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Ask HN: Why not make everyone's salary public?

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Re: Ask HN: Why not make everyone's salary public?

#11

Post by nyrulez »

1. People who think they are equivalent to someone getting higher pay (and there will always be plenty, regardless of the actual truth) will get demoralized and lose motivation. This can happen at any level, not just junior employees.

2. In a market where great talent is scarce, you will lose your ability to negotiate if the candidate has a better offer from your competitor. Sometimes bidding up makes sense.

3.More generally,this works less well in any field where there is a high possible variance in ability of folks with same credentials and experience. This is especially true in tech (only matters if you are in the market for top talent, not the median. Burger king doesn't need to care, but Facebook and Google can't survive with median talent). Without the ability to have that variance in compensation, you lose the ability to get top 25% folks, especially when your competitors are not restricted in the same way.

Re: Ask HN: Why not make everyone's salary public?

#12

Post by Mz »

Given your remark about "socialist assholes," I will suggest that it is extremely hard to pursue "socialist" agendas and business in a heirarchical setting. Rock groups sometimes split the credits and the money evenly, not caring who actually wrote the lyrics, but they are generally not heirarchical. I don't know the answer to this question. I do know I would do more research than tossing the question out on hn if it were my company. You can't easily put the cat back in the bag if you try this and conclude it was a disaster.

Re: Ask HN: Why not make everyone's salary public?

#14

Post by maniacwhat »

rm999 wrote: post #13

I prefer the glassdoor approach: aggregate anonymized numbers so people get a good idea of the income and bonus distribution by company, job title, city, and experience. This really gives anyone a ton of useful information without drama.

I think ideally this would be great, but in practice de-anonymization (by cross-referencing etc.) is extremely hard to prevent. So for the effort you may not even benefit from the bulk aggregation, only adding a layer of obscurity.

Re: Ask HN: Why not make everyone's salary public?

#15

Post by crazygringo »

cjbprime wrote: post #2

I think Fog Creek does this: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000038.html They also have "levels", with compensation tied to a level, so it looks like they've basically removed compensation negotiation from the company. You don't mention wanting to do that. If you do want to do that, something like Joel's setup sounds like it can work out fine. If you don't want to remove the ability to let people negoti…

It seems like having "levels" is another way to be able to negotiate.

A couple companies ago, I worked at a place where you employee "level" was public knowledge and tied to your job description, and determined your base salary level. (A, B, C, D, ...). Everyone got yearly raises roughly equivalent to inflation, etc. Yearly bonuses were based on the letter too.

But everyone had a (more secret) number after their letter, so you might be K5, which provided a lot of leeway for negotiating higher salaries, etc. So you'd know if you were in the same general band as another employee, but one of you might be making 25% more than the other.

Re: Ask HN: Why not make everyone's salary public?

#16

Post by scheff »

2 reasons I can think of.

1 - nobody would get a pay rise because "If I give you a pay rise, then I have to give everyone a pay rise" would be the mantra of managers in an established organisation. Anything less would create arguments.

2 - the ego of every employee. "Oh, right, just because he's an engineer, he's more important than me in marketing ... which one of us improves how much profit you generate?" ... and so for every other class of employee. even between engineers - "I'm sorry, but I'm better than that guy because of X, Y and Z (subjective reasons) and I should get paid more."

The extension of 2 is - "If I don't get paid the same as that guy then I'm not working nearly as hard as I have been ... I mean - what's the point?"

Re: Ask HN: Why not make everyone's salary public?

#17

Post by 1123581321 »

I think you can do it if you quantify everything that goes into the number and list that too. For example, if you hire top talent from Google and pay $30k/year more, you could note in the salary table that being from a prestigious company at that level is worth so much, and give a range. It would take work, but if you credit everything that could possibly explain the difference, you might satisfy people or at least explain to some exactly why they make less.

Or, and I prefer this, you could not disclose but pay everyone above market rate so they don't think about money, but not so high that it's an issue/fuels the desire for perpetually more.

Re: Ask HN: Why not make everyone's salary public?

#18

Post by smartwater »

maniacwhat wrote: post #14
rm999 wrote: post #13

I prefer the glassdoor approach: aggregate anonymized numbers so people get a good idea of the income and bonus distribution by company, job title, city, and experience. This really gives anyone a ton of useful information without drama.

I think ideally this would be great, but in practice de-anonymization (by cross-referencing etc.) is extremely hard to prevent. So for the effort you may not even benefit from the bulk aggregation, only adding a layer of obscurity.

That sounds like the least creative way to use mathematics. They can de-anonymize till the cows come home for all I care. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter at all. Plenty of salaries are made public for various reasons.

Re: Ask HN: Why not make everyone's salary public?

#19

Post by SparrowOS »

God's world is 100% just. If you are rewarded more and it's not a curse, you will earn it or possibly need to save it for when you are 40 and cannot get a job anymore.

Do not covet. I recommend not thinking about it--no good can come. Jesus had a couple parables.

God says... C:\Text\DARWIN.TXT

f certain lizards change much in shape with advancing years. With crustaceans not only many trivial, but some important parts assume a new character, as recorded by Fritz Muller, after maturity. In all such cases- -and many could be given--if the age for reproduction were retarded, the character of the species, at least in its adult state, would be modified; nor is it improbable that the previous and earlier stages of development would in some cases be hurried through and finally lost. Whether spe

Re: Ask HN: Why not make everyone's salary public?

#20

Post by _delirium »

S4M wrote: post #7

In Norway, the salaries are public. I have never lived there, but a colleague who has worked in Norway told me that it was a pain, not because your neighbours know your salary, but because people can target you commercially as they know how much you can afford. But apart from that, nobody cares.

The relatively low inequality in Norway probably reduces reasons for people to care, since a large segment of the population make very similar incomes. I live in Denmark, and among "regular" professionals there is very little friction over salary because everyone makes similar salaries— you only deviate significantly upwards if you go to things like finance or start a successful company, and you deviate downwards if you're a grocery worker and similar (but even they get a decent wage... around $40k/yr w/ full benefits is just about the minimum possible wage for someone who's employed). In the rest of the cases you make something vaguely in the vicinity of Regular Middle-Class Salary, which most people are pretty happy with.

A fully public database would be interesting for auto-targeting, though. Someone like Amazon could feed it as another factor into their pricing algorithms.

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