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>Imagine what would happen if there were five $70k salaries and one $165k salary for six people doing the same work. People would suddenly get very uncomfortabl

>Imagine what would happen if there were five $70k salaries and one $165k salary for six people doing the same work. People would suddenly get very uncomfortable. Isn't that the entire point of the first exercise however? If the 165k salary isn't completely obvious, then it should make people feel uncomfortable - they are being shafted.

michaelochurch 16y ago
If you're getting the $165k, you're not going to be very enthusiastic about this exercise. The modular-arithmetic alternative is better, at least in terms of political stability: they figure out that there's an average of $86k. Then the people making $70k all negotiate up to $90k and, even if getting shafted, people are happier.
- kelnos 16y ago
  > If you're getting the $165k, you're not going to be very enthusiastic about this exercise. Why not? I'd be completely fine being the odd one out, especially if it helped to encourage my lower-paid co-workers to renegotiate their salaries. The whole point of this exercise, IMO, is to determine if there's inequity, and how much. I'd want to know the full salary range, not just the average. Companies rely on you knowing very little about your peers' salaries; more information can only help you, even if it might make you feel a little bad.
  - neworbit 16y ago
    More money going to raises for your comrades generally means less available for you
    - gaius 16y ago
      Nah, it means less money available to the tier above you and/or the shareholders and/or the non-LOB parts of the company, e.g. HR.
- ido 16y ago
  Why would you, as an employee, care about "political stability"?
  - roc 16y ago
    Because you have to actually work with those other people? Of course other employees should aim angst about unfairness at management. But they won't. Not entirely. And that overflow can be enough to nudge relationships from friendly to strained/tense-professional, or not-particularly-friendly-but-professional relationships straight into unproductive-leaning-towards-toxic territory. I was in a group of developers who had the hat method essentially performed for them [1]. Relationships changed [2]. Even after the discrepancies were largely corrected, the relationships remained strained. [1] The short version goes: the comptroller's office was compiling stats on salary ranges for comparison to regional averages (back during the bubble, when management was paranoid about being behind the curve on pay and losing talent). Someone either needed help with a formula from, or just directly leaked the data to, a developer friend. That developer, upon seeing the wide variance, shared with the group. And let's just say it was surprisingly trivial to map the outlying data points to names. [2] Which is why I'd recommend the calculated average method over the hat method. It's better to see your position relative to the group, than to see the raw data that can impact interpersonal relationships.

michaelochurch 16y ago

If you're getting the $165k, you're not going to be very enthusiastic about this exercise. The modular-arithmetic alternative is better, at least in terms of political stability: they figure out that there's an average of $86k. Then the people making $70k all negotiate up to $90k and, even if getting shafted, people are happier.

kelnos 16y ago
> If you're getting the $165k, you're not going to be very enthusiastic about this exercise. Why not? I'd be completely fine being the odd one out, especially if it helped to encourage my lower-paid co-workers to renegotiate their salaries. The whole point of this exercise, IMO, is to determine if there's inequity, and how much. I'd want to know the full salary range, not just the average. Companies rely on you knowing very little about your peers' salaries; more information can only help you, even if it might make you feel a little bad.
- neworbit 16y ago
  More money going to raises for your comrades generally means less available for you
  - gaius 16y ago
    Nah, it means less money available to the tier above you and/or the shareholders and/or the non-LOB parts of the company, e.g. HR.
ido 16y ago
Why would you, as an employee, care about "political stability"?
- roc 16y ago
  Because you have to actually work with those other people? Of course other employees should aim angst about unfairness at management. But they won't. Not entirely. And that overflow can be enough to nudge relationships from friendly to strained/tense-professional, or not-particularly-friendly-but-professional relationships straight into unproductive-leaning-towards-toxic territory. I was in a group of developers who had the hat method essentially performed for them [1]. Relationships changed [2]. Even after the discrepancies were largely corrected, the relationships remained strained. [1] The short version goes: the comptroller's office was compiling stats on salary ranges for comparison to regional averages (back during the bubble, when management was paranoid about being behind the curve on pay and losing talent). Someone either needed help with a formula from, or just directly leaked the data to, a developer friend. That developer, upon seeing the wide variance, shared with the group. And let's just say it was surprisingly trivial to map the outlying data points to names. [2] Which is why I'd recommend the calculated average method over the hat method. It's better to see your position relative to the group, than to see the raw data that can impact interpersonal relationships.