7 ms·

Pay secrecy: Why some workers can't discuss salaries

60 points by hhs 5y ago

njharman 5y ago
I met IT worker with security clearance that worked someplace that you needed security clearance. They were unable to discuss salary (or any personal financial matter) because of that security. The reasoning being it potentially opened them up to being "turned" by foreign state actors either via financial bribes or financial blackmail.
- rkeene2 5y ago
  I don't buy it -- I've held clearances from that required a NAC to ones that required an SSBI, and got my first US National Security clearance when I was 16 and continuously held a clearance for about 20 years, as both a federal civil servant and a contractor, and never once was asked not to discuss my pay.
  - shemnon42 5y ago
    I buy it. It is fairly well known that too much or the wrong kind of debt can cost you even secret clearance. So for other compartments to require pay secrecy is well in line with that concern.
    - hhjj 5y ago
      You can have high salary and still be indebted. Also you don't have to discuss salary to negotiate how much they would like to earn as an extra (and that may not even be money). I don't buy it, that doesn't make sense.
  - anthomtb 5y ago
    Nor were you likely given a W-2 that came with (S/NF) in front of the gross earnings field. IOW, IT worker in the GP’s post was making something up.
- edgan 5y ago
  Sounds more like an excuse. It would make some sense if it was financial problems, but even then it crossing the line of free speech.
- jt2190 5y ago
  I suspect it’s much more mundane: If you want to know how much money your adversary is spending on $PROGRAM, you can get part of this with some salary info and head count. Simple data points like these can tell you a lot. See, for example, the German Tank Problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem
  - pbhjpbhj 5y ago
    Agree: This program isn't paying enough per head to be employing security architects, this project is employing lots of juniors, ... sounds useful if you're targeting projects to exploit?
- stefan_ 5y ago
  "We pay you so little it makes you a liability for blackmail"
  - CamelCaseName 5y ago
    I think there's a very narrow window where the value of information or control you have access to is worth less than the value a bad actor can extract from it.
- slumdev 5y ago
  Nah, this is probably BS. If I had the resources of a government, I could bribe just about anyone who works for a living.
- frankbreetz 5y ago
  As someone who works in IT, with a security clearance, I am pretty sure this is a lie. We talk about salary all the time. Some people are weird about it, but that has been true every place I have worked at.
- djhworld 5y ago
  Sounds like a load of nonsense to me. I think the background check for these jobs _does_ check if you have debts etc. and I think probes into your financial history to see behaviour - they won't take you on if you're a risk. The salary thing is nonsense though, a motivated foreign state actor will find ways of bribing if they detect you can be corrupted.
- caseysoftware 5y ago
  That's unlikely but he was probably told that. I contracted in IT for a Federal agency with a Secret clearance and encouraging us not to talk numbers was a key part of the company's negotiating tactics.
- mcculley 5y ago
  Many government civilian roles have very well documented compensation: https://www.federalpay.org/gs/2021 https://www.federalpay.org/gs/2021 I have held a clearance while a private contractor and worked with many who held clearances, both as contractors and government civilians. There were many restrictions on what we could talk about because of security. Salary was not one of them. Some of us were under direction from our private contractor companies to not discuss salary. That had nothing to do with security. It was about maximizing profit and leverage for the company.
  - frankbreetz 5y ago
    Contractors don't follow the government scale, the can make different amounts. Government people typically have better benefits and job security, so contractor's salary can be a fair bit higher. It is a point of reference though, you can know how much many of the people that work with you make.
    - mcculley 5y ago
      Consider only the GS scale. There are many with security clearances. We know what they make. I was replying to the person who said that security clearances required that compensation be secret. That is obviously not true.
airhead969 5y ago
It's a BS club to keep naive but good workers underpaid and to reward shrewder people. There's no excuse, other than to prevent people from de facto "unionizing" their pay.
spinax 5y ago
These articles never seem to touch on the point which matters to me: I don't want the workplace social peer pressure of who makes more, or less, etc. and the drama which comes with it. The belief that every employee wants there to be open sharing of salary data is not universal.
- hhs 5y ago
  Please note that the piece does acknowledge this: > Recent years have also brought more clarity around best practice on transparency: many workers favour a non-specific kind of salary disclosure where firms reveal ranges, averages and information about wage gaps rather than individual data.
  - spinax 5y ago
    nod I think these are two branches of the tree and this problem is more in line with role disclosure (I'm not saying this well - for example, the need on job postings to list the actual salary range up front, like I know some non-US countries and I think recently Colorado? implemented into law). The branch of this problem tree I speak of intersects more like "OK the band for level 3 is 50k-60k USD. Mark makes 60k and I make 50k but I feel my work is better than his and I've been here longer." This article is mostly about individual sharing, I think that quoted part is a nod in context to the other branch of the problem root which is just as important in it's own way. Not the best at making up examples, sorry.
    - pythonaut_16 5y ago
      Bands still seem helpful to the discussion. If Mark is making 60k then its clear the company is valuing him more and that might open the door to a beneficial discussion. Seems like it at least gives you some metrics to compare to rather than just favoritism.
- Salgat 5y ago
  While I loathe the seniority system that Union folks use, at the very least their pay is all out in the open and everyone knows what everyone makes and it still works. The biggest issue is just overcoming the cultural hurdle of acknowledging that your pay is not your identity, it's just a number that you can negotiate and if you're undervalued, instead of pissing and moaning to other employees, you go find a new job that pays what you're worth.
Barrin92 5y ago
I'm all for pay transparency. Information symmetry is good and I admire the Swedish system in regards to taxes which is very open. As the article points out it'd probably be a boon for minorities who traditionally do less well in secret negotiations for different reasons despite being equally competent, and paying equally competent people the same is good both for the firm and for the individuals in the long run. Personally, I would start to question myself if I felt like I had to hide what I make. Never worked anywhere where hard working people were maligned for their salary if it was justified.
heavyset_go 5y ago
In the US, discussion of pay and working conditions while on the job and off are protected acts under the NLRA. The NLRB is the board that enforces those protections.
- bialpio 5y ago
  Can you waive those protections away by signing a contract that contains a clause that forbids salary discussions, or would that clause of the contract become unenforceable?
  - mattficke 5y ago
    It would be unenforceable, with the caveat that the protection only applies to non-supervisory roles and only when discussing salary with other employees internally. Companies can still limit your ability to disclose your salary externally, as a trade secret.
  - TheCoelacanth 5y ago
    No, such provisions are illegal to enforce.
gsich 5y ago
Hiding salaries only benefits the employer.
tryingtogetback 5y ago
Can pay transparency potentially limit/discourage horizontal mobility for workers as a second order effect? As in "there is no point to explore other domains/companies in my industry since my compensation will not change for my seniority level even though I understand that the value I deliver for society might increase exponentially" Can pay transparency level up the field by removing the incentive for hyper-productive outliers, pulling wages down, as a second order effect? As in "I'm sorry Jane, we appreciate that you've been working 80 hour weeks and is solely responsible for the success of this project but 20 other engineers in our team who have the same seniority level as you are making $N and we can not pay you a dollar more (otherwise they would have to give the same raise to other 20 engineers to make it look fair). Promotion is another option, you are on track but it will take a year or two" Is it possible that push for pay transparency is just pandering to the lowest common denominator where best and brightest are left behind?
- antasvara 5y ago
  Does pay transparency necessarily mean that someone can't get a raise? In this theoretical scenario, Jane would know exactly how much she's being paid in comparison to the other engineers. If she's performing better than them while getting paid the same, she would know that she's worth more. The scenario you've described seems to imply that the company doesn't already know everyone's salaries. Pay transparency isn't what kept the company from giving her a raise; in fact, without pay transparency they could have told her that she was making more than her coworkers. Point being that companies can already refuse to give a raise by saying some boilerplate like "you're being competitively compensated for an employee of your seniority, and unfortunately we can't give you a raise."
  - seieste 5y ago
    > If she's performing better than them while getting paid the same, she would know that she's worth more This is another area where pay transparency can complicate things. Jane may have the same experience and education as other employees, but much higher performance and work ethic. Unfortunately, this isn’t easily quantified, whereas the other characteristics are, which can create resentment among her peers who don’t see the other value that she’s providing.
mkl95 5y ago
I once worked for a bodyshop where the director was the only guy hired by the actual company we were working for. One of the first few things we learned about him was that a clause in his contract forbid him from discussing our salaries and working conditions with us. Long story short, I switched jobs shortly after because we were doing a lot of unpaid overtime, and tons of things that had nothing to do with a software developer's job. But the straw that broke the camel's back was that we found out every engineer had a different contract -different salary, bonuses, etc.-, even when we had similar experience. The director's boss thought we wouldn't find out just because of that silly clause. If you are being asked not to discuss your salary, apply Occam's razor, and either deal with it or run away.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  I should point out that US law protects employees rights to openly discuss their salaries. It is entirely reasonable and legal to forbid a supervisor from discussing/publicizing the salary of all their subordinates. Whether that is a good business decision is a very different question.
  - mkl95 5y ago
    I live in the EU. I have never seen anything similar before or after. Is it common in the US?
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      I'm sorry, I'm not 100% sure what you are saking. You haven't seen anything similar to bosses not publishing their employees salary? Or US law protecting the rights of employees in something?
      - mkl95 5y ago
        Sorry, I meant explicitly forbidding a supervisor from discussing working conditions or salary with their subordinates is pretty rare in Europe, and in fact that's the only time I've been told of such thing. I was wondering if that kind of clause is a common thing in the US - for instance limiting job mobility by not allowing you to work for X client for N years is common in Europe, while I get it's rare in the US from what I read on social media / HN.
docflabby 5y ago
Not sure why this is singling out the USA every UK employment contract I've seen has forbidden the disclosure of salary to other employees.
- andyjohnson0 5y ago
  I'm in the UK and I've never had a contract with such a clause in the nearly thirty years I've been working as a developer.
  - docflabby 5y ago
    Maybe it's sector dependent I've mostly worked in financial services, would be good to find out what the wider picture is I'm thinking my view is skewed now!
- detaro 5y ago
  They might be in the contracts, but as far as I know they are invalid or at least restricted by anti-discrimination laws.
- raspyberr 5y ago
  https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/77 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/77 I'm pretty sure Equality Act 2010 makes any such term in a contract unenforceable.
Dumblydorr 5y ago
I, a man, "foolishly" told a female coworker with the same position what raise and salary I got. I had negotiated 10% more pay than the base offer, she hadn't. She went to HR and dragged my name and salary through these proceedings, arguing a woman was getting paid less to do the same job as a man. Nevermind I had a masters and was faster and more versatile as a worker...she got a much bigger raise than I did so her pay ended up equal to mine, despite lack of negotiating or higher Ed or better performance. HR responded by sternly telling me I should not discuss salaries. Why not? So you can underpay people? There's literally zero reason other than that for us to not discuss it. The CEO literally owns a dozen Tesla's, pure unadulterated greed on his part.
- smogcutter 5y ago
  I mean, it sounds like she used the information as leverage to negotiate a better salary for herself, which is exactly what you’re complaining she didn’t do.
- rufus_foreman 5y ago
  >> HR responded by sternly telling me I should not discuss salaries. Why not? Doesn't your own anecdote show exactly why not? You make the same amount of money that you did before this happened, but now you are obviously angry that someone you consider less qualified now makes the same amount as you, you seem angry that you got dragged into the discussion, and you also seem angry that your CEO has more money than you. Comparison is the thief of joy.
- dasil003 5y ago
  I can't tell from this comment whether you believe her salary should be equal to yours or not.
- throwwwaway69 5y ago
  Them telling you not to discuss salary is super illegal.
- setr 5y ago
  > lack of … higher Ed or better performance. It sounds like now you’re being relatively underpaid — if they value her lack of skills at the same level of your having skills, something’s gone wrong. In fact, according to your definition, this is exactly a scenario where a pay disparity “should” exist. Perhaps you should both be getting paid better, but there should be a difference
cushychicken 5y ago
It is illegal to prevent people from discussing their salaries in the United States. National Labor Relations Act, 1935, plain as day, and reaffirmed several times in court. I'm also proud to work in Massachusetts, where it's illegal for prospective employers to ask about your prior job's salary. This harms workers by pegging future comp to past comp. It's particularly destructive to women and people of color. There are sneaky ways for employers to circumvent this law - I've written a blog post before about how this happens: http://cushychicken.github.io/what-to-say-when-asked-salary-history/ http://cushychicken.github.io/what-to-say-when-asked-salary-... Discussing salary is, in my view, one of the last major bits of power retained to workers in the US. It is also one of the only labor rights that the government has meaningfully protected. Talk about your salary with others. It's an important behavior to normalize, and a powerful way to help spur pay equity in this country. It's one of the easiest ways to push back against the information asymmetry that most corporations naturally exploit. (Though I suspect this is almost purely out of self interest, and not any real malice.)
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  Re: your article: > Disclosing your salary can turn a potential double digit raise when changing jobs to a few percent raise. You could leave thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars on the table. But isn't it possible for this to happen in the opposite direction? I.e., turning a pay cut into a small raise.
  - MisterBastahrd 5y ago
    Here's my unvarnished opinion as a former recruiter turned developer... You would have to be a complete and utter moron to truthfully relate your current or former pay history to a potential employer. There are two primary things that they are doing when they ask for your salary history: 1. They want to know whether they can get you for cheap 2. They want to know the rates that the market is setting for a person of your talent level You never have to be truthful about what you were paid and why you left unless you are in a profession that requires such information to be disclosed. Add 20% and let them negotiate you down to what you are willing to move for. Any employer that isn't competent enough to price your talent versus the market is an employer who will screw you over in the future.
dasil003 5y ago
I think everyone agrees that salary secrecy benefits primarily the company over the employees as a group. But the subtlety is that it also benefits the good negotiators or others who are seen to provide unique value by management as they can be paid more without inflating salaries across the board. As an individual, there's a game theory aspect where if you believe you are paid more, it is not in your best interest to share that information. Now of course you might choose to ignore this and disclose anyway in solidarity with your colleagues and a belief in the greater value of transparency, but it may come at some personal cost.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  > As an individual, there's a game theory aspect where if you believe you are paid more, it is not in your best interest to share that information. If you're really able to provide your employer with more value than other employees, it's in your best interests that other employees' base pay rates rise, because you can raise your rates in relation to them and the additional value you can offer.
kthejoker2 5y ago
In the interest of pay transparency: I am a white, male Group Manager for Avanade, an Accenture subsidiary, in Houston, Texas. I work as a Data and AI architect. My base salary is $183,000 a year. The fact that it feels somewhere between dangerous and transgressive to post that speaks volumes to me. What weird evolutionary mechanism brought this on?

60 points by hhs 5y ago

I met IT worker with security clearance that worked someplace that you needed security clearance. They were unable to discuss salary (or any personal financial matter) because of that security. The reasoning being it potentially opened them up to being "turned" by foreign state actors either via financial bribes or financial blackmail.

rkeene2 5y ago
I don't buy it -- I've held clearances from that required a NAC to ones that required an SSBI, and got my first US National Security clearance when I was 16 and continuously held a clearance for about 20 years, as both a federal civil servant and a contractor, and never once was asked not to discuss my pay.
- shemnon42 5y ago
  I buy it. It is fairly well known that too much or the wrong kind of debt can cost you even secret clearance. So for other compartments to require pay secrecy is well in line with that concern.
  - hhjj 5y ago
    You can have high salary and still be indebted. Also you don't have to discuss salary to negotiate how much they would like to earn as an extra (and that may not even be money). I don't buy it, that doesn't make sense.
- anthomtb 5y ago
  Nor were you likely given a W-2 that came with (S/NF) in front of the gross earnings field. IOW, IT worker in the GP’s post was making something up.
edgan 5y ago
Sounds more like an excuse. It would make some sense if it was financial problems, but even then it crossing the line of free speech.
jt2190 5y ago
I suspect it’s much more mundane: If you want to know how much money your adversary is spending on $PROGRAM, you can get part of this with some salary info and head count. Simple data points like these can tell you a lot. See, for example, the German Tank Problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem
- pbhjpbhj 5y ago
  Agree: This program isn't paying enough per head to be employing security architects, this project is employing lots of juniors, ... sounds useful if you're targeting projects to exploit?
stefan_ 5y ago
"We pay you so little it makes you a liability for blackmail"
- CamelCaseName 5y ago
  I think there's a very narrow window where the value of information or control you have access to is worth less than the value a bad actor can extract from it.
slumdev 5y ago
Nah, this is probably BS. If I had the resources of a government, I could bribe just about anyone who works for a living.
frankbreetz 5y ago
As someone who works in IT, with a security clearance, I am pretty sure this is a lie. We talk about salary all the time. Some people are weird about it, but that has been true every place I have worked at.
djhworld 5y ago
Sounds like a load of nonsense to me. I think the background check for these jobs _does_ check if you have debts etc. and I think probes into your financial history to see behaviour - they won't take you on if you're a risk. The salary thing is nonsense though, a motivated foreign state actor will find ways of bribing if they detect you can be corrupted.
caseysoftware 5y ago
That's unlikely but he was probably told that. I contracted in IT for a Federal agency with a Secret clearance and encouraging us not to talk numbers was a key part of the company's negotiating tactics.
mcculley 5y ago
Many government civilian roles have very well documented compensation: https://www.federalpay.org/gs/2021 https://www.federalpay.org/gs/2021 I have held a clearance while a private contractor and worked with many who held clearances, both as contractors and government civilians. There were many restrictions on what we could talk about because of security. Salary was not one of them. Some of us were under direction from our private contractor companies to not discuss salary. That had nothing to do with security. It was about maximizing profit and leverage for the company.
- frankbreetz 5y ago
  Contractors don't follow the government scale, the can make different amounts. Government people typically have better benefits and job security, so contractor's salary can be a fair bit higher. It is a point of reference though, you can know how much many of the people that work with you make.
  - mcculley 5y ago
    Consider only the GS scale. There are many with security clearances. We know what they make. I was replying to the person who said that security clearances required that compensation be secret. That is obviously not true.

airhead969 5y ago

It's a BS club to keep naive but good workers underpaid and to reward shrewder people. There's no excuse, other than to prevent people from de facto "unionizing" their pay.

spinax 5y ago

These articles never seem to touch on the point which matters to me: I don't want the workplace social peer pressure of who makes more, or less, etc. and the drama which comes with it. The belief that every employee wants there to be open sharing of salary data is not universal.

hhs 5y ago
Please note that the piece does acknowledge this: > Recent years have also brought more clarity around best practice on transparency: many workers favour a non-specific kind of salary disclosure where firms reveal ranges, averages and information about wage gaps rather than individual data.
- spinax 5y ago
  nod I think these are two branches of the tree and this problem is more in line with role disclosure (I'm not saying this well - for example, the need on job postings to list the actual salary range up front, like I know some non-US countries and I think recently Colorado? implemented into law). The branch of this problem tree I speak of intersects more like "OK the band for level 3 is 50k-60k USD. Mark makes 60k and I make 50k but I feel my work is better than his and I've been here longer." This article is mostly about individual sharing, I think that quoted part is a nod in context to the other branch of the problem root which is just as important in it's own way. Not the best at making up examples, sorry.
  - pythonaut_16 5y ago
    Bands still seem helpful to the discussion. If Mark is making 60k then its clear the company is valuing him more and that might open the door to a beneficial discussion. Seems like it at least gives you some metrics to compare to rather than just favoritism.
Salgat 5y ago
While I loathe the seniority system that Union folks use, at the very least their pay is all out in the open and everyone knows what everyone makes and it still works. The biggest issue is just overcoming the cultural hurdle of acknowledging that your pay is not your identity, it's just a number that you can negotiate and if you're undervalued, instead of pissing and moaning to other employees, you go find a new job that pays what you're worth.

Barrin92 5y ago

I'm all for pay transparency. Information symmetry is good and I admire the Swedish system in regards to taxes which is very open. As the article points out it'd probably be a boon for minorities who traditionally do less well in secret negotiations for different reasons despite being equally competent, and paying equally competent people the same is good both for the firm and for the individuals in the long run. Personally, I would start to question myself if I felt like I had to hide what I make. Never worked anywhere where hard working people were maligned for their salary if it was justified.

heavyset_go 5y ago

In the US, discussion of pay and working conditions while on the job and off are protected acts under the NLRA. The NLRB is the board that enforces those protections.

bialpio 5y ago
Can you waive those protections away by signing a contract that contains a clause that forbids salary discussions, or would that clause of the contract become unenforceable?
- mattficke 5y ago
  It would be unenforceable, with the caveat that the protection only applies to non-supervisory roles and only when discussing salary with other employees internally. Companies can still limit your ability to disclose your salary externally, as a trade secret.
- TheCoelacanth 5y ago
  No, such provisions are illegal to enforce.

gsich 5y ago

Hiding salaries only benefits the employer.

tryingtogetback 5y ago

Can pay transparency potentially limit/discourage horizontal mobility for workers as a second order effect? As in "there is no point to explore other domains/companies in my industry since my compensation will not change for my seniority level even though I understand that the value I deliver for society might increase exponentially" Can pay transparency level up the field by removing the incentive for hyper-productive outliers, pulling wages down, as a second order effect? As in "I'm sorry Jane, we appreciate that you've been working 80 hour weeks and is solely responsible for the success of this project but 20 other engineers in our team who have the same seniority level as you are making $N and we can not pay you a dollar more (otherwise they would have to give the same raise to other 20 engineers to make it look fair). Promotion is another option, you are on track but it will take a year or two" Is it possible that push for pay transparency is just pandering to the lowest common denominator where best and brightest are left behind?

antasvara 5y ago
Does pay transparency necessarily mean that someone can't get a raise? In this theoretical scenario, Jane would know exactly how much she's being paid in comparison to the other engineers. If she's performing better than them while getting paid the same, she would know that she's worth more. The scenario you've described seems to imply that the company doesn't already know everyone's salaries. Pay transparency isn't what kept the company from giving her a raise; in fact, without pay transparency they could have told her that she was making more than her coworkers. Point being that companies can already refuse to give a raise by saying some boilerplate like "you're being competitively compensated for an employee of your seniority, and unfortunately we can't give you a raise."
- seieste 5y ago
  > If she's performing better than them while getting paid the same, she would know that she's worth more This is another area where pay transparency can complicate things. Jane may have the same experience and education as other employees, but much higher performance and work ethic. Unfortunately, this isn’t easily quantified, whereas the other characteristics are, which can create resentment among her peers who don’t see the other value that she’s providing.

mkl95 5y ago

I once worked for a bodyshop where the director was the only guy hired by the actual company we were working for. One of the first few things we learned about him was that a clause in his contract forbid him from discussing our salaries and working conditions with us. Long story short, I switched jobs shortly after because we were doing a lot of unpaid overtime, and tons of things that had nothing to do with a software developer's job. But the straw that broke the camel's back was that we found out every engineer had a different contract -different salary, bonuses, etc.-, even when we had similar experience. The director's boss thought we wouldn't find out just because of that silly clause. If you are being asked not to discuss your salary, apply Occam's razor, and either deal with it or run away.

HWR_14 5y ago
I should point out that US law protects employees rights to openly discuss their salaries. It is entirely reasonable and legal to forbid a supervisor from discussing/publicizing the salary of all their subordinates. Whether that is a good business decision is a very different question.
- mkl95 5y ago
  I live in the EU. I have never seen anything similar before or after. Is it common in the US?
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    I'm sorry, I'm not 100% sure what you are saking. You haven't seen anything similar to bosses not publishing their employees salary? Or US law protecting the rights of employees in something?
    - mkl95 5y ago
      Sorry, I meant explicitly forbidding a supervisor from discussing working conditions or salary with their subordinates is pretty rare in Europe, and in fact that's the only time I've been told of such thing. I was wondering if that kind of clause is a common thing in the US - for instance limiting job mobility by not allowing you to work for X client for N years is common in Europe, while I get it's rare in the US from what I read on social media / HN.

docflabby 5y ago

Not sure why this is singling out the USA every UK employment contract I've seen has forbidden the disclosure of salary to other employees.

andyjohnson0 5y ago
I'm in the UK and I've never had a contract with such a clause in the nearly thirty years I've been working as a developer.
- docflabby 5y ago
  Maybe it's sector dependent I've mostly worked in financial services, would be good to find out what the wider picture is I'm thinking my view is skewed now!
detaro 5y ago
They might be in the contracts, but as far as I know they are invalid or at least restricted by anti-discrimination laws.
raspyberr 5y ago
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/77 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/77 I'm pretty sure Equality Act 2010 makes any such term in a contract unenforceable.

Dumblydorr 5y ago

I, a man, "foolishly" told a female coworker with the same position what raise and salary I got. I had negotiated 10% more pay than the base offer, she hadn't. She went to HR and dragged my name and salary through these proceedings, arguing a woman was getting paid less to do the same job as a man. Nevermind I had a masters and was faster and more versatile as a worker...she got a much bigger raise than I did so her pay ended up equal to mine, despite lack of negotiating or higher Ed or better performance. HR responded by sternly telling me I should not discuss salaries. Why not? So you can underpay people? There's literally zero reason other than that for us to not discuss it. The CEO literally owns a dozen Tesla's, pure unadulterated greed on his part.

smogcutter 5y ago
I mean, it sounds like she used the information as leverage to negotiate a better salary for herself, which is exactly what you’re complaining she didn’t do.
rufus_foreman 5y ago
>> HR responded by sternly telling me I should not discuss salaries. Why not? Doesn't your own anecdote show exactly why not? You make the same amount of money that you did before this happened, but now you are obviously angry that someone you consider less qualified now makes the same amount as you, you seem angry that you got dragged into the discussion, and you also seem angry that your CEO has more money than you. Comparison is the thief of joy.
dasil003 5y ago
I can't tell from this comment whether you believe her salary should be equal to yours or not.
throwwwaway69 5y ago
Them telling you not to discuss salary is super illegal.
setr 5y ago
> lack of … higher Ed or better performance. It sounds like now you’re being relatively underpaid — if they value her lack of skills at the same level of your having skills, something’s gone wrong. In fact, according to your definition, this is exactly a scenario where a pay disparity “should” exist. Perhaps you should both be getting paid better, but there should be a difference

cushychicken 5y ago

It is illegal to prevent people from discussing their salaries in the United States. National Labor Relations Act, 1935, plain as day, and reaffirmed several times in court. I'm also proud to work in Massachusetts, where it's illegal for prospective employers to ask about your prior job's salary. This harms workers by pegging future comp to past comp. It's particularly destructive to women and people of color. There are sneaky ways for employers to circumvent this law - I've written a blog post before about how this happens: http://cushychicken.github.io/what-to-say-when-asked-salary-history/ http://cushychicken.github.io/what-to-say-when-asked-salary-... Discussing salary is, in my view, one of the last major bits of power retained to workers in the US. It is also one of the only labor rights that the government has meaningfully protected. Talk about your salary with others. It's an important behavior to normalize, and a powerful way to help spur pay equity in this country. It's one of the easiest ways to push back against the information asymmetry that most corporations naturally exploit. (Though I suspect this is almost purely out of self interest, and not any real malice.)

Wowfunhappy 5y ago
Re: your article: > Disclosing your salary can turn a potential double digit raise when changing jobs to a few percent raise. You could leave thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars on the table. But isn't it possible for this to happen in the opposite direction? I.e., turning a pay cut into a small raise.
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  Here's my unvarnished opinion as a former recruiter turned developer... You would have to be a complete and utter moron to truthfully relate your current or former pay history to a potential employer. There are two primary things that they are doing when they ask for your salary history: 1. They want to know whether they can get you for cheap 2. They want to know the rates that the market is setting for a person of your talent level You never have to be truthful about what you were paid and why you left unless you are in a profession that requires such information to be disclosed. Add 20% and let them negotiate you down to what you are willing to move for. Any employer that isn't competent enough to price your talent versus the market is an employer who will screw you over in the future.

dasil003 5y ago

I think everyone agrees that salary secrecy benefits primarily the company over the employees as a group. But the subtlety is that it also benefits the good negotiators or others who are seen to provide unique value by management as they can be paid more without inflating salaries across the board. As an individual, there's a game theory aspect where if you believe you are paid more, it is not in your best interest to share that information. Now of course you might choose to ignore this and disclose anyway in solidarity with your colleagues and a belief in the greater value of transparency, but it may come at some personal cost.

heavyset_go 5y ago
> As an individual, there's a game theory aspect where if you believe you are paid more, it is not in your best interest to share that information. If you're really able to provide your employer with more value than other employees, it's in your best interests that other employees' base pay rates rise, because you can raise your rates in relation to them and the additional value you can offer.

kthejoker2 5y ago

In the interest of pay transparency: I am a white, male Group Manager for Avanade, an Accenture subsidiary, in Houston, Texas. I work as a Data and AI architect. My base salary is $183,000 a year. The fact that it feels somewhere between dangerous and transgressive to post that speaks volumes to me. What weird evolutionary mechanism brought this on?