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Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

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Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#61

Post by meheleventyone »

robertlagrant wrote: post #29
meheleventyone wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean this is the same as cost of living adjusted salaries. Same work, less pay just based on geographical location.

It's not really based on location. It's based on competition. Location is one of the factors in salary competition.

Right but it's sold to employees as based on cost of living, quite a few remote companies do this for example to have flat rate salary bands but still pay less based on location. For example:

https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation...

We could of course quibble about market rate and so on but that shouldn't be locally based in a global marketplace. The fact that a software shop down the road from me pays peanuts when I'm looking for work with companies in other countries that otherwise pay their staff very well isn't important IMO and IME.

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#62

Post by eesmith »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #33

I always wonder if the world would be a better or worse place if all salaries where forced to be made public by law. Lots of pros and cons, but it would be very interesting.

I believe several countries do that. For examples:

"Norway, the country where you can see everyone's tax returns" - https://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2016/apr/11/when-it-c... .

What We Can Learn From Sweden's Public Records of Salaries" - https://theculturetrip.com/europe/sweden/articles/what-we-ca...

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#63

Post by Grothendank »

jl6 wrote: post #7

> If they find out their co-workers are making more money to do the same job, they are likely to take action. Here’s the rub: “same job”. Sure, this is a reasonable attitude to take if it’s genuinely the same job and each worker is creating genuinely the same value. But everywhere I’ve worked, comparable jobs are defined as graded job families, and it has been very obvious that there is a diverse range of work being…

This is a reasonable attitude to take if workers are given credit and compensation based on unfair political factors, and in general, factors other than performance or special needs. It does not matter if the worker performs a task different from yours, so long as their wage is unfairly inflated so as to take away your share of the surplus of revenue.

Therefore, it seems beyond risky to say that knowledge work makes roles so vague and uncertain that people cannot know when they are being exploited. The pay gap between the C-suite and the main producers at a knowledge org is just as bad as at an org focused on physical production.

If after a moment's thought you still think that we cannot organize to reduce the pay of executive class because the executives do work different from ours, I encourage you to reflect more deeply on this. It's perfectly reasonable to demand that your bosses and seniors get paid more fairly, even though their job differs from yours.

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#64

Post by q-big »

phpisthebest wrote: post #12

I once had employer tell me that because I was single with no kids I did not "need" as much income as a co-worker with multiple kids... I noped out of that employment quickly

> I once had employer tell me that because I was single with no kids I did not "need" as much income as a co-worker with multiple kids...

Why not rather: you don't have such a time-intense hobby such as raising kids, so you deserve more income.

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#65

Post by galangalalgol »

Reason077 wrote: post #37

Only 4%?!

Is it usual where you work for everyone with the same title to make the same amount? Everywhere I have worked your cost of living adjustment each year is based on performance appraisals. So after a few years you'd expect people to make significantly different amounts.

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#66

Post by ajsnigrutin »

medo-bear wrote: post #41
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other was, working as little as possible, because you got paid the same, no matter what. Source: lived in a socialist country

also owned own home https://i.redd.it/vj4m7grzdyr41.png

In my country (slovenia, former yugoslavia) owning homes destroyed the housing market in the long run...

The government owned a huge percentage of homes and rented them out to people who needed them, and moved them around too (if they got a kid, they got a larger apartment).

Then after the breakup, the government didn't want to deal with that, and sold all those apartments to renters living there for peanuts.. so 'everybody' got a home, and in the meantime stopped the communist-style buildings. .. then nimbyism, and yeah.. same as everywhere.

Now the "boomers" have apartments and young people can't buy them, because we don't build stuff anymore. When a boomer dies, their kids inherit and lease it out, because selling it is pointless due to ever rising prices (again, nobody builds anything anymore... nimbyism and all that)

If the government kept the apartments, when a boomer died, someone else would get to rent it at the government-non-profit-rate, but nope... whole country paid for building those apartments, some people got lucky to keep them, and the others could fuck off.

Also, building a private house back then was easier.. you could basically build, and then deal with all the pesky stuff, such as permits and legalization... now, you can't build a dog house without building/construction inspectors there. On one hand, we now have improper owner-build buildings in inapropriate places... on the other hand, atleast those people got a house, which is impossible now.

Also, building a house isn't even so expensive here... especially if you do a lot of stuff alone... but just the project/permit costs are higher than the bricks and concrete, and buying a piece of land where you're actually permitted to build is impossible... but we do have literal fields in the prime locations of our capital - https://goo.gl/maps/YeoJMMGN2QhtZDLs8 (just rotate the view around to see what's next to that)

tldr: in socialist time, everybody was renting from the government, in capitalist time, those apartments were sold for peanuts to renters (and the rest of the taxpayers, who didn't get apartments, got fucked)

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#67

Post by iso1631 »

neallindsay wrote: post #14
HelloNurse wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably just casual rounding of a quantity and its reciprocal, without realizing that 4% vs 5% is a large difference.

Maybe it's actually 4.48%, which would be about 1 in 22, and they rounded in opposite directions.

Indeed, 4.5% would be 5% when rounded in decimal, but it's 1 in 22.222 in fractional, so 1 in 20 and 5% both are valid choices with normal rounding.

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#68

Post by ajsnigrutin »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #54
medo-bear wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

also owned own home https://i.redd.it/vj4m7grzdyr41.png

Will someone please think of the landlords?

Back in socialist time, the government was the landlord for a huge percentage of that... they literally took peoples private houses away after WW2, and rented them out to people.

Only after the split of yugoslavia, they sold the taxpayer paid and built apartments to then-current renters for peanuts.

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#69

Post by bheadmaster »

notimetorelax wrote: post #52
wslh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had this discussion as a boss and in favor of offering extra benefits with someone with kids with the same role and experience of someone without them. Interesting to discuss it further here in HN. I argue that at the same professional level it is not the same to have a full family that being solo.

You may not know if a single person is supporting a relative or a grandma with cancer. Nor should you. It’s a flawed argument and pay should be for performance. This doesn’t meant that there shouldn’t be accommodations to everyone’s needs. But those are not tied to pay.

> You may not know if a single person is supporting a relative or a grandma with cancer. Nor should you.

I see this as the core of the argument - paying people based on their needs requires you to invade their privacy in order to find out their needs. And not wanting your employer to invade your privacy would mean getting some baseline low pay because "you don't have any needs".

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#70

Post by luckylion »

lqet wrote: post #57
phpisthebest wrote: post #12

I once had employer tell me that because I was single with no kids I did not "need" as much income as a co-worker with multiple kids... I noped out of that employment quickly

In Germany, public officials ("Beamte") are paid a bonus depending on (a) their marital status, (b) the number of kids they have and (c) whether their spouse is also a public official (you get less then to avoid receiving the children bonus 2 times). This has multiple reason: one feels a bit ancient as the states basically want their "Beamte" to live in an "orderly" family situation and thus encourage marriage and ch…

The Beihilfe covers 70% of children's medical cost IIRC, and the bonus is significantly higher than private insurance for children.
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