4 ms·

Management is the only one who benefits when labor doesn’t openly share salary information. Let the information flow. Knowledge is power.

• eastbound 3y ago
  No. With full public information, bad employees benefit from being able to ask for more, good employees just flee elsewhere. Because it’s impossible to reason someone on their skills. Full information is hell on Earth.
  • lotsofpulp 3y ago
    Management’s job is to get rid of bad employees. Good employees do not have unlimited places to “flee” to. And full information is when markets allocate resources most efficiently.
    • ekianjo 3y ago
      Information asymmetry is a natural thing. It benefits job seekers too because your prospective employer does not know everything about them. If all info was freely available knowledge brokers would have immense power.
      • lotsofpulp 3y ago
        > Information asymmetry is a natural thing. What does this mean? Why does natural even matter? Humans changed a lot of things that are “natural” to better their lives. >It benefits job seekers too because your prospective employer does not know everything about them. Temporarily embarassed billionaires. Aka you like to think you are the 1% who can out negotiate an employer because you are so in demand. 99% of people will be at a disadvantage no matter what. Also, https://theworknumber.com/ https://theworknumber.com/ > If all info was freely available knowledge brokers would have immense power. What is the purpose of a “knowledge” broker, if the thing they are brokering is already available to everyone?
        • WrongAssumption 3y ago
          No he’s right. It used to be in my state that prospective employers could ask for salary history with proof. If you are leaving a place because of bad pay or just that you want to make more money the discussion was always tethered around your previous pay. A few years ago my state made it illegal to ask for that information, and can now only ask our salary expectations. It’s now tethered around what you want to make. This led to a HUGE increase in my comp.
          • lotsofpulp 3y ago
            > If you are leaving a place because of bad pay or just that you want to make more money the discussion was always tethered around your previous pay. The employer wanted you to think that, but it was actually tethered around your other job offers and your willingness to say no. If you have access to information for what other employers are paying, and are potential other options for your employment, the employer will know you know this. More importantly, you will not have to waste your valuable time figuring out what other employers are paying, so you have to do less work to figure out the market. The employer most likely already knows the market, that is part of their daily duties, and know that applicants have to do a lot of work to figure out the market. Hence trying to use people’s previous pay to lowball them, since they know that people only know that.
          • oblio 3y ago
            You could have just said no.
        • ekianjo 3y ago
          Even if data is freely available evrerywhere it means it becomes a valuable occupation to collect it and exploit it and this is what a knowledge broker is.
          • lotsofpulp 3y ago
            Why is this framed negatively as “exploiting”? What is the problem with a business springing up that collects labor pricing information and provides a resource to labor sellers on where the market is indicating more demand for labor? Right now, labor buyers can buy the same exact information, and as a result, labor sellers are being exploited.
      • oblio 3y ago
        These "knowledge brokers" already exist and companies buy their info. This would only make it so employees could do the same.
  • Devasta 3y ago
    So you would rather have your own compensation package be lower if it ensures that your coworkers packages are also low?
    • oblio 3y ago
      You'd be surprised and I can't find the study anymore, but this is a very frequent thing.
  • asoneth 3y ago
    This is the opposite of my experience with salary transparency both as an employee and a manager. It tended to made unproductive employees leave when they realized that the company did not consider them as critical as they imagined themselves to be which saved a ton of effort because we rarely needed to resort to PIPs or firing. It also made it clearer to productive employees how much their work was valued.
• nonethewiser 3y ago
  And job seekers. They don’t want potential employers knowing how much they made.
  • Lanolderen 3y ago
    I'm pretty sure they know what you made if you worked at a large company anyway. For small ones they can probably guess better than the job seeker can. Excluding insider info because it goes both ways.
    • sgarland 3y ago
      I was quite surprised when a recruiter correctly guessed my total comp at a medium-sized, private company, with little info on levels.fyi He got within a few thousand dollars. Respect, you’re good at your job. Also to his credit, I still got a hefty pay bump.
    • nonethewiser 3y ago
      They can guess based off ranges. They dont have a list with your name and exact salary. In fact it’s explicitly illegal for them to ask in many states so this would circumvent that law.
      • Lanolderen 3y ago
        My line of thought is that while I can look at Glassdoor or whatever so can they. But they can also get a department to do what I'll be doing 40hrs/week. Maybe I can ask a friend at that company but there's nothing really stopping my interviewer from asking his friend at my (ex)company the same thing.
  • Someone1234 3y ago
    Too late. Experian already buys and sells your salary information, and potential employers pay them to see it. I believe the product is "Employment Insight" but it could be one of their others. I've literally seen the salaries flow from payroll straight onto their servers.