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Frankly, I'll never work for a company with public pay. I don't want equality, I want to be able to negotiate my value to the company whether that is more or l

Frankly, I'll never work for a company with public pay. I don't want equality, I want to be able to negotiate my value to the company whether that is more or less than others. This is why I became a freelancer years ago and have vastly increased my income. I'm paid for the value I provided the company's bottom line, not some arbitrary "equal" amount based on an arbitrary title as a cog in the machine.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Afforess 5y ago
You are making the argument that public pay reduces the upper window on merit-based compensation. This may even be true! However, consider the other group of people this helps. Minorities, H1B holders, other commonly discriminated classes, who discover they are doing the same work as a colleague and being payed 1/3 the rate. Should these folks get screwed over so you can get your negotiated high pay? Has the trade off even been considered? I'm not saying you're wrong. I just want to make clear what the other side is arguing for - and it's not some evil plot to screw you in particular. It's to help a different group.
- zepto 5y ago
  > it's not some evil plot to screw you in particular It might not be an ‘evil plot’, but corporations routinely support wage suppressing measures.
- Veen 5y ago
  > Should these folks get screwed over so you can get your negotiated high pay? They’re not getting screwed over. They’re getting paid what they agreed to when they took the job, just like everyone else is.
  - fnimick 5y ago
    And it's an unethical system where people who have leverage end up able to negotiate more pay for the same output than people who do not. I suspect that if you weren't in a privileged position, you'd be upset about the disparity too.
    - nightski 5y ago
      Leverage is skill and results. Skill and results do not come from "privilege", it is earned through years of hard work, practice and dedication.
      - cycomanic 5y ago
        Ah come on, we know that this is not true. For example we know that many CEOs come from very select few universities, have typically unique connections through families etc.. So not really hard work practice and dedication
        Veen 5y ago
        They don’t last long if they can’t do the job though, even if they had an advantage in their climb to the top.
        ravitation 5y ago
        I generally agree with what you're saying, but it's often more simple than that. The greatest leverage in a salary negotiation comes from the freedom to actually quit, a freedom, especially in the United States, that many do not have (and never "earn"). While, on the other hand, the privileged are born with this freedom.
        perl4ever 5y ago
        >The greatest leverage in a salary negotiation comes from the freedom to actually quit Leverage comes from alternatives to an agreement. The asymmetry in negotiations is that in most circumstances, employees or candidates tend to have zero (remaining unemployed) or one (remaining at a job) alternatives. People think they have more alternatives, but there's a huge difference between an alternative at an exact moment, and alternatives that are theoretical within days, weeks or months. Employers have alternatives, even if they aren't great, right now. So you're not on an equal footing whether you are interviewing or talking to your current employer. Not to mention, when you do have leverage, exploiting it to the hilt can poison or destroy a future relationship.
silicon2401 5y ago
This is why equality often ends up being a race to the bottom. If you disallow rewarding exceptional behavior and people, or only let everyone have the same thing, then there's just no way around the reality of limited resources and the inherent inequality of genetics and interest/effort.
- JohnFen 5y ago
  I don't see calls for equality as meaning that you can't make more money by performing better. I see calls for equality meaning that the basis on which pay rates are decided are applied to all equally.
  - silicon2401 5y ago
    Maybe we see different things. Many people, including on HN, argue for things like lottery systems for universities, i.e. "you can't get into a better university by performing better in grade school".
lovich 5y ago
Public pay information doesn’t require equality. If you actually are better then you’ll negotiate better pay. You’re saying the equivalent of “I don’t want a free market. If other people have the same information I do then I won’t be able to benefit off the information disparity and have to compete on merit”
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  > Public pay information doesn’t require equality. That's absolutely NOT how it works in practice. It is widely studied that there are HUGE differences in programmer productivity. While the theoretical "10x" programmer may not be that common, I see "2x" programmers all the time. But you hardly ever see 2x differences in salaries, even though this would be the fair thing if you were looking at output. Once pay becomes public, management is basically constrained to keep people in relatively tight bands because it's trivial for anyone on the lower end of a pay scale to complain that Programmer X gets paid more money, even if Programmer X gets shit out the door 2x faster.
  - suriyaG 5y ago
    The problem, I believe is in objectively measuring said "productivity". Yes, you say person A is 2X productive than person B. But that's just arbitrary from your POV. Someone in the same team may mark them as 1.5X productive. Heck, the same person you saw working 2X one week might not work the same amount the next. If you have any suggestion on ways of measuring productivity. That'll be cool to hear.
    - varjag 5y ago
      Some people consistently outperform most others in their clique. Fair compensation is a problem without a great solution there, but denial is not the answer.
    - dwaltrip 5y ago
      I agree, measuring productivity is very difficult. And as you said, it can be a moving target as well. But I don't think you are claiming there are not significant differences in productivity? Given that, it's not unreasonable for the more productive people to ask for more compensation, even if it is difficult to identify who they are. It's definitely a hard problem. There is probably a lot of room for improvement in general for how we approach this.
criddell 5y ago
I don't think public pay means you can't negotiate your salary to get paid what you believe you deserve. Did you ever wonder if maybe your negotiation skills aren't as good as you think? Public pay could be a way of finding out if you are selling yourself short.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  It's easy to contact salary services to know what the market rate is for your position. If anything, people with better "negotiation skills" do this proactively, while other people wander and complain without realizing much of this information is already publicly available.
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    > It's easy to contact salary services to know what the market rate is for your position. This would be easier and more accessible if the data was just available.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      You mean like on levels.fyi? In my experience (as an employee and an employer), their data seems very well aligned to reality. Its main flaw is that it’s US-heavy.
ASalazarMX 5y ago
You're conflating openness with equality. Public salaries don't mean they have to be the same salary for all, because people are not the same. It's frequent that the salary of a freelancer working for a company becomes public among its employees. That doesn't mean similar employees will ask the same salary, because they know the freelancer can do something they can't, or they can't do it as well.
- ljm 5y ago
  Or more literally, you can't take a freelancer on a 3 month contract at 700 a day and say, "well based on what they're being paid, my salary should be 170k!"
ljm 5y ago
Arguably, freelancing or starting your own business will continue to be the best way to achieve this (and it comes with considerable risk), as your negotiation skills and business acumen will contribute to your income, as well every other skill not directly connected to the job description for a specific role. At a full-time, salaried job, though? Do you get a higher salary because of your demonstrable value, or just because you've become a great salesman? The latter being why tech companies throw up barrier after barrier in their hiring process to try and differentiate between smooth talking and genuine skill (or value). The point being, would you even work for a company at all knowing where you stand as a freelancer, or a consultant? From where I'm standing, publishing the payroll wouldn't make a jot of a difference.
JohnFen 5y ago
I wouldn't want my to work at such a company either, but not because of negotiation power. I'd avoid it because I think it would lead to a sense of competition with coworkers over pay, complete with resentments, and that would be irritating.
tayo42 5y ago
Are you actually able to do that in any typical company. Usually your stuck in a pay band ime
moron4hire 5y ago
Shouldn't your performance influence the title you end up having? Just because your pay is based on your title doesn't mean your relative performance level can't be rewarded. Perform better = increase grade in career track.
Veen 5y ago
I completely agree. My pay is based on a private agreement between me and my employer. It has nothing to do with other employees, just as their pay has nothing to do with me.
vkou 5y ago
> Frankly, I'll never work for a company with public pay. I don't want equality, Public pay does not mean equality. Most public institutions have public pay, but the janitor does not make as much as the CEO. > I want to be able to negotiate my value to the company whether that is more or less than others. In which case, public pay is an incredibly important bit of information for you to frame your negotiation around. Being unhappy with public pay is like going to a car dealership and being unhappy that there are prices written on the windows of the car its selling. You can still negotiate from those prices. In fact, you're expected to.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  >Being unhappy with public pay is like going to a car dealership and being unhappy that there are prices written on the windows of the car its selling. Not only that, but more information on costs is still better, even if you have the MSRP. You want to know the invoice, you want to know the holdback if any, you want to know the average selling price in your area, you certainly want to know how much sales tax is, you probably take for granted the gas mileage is disclosed, is there an extra/excessive "documentation" fee...
BeetleB 5y ago
> I'm paid for the value I provided the company's bottom line Nope. You're paid for your ability to negotiate. Big difference. It's very obvious in some companies where it's easy to find higher paid people who are mediocre compared to their colleagues. They get paid more not because they bring in more value, but because they negotiated better. And, seriously: Except for a few cases (2 person business or something) no one has an accurate amount of how much you add to the bottom line. It's a safe bet you don't. So the notion that either party knows your value is just flawed.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  > no one has an accurate amount of how much you add to the bottom line. It's a safe bet you don't. +1. This is extra impossible at tech companies that "give away" products. How much do you add to the bottom line for improving google search algo? Its directly 0 because a better algo doesnt mean more money (it would at a hedge fund!) and indirectly it could be billions if it means more people use the product (or it could be zero if one thinks that google's 98% market share means the algo is irrelevant) How much does an employee on Alexa add to amazon's bottom line? Its a huge project that is important to the company, but it makes almost $0 and is obviously not free to run... so should you lose money to be an alexa employee? How do you measure this at any real company?
  - jasonladuke0311 5y ago
    Also, it doesn’t take into account skilled/hard-to-hire roles that are effectively cost centers, like security. How much revenue am I responsible for as a security engineer? Probably none, especially since the consequences for a breach are usually negligible.
  - jakelazaroff 5y ago
    It is most definitely not impossible. How do you think companies decide on budgets? They're not just guessing; they're predicting how different projects will impact revenue. Alexa isn't important to Amazon because it's "cool" — it's important because they've put an actual dollar amount to its return on investment.
kasey_junk 5y ago
I worked for a trading firm that had public pay & it certainly wasn’t about equality. It was simply recognition that people will talk about pay and it was easier to get in front of any ill will & miscommunication. There were extremely wide pay bands there for the same function and it worked fine because the company was perfectly happy to tell people “that other person is paid more because they are worth more to us”. I find that a whole lot more palatable to the nonsense pay bands I see at the regular tech company. Don’t lie to people about why your pay is secret (it’s always for information asymmetry in negotiations) and be honest to your employees about their value to the company and everything seems to sort itself out.
- nickff 5y ago
  >"it’s always for information asymmetry in negotiations" There are other reasons; depending on how varied the roles and responsibilities are in an organization, and the people working there (partly 'culture'), this kind of information can make some people get embarrassed or envious. This is obviously most true for company with wider ranges of operations (highly paid engineers vs. lower paid manufacturing workers and/or customer service personnel,) in areas where 'value to company' is not a widely-shared outlook.
- golemiprague 5y ago
  In trading firm you can measure value by how much money a trader makes for the company, people can almost guess your salary, or at least your bonuses based on this data, so exposing it is not such a big deal. But how do you measure software developers? it is not that simple and exposing salaries can create a lot of jealousy between people because there is no clear criteria.
nitwit005 5y ago
> I'm paid for the value I provided the company's bottom line Completely untrue. Imagine you spend three years building an app. You'll produce zero revenue during those years, and even after it ships, it'll take years more to pay off the money invested. In reality, like any other good, your pay is determined by what someone is willing to pay for you.
ravitation 5y ago
I'm interested to know how having access to information, which the opposing party in said negotiation has access to, would hurt you? It seems unlikely that it hurts you directly in your own negotiation, and more likely is a benefit. It might hurt you indirectly - in that it helps other employees, who are making less than you, potentially make more, and thereby reduce your own theoretical maximum pay (this doesn't seem very compelling though)... But, it seems naively egocentric to believe that, over the course of one's career, that indirect harm would be greater than the potential direct benefit... What am I missing here?
- Frost1x 5y ago
  There tends to be an assumption that more information is always better but it ultimately depends on how one interprets and uses that information (time and absorptive capacity is important). Most models that push for more information assume perfect decision making (utilizing all the information effectively and optimally). That is not always the case (I might even argue often). Information overload can lead to analysis paralysis, adding complexity to properly weighing information, and ultimately land into poor decision making processes. In the case of salary information, perhaps I perceive that I'm a below average worker. When handed the average, I might be willing to low ball myself because my thought process may think pay is directly correlated to skill or value given to a company and if I perceive my ability to produce as lower than others, I may be willing, during a negotiation process, to accept low balled values. In the era of the data deluge, we're learning it's not always the case that more information is better. More and even high quality information needs high quality decision making. If you think of human decision making as flawed (hint: we all make flawed decisions so it is), then our processes will not always make good use of new information, even with high quality concise information. It's very possible for more information to result in undesired or negative effects. We like to pretend we have all sorts of oracle systems out there but we really don't. In the case of knowing salaries I tend to agree with you: knowing what your competition make is better, most of the time.
  - ravitation 5y ago
    Your example, while potentially leading to a lower salary, is not actually an argument against public salary information, unless you assume the goal is universally higher salaries... Which, in your example, you explicitly state is not the goal of the worker... The prior is, in my opinion, generally the safer assumed goal. Regardless, yes, more information yields the possibility of incorrect analysis, but I don't think that it's obvious that the information in this instance, the salaries of one's peers, would be of such complexity that knowing it would result in frequent misinterpretation to the detriment of the worker. In fact, given the stated goals of the worker in your example, even they use such information to their own (personal) moral, if not their financial, benefit.
heavyset_go 5y ago
You can more accurately ascertain the true market value of your work by knowing the salaries of your peers. It has nothing to do with equality. Also, even in companies that don't post their salaries have pay grades and bands.
analyst74 5y ago
As an employee, if you consistently deliver measurable and outsized impact, you get high ratings and promotions that will increase your pay dramatically. And as freelance developer, how do you know you're not underpaid? For example, a client offered you $x to build a system, how do you know that's a fair amount without market data?
mc32 5y ago
I wouldn't say never but I'd prefer not to. My compensation information to me is private. I never felt like sharing it either when I was poor or now when I'm better off. It's like having an open sex life. It's not for me. I don't want to know how often you get laid, nor do I have the need to share my sex life either. Neither is "wrong" they're just not things I want to share.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  Do you want to know how much other people paid for a car, when you're shopping for one, or any other big ticket item? Would you be ok with nobody posting MSRPs anywhere?
  - mc32 5y ago
    Anonymous? Sure. Do I need to know what Jane Blow paid? No.
    - perl4ever 5y ago
      What does that mean? The average is enough and you would actively avoid information about the distribution if you could get it?
      - mc32 5y ago
        No they can give me the distribution, I just don’t need to know what Jane Blow paid. So I don’t need to know what Jane, or my boss or whomever paid for their F-150 and none of them need to know what I paid. But I don’t mind knowing the distribution so long as none of the data points can be tied to any particular person.
        perl4ever 5y ago
        >so long as none of the data points can be tied to any particular person Does that mean you are against salaries being published beside names, or you feel any possibility of identifying people should prevent a dataset being released?
Talanes 5y ago
It's not the ability to negotiate that you want, because that wouldn't go away just by public pay. You think that in an information-scarce negotiating environment, you can do a better job than your colleagues. You don't want them being able to reference you in their negotiations.
jhgb 5y ago
> I'll never work for a company with public pay. I don't want equality, I want to be able to negotiate my value to the company whether that is more or less than others. I don't understand how this affects your ability to "negotiate your value" in the first place. The party you're negotiating with already has this data, regardless of whether you yourself have it as well or not.
listless 5y ago
I’ve never understood why people think this is a good idea. If you share your salary with someone, it will go one of two ways - either they will be angry that you make more or you will be resentful that they make more than you. I don’t see what good can come of sharing salaries.
Breza 5y ago
Public salaries don't mean that everybody gets paid the same. It just brings the differences to light. If you have the same job title as somebody else but you manage twice as many projects, there's no reason you should both earn the same. But if you contribute the same value to the firm, management should have to explain why you earn more.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Afforess 5y ago

You are making the argument that public pay reduces the upper window on merit-based compensation. This may even be true! However, consider the other group of people this helps. Minorities, H1B holders, other commonly discriminated classes, who discover they are doing the same work as a colleague and being payed 1/3 the rate. Should these folks get screwed over so you can get your negotiated high pay? Has the trade off even been considered? I'm not saying you're wrong. I just want to make clear what the other side is arguing for - and it's not some evil plot to screw you in particular. It's to help a different group.

zepto 5y ago
> it's not some evil plot to screw you in particular It might not be an ‘evil plot’, but corporations routinely support wage suppressing measures.
Veen 5y ago
> Should these folks get screwed over so you can get your negotiated high pay? They’re not getting screwed over. They’re getting paid what they agreed to when they took the job, just like everyone else is.
- fnimick 5y ago
  And it's an unethical system where people who have leverage end up able to negotiate more pay for the same output than people who do not. I suspect that if you weren't in a privileged position, you'd be upset about the disparity too.
  - nightski 5y ago
    Leverage is skill and results. Skill and results do not come from "privilege", it is earned through years of hard work, practice and dedication.
    - cycomanic 5y ago
      Ah come on, we know that this is not true. For example we know that many CEOs come from very select few universities, have typically unique connections through families etc.. So not really hard work practice and dedication
      - Veen 5y ago
        They don’t last long if they can’t do the job though, even if they had an advantage in their climb to the top.
      - ravitation 5y ago
        I generally agree with what you're saying, but it's often more simple than that. The greatest leverage in a salary negotiation comes from the freedom to actually quit, a freedom, especially in the United States, that many do not have (and never "earn"). While, on the other hand, the privileged are born with this freedom.
        perl4ever 5y ago
        >The greatest leverage in a salary negotiation comes from the freedom to actually quit Leverage comes from alternatives to an agreement. The asymmetry in negotiations is that in most circumstances, employees or candidates tend to have zero (remaining unemployed) or one (remaining at a job) alternatives. People think they have more alternatives, but there's a huge difference between an alternative at an exact moment, and alternatives that are theoretical within days, weeks or months. Employers have alternatives, even if they aren't great, right now. So you're not on an equal footing whether you are interviewing or talking to your current employer. Not to mention, when you do have leverage, exploiting it to the hilt can poison or destroy a future relationship.

silicon2401 5y ago

This is why equality often ends up being a race to the bottom. If you disallow rewarding exceptional behavior and people, or only let everyone have the same thing, then there's just no way around the reality of limited resources and the inherent inequality of genetics and interest/effort.

JohnFen 5y ago
I don't see calls for equality as meaning that you can't make more money by performing better. I see calls for equality meaning that the basis on which pay rates are decided are applied to all equally.
- silicon2401 5y ago
  Maybe we see different things. Many people, including on HN, argue for things like lottery systems for universities, i.e. "you can't get into a better university by performing better in grade school".

lovich 5y ago

Public pay information doesn’t require equality. If you actually are better then you’ll negotiate better pay. You’re saying the equivalent of “I don’t want a free market. If other people have the same information I do then I won’t be able to benefit off the information disparity and have to compete on merit”

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
> Public pay information doesn’t require equality. That's absolutely NOT how it works in practice. It is widely studied that there are HUGE differences in programmer productivity. While the theoretical "10x" programmer may not be that common, I see "2x" programmers all the time. But you hardly ever see 2x differences in salaries, even though this would be the fair thing if you were looking at output. Once pay becomes public, management is basically constrained to keep people in relatively tight bands because it's trivial for anyone on the lower end of a pay scale to complain that Programmer X gets paid more money, even if Programmer X gets shit out the door 2x faster.
- suriyaG 5y ago
  The problem, I believe is in objectively measuring said "productivity". Yes, you say person A is 2X productive than person B. But that's just arbitrary from your POV. Someone in the same team may mark them as 1.5X productive. Heck, the same person you saw working 2X one week might not work the same amount the next. If you have any suggestion on ways of measuring productivity. That'll be cool to hear.
  - varjag 5y ago
    Some people consistently outperform most others in their clique. Fair compensation is a problem without a great solution there, but denial is not the answer.
  - dwaltrip 5y ago
    I agree, measuring productivity is very difficult. And as you said, it can be a moving target as well. But I don't think you are claiming there are not significant differences in productivity? Given that, it's not unreasonable for the more productive people to ask for more compensation, even if it is difficult to identify who they are. It's definitely a hard problem. There is probably a lot of room for improvement in general for how we approach this.

criddell 5y ago

I don't think public pay means you can't negotiate your salary to get paid what you believe you deserve. Did you ever wonder if maybe your negotiation skills aren't as good as you think? Public pay could be a way of finding out if you are selling yourself short.

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
It's easy to contact salary services to know what the market rate is for your position. If anything, people with better "negotiation skills" do this proactively, while other people wander and complain without realizing much of this information is already publicly available.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  > It's easy to contact salary services to know what the market rate is for your position. This would be easier and more accessible if the data was just available.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    You mean like on levels.fyi? In my experience (as an employee and an employer), their data seems very well aligned to reality. Its main flaw is that it’s US-heavy.

ASalazarMX 5y ago

You're conflating openness with equality. Public salaries don't mean they have to be the same salary for all, because people are not the same. It's frequent that the salary of a freelancer working for a company becomes public among its employees. That doesn't mean similar employees will ask the same salary, because they know the freelancer can do something they can't, or they can't do it as well.

ljm 5y ago
Or more literally, you can't take a freelancer on a 3 month contract at 700 a day and say, "well based on what they're being paid, my salary should be 170k!"

ljm 5y ago

Arguably, freelancing or starting your own business will continue to be the best way to achieve this (and it comes with considerable risk), as your negotiation skills and business acumen will contribute to your income, as well every other skill not directly connected to the job description for a specific role. At a full-time, salaried job, though? Do you get a higher salary because of your demonstrable value, or just because you've become a great salesman? The latter being why tech companies throw up barrier after barrier in their hiring process to try and differentiate between smooth talking and genuine skill (or value). The point being, would you even work for a company at all knowing where you stand as a freelancer, or a consultant? From where I'm standing, publishing the payroll wouldn't make a jot of a difference.

JohnFen 5y ago

I wouldn't want my to work at such a company either, but not because of negotiation power. I'd avoid it because I think it would lead to a sense of competition with coworkers over pay, complete with resentments, and that would be irritating.

tayo42 5y ago

Are you actually able to do that in any typical company. Usually your stuck in a pay band ime

moron4hire 5y ago

Shouldn't your performance influence the title you end up having? Just because your pay is based on your title doesn't mean your relative performance level can't be rewarded. Perform better = increase grade in career track.

Veen 5y ago

I completely agree. My pay is based on a private agreement between me and my employer. It has nothing to do with other employees, just as their pay has nothing to do with me.

vkou 5y ago

> Frankly, I'll never work for a company with public pay. I don't want equality, Public pay does not mean equality. Most public institutions have public pay, but the janitor does not make as much as the CEO. > I want to be able to negotiate my value to the company whether that is more or less than others. In which case, public pay is an incredibly important bit of information for you to frame your negotiation around. Being unhappy with public pay is like going to a car dealership and being unhappy that there are prices written on the windows of the car its selling. You can still negotiate from those prices. In fact, you're expected to.

perl4ever 5y ago
>Being unhappy with public pay is like going to a car dealership and being unhappy that there are prices written on the windows of the car its selling. Not only that, but more information on costs is still better, even if you have the MSRP. You want to know the invoice, you want to know the holdback if any, you want to know the average selling price in your area, you certainly want to know how much sales tax is, you probably take for granted the gas mileage is disclosed, is there an extra/excessive "documentation" fee...

BeetleB 5y ago

> I'm paid for the value I provided the company's bottom line Nope. You're paid for your ability to negotiate. Big difference. It's very obvious in some companies where it's easy to find higher paid people who are mediocre compared to their colleagues. They get paid more not because they bring in more value, but because they negotiated better. And, seriously: Except for a few cases (2 person business or something) no one has an accurate amount of how much you add to the bottom line. It's a safe bet you don't. So the notion that either party knows your value is just flawed.

vineyardmike 5y ago
> no one has an accurate amount of how much you add to the bottom line. It's a safe bet you don't. +1. This is extra impossible at tech companies that "give away" products. How much do you add to the bottom line for improving google search algo? Its directly 0 because a better algo doesnt mean more money (it would at a hedge fund!) and indirectly it could be billions if it means more people use the product (or it could be zero if one thinks that google's 98% market share means the algo is irrelevant) How much does an employee on Alexa add to amazon's bottom line? Its a huge project that is important to the company, but it makes almost $0 and is obviously not free to run... so should you lose money to be an alexa employee? How do you measure this at any real company?
- jasonladuke0311 5y ago
  Also, it doesn’t take into account skilled/hard-to-hire roles that are effectively cost centers, like security. How much revenue am I responsible for as a security engineer? Probably none, especially since the consequences for a breach are usually negligible.
- jakelazaroff 5y ago
  It is most definitely not impossible. How do you think companies decide on budgets? They're not just guessing; they're predicting how different projects will impact revenue. Alexa isn't important to Amazon because it's "cool" — it's important because they've put an actual dollar amount to its return on investment.

kasey_junk 5y ago

I worked for a trading firm that had public pay & it certainly wasn’t about equality. It was simply recognition that people will talk about pay and it was easier to get in front of any ill will & miscommunication. There were extremely wide pay bands there for the same function and it worked fine because the company was perfectly happy to tell people “that other person is paid more because they are worth more to us”. I find that a whole lot more palatable to the nonsense pay bands I see at the regular tech company. Don’t lie to people about why your pay is secret (it’s always for information asymmetry in negotiations) and be honest to your employees about their value to the company and everything seems to sort itself out.

nickff 5y ago
>"it’s always for information asymmetry in negotiations" There are other reasons; depending on how varied the roles and responsibilities are in an organization, and the people working there (partly 'culture'), this kind of information can make some people get embarrassed or envious. This is obviously most true for company with wider ranges of operations (highly paid engineers vs. lower paid manufacturing workers and/or customer service personnel,) in areas where 'value to company' is not a widely-shared outlook.
golemiprague 5y ago
In trading firm you can measure value by how much money a trader makes for the company, people can almost guess your salary, or at least your bonuses based on this data, so exposing it is not such a big deal. But how do you measure software developers? it is not that simple and exposing salaries can create a lot of jealousy between people because there is no clear criteria.

nitwit005 5y ago

> I'm paid for the value I provided the company's bottom line Completely untrue. Imagine you spend three years building an app. You'll produce zero revenue during those years, and even after it ships, it'll take years more to pay off the money invested. In reality, like any other good, your pay is determined by what someone is willing to pay for you.

ravitation 5y ago

I'm interested to know how having access to information, which the opposing party in said negotiation has access to, would hurt you? It seems unlikely that it hurts you directly in your own negotiation, and more likely is a benefit. It might hurt you indirectly - in that it helps other employees, who are making less than you, potentially make more, and thereby reduce your own theoretical maximum pay (this doesn't seem very compelling though)... But, it seems naively egocentric to believe that, over the course of one's career, that indirect harm would be greater than the potential direct benefit... What am I missing here?

Frost1x 5y ago
There tends to be an assumption that more information is always better but it ultimately depends on how one interprets and uses that information (time and absorptive capacity is important). Most models that push for more information assume perfect decision making (utilizing all the information effectively and optimally). That is not always the case (I might even argue often). Information overload can lead to analysis paralysis, adding complexity to properly weighing information, and ultimately land into poor decision making processes. In the case of salary information, perhaps I perceive that I'm a below average worker. When handed the average, I might be willing to low ball myself because my thought process may think pay is directly correlated to skill or value given to a company and if I perceive my ability to produce as lower than others, I may be willing, during a negotiation process, to accept low balled values. In the era of the data deluge, we're learning it's not always the case that more information is better. More and even high quality information needs high quality decision making. If you think of human decision making as flawed (hint: we all make flawed decisions so it is), then our processes will not always make good use of new information, even with high quality concise information. It's very possible for more information to result in undesired or negative effects. We like to pretend we have all sorts of oracle systems out there but we really don't. In the case of knowing salaries I tend to agree with you: knowing what your competition make is better, most of the time.
- ravitation 5y ago
  Your example, while potentially leading to a lower salary, is not actually an argument against public salary information, unless you assume the goal is universally higher salaries... Which, in your example, you explicitly state is not the goal of the worker... The prior is, in my opinion, generally the safer assumed goal. Regardless, yes, more information yields the possibility of incorrect analysis, but I don't think that it's obvious that the information in this instance, the salaries of one's peers, would be of such complexity that knowing it would result in frequent misinterpretation to the detriment of the worker. In fact, given the stated goals of the worker in your example, even they use such information to their own (personal) moral, if not their financial, benefit.

heavyset_go 5y ago

You can more accurately ascertain the true market value of your work by knowing the salaries of your peers. It has nothing to do with equality. Also, even in companies that don't post their salaries have pay grades and bands.

analyst74 5y ago

As an employee, if you consistently deliver measurable and outsized impact, you get high ratings and promotions that will increase your pay dramatically. And as freelance developer, how do you know you're not underpaid? For example, a client offered you $x to build a system, how do you know that's a fair amount without market data?

mc32 5y ago

I wouldn't say never but I'd prefer not to. My compensation information to me is private. I never felt like sharing it either when I was poor or now when I'm better off. It's like having an open sex life. It's not for me. I don't want to know how often you get laid, nor do I have the need to share my sex life either. Neither is "wrong" they're just not things I want to share.

perl4ever 5y ago
Do you want to know how much other people paid for a car, when you're shopping for one, or any other big ticket item? Would you be ok with nobody posting MSRPs anywhere?
- mc32 5y ago
  Anonymous? Sure. Do I need to know what Jane Blow paid? No.
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    What does that mean? The average is enough and you would actively avoid information about the distribution if you could get it?
    - mc32 5y ago
      No they can give me the distribution, I just don’t need to know what Jane Blow paid. So I don’t need to know what Jane, or my boss or whomever paid for their F-150 and none of them need to know what I paid. But I don’t mind knowing the distribution so long as none of the data points can be tied to any particular person.
      - perl4ever 5y ago
        >so long as none of the data points can be tied to any particular person Does that mean you are against salaries being published beside names, or you feel any possibility of identifying people should prevent a dataset being released?

Talanes 5y ago

It's not the ability to negotiate that you want, because that wouldn't go away just by public pay. You think that in an information-scarce negotiating environment, you can do a better job than your colleagues. You don't want them being able to reference you in their negotiations.

jhgb 5y ago

> I'll never work for a company with public pay. I don't want equality, I want to be able to negotiate my value to the company whether that is more or less than others. I don't understand how this affects your ability to "negotiate your value" in the first place. The party you're negotiating with already has this data, regardless of whether you yourself have it as well or not.

listless 5y ago

I’ve never understood why people think this is a good idea. If you share your salary with someone, it will go one of two ways - either they will be angry that you make more or you will be resentful that they make more than you. I don’t see what good can come of sharing salaries.

Breza 5y ago

Public salaries don't mean that everybody gets paid the same. It just brings the differences to light. If you have the same job title as somebody else but you manage twice as many projects, there's no reason you should both earn the same. But if you contribute the same value to the firm, management should have to explain why you earn more.