6 ms·

I'd be more likely to point the finger at human nature: if there are five engineers in a given role at a company, and they're paid different salaries, four of t

by strken 6y ago

I'd be more likely to point the finger at human nature: if there are five engineers in a given role at a company, and they're paid different salaries, four of them are going to feel cheated.

HWR_14 6y ago
All five of them may feel cheated. The best compensated one may consider themselves as more than that much better than the other four. But, abstractly, maybe four of them are getting cheated. Shouldn't they be told?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Why is it person A’s business what anyone else is paid? IMO, they’re only getting cheated if they’re being paid worse than as agreed.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    It's possible to tell the four being cheated without telling them the fifths salary.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      How do you determine that any are “being cheated”? Once you do, how do you share the salary information of five people such that four of them working together can’t de-anonymize the fifth? (I’m facing this exact issue at work; I do want to publish more info about salaries without risking even the slightest possibility to expose private information of any of our employees.)
      - joshuamorton 6y ago
        Two options spring to mind: 1. Don't worry about that failure mode. There will always be ways for collusion among employees to gain salary information. 2. Publish the methodology by which compensation is calculated. That is, it is presumably some combination of algorithm based on location and role, performance, and discretion. Make the calculation methodology transparent (internally). This will also set a range you can publish externally. This allows people to ask informed questions ("why is my perceived performance not being rewarded") instead of being completely baffled by numberwang. Transparency about the process and forces the company to do better, which is a good thing.
        sokoloff 6y ago
        Re: 1. I don’t view it as my place to disclose (or allow to be disclosed) any information that any of my employees would reasonably consider private. They can choose disclose it. I will not decide to do so on their behalf.
        joshuamorton 6y ago
        Then don't. But publishing aggregate salary information is not that. You're making an excuse to avoid sharing information that would help your employees. You might, for example, try asking them, and seeing how many feel that their privacy would be violated by publishing aggregate anonymous salary data. The answer will be 0. Keep in mind if you have a reasonable belief that all but one of your employees will collaborate to unmask another's salary, they have ample support to form a union and require internal transparency in the contract. Your threat model is illegitimate.
        sokoloff 6y ago
        It depends on how you're aggregating, of course. If I publish an indicative range, I agree that I'm not divulging any private information. (That also happens to be exactly what I'm personally fighting HR/comp in order to be able to do. I want my employees to have this information, but I want that less than I want to protect the privacy of employees who have not chosen to share their information on their own.) If I publish a names-redacted list of everyone's salary and track/level/job code, or a mean & std-deviation per track/level/job code, I am almost certain to divulge private information of at least one employee. I have spoken with employees on this topic. Publishing their data, even inadvertently (as in the Netflix contest example), does not have anywhere near 100% support.
  - HWR_14 6y ago
    What's the harm to person B of person A getting to know person B's salary? In a more general sense, more information makes for better decisions.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      What’s the harm to any person if private information of theirs is shared? Person B should be (and is) free to tell person A their salary iff they want. If they don’t want to share that private information with A, no else should either.
      - HWR_14 6y ago
        You're thinking about an individual supply of information between two actors, not a sea-change by making it common knowledge among all market participants.
        sokoloff 6y ago
        I wonder if you’re carefully thinking through the privacy concerns. Share anonymized (and non-de-anonymizable) information all you want. Don’t share private, individual information without that individual’s affirmative consent. Same reason that it’s OK and informative to share how many people in your state have +COVID or +STD tests, but not how many in your household do.
        HWR_14 6y ago
        I'm honestly not sure how I feel about the privacy concerns. On the one hand I do very much support privacy in many areas. Facebook is a cancer that seeks to spy on me every second of the day and needs to be regulated for that reason. People need privacy for a lot of very important reasons. On the other, I'm not sure how I feel about privacy in financial matters. Do people's salaries need to be secret? Yes, having other people's financial information is an advantage in negotiations, but wouldn't that even out if you both knew more about each other's finances? And make lots of other negotiations easier too. Edit: I'm actually not sure it's a valid privacy state to conceal how many people have COVID in your household. It think that information being public has a lot of value and I don't know if I support privacy in that case. Where they were when the caught it is a dangerous thing to leak. But I don't see any reason to conceal it. Certainly, I wouldn't want COVID+ people around me, and I wouldn't want them hiding their status to sneak back to work and continue the pandemic either. "I am currently under quarantine" seems like an important message that needs to be broadcasted.
  - chrismcb 6y ago
    This only works if both sides have access to all the info. The employer has all the info, but the employee had no info. They may agree to a lower wage because they think it is the best they can get. But with more info up front they may not have made that agreement.
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    I remember accidentally finding out a coworker (with about half my experience by the way) was being paid 50% more than me, and yea it totally felt like I was being cheated. Likely just because he was a smooth talker and not from any real technical talent. All hat and no cattle, as they say. Next review time I hinted that I thought there was a lot of upward room in the salary band for my experience level, but the conversation went nowhere so I quit and got a significant bump elsewhere.

by strken 6y ago

I'd be more likely to point the finger at human nature: if there are five engineers in a given role at a company, and they're paid different salaries, four of them are going to feel cheated.

HWR_14 6y ago

All five of them may feel cheated. The best compensated one may consider themselves as more than that much better than the other four. But, abstractly, maybe four of them are getting cheated. Shouldn't they be told?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
sokoloff 6y ago
Why is it person A’s business what anyone else is paid? IMO, they’re only getting cheated if they’re being paid worse than as agreed.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  It's possible to tell the four being cheated without telling them the fifths salary.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    How do you determine that any are “being cheated”? Once you do, how do you share the salary information of five people such that four of them working together can’t de-anonymize the fifth? (I’m facing this exact issue at work; I do want to publish more info about salaries without risking even the slightest possibility to expose private information of any of our employees.)
    - joshuamorton 6y ago
      Two options spring to mind: 1. Don't worry about that failure mode. There will always be ways for collusion among employees to gain salary information. 2. Publish the methodology by which compensation is calculated. That is, it is presumably some combination of algorithm based on location and role, performance, and discretion. Make the calculation methodology transparent (internally). This will also set a range you can publish externally. This allows people to ask informed questions ("why is my perceived performance not being rewarded") instead of being completely baffled by numberwang. Transparency about the process and forces the company to do better, which is a good thing.
      - sokoloff 6y ago
        Re: 1. I don’t view it as my place to disclose (or allow to be disclosed) any information that any of my employees would reasonably consider private. They can choose disclose it. I will not decide to do so on their behalf.
        joshuamorton 6y ago
        Then don't. But publishing aggregate salary information is not that. You're making an excuse to avoid sharing information that would help your employees. You might, for example, try asking them, and seeing how many feel that their privacy would be violated by publishing aggregate anonymous salary data. The answer will be 0. Keep in mind if you have a reasonable belief that all but one of your employees will collaborate to unmask another's salary, they have ample support to form a union and require internal transparency in the contract. Your threat model is illegitimate.
        sokoloff 6y ago
        It depends on how you're aggregating, of course. If I publish an indicative range, I agree that I'm not divulging any private information. (That also happens to be exactly what I'm personally fighting HR/comp in order to be able to do. I want my employees to have this information, but I want that less than I want to protect the privacy of employees who have not chosen to share their information on their own.) If I publish a names-redacted list of everyone's salary and track/level/job code, or a mean & std-deviation per track/level/job code, I am almost certain to divulge private information of at least one employee. I have spoken with employees on this topic. Publishing their data, even inadvertently (as in the Netflix contest example), does not have anywhere near 100% support.
- HWR_14 6y ago
  What's the harm to person B of person A getting to know person B's salary? In a more general sense, more information makes for better decisions.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    What’s the harm to any person if private information of theirs is shared? Person B should be (and is) free to tell person A their salary iff they want. If they don’t want to share that private information with A, no else should either.
    - HWR_14 6y ago
      You're thinking about an individual supply of information between two actors, not a sea-change by making it common knowledge among all market participants.
      - sokoloff 6y ago
        I wonder if you’re carefully thinking through the privacy concerns. Share anonymized (and non-de-anonymizable) information all you want. Don’t share private, individual information without that individual’s affirmative consent. Same reason that it’s OK and informative to share how many people in your state have +COVID or +STD tests, but not how many in your household do.
        HWR_14 6y ago
        I'm honestly not sure how I feel about the privacy concerns. On the one hand I do very much support privacy in many areas. Facebook is a cancer that seeks to spy on me every second of the day and needs to be regulated for that reason. People need privacy for a lot of very important reasons. On the other, I'm not sure how I feel about privacy in financial matters. Do people's salaries need to be secret? Yes, having other people's financial information is an advantage in negotiations, but wouldn't that even out if you both knew more about each other's finances? And make lots of other negotiations easier too. Edit: I'm actually not sure it's a valid privacy state to conceal how many people have COVID in your household. It think that information being public has a lot of value and I don't know if I support privacy in that case. Where they were when the caught it is a dangerous thing to leak. But I don't see any reason to conceal it. Certainly, I wouldn't want COVID+ people around me, and I wouldn't want them hiding their status to sneak back to work and continue the pandemic either. "I am currently under quarantine" seems like an important message that needs to be broadcasted.
- chrismcb 6y ago
  This only works if both sides have access to all the info. The employer has all the info, but the employee had no info. They may agree to a lower wage because they think it is the best they can get. But with more info up front they may not have made that agreement.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  I remember accidentally finding out a coworker (with about half my experience by the way) was being paid 50% more than me, and yea it totally felt like I was being cheated. Likely just because he was a smooth talker and not from any real technical talent. All hat and no cattle, as they say. Next review time I hinted that I thought there was a lot of upward room in the salary band for my experience level, but the conversation went nowhere so I quit and got a significant bump elsewhere.