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In my opinion -- and I have no hard data to back this up, merely some limited personal experience -- the biggest issue employers will have about salary transpar

In my opinion -- and I have no hard data to back this up, merely some limited personal experience -- the biggest issue employers will have about salary transparency is that it makes paying high performers high salaries more difficult. Typically having a high performer on staff is a huge win for the employer. E.g., at one previous company, the top couple sales people were 10X performers compared to the median sales person. And they were compensated maybe 5X the median. A disgruntled employee found and leaked a document that listed everyone's compensation -- and the negative feelings that were generated towards the company and towards the highly paid sales people was profound. Part of the issue is that the 10X sales people did not necessarily work 10X harder, they just had the right set of personality traits, industry experience, and je ne sais quoi that made them able to bring in more and bigger clients. But many people feel intrinsically that compensation should be tied to effort and to those people it was upsetting to see coworkers who did not necessarily put in 5X more effort get 5X more money. Edited to add: to be clear, I do not personally have a problem with pay being tied to results instead of to effort, but I saw first hand that many people have a different opinion about this.

badpun 4y ago
It can be dealt by creating high-paying higher rungs on career ladder and then promoting the 10x people there. So, regular SE position can have a salary range of say $120k-$150k, but principal senior staff ninja can have say $400k-$600k. That's how FAANGs do it basically.
- boole1854 4y ago
  I see that as being more helpful from a regulatory point of view (i.e., by providing a limited defense against claims of pay discrimination) than from an employee morale point of view. E.g., when people express dissatisfaction over the fact that those in the C-suite make X times what the average employee does, pointing out that the people in the C-suite have different titles or roles from the average employee doesn't seem to assuage anybody.
  - djur 4y ago
    Most complaints I hear about C-level pay boil down to claims that the roles themselves are overvalued, not that individuals are overpaid for the role. I think the value of an extremely highly-performing engineer is likely to be more apparent to the "rank and file" than that of an executive, especially at a company where employee morale is a serious concern.

badpun 4y ago

It can be dealt by creating high-paying higher rungs on career ladder and then promoting the 10x people there. So, regular SE position can have a salary range of say $120k-$150k, but principal senior staff ninja can have say $400k-$600k. That's how FAANGs do it basically.

boole1854 4y ago
I see that as being more helpful from a regulatory point of view (i.e., by providing a limited defense against claims of pay discrimination) than from an employee morale point of view. E.g., when people express dissatisfaction over the fact that those in the C-suite make X times what the average employee does, pointing out that the people in the C-suite have different titles or roles from the average employee doesn't seem to assuage anybody.
- djur 4y ago
  Most complaints I hear about C-level pay boil down to claims that the roles themselves are overvalued, not that individuals are overpaid for the role. I think the value of an extremely highly-performing engineer is likely to be more apparent to the "rank and file" than that of an executive, especially at a company where employee morale is a serious concern.