7 ms·

Those are understandable reasons, but I wouldn't call them legitimate. Like I can understand why "being angry" sounds like a good justification for punching so

by Retra 11y ago

Those are understandable reasons, but I wouldn't call them legitimate. Like I can understand why "being angry" sounds like a good justification for punching someone in the face, but I wouldn't call it a legitimate reason. If your employees feel Jeff is making too much money, maybe he is? Or maybe your company is doing a poor job of making it clear what it is that he brings to the table. Besides, you already have a hostile environment when you force employees to keep secrets from each other. (They're certainly not going to be loyal when they are being exploited as a matter of policy. It breed cynicism.)

nullrouted 11y ago
I guess you and I just disagree which is okay :) I guess it depends on why you are angry and punched that person in the face, did they spit on you, hit your wife, etc? Your analogy here isn't very good. It isn't an employees job to understand what every other employee does and honestly management trying to justify every salary to every other employee would be a bit ridiculous. Maybe Jeff (or lets say Sarah) has a good salary because they bring in 10x the business as the next best sales person. That is easily quantifiable but lets say Jeff/Sarah brings in only the average income but you can see the growth with their customers. That isn't easily quantifiable and honestly doesn't need to be broadcasted to the whole employee base (especially since employees leave and go to other competitors and would then have a good list to work off of). Employees routinely keep information confidential from each other because it makes sense to do so. This isn't a bad thing like you make it out to be, companies shouldn't be some open society where everyone gets to know each others business.
- ectoplasm 11y ago
  Well, if it's legitimacy you're after, it's illegal to prevent salary sharing in the US.
- fleitz 11y ago
  Hahah no one would trade on the stock market if you didn't have an idea of the order book, it's essential that pricing is disclosed so that FMV can be reached. Negotiating your salary with out knowing what everyone else was making is stupid. If you're a star performer the goal is to get everyone making what you're making so you can ask for a raise on top of that. (In companies with huge amounts of cash on hand).
  - nullrouted 11y ago
    You are mistaking the premise. I'm not saying you should not have an idea of what the "market" is paying and ask that from a potential employer. But knowing what the person next to you makes is an entirely different situation. I know there are employees next to me that make more/less than I do. I honestly don't care as long as I feel I'm making a fair salary for the work I perform. You can always get an idea of what the market is paying by talking to fellow employees outside the company or the recruiters that hit you up.
    - Retra 11y ago
      You don't know what a fair salary is, because you don't know what your peers are earning. I mean, if you can find out what your competitors are paying their employees, surely their own employees can figure that out. So if you can figure it out, it's not a secret to anybody! The problem with your approach is that it is very easy to manipulate people when you permit a power/information differential like that. You end up saying "the slave is happy with the food we give him; why should we offer freedom?" -- when he's only happy with the food because you've been beating him for so long he's been conditioned into helpless appreciation of your scraps. You feel you're making a fair salary? Well then what is the harm of knowing your neighbor's salary? Are you going to learn a new meaning of 'fair?' What's the harm in that? That's just updating your priors and giving you the ability to make better decisions with more information. (That anyone would choose to reject relevant information when making decisions is the height of absurdity.)
      - Dylan16807 11y ago
        A statistical summary of salary for the job is almost as good as knowing everyone's salary, and better than knowing the exact salary of your direct peers but not more. So in such a situation there's little upside. You already know you're not getting scraps. But there's a painful downside in knowing exactly who the company thinks does worse work than their direct peers.
        woah 11y ago
johncolanduoni 11y ago
> If your employees feel Jeff is making too much money, maybe he is? Or maybe your company is doing a poor job of making it clear what it is that he brings to the table. No matter how expertly this is pulled of, human jealousy is still a risk. In particular, because there are more than a few people who think what other people do is less valuable just because it isn't what they do. In addition, I don't think many companies can successfully justify every decision in a satisfactory way to every employee, no matter what decisions they make. Nor should they have to. Not that I'm defending keeping wages secret. I think it creates more problems than it solves, and that it doesn't even solve this problem in most cases.
- eyko 11y ago
  Then don't pay someone 50K and someone 250K when their value is fairly similar. I think it's common sense that if there's a certain sense of equality among your workers, nobody is going to be bothered because Jeff in sales earns 15K/year more than them, if in general there's not such a big margin between Jeff and Jane. I also believe making salaries public are also a good way to fight against gender-inequality in the work place and it makes workers think collectively rather than individually.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    The UK supermarket ASDA is going through a sex discrimination legal case at the moment. Warehouse employees get paid a bit more than shopfloor employees. Warehouse employees are mostly men. Shop floor employees are mostly women. The jobs are not identical, but they are similar. Shop floor employees include the shelf stackers - they take pallets of boxes of goods and unload these onto shelves. That's very similar to the lifting work that warehouse employees do. (There might be a need for some warehouse workers to have forklift licences, which would explain a small amount of the pay differential). In this legal case the wages of both group are pretty close to minimum wage. http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/oct/24/asda-mass-legal-action-equal-pay http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/oct/24/asda-mass-le... http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/09/sainsburys-faces-equal-pay-battle-with-female-shop-floor-workers http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/09/sainsburys-f...
yummyfajitas 11y ago
Or maybe Jeff is highly productive but not good at marketing himself. Perhaps he doesn't want the spotlight and is happy to quietly provide value for his employer who rewards him in turn. Perhaps Jeff is black and everyone besides management (the only people who have a financial incentive not to be) is racist. Perhaps Jeff is doing an important but unpopular task; e.g., he's the asshole rejecting pull requests because the schema changes break normal form, or running A/B tests and finding that all the other employee's cool features don't increase revenue. There are lots of legitimate reasons why Jeff might be effective and well paid, and why it might not be useful to publicize this fact widely. A popularity contest is NOT the right way to allocate pay - among other things, the participants in the popularity contest have no incentive whatsoever to properly evaluate Jeff's value.
OJFord 11y ago
> Or maybe your company is doing a poor job of making it clear what it is that he brings to the table. I don't think it's really a SWE- for example -'s concern what Jeff in sales brings to the table. I mean maybe they're friends, or work together, and he knows. But if he doesn't know, and doesn't think Jeff deserves so much, it's really neither here nor there. It's not up to him.
rurban 11y ago
> If your employees feel Jeff is making too much money, maybe he is? Or maybe your company is doing a poor job of making it clear what it is that he brings to the table. Please please please do not distort this example by omitting the critical "Jeff in sales". In the Google context Jeff (Dean) earns all the money they potentially throw at him. And everybody know about his magic qualities. The quotation is Jeff in sales, not just Jeff!

by Retra 11y ago

nullrouted 11y ago

I guess you and I just disagree which is okay :) I guess it depends on why you are angry and punched that person in the face, did they spit on you, hit your wife, etc? Your analogy here isn't very good. It isn't an employees job to understand what every other employee does and honestly management trying to justify every salary to every other employee would be a bit ridiculous. Maybe Jeff (or lets say Sarah) has a good salary because they bring in 10x the business as the next best sales person. That is easily quantifiable but lets say Jeff/Sarah brings in only the average income but you can see the growth with their customers. That isn't easily quantifiable and honestly doesn't need to be broadcasted to the whole employee base (especially since employees leave and go to other competitors and would then have a good list to work off of). Employees routinely keep information confidential from each other because it makes sense to do so. This isn't a bad thing like you make it out to be, companies shouldn't be some open society where everyone gets to know each others business.

ectoplasm 11y ago
Well, if it's legitimacy you're after, it's illegal to prevent salary sharing in the US.
fleitz 11y ago
Hahah no one would trade on the stock market if you didn't have an idea of the order book, it's essential that pricing is disclosed so that FMV can be reached. Negotiating your salary with out knowing what everyone else was making is stupid. If you're a star performer the goal is to get everyone making what you're making so you can ask for a raise on top of that. (In companies with huge amounts of cash on hand).
- nullrouted 11y ago
  You are mistaking the premise. I'm not saying you should not have an idea of what the "market" is paying and ask that from a potential employer. But knowing what the person next to you makes is an entirely different situation. I know there are employees next to me that make more/less than I do. I honestly don't care as long as I feel I'm making a fair salary for the work I perform. You can always get an idea of what the market is paying by talking to fellow employees outside the company or the recruiters that hit you up.
  - Retra 11y ago
    You don't know what a fair salary is, because you don't know what your peers are earning. I mean, if you can find out what your competitors are paying their employees, surely their own employees can figure that out. So if you can figure it out, it's not a secret to anybody! The problem with your approach is that it is very easy to manipulate people when you permit a power/information differential like that. You end up saying "the slave is happy with the food we give him; why should we offer freedom?" -- when he's only happy with the food because you've been beating him for so long he's been conditioned into helpless appreciation of your scraps. You feel you're making a fair salary? Well then what is the harm of knowing your neighbor's salary? Are you going to learn a new meaning of 'fair?' What's the harm in that? That's just updating your priors and giving you the ability to make better decisions with more information. (That anyone would choose to reject relevant information when making decisions is the height of absurdity.)
    - Dylan16807 11y ago
      A statistical summary of salary for the job is almost as good as knowing everyone's salary, and better than knowing the exact salary of your direct peers but not more. So in such a situation there's little upside. You already know you're not getting scraps. But there's a painful downside in knowing exactly who the company thinks does worse work than their direct peers.
      - woah 11y ago

johncolanduoni 11y ago

> If your employees feel Jeff is making too much money, maybe he is? Or maybe your company is doing a poor job of making it clear what it is that he brings to the table. No matter how expertly this is pulled of, human jealousy is still a risk. In particular, because there are more than a few people who think what other people do is less valuable just because it isn't what they do. In addition, I don't think many companies can successfully justify every decision in a satisfactory way to every employee, no matter what decisions they make. Nor should they have to. Not that I'm defending keeping wages secret. I think it creates more problems than it solves, and that it doesn't even solve this problem in most cases.

eyko 11y ago
Then don't pay someone 50K and someone 250K when their value is fairly similar. I think it's common sense that if there's a certain sense of equality among your workers, nobody is going to be bothered because Jeff in sales earns 15K/year more than them, if in general there's not such a big margin between Jeff and Jane. I also believe making salaries public are also a good way to fight against gender-inequality in the work place and it makes workers think collectively rather than individually.
- DanBC 11y ago
  The UK supermarket ASDA is going through a sex discrimination legal case at the moment. Warehouse employees get paid a bit more than shopfloor employees. Warehouse employees are mostly men. Shop floor employees are mostly women. The jobs are not identical, but they are similar. Shop floor employees include the shelf stackers - they take pallets of boxes of goods and unload these onto shelves. That's very similar to the lifting work that warehouse employees do. (There might be a need for some warehouse workers to have forklift licences, which would explain a small amount of the pay differential). In this legal case the wages of both group are pretty close to minimum wage. http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/oct/24/asda-mass-legal-action-equal-pay http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/oct/24/asda-mass-le... http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/09/sainsburys-faces-equal-pay-battle-with-female-shop-floor-workers http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/09/sainsburys-f...

yummyfajitas 11y ago

Or maybe Jeff is highly productive but not good at marketing himself. Perhaps he doesn't want the spotlight and is happy to quietly provide value for his employer who rewards him in turn. Perhaps Jeff is black and everyone besides management (the only people who have a financial incentive not to be) is racist. Perhaps Jeff is doing an important but unpopular task; e.g., he's the asshole rejecting pull requests because the schema changes break normal form, or running A/B tests and finding that all the other employee's cool features don't increase revenue. There are lots of legitimate reasons why Jeff might be effective and well paid, and why it might not be useful to publicize this fact widely. A popularity contest is NOT the right way to allocate pay - among other things, the participants in the popularity contest have no incentive whatsoever to properly evaluate Jeff's value.

OJFord 11y ago

> Or maybe your company is doing a poor job of making it clear what it is that he brings to the table. I don't think it's really a SWE- for example -'s concern what Jeff in sales brings to the table. I mean maybe they're friends, or work together, and he knows. But if he doesn't know, and doesn't think Jeff deserves so much, it's really neither here nor there. It's not up to him.

rurban 11y ago

> If your employees feel Jeff is making too much money, maybe he is? Or maybe your company is doing a poor job of making it clear what it is that he brings to the table. Please please please do not distort this example by omitting the critical "Jeff in sales". In the Google context Jeff (Dean) earns all the money they potentially throw at him. And everybody know about his magic qualities. The quotation is Jeff in sales, not just Jeff!