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Leaked Microsoft pay guidelines – salary, hiring bonus, stock awards by level

businessinsider.com

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Re: Leaked Microsoft pay guidelines – salary, hiring bonus, stock awards by level

#61

Post by solardev »

dataking wrote: post #32
dom96 wrote: post #6

At this point is there any disadvantage to legislating that all companies should share a transparency report where they list their levels + avg, min, max, median salaries for each level?

Lots or reporting requirements only take effect once a firm reaches a certain size. This makes a lot of sense given that tiny firms (say less than 10 employees) may not have formalized wage scales, in-house administrative staff, and have a harder time amortizing compliance costs. So yes, there are disadvantages to consider.

Smaller companies can just report whatever they're paying each employee that year, then?

Re: Leaked Microsoft pay guidelines – salary, hiring bonus, stock awards by level

#62

Post by kiklion »

pgeorgi wrote: post #21
m0rissette wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t all the companies then just conspire to pay everyone lower wages?

There are already companies collecting such information and making them available for their customers (who supposedly provide some collated data set to them in exchange). That's what all the "paying top of market rate" talk in various companies is based on. So: the potential for collusion already exists, but unless regular folks can get access to the analysts' data sets as well, it's a very one-sided deal.

You don’t even always need a third party. My wife works in HR for the government and part of her job is literally to contact neighboring counties and send them requests for their salaries for various positions and levels while filling out salary requests from other counties.

Of course, being government, it’s all public information anyway so collaborating in this way is seen more of a performance increase vs manually accessing each counties salary information but it’s the same premise.

Re: Leaked Microsoft pay guidelines – salary, hiring bonus, stock awards by level

#63

Post by asoneth »

eastbound wrote: post #47
jachee wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Management is the only one who benefits when labor doesn’t openly share salary information. Let the information flow. Knowledge is power.

No. With full public information, bad employees benefit from being able to ask for more, good employees just flee elsewhere. Because it’s impossible to reason someone on their skills. Full information is hell on Earth.

This is the opposite of my experience with salary transparency both as an employee and a manager. It tended to made unproductive employees leave when they realized that the company did not consider them as critical as they imagined themselves to be which saved a ton of effort because we rarely needed to resort to PIPs or firing. It also made it clearer to productive employees how much their work was valued.

Re: Leaked Microsoft pay guidelines – salary, hiring bonus, stock awards by level

#64

Post by kasey_junk »

xvector wrote: post #28
dom96 wrote: post #6

At this point is there any disadvantage to legislating that all companies should share a transparency report where they list their levels + avg, min, max, median salaries for each level?

Every company I've talked to with "transparent" comp has offered absolutely terrible comp, even for their highest possible offer. In reality "transparent comp" becomes an excuse for companies to not negotiate.

I worked for several hedge funds with transparent comp that have been some of the most lucrative of my career. If we are just throwing around anecdotes.

Re: Leaked Microsoft pay guidelines – salary, hiring bonus, stock awards by level

#65

Post by sokoloff »

Mechanical9 wrote: post #50
sokoloff wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there are 100 SWEPR5s in the proposal above, Alice's nosy co-worker or neighbor only learns the range of Alice's salary. If Alice is the only one, they learn the precise value.

I think the question is more why should an individual's salary be private? Personally, I think money is power, and I want to know about power disparities to better protect myself. But I understand there are factors to consider.

Upthread proposer asked "is there any disadvantage[?]" I listed one (or two, if you count "this won't accomplish much because of the equity comp portion").

Philosophically, whether an individual's ought to be private is an interesting but distinct question. This proposal has the disadvantage that it makes disclosures about individual people who might not want that disclosure made and which are not being made today.

Re: Leaked Microsoft pay guidelines – salary, hiring bonus, stock awards by level

#66

Post by pseg134 »

candiddevmike wrote: post #52
sokoloff wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m opposed to disclosure laws that would be prone to expose the income of individual people. If Alice is the only SWEPR5 at a company, that proposal publishes her salary. If Bob is clearly the best SWEPR4, Cathy the middle, and Dave just barely got promoted to that level, their salaries are also individually published. I don’t object to good faith ranges being required in job listings, but I oppose anything that wou…

Did you know there are some countries where you can look up anyone's income?

[flagged]

Re: Leaked Microsoft pay guidelines – salary, hiring bonus, stock awards by level

#67

Post by ta1243 »

hasperdi wrote: post #53
candiddevmike wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you know there are some countries where you can look up anyone's income?

Norway is one

Norway is the only one. And you can't look up salary, just their total income, which could include say renting out a vacation home or whatever.

Re: Leaked Microsoft pay guidelines – salary, hiring bonus, stock awards by level

#69

Post by figmert »

sokoloff wrote: post #29
dom96 wrote: post #6

At this point is there any disadvantage to legislating that all companies should share a transparency report where they list their levels + avg, min, max, median salaries for each level?

I’m opposed to disclosure laws that would be prone to expose the income of individual people. If Alice is the only SWEPR5 at a company, that proposal publishes her salary. If Bob is clearly the best SWEPR4, Cathy the middle, and Dave just barely got promoted to that level, their salaries are also individually published. I don’t object to good faith ranges being required in job listings, but I oppose anything that wou…

Why shouldn't Dave and Cathy know what Bob is earning? They're the same level, they should earn the same.

Re: Leaked Microsoft pay guidelines – salary, hiring bonus, stock awards by level

#70

Post by ta1243 »

sokoloff wrote: post #65
Mechanical9 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the question is more why should an individual's salary be private? Personally, I think money is power, and I want to know about power disparities to better protect myself. But I understand there are factors to consider.

Upthread proposer asked "is there any disadvantage[?]" I listed one (or two, if you count "this won't accomplish much because of the equity comp portion"). Philosophically, whether an individual's ought to be private is an interesting but distinct question. This proposal has the disadvantage that it makes disclosures about individual people who might not want that disclosure made and which are not being made today.

If an individual salary ought to be secret, why does the US insist on advertising the salary of so many people (not even just the salary range either - but the individual name = $xxxxxx)

If a salary shouldn't be secret, why does the US insist on allowing some people to keep their salary secret?

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