6 ms·

> your data Is it yours though? The employer could probably argue that it's theirs. Devil's advocate: I think it's widely understood that entities can be trans

> your data Is it yours though? The employer could probably argue that it's theirs. Devil's advocate: I think it's widely understood that entities can be transparent with their data if they choose, other than NDA scenarios.

Retric 2y ago
Most companies request people not share pay information. Information asymmetry is a huge deal in negotiations.
- dcrazy 2y ago
  Such a “requirement” is illegal. https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-rights/your-rights-to-discuss-wages https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-right...
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - skyyler 2y ago
    And pot was illegal in the 70s.
    - jgalt212 2y ago
      It still is.
      - ghaff 2y ago
        At the US federal level. It may or may not be illegal at the state level--and is regulated in any case.
        jacobr1 2y ago
        It is still illegal in every US state. States can legalize it at the level of their own laws, and they can choose not to enforce federal laws, but that doesn't actually make it legal while federal laws are in place that conflict. A federal agent could choose to walk into any dispensary in a "legal" state and arrest everyone there, and they could be prosecuted in federal court. Yet at a practical level there has been a decision to defer to the states on what they will enforce, but that is a decision of executive authority rather than the law.
        ghaff 2y ago
        I expect you'd have a pretty complicated jurisdictional case if a team of FBI agents were to go into a dispensary in a state where it was legal and round everyone up. And pretty much no sane politician would go anywhere near it. I also wouldn't (hypothetically) travel with the stuff over state boundaries.
- vkou 2y ago
  They can request it, but can't stop you if you do. You can also request them to do likewise, with similar recourse. A request is nothing without teeth behind it.
  - klingoff 2y ago
    Teeth like employment at-will?
    - vkou 2y ago
      It's generally quite unlikely that sharing your salary is going to result in getting bitten by that. You'd need to do labour organization (or be completely surrounded by rats and snitches and other vermin at your workplace, who already have an axe to grind) to actually get blowback for this stuff. Most of the taboo around it is cultural, because people here attach their self-worth to their paycheck. You could also always do it anonymously or pseudonymously. You'd have almost no chances of retaliation in that case.
      - klingoff 2y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32216332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32216332
        vkou 2y ago
        The singular of anecdote is not data. Getting hit by lightning is also unlikely, but it happens to thousands of people every year. That doesn't mean I'll be flying a kite in a thunderstorm, but it also doesn't mean that you should lock yourself in a bunker the moment the sky turns grey. Most of the taboo around this is cultural, not retributive.
        klingoff 2y ago
        Firing people at will includes firing them because you got the feeling they may be behaving in any way in any situation perhaps in conflict to any request you made. Odds are someone won't get fired for stealing office supplies and in at will place they may be more often fired for misunderstandings related to a misperception where they don't come clean on something they never did. That there was no way to sue the company in that example is a demonstration that the employee lacked any right to break any taboo. As such there are teeth anywhere that is at will for any request whether it is reasonable or not and whether it relates to a taboo the employee may be expected to have or not.
- mcherm 2y ago
  But in the US, federal labor law makes it illegal for employers to prevent employees from sharing pay information (at least for employees who are entitled to unionize).
- ghaff 2y ago
  I never have but I have never been told I couldn't share pay information. Certainly I have with my accountant and financial advisor. I've also been asked when applying for a new job whether or not I've been 100% forthcoming.
GTP 2y ago
Well, if we're discussing whose data it is the information about how much I pay you, even from a devi's advocate perspective, you can't do better than arguing that this data pertains to both of us. So we should share the property of that data somehow. I don't see how you could argue that that data would be solely the employer's data.
- hunter2_ 2y ago
  If I administer a survey, collect responses, and put them into a spreadsheet, is the data in that spreadsheet not mine despite the fact that it consists of things that other people told me? I can't share it without the permission of those surveyed, assuming I didn't promise not to?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - willcipriano 2y ago
    Technically sure, but the sort of people who live that way don't get invited out anywhere.
  - GTP 2y ago
    It really depends on which kind of data you're collecting. If you're collecting health related data that is linkable to the people it pertains to, the GDPR would prevent you from sharing that data with third parties without one of the admissible legal basis, the most common of which is the consent of the people whose data you collected. In the case of health data, maybe even USA laws would prevent you from sharing it. Edit: it is now some time since I studied the GDPR, so I'm actually unsure if, for healt-related data, it can be used any legal basis other than consent. The reason being that health, together with a few other categories, has special protections.
  - BobbyJo 2y ago
    These are answered questions. If you are talking about the raw data, you have to get the respondents to agree that their answers become your property (either implicitly or explicitly, there are rules around both), or no, you do not own the data in the spreadsheet.
abeppu 2y ago
... should companies be nervous about this also though? Is the decision for their payroll info to be visible to unknown buyers an intentional, well-considered one? Is this effectively leaking potentially strategically important info? Like, I haven't seen this happen, but could a recruiting team buy the compensation data on staff at a competing firm, identify those that look like a good deal, and poach them starting with a "we'll offer you k% more than your current employer"? Could market analysts use this data to notice when a company starts firing more people, or starts giving fewer/smaller raises? What if the next time your company showed up in a Gartner or Forrester report, it came along with a caveat "however given decreased investment in staff, their pace of product development or quality of client services may be at risk."
samus 2y ago
The employer requires this data to do payroll correctly. Apart from that, it sound only be used for expressly authorized purposes. But maybe that's a european GDPR-influenced way of seeing this issue.
mapt 2y ago
In a market-first values system, where we rely on the labor market to largely self-regulate given the promises that free market idealogues & corporate actors made us, colluding on wages like this should lead to scorched-earth retribution from the FTC. Not "Oh hey there, you're not allowed to do that, stop that", but "We are diluting your stock by a quarter and distributing it to your workers" type shit.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  > given the promises that free market idealogues & corporate actors made us I find it amusing/annoying how many Free™-market boosterism messages are actually contradictory "heads I win, tails you lose" constructs. For example: 1. "Regulations are bad, because left to its own devices the market will be optimally-efficient, once everyone has perfect-information about all the prices and deals other people are making." 2. "Regulations are bad, because cartels and collusion will be destroyed by defectors who use their freedom to make secret prices and hidden deals." Sometimes these arguments come from the same people, but even when they don't they represent two wildly incompatible ideas of what "the free market" really is.
  - throw10920 2y ago
    I wonder what the name is for the fallacies committed by this comment and grandparent comment. It's this disingenuous "even though nobody in this thread has expressed these two contradictory things, I'm just going to make them up and pretend that an imaginary member of [group that I don't like] said them". It's like a strawman fallacy did a fusion dance with an ad-hominem. I see it all the time on HN - surely it has a name.
    - Terr_ 2y ago
      > It's this disingenuous "even though nobody in this thread has expressed [...]" No, what's disingenuous is your weird attempt to stifle an entirely on-topic discussion which has made you uncomfortable. You're suggesting that we may not criticize a stance or argument unless another Hacker News user has directly advocated for it. That's not how it works, or else we'd never be able to talk about things like the DMCA or Microsoft's forced-reboot update policy. That said, how about we steer away from pure-meta personal attack posts to something that at least involves the original topic of markets and market-actors, starting with: > I'm just going to make them up and pretend that an imaginary member of [group that I don't like] said them" Your comment is saying--via sarcastic subtext--that I have "made up" items #1 and #2 and that (to substitute GP's term) "free-market ideologues" do not advance either argument about efficiency or cartel-risk. Is that really what you believe and you'd be convinced otherwise by examples, or would you like to issue some non-sarcastic clarification?
karaterobot 2y ago
Does my personal health information belong to my doctor? Not according to HIPAA, at least not in a way that gives the doctor control over selling it. While my pay is currently not protected by similar regulation, it seems like the kind of protection regulation similar to HIPAA could defensibly target.
- xenocratus 2y ago
  Your personal health information is information that pertains to you and you only. Your compensation is part of a contract between yourself and your employer, hence why both parties have to sign it, and why both parties have ownership over it. Not arguing that payroll information can't be protected, my only point was that your comparison was off.
  - treypitt 2y ago
    Because hospitals and clinics don't care or record the treatment they provide?
    - BobaFloutist 2y ago
      Not to mention insurance.
  - karaterobot 2y ago
    I'm not saying it is currently the case that I own my compensation number, I'm saying it's not impossible to imagine creating regulation to make that happen.

Retric 2y ago

Most companies request people not share pay information. Information asymmetry is a huge deal in negotiations.

dcrazy 2y ago
Such a “requirement” is illegal. https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-rights/your-rights-to-discuss-wages https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-right...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- skyyler 2y ago
  And pot was illegal in the 70s.
  - jgalt212 2y ago
    It still is.
    - ghaff 2y ago
      At the US federal level. It may or may not be illegal at the state level--and is regulated in any case.
      - jacobr1 2y ago
        It is still illegal in every US state. States can legalize it at the level of their own laws, and they can choose not to enforce federal laws, but that doesn't actually make it legal while federal laws are in place that conflict. A federal agent could choose to walk into any dispensary in a "legal" state and arrest everyone there, and they could be prosecuted in federal court. Yet at a practical level there has been a decision to defer to the states on what they will enforce, but that is a decision of executive authority rather than the law.
        ghaff 2y ago
        I expect you'd have a pretty complicated jurisdictional case if a team of FBI agents were to go into a dispensary in a state where it was legal and round everyone up. And pretty much no sane politician would go anywhere near it. I also wouldn't (hypothetically) travel with the stuff over state boundaries.
vkou 2y ago
They can request it, but can't stop you if you do. You can also request them to do likewise, with similar recourse. A request is nothing without teeth behind it.
- klingoff 2y ago
  Teeth like employment at-will?
  - vkou 2y ago
    It's generally quite unlikely that sharing your salary is going to result in getting bitten by that. You'd need to do labour organization (or be completely surrounded by rats and snitches and other vermin at your workplace, who already have an axe to grind) to actually get blowback for this stuff. Most of the taboo around it is cultural, because people here attach their self-worth to their paycheck. You could also always do it anonymously or pseudonymously. You'd have almost no chances of retaliation in that case.
    - klingoff 2y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32216332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32216332
      - vkou 2y ago
        The singular of anecdote is not data. Getting hit by lightning is also unlikely, but it happens to thousands of people every year. That doesn't mean I'll be flying a kite in a thunderstorm, but it also doesn't mean that you should lock yourself in a bunker the moment the sky turns grey. Most of the taboo around this is cultural, not retributive.
        klingoff 2y ago
        Firing people at will includes firing them because you got the feeling they may be behaving in any way in any situation perhaps in conflict to any request you made. Odds are someone won't get fired for stealing office supplies and in at will place they may be more often fired for misunderstandings related to a misperception where they don't come clean on something they never did. That there was no way to sue the company in that example is a demonstration that the employee lacked any right to break any taboo. As such there are teeth anywhere that is at will for any request whether it is reasonable or not and whether it relates to a taboo the employee may be expected to have or not.
mcherm 2y ago
But in the US, federal labor law makes it illegal for employers to prevent employees from sharing pay information (at least for employees who are entitled to unionize).
ghaff 2y ago
I never have but I have never been told I couldn't share pay information. Certainly I have with my accountant and financial advisor. I've also been asked when applying for a new job whether or not I've been 100% forthcoming.

GTP 2y ago

Well, if we're discussing whose data it is the information about how much I pay you, even from a devi's advocate perspective, you can't do better than arguing that this data pertains to both of us. So we should share the property of that data somehow. I don't see how you could argue that that data would be solely the employer's data.

hunter2_ 2y ago
If I administer a survey, collect responses, and put them into a spreadsheet, is the data in that spreadsheet not mine despite the fact that it consists of things that other people told me? I can't share it without the permission of those surveyed, assuming I didn't promise not to?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- willcipriano 2y ago
  Technically sure, but the sort of people who live that way don't get invited out anywhere.
- GTP 2y ago
  It really depends on which kind of data you're collecting. If you're collecting health related data that is linkable to the people it pertains to, the GDPR would prevent you from sharing that data with third parties without one of the admissible legal basis, the most common of which is the consent of the people whose data you collected. In the case of health data, maybe even USA laws would prevent you from sharing it. Edit: it is now some time since I studied the GDPR, so I'm actually unsure if, for healt-related data, it can be used any legal basis other than consent. The reason being that health, together with a few other categories, has special protections.
- BobbyJo 2y ago
  These are answered questions. If you are talking about the raw data, you have to get the respondents to agree that their answers become your property (either implicitly or explicitly, there are rules around both), or no, you do not own the data in the spreadsheet.

abeppu 2y ago

... should companies be nervous about this also though? Is the decision for their payroll info to be visible to unknown buyers an intentional, well-considered one? Is this effectively leaking potentially strategically important info? Like, I haven't seen this happen, but could a recruiting team buy the compensation data on staff at a competing firm, identify those that look like a good deal, and poach them starting with a "we'll offer you k% more than your current employer"? Could market analysts use this data to notice when a company starts firing more people, or starts giving fewer/smaller raises? What if the next time your company showed up in a Gartner or Forrester report, it came along with a caveat "however given decreased investment in staff, their pace of product development or quality of client services may be at risk."

samus 2y ago

The employer requires this data to do payroll correctly. Apart from that, it sound only be used for expressly authorized purposes. But maybe that's a european GDPR-influenced way of seeing this issue.

mapt 2y ago

In a market-first values system, where we rely on the labor market to largely self-regulate given the promises that free market idealogues & corporate actors made us, colluding on wages like this should lead to scorched-earth retribution from the FTC. Not "Oh hey there, you're not allowed to do that, stop that", but "We are diluting your stock by a quarter and distributing it to your workers" type shit.

Terr_ 2y ago
> given the promises that free market idealogues & corporate actors made us I find it amusing/annoying how many Free™-market boosterism messages are actually contradictory "heads I win, tails you lose" constructs. For example: 1. "Regulations are bad, because left to its own devices the market will be optimally-efficient, once everyone has perfect-information about all the prices and deals other people are making." 2. "Regulations are bad, because cartels and collusion will be destroyed by defectors who use their freedom to make secret prices and hidden deals." Sometimes these arguments come from the same people, but even when they don't they represent two wildly incompatible ideas of what "the free market" really is.
- throw10920 2y ago
  I wonder what the name is for the fallacies committed by this comment and grandparent comment. It's this disingenuous "even though nobody in this thread has expressed these two contradictory things, I'm just going to make them up and pretend that an imaginary member of [group that I don't like] said them". It's like a strawman fallacy did a fusion dance with an ad-hominem. I see it all the time on HN - surely it has a name.
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    > It's this disingenuous "even though nobody in this thread has expressed [...]" No, what's disingenuous is your weird attempt to stifle an entirely on-topic discussion which has made you uncomfortable. You're suggesting that we may not criticize a stance or argument unless another Hacker News user has directly advocated for it. That's not how it works, or else we'd never be able to talk about things like the DMCA or Microsoft's forced-reboot update policy. That said, how about we steer away from pure-meta personal attack posts to something that at least involves the original topic of markets and market-actors, starting with: > I'm just going to make them up and pretend that an imaginary member of [group that I don't like] said them" Your comment is saying--via sarcastic subtext--that I have "made up" items #1 and #2 and that (to substitute GP's term) "free-market ideologues" do not advance either argument about efficiency or cartel-risk. Is that really what you believe and you'd be convinced otherwise by examples, or would you like to issue some non-sarcastic clarification?

karaterobot 2y ago

Does my personal health information belong to my doctor? Not according to HIPAA, at least not in a way that gives the doctor control over selling it. While my pay is currently not protected by similar regulation, it seems like the kind of protection regulation similar to HIPAA could defensibly target.

xenocratus 2y ago
Your personal health information is information that pertains to you and you only. Your compensation is part of a contract between yourself and your employer, hence why both parties have to sign it, and why both parties have ownership over it. Not arguing that payroll information can't be protected, my only point was that your comparison was off.
- treypitt 2y ago
  Because hospitals and clinics don't care or record the treatment they provide?
  - BobaFloutist 2y ago
    Not to mention insurance.
- karaterobot 2y ago
  I'm not saying it is currently the case that I own my compensation number, I'm saying it's not impossible to imagine creating regulation to make that happen.