6 ms·

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 dr

by 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.
pope_meat 5y ago
Do you make more than most of your peers in your work place, or less?
kevinventullo 5y ago
The employees at tech firms I’ve worked at solved this by “anonymizing”. Basically a few folks maintained a big publicly readable spreadsheet with columns like Title, Level, YOE, YOE at Company, Office Location, Gender, Base Comp, Total Comp. Technically the fields were sufficiently granular that some rows could in principle be de-anonymized, but that wasn’t really the point. N.b. This was just random employees collecting volunteered information, nothing HR-sanctioned.
- darkerside 5y ago
  The fact remains that this seems likely to increase the perception of unfairness, lower the level of individual happiness, and increase the time spent complaining and analyzing salary discrepancies. Things will never be exactly equal. Why focus time emphasizing the differences?
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    > Things will never be exactly equal. Why focus time emphasizing the differences? Why remain ignornant, and potentially lose out on acertaining one's true market value, because it might hurt someone's feelings? Price discovery via markets can only work with transparency. Opaqueness leads to inefficiencies.
    - darkerside 5y ago
      If you want to optimize for everybody getting paid perfectly fairly, sure. If you believe there are diminishing returns to that and our time as people is better spent growing the pie, then that isn't information, it's noise.
      - squeaky-clean 5y ago
        As an individual, why would I care about growing the pie and not my own salary? It's not about optimizing everyone getting paid fairly. It's about optimizing your own pay.
gravypod 5y ago
What if you had a pool of anonymous employee-contributed data about title + pay + benefits that showed you where you were on the distribution? Would you contribute to, and view, that.
bogota 5y ago
I don’t want to know what bob or jill make but i do want to know the company pay bands. It’s really silly when im looking for other jobs that i pass everything then get to the offer to counter it and ooops looks like your 5k over the band for what we wanted to hire you for. Great would have been nice to know up front that unless I interview at whatever your requirement is for staff level on the day of the interview this wasn’t going to work. Its draining and a waste of everyones time.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  Why don't you want to know what Bob or Jill makes? If they make more than you and are better than you, you can see where you will be after you improve. If they get paid more than you and are worse than you, then you can use that knowledge to get a raise. If they make less than you and are better than you, you know they're going to start getting paid more which will make everyone better off. And if they get paid less than you and are worse than you, they'll be more receptive to mentoring.
  - chii 5y ago
    and if they believe they are better than you, but you believe you are better than them, it causes conflict.
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      And the someone who made that decision can explain why one of you is paid more. And instead of one of you spending your career thinking you're so great, you find out that X skills are lacking or Y skills are not valued where you are. So you improve your skills or find a job with a better fit. That sounds great.
kylebyproxy 5y ago
> The belief that every employee wants there to be open sharing of salary data is not universal. I would have thought that the desire to know if you're being treated fairly is universal. You really wouldn't mind making a fraction of what your coworkers make?

by spinax 5y ago

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.

pope_meat 5y ago

Do you make more than most of your peers in your work place, or less?

kevinventullo 5y ago

The employees at tech firms I’ve worked at solved this by “anonymizing”. Basically a few folks maintained a big publicly readable spreadsheet with columns like Title, Level, YOE, YOE at Company, Office Location, Gender, Base Comp, Total Comp. Technically the fields were sufficiently granular that some rows could in principle be de-anonymized, but that wasn’t really the point. N.b. This was just random employees collecting volunteered information, nothing HR-sanctioned.

darkerside 5y ago
The fact remains that this seems likely to increase the perception of unfairness, lower the level of individual happiness, and increase the time spent complaining and analyzing salary discrepancies. Things will never be exactly equal. Why focus time emphasizing the differences?
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  > Things will never be exactly equal. Why focus time emphasizing the differences? Why remain ignornant, and potentially lose out on acertaining one's true market value, because it might hurt someone's feelings? Price discovery via markets can only work with transparency. Opaqueness leads to inefficiencies.
  - darkerside 5y ago
    If you want to optimize for everybody getting paid perfectly fairly, sure. If you believe there are diminishing returns to that and our time as people is better spent growing the pie, then that isn't information, it's noise.
    - squeaky-clean 5y ago
      As an individual, why would I care about growing the pie and not my own salary? It's not about optimizing everyone getting paid fairly. It's about optimizing your own pay.

gravypod 5y ago

What if you had a pool of anonymous employee-contributed data about title + pay + benefits that showed you where you were on the distribution? Would you contribute to, and view, that.

bogota 5y ago

I don’t want to know what bob or jill make but i do want to know the company pay bands. It’s really silly when im looking for other jobs that i pass everything then get to the offer to counter it and ooops looks like your 5k over the band for what we wanted to hire you for. Great would have been nice to know up front that unless I interview at whatever your requirement is for staff level on the day of the interview this wasn’t going to work. Its draining and a waste of everyones time.

HWR_14 5y ago
Why don't you want to know what Bob or Jill makes? If they make more than you and are better than you, you can see where you will be after you improve. If they get paid more than you and are worse than you, then you can use that knowledge to get a raise. If they make less than you and are better than you, you know they're going to start getting paid more which will make everyone better off. And if they get paid less than you and are worse than you, they'll be more receptive to mentoring.
- chii 5y ago
  and if they believe they are better than you, but you believe you are better than them, it causes conflict.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    And the someone who made that decision can explain why one of you is paid more. And instead of one of you spending your career thinking you're so great, you find out that X skills are lacking or Y skills are not valued where you are. So you improve your skills or find a job with a better fit. That sounds great.

kylebyproxy 5y ago

> The belief that every employee wants there to be open sharing of salary data is not universal. I would have thought that the desire to know if you're being treated fairly is universal. You really wouldn't mind making a fraction of what your coworkers make?