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To be fair, workers are not interchangeable pieces. If you're paid less, it's not necessarily because your employer is ripping you, there are many factors: perf

To be fair, workers are not interchangeable pieces. If you're paid less, it's not necessarily because your employer is ripping you, there are many factors: performance, commitment, disposition, ambition, networking, etc. I don't think it's a good idea to dictate fixed salaries, but it's a great idea to make them transparent. It would be nice seeing how much the best employee earns, so you could use them as a role model. It would also be nice to see if the slacker brother of your boss is earning accordingly to his performance.

pcurve 5y ago
I tend to agree. No two candidates are exactly the same. Just like there's no pay transparency, there is no candidate transparency. With things I buy off the Web, I have option of returning if they were misrepresented or do not perform. With job applicants, you can't do that.
sangnoir 5y ago
> To be fair, workers are not interchangeable pieces. True - but job posts can be occupied by interchangeable pieces; some are overachievers, but all meet a minimum requirement. "Software Engineer I" in department A can be filled by any suitable candidate, and the budget maxes out at $XXX,000. If you're being paid less than this, the employer should tell you why (commitment,disposition, ambition, networking, etc).
danaris 5y ago
> To be fair, workers are not interchangeable pieces. This is absolutely true. However, in practice, while there are certainly workplaces where differences in pay are primarily due to differences in actual productive output and value to the team/company, there are also many, many workplaces where the differences in pay are entirely due to either better negotiation skills (which have absolutely nothing to do with the work in question), or how much the people deciding on the pay like the workers in question....including how much the workers in question toe the party line and are willing to sacrifice and abuse themselves for the sake of the company. In a case like this, what is responsible is to acknowledge the good-faith cases, and put rules in place (like pay transparency) to help fight against the bad-faith and abusive cases. "We should allow companies the freedom to continue to abuse their employees, because some companies instead use that freedom to reward good employees" is not a particularly compelling argument, at least to me.
- nitrogen 5y ago
  "We should allow companies the freedom to continue to abuse their employees, because some companies instead use that freedom to reward good employees" is not a particularly compelling argument, at least to me. That really depends on the magnitude of the two problems. "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater," "The cure is worse than the disease," etc.
  - danaris 5y ago
    This is certainly true, and a fair criticism in the general case. However, at least from my perspective, the harm caused by allowing employers to continue to abuse the information asymmetry is significant and real, while the idea that keeping people in the dark makes it somehow more likely that good employers will reward good employees seems to have no rational basis in fact. (It is, I believe, much more likely that good employers will reward good employees regardless of whether they are required to disclose employee compensation.) Thus, unless you wish to claim an ideological argument of some sort (which I would say should always be superseded by evidence of actual harm to actual people on the other side), the only remaining argument I've personally seen against pay transparency always appears to boil down to "I assume I must be paid better than the people around me, because of my obviously better skills at $JOB and/or negotiation, and I'm afraid that if everyone knew they would be jealous of me."
P_I_Staker 5y ago
Or they're paid more, because their neighbour is a good worker, and too nice to ask for anything. Meanwhile Mr. Jerkface next door is a very mediocre, unreliable character, and is still difficult to let go, so he gets paid more, because he always asks for more more money. Dynamic pay doesn't always reward the very best, and certainly not proportionally. It also rewards the person the boss likes, well connected people, and people that are just more skilled at gaming the system.
avianlyric 5y ago
Dictating fixed salaries and wage transparency are vastly different things, and only one of those things is being discussed here. Wage transparency does not lead to fixed salaries, it just removes the information asymmetry between employer and worker, making it easier for workers to negotiate a better wage. Employers can still refuse to introduce pay parity, and many employees probably won’t care that much.

pcurve 5y ago

I tend to agree. No two candidates are exactly the same. Just like there's no pay transparency, there is no candidate transparency. With things I buy off the Web, I have option of returning if they were misrepresented or do not perform. With job applicants, you can't do that.

sangnoir 5y ago

> To be fair, workers are not interchangeable pieces. True - but job posts can be occupied by interchangeable pieces; some are overachievers, but all meet a minimum requirement. "Software Engineer I" in department A can be filled by any suitable candidate, and the budget maxes out at $XXX,000. If you're being paid less than this, the employer should tell you why (commitment,disposition, ambition, networking, etc).

danaris 5y ago

> To be fair, workers are not interchangeable pieces. This is absolutely true. However, in practice, while there are certainly workplaces where differences in pay are primarily due to differences in actual productive output and value to the team/company, there are also many, many workplaces where the differences in pay are entirely due to either better negotiation skills (which have absolutely nothing to do with the work in question), or how much the people deciding on the pay like the workers in question....including how much the workers in question toe the party line and are willing to sacrifice and abuse themselves for the sake of the company. In a case like this, what is responsible is to acknowledge the good-faith cases, and put rules in place (like pay transparency) to help fight against the bad-faith and abusive cases. "We should allow companies the freedom to continue to abuse their employees, because some companies instead use that freedom to reward good employees" is not a particularly compelling argument, at least to me.

nitrogen 5y ago
"We should allow companies the freedom to continue to abuse their employees, because some companies instead use that freedom to reward good employees" is not a particularly compelling argument, at least to me. That really depends on the magnitude of the two problems. "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater," "The cure is worse than the disease," etc.
- danaris 5y ago
  This is certainly true, and a fair criticism in the general case. However, at least from my perspective, the harm caused by allowing employers to continue to abuse the information asymmetry is significant and real, while the idea that keeping people in the dark makes it somehow more likely that good employers will reward good employees seems to have no rational basis in fact. (It is, I believe, much more likely that good employers will reward good employees regardless of whether they are required to disclose employee compensation.) Thus, unless you wish to claim an ideological argument of some sort (which I would say should always be superseded by evidence of actual harm to actual people on the other side), the only remaining argument I've personally seen against pay transparency always appears to boil down to "I assume I must be paid better than the people around me, because of my obviously better skills at $JOB and/or negotiation, and I'm afraid that if everyone knew they would be jealous of me."

P_I_Staker 5y ago

Or they're paid more, because their neighbour is a good worker, and too nice to ask for anything. Meanwhile Mr. Jerkface next door is a very mediocre, unreliable character, and is still difficult to let go, so he gets paid more, because he always asks for more more money. Dynamic pay doesn't always reward the very best, and certainly not proportionally. It also rewards the person the boss likes, well connected people, and people that are just more skilled at gaming the system.

avianlyric 5y ago

Dictating fixed salaries and wage transparency are vastly different things, and only one of those things is being discussed here. Wage transparency does not lead to fixed salaries, it just removes the information asymmetry between employer and worker, making it easier for workers to negotiate a better wage. Employers can still refuse to introduce pay parity, and many employees probably won’t care that much.