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As great as it sounds, transparent salaries are harmful. I was in an awkward situation where I was paid much more than other people who joined at the same time
by niggler 14y ago
As great as it sounds, transparent salaries are harmful.
I was in an awkward situation where I was paid much more than other people who joined at the same time as me. One day one of my coworkers found out (due to some accident in distributing stubs) and the relationship became really tense -- he thought he deserved more pay (even though he did half the work I did, he saw it as a measure of the value of his time)
- chaghalibaghali 14y agoThat's the opposite of transparent salaries - you just described a leaking of a small bit of information in a closed salary system.
- niggler 14y agoThere's a certain type of person, prevalent in many circles including finance and technology, who cares strongly about relative salaries and would never be happy if he wasn't the highest paid person in the company. I have met quite a few of those people
- swombat 14y agoI've met some of those too. The solution to deal with those people is ruthlessly simple: don't hire them.
- charlieflowers 14y agoI definitely agree with that.
- MetaCosm 14y agoWe call that "certain type of person" a human. The vast majority of people do comparisons relatively, not absolutely. It is human nature. You covet what those around you have, you compare yourself to those around you based on the little knowledge you have about them and everything else going on. Transparency is easy for pay, but not for value.
- Keyframe 14y agoI was once on a project which lasted about half a year. It was really tough work, in a foreign country, harsh conditions, bad management... People were nervous, and one day they found out someone had 12X their salary. It was me, but they didn't know it. I didn't know they didn't have same salary as me or close to it. I was brought in as a specialist, but even people higher than me had smaller salary than me (4X smaller). Situation was not great after that, but names were witheld. I always wonder how it would play out if they found out it was me, we were all on friendly basis.