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Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

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Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#151

Post by shapefrog »

digitalsushi wrote: post #138

I'm getting really old cause I am starting to see this from both sides If you found out your cube neighbor is out-earning you and you do the same work, you (probably) are safer when the next wave of layoffs comes around. That little disparity can feel like a giant shield. This is the most anti-worker thing I have ever typed. I hate myself for sharing how I rationalize this.

Funily enough I have sat at the table and it went down the opposite.

The underpaid lifer, with tons of internal knowledge was thrown out over the shiny new grifter who convinced them they were the second coming and they threw money at. There was also a lot of confirmation bias as they were sure the story was true.

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#152

Post by Apreche »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #60
lr wrote: post #43

250,000 people (includes student employees) at the university of California can just go online and look up their co-worker’s salary, for the past 10 years! Yet, it doesn’t cause problems. In fact, salaries are public for all government workers in California (UC just makes it very easy to look someone up). The entire country of Finland posts all salaries of the entire population online! The angst over these laws is, I…

The definition of free market is that information is avaliable. I dont understand how people that declare they believe in free market, want information to be hidden and the market to be less free. Additionally most of them are employees. It should be obvious that freely knowing salaries will improve the employee's ability to negotiate the wage they deserve.

Knowing what other people with the same title at current, and similar, employers will definitely improve people’s ability to negotiate. But that’s not the real information employees need. What is really secret is the true value of the labor the employee is producing to the company.

Imagine salaries are completely public. A team of co-workers finds out that they are all being paid $200k each, and are happy with that. But if they only knew that their labor generates $2 million in profits for the company, each. They should be getting paid something like $1.8 or $1.9 million per person. The execs are ripping them off big time.

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#153

Post by least »

O__________O wrote: post #127
least wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The military trains you to be loyal to your comrades, not your spouse, but in my experience the person cheating in the relationship is usually the spouse of the service member, not the service member. Recruiters talking about getting laid a ton is probably because the primary recruiting demographic is young single men, and they will say just about anything to get people to sign contracts.

Military in my experience is ruthlessly about self preservation - which is not in my opinion about loyalty, but about survival career wise and on the battlefield.

> Military in my experience...

What sort of experience do you have with the military?

As someone who has served in the U.S. military, loyalty is absolutely drilled into you; it's integral to battle readiness, which is ultimately the military's goal. They instill the value of loyalty as far as it serves to make soldiers that are willing to fight and die for each other and for their country.

That doesn't extend to any and everything, but I don't think any of your arguments that the military creates a culture of cheating are substantiated. The military actually creates disincentives from cheating that do not exist in the civilian world with the UCMJ.

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#154

Post by medo-bear »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #134
medo-bear wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

boomers is a largely american concept. i doubt eastern european people of same generation can be called boomers: having lived in a completely different system. anyway you seem to say that owning houses resulted in a problem of not owning houses? seems to me a more simple explanation would be that slovenia became a capitalist society, and for-profit housing doesnt quite accomodate as many people as the socialist one.…

There was a (after war) baby boom here too. We didn't call them by that name, but there was a huge population rise in the late 40s and 50s. In yugoslavia, you didn't own an apartment, but you rented it (from the government)... so almost noone had more than one apartment, noone had a too-large apartment, and if you got a job in trbovlje the government would get you an apartment in trbovlje (a city in the middle of now…

> In yugoslavia, you didn't own an apartment, but you rented it (from the government)...

you paid it off to the corporation you worked for. it wasnt a lottery system. it was more like a generous homeloan

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02757206.2017.1...

>so almost noone had more than one apartment, noone had a too-large apartment

actually the apartments were reletively very good quality, and often buildings were made as part of a grander urban project

anyway im not saying the system was perfect. this shouldnt need to be said. but it did solve certain problems rather quickly

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#155

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

roody15 wrote: post #123
0xRusty wrote: post #102

It's not easy for people promoted into manager roles either. I'm a new manager who the first time is now exposed to salary details of my, now direct reports, former co-workers. For the past couple of weeks I've been walking around thinking "how the hell does he make that much?! When I was at that level of experience I was paid $40k less". It's really affecting me to be honest. I'm seeing people in different light and…

Did you ever ask for a raise or more money? If so did they ever say no? In my experience many who complain about salary often failed to ever try and negotiate on behalf of themselves.

Some of us think that doing our job should be enough to be fairly compensated without having to take on the additional duty of continually fighting for it.

But since that isn't how things work in glorious capitalist utopia, I just slack off hard core instead. I don't need the money near as much as I need my time back.

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#156

Post by wongarsu »

a4a4a4a4 wrote: post #98
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The definition of free market is that information is avaliable. I dont understand how people that declare they believe in free market, want information to be hidden and the market to be less free. Additionally most of them are employees. It should be obvious that freely knowing salaries will improve the employee's ability to negotiate the wage they deserve.

> It should be obvious that freely knowing salaries will improve the employee's ability to negotiate the wage they deserve. I would argue that for high performers, it could become an excuse not to pay more. "Sorry, we know you did XYZ, but we can't give you a further raise because you're already 4% ahead of your colleagues." And of course, everyone thinks they're a high-performer, so this policy would be unpopular wi…

But then you can just look up a company that does pay their high performers more, and apply there. And if that happens often enough employers have to consider if paying top talent more money isn't a worthwhile strategy after all (maybe they decide it isn't, but employees will be free to react appropriately)

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#157

Post by onion2k »

roody15 wrote: post #123
0xRusty wrote: post #102

It's not easy for people promoted into manager roles either. I'm a new manager who the first time is now exposed to salary details of my, now direct reports, former co-workers. For the past couple of weeks I've been walking around thinking "how the hell does he make that much?! When I was at that level of experience I was paid $40k less". It's really affecting me to be honest. I'm seeing people in different light and…

Did you ever ask for a raise or more money? If so did they ever say no? In my experience many who complain about salary often failed to ever try and negotiate on behalf of themselves.

There is an element of failure to negotiate, and to renegotiate, involved but if that's where your thinking stops you're missing the point. It's not just that the person involved didn't ask for a raise. It's also the fact that everyone above them who was privy to salary data accepted it. Every single person in a higher management role was perfectly OK with two people doing the same job being paid significantly different salaries.

And then you start wondering if you're being underpaid too. Do all the people above you know how much of a sucker you are for accepting the lowball rate?

It's a problem for people who get promoted to a level where they get to peek behind the curtain and see all the things that the company has been doing wrong all the time they've been there, and the realisation that all the other people are fine with it. It kind of gets to you after a while.

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#158

Post by nmstoker »

Anyone know if the new NYC applies only to newly posted roles? Or is it backdated to postings made before the introduction of the law?

Tried to find details online but couldn't find anything yet. I would have assumed it was backdated for anything currently available but it's not clear.

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#160

Post by valdiorn »

0xRusty wrote: post #102

It's not easy for people promoted into manager roles either. I'm a new manager who the first time is now exposed to salary details of my, now direct reports, former co-workers. For the past couple of weeks I've been walking around thinking "how the hell does he make that much?! When I was at that level of experience I was paid $40k less". It's really affecting me to be honest. I'm seeing people in different light and…

> Everybody just wants wants wants and act like children when they don't get.

Wow, what an immature attitude YOU have.

Of course everyone "wants wants wants". You're displaying that attitude right now. You're feeling hurt about not getting more, because you want more. That's normal. That's OK. If someone offered to bump my salary to a million pounds for no reason, of course I'd take it.

You should probably try asking for a pay rise. Pay, in tech, has everything to do with your negotiation power, and almost nothing to do with how good you are at your job. Your job is to maximise your salary. For the person paying the salary (your boss), their job is to minimise it. They're not doing it because they despise you, think less of you, or want to exact petty revenge on you. they do it because it's their job to keep costs down. Just like you would try to minimise the cost of servers, or software licenses. The sooner people understand this, the better for everyone.

Now go and advocate for yourself. If you really feel under-paid, ask for a raise. Threaten to walk (be sure you can actually follow up on that). If your contribution to the company is deemed to be worth the money, you'll get it.

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