality: some people measure success in absolute terms ("I have a nice house, nice food and my children get bright future, I am happy") and others measure success only in relation to their "rivals" ("I live in trailer but my neighbors live in mud huts, I eat cat food but my neighbors eat actual cats, my children go to community college but my neighbor's go to prison, I am happy").

pandaman 6y ago

The employer is buying labor and "price discrimination" is a seller's strategy. Offering different salaries to different people is just regular shopping around. You are likely guilty of it yourself. Do you buy the first airline ticket to your destination you get in the search or do you choose among several alternatives with the pricing in mind? Do you ask businesses for quotes? Do you go to a particular store for some specific products? Oh horror, you are shopping for the best offer too!

acituan 6y ago
> The employer is buying labor and "price discrimination" is a seller's strategy This doesn't matter at all, information asymmetry based extraction is still there. The employer is buying labor in large quantities from many sellers, and because they don't appraise all units of labor individually (they can't), they are individually negotiating the least amount of money they can get away with. The fact that prices are concealed between these individual sellers (candidates/employers) is the only way this can work (information asymmetry). When a buyer is shopping for a airplane ticket, they are shopping for the relatively same service from many providers, but they know these different prices and choose the cheapest (no information asymmetry). When, however, the airlines are using personalized pricing and the buyer doesn't know this (information asymmetry), the buyer is screwed over because they pay the maximum they would for the same flight, while the next guy is potentially getting a steep discount. In both cases, if the information asymmetry is cured (as in sharing your salary or what money you paid for a ticket), the strategy no longer works because this changes the individual price points (people have huge loss aversion bias and they definitely react to the idea of being screwed over). The fact that they are buyers vs sellers in these transactions doesn't matter at all. "Shopping for the best offer" depends on knowing what offers were available to you and the others to begin with.
- pandaman 6y ago
  >The fact that prices are concealed between these individual sellers (candidates/employers) is the only way this can work (information asymmetry). This would work if all sellers were selling the same goods. Such as in case of hourly labor. Incidentally, in these cases, the salary is known and is same for the laborers with the same skill set and responsibilities. In case of salaried jobs, such as in Blizzard, the labor of each employee is unique and you cannot sensibly price it wholesale thus there are salary negotiations for both sides to come to an agreement. I personally do not see how knowing other people salaries is going to help you in a negotiation as this does not give you any additional leverage but if you think it will - go ahead and disclose your salary to your coworkers, see how it will go. >"Shopping for the best offer" depends on knowing what offers were available to you and the others to begin with. And who is preventing you from asking? I don't see how asking your coworker salary is going to help you to learn what offer you can get in another place without applying there.
  - acituan 6y ago
    > the labor of each employee is unique and you cannot sensibly price it wholesale thus there are salary negotiations for both sides to come to an agreement Yes, that is exactly what I am claiming to be a myth. That unique price point is not a result of appraising the worth of that unique labor. Anyone involved from interviewing to making the hiring offer so don’t give a crap about finding your unique value, let alone your expected value, nor they have the means necessarily. Which means price points are mainly a result of negotiation power of the each party, which is severely handicapped for the candidates, because they don’t know the offers made to others in comparable experience and education. So they don’t know the best counter offer they could make and still get hired. That unexploited margin goes to the employer which has tons of data on past rejections and acceptances so that they can better minimize the offer they make. In some labor markets, the non-negotiable salary is advertised with the job ads. Not claiming that is an infallible solution, but it makes for a drastically different labor market.
    - pandaman 6y ago
      Indeed, nobody cares about the exact appraisal of your value. It's a market transaction - if both the seller and the buyer are satisfied with the price then the deal goes through at that price. >which is severely handicapped for the candidates, because they don’t know the offers made to others in comparable experience and education It does not matter. If you are not satisfied with the offer - ask for more or walk away. If you are - then it does not matter what others got especially to you, who have not evaluated them at all. What you think is "comparable" might be far from that in my view and vice versa. >In some labor markets, the non-negotiable salary is advertised with the job ads. Not claiming that is an infallible solution, but it makes for a drastically different labor market. Yeah, I gave an example in the post you replied to: the unskilled labor market. Amazon pays the same rate to every warehouse drone and it's known in advance. Same as many retail jobs, same as many trades.

sgerenser 6y ago

But isn’t it true that that software developer salaries in many countries in Europe are much lower than the U.S.?

pandaman 6y ago
It's true for all countries and not just Europe from what I know. However, for people who espouse these ideas, being paid well is irrelevant. Their concern is that nobody else is being paid more than them. I think it's a type of personality: some people measure success in absolute terms ("I have a nice house, nice food and my children get bright future, I am happy") and others measure success only in relation to their "rivals" ("I live in trailer but my neighbors live in mud huts, I eat cat food but my neighbors eat actual cats, my children go to community college but my neighbor's go to prison, I am happy").