101–110 of 331 posts
http://www.glassdoor.com can be a helpful resource in this regard. It needs a bunch more critical mass before it's truly useful, but some information is usually better than no information.
I've found glassdoor.com to have pretty accurate (though anonymous) reports of employers' salary ranges and employee satisfaction.
I actually think full transparency on salary could make this nasty issue go away. Post what everyone is making and let people negotiate a fair package. There would be some transitional pain in the first 2 months, and payroll costs might go up 10 percent, but people would be happier in the long run. Why use inaccurate gossip instead of full transparency? What drove up compensation in banking in the 2000s was inaccurat…
I rather suspect that full salary transparency would result in a race-to-the-top.
because you work for a hobby...
I actually think full transparency on salary could make this nasty issue go away. Post what everyone is making and let people negotiate a fair package. There would be some transitional pain in the first 2 months, and payroll costs might go up 10 percent, but people would be happier in the long run. Why use inaccurate gossip instead of full transparency? What drove up compensation in banking in the 2000s was inaccurat…
I rather suspect that full salary transparency would result in a race-to-the-top.
This is good from an employee's perspective, but it reduces profits for companies. As such, it is unlikely that many companies would voluntarily support transparency.
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Here's what I though you were going to say: You're hiring up an engineering team. You have five slots. Four are filled at market salaries. The four people range in productivity from marginal to good-at-stuff-no-one-else-likes, but none of them are that great. You almost have to keep the four folks, because they're entrenched in deliverables and plus, they've shown their dedication to the company. In walks a candidate…
The first step should be giving some disclosure to the candidate. Say, "55k? You're so silly. We'd hire you for much more than that, we only pay fair salaries here. Let me talk to my people and see what we can make available." If the other people aren't providing a value commensurate with their compensation, you should fire them whether you have an expensive replacement on tap or not. If they are providing such a val…
Salaries never stay secrets forever. Hiding them only delays the inevitable. Last year we were having a discussion at lunch. Coworker was building a new house, and when it came to the numbers it was let loose that it was going to cost about $700K. This didn't seem like much, except to a young guy that joined the previous year and had done nothing but kick ass and take names. The new guy was arguably the most talented…
$175/hour * 40 hours/week * 50 weeks/year = $350,000/year, for anyone else (like me) who can't immediately estimate equivalent yearly rates.
I've found a good (albeit a bit conservative) rule-of-thumb is to convert the hourly wage into the yearly salary. Working as a consultant for $175/hour is similar to being employed at $175K/year.
EDIT: The U.S. federal self-employment tax for 2011 is 13.3% (15.3% was for 2010).
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Though you have to pay your own taxes -- probably 30%, in the end -- and your own medical.
You pay your own taxes now.
If for nothing else, you should have a business just so you can claim more expenses and reduce the amount you have to pay Uncle Sam (from my understanding, all you need to have is a profit motive -- not necessarily profits).
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In Finland, tax data is public -- you can go look up what your coworkers are making without the consent of either them or their employers. I don't think it has caused a race to the top in any meaningful way.
Even if it causes a "race to the top", is that such a bad thing? Shouldn't most of the fruits of labor go to the people doing the work?
So, if you know the average salary is $X and the top salary is $2X, and you're making $1.1X then you ask for a payrise to $1.6X because "you know you're better than most of the people here". Then everyone does. And so on.
I think the way around that is to match transparent salaries with a transparent ladder of responsibilities/expectations/experience, like you were talking about with Fog Creek.
Then there's a clear standard for people to evaluate what they are worth to the company.
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Another method I've heard: person 1 picks a large random number, adds their salary to it, writes down the resulting number, and passes it on to person 2. Person 2 adds their salary to the number, writes down the new sum, and passes it on to person 3. This continues until the result gets back to person 1. You end up with the large random number plus the sum of everyone's salary. Person 1 then subtracts the large rando…
This is better because it determines the average but not distribution. Imagine what would happen if there were five $70k salaries and one $165k salary for six people doing the same work. People would suddenly get very uncomfortable. One technical gripe: you forgot that the arithmetic needs to be modular to guarantee anonymity. Let's just say the large random number is chosen between 0 and 9,999,999. (You need a range…
Isn't that the entire point of the first exercise however? If the 165k salary isn't completely obvious, then it should make people feel uncomfortable - they are being shafted.
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According to CNN's cost of living calculator ( http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/costofliving/costofliving.htm... ): $100,000 in Mountain View, CA = $58,302 in Austin, TX = $73,992 in Seattle, WA = $71,306 in Chicago, IL = $61,660 in Cleveland, OH And from a quick skim down any real estate listing for Mountain View, CA I think these numbers might be a bit on the high side.
Interesting; it turns out I make right around MV$100,000. Never realized that. But given two roughly equal-valued salaries, I think the higher absolute salary is still superior. Savings, for instance, don't scale with cost of living; saving 20% of $100,000 is much different from saving 25% of $40,000.
Depending on your finances, a 20% bump in pay with a 40% increase in cost of living may lower your discretionary income.
For some, this is offset because overhead does not scale 1:1 with salary: living in a high-cost area provides a greater discretionary income advantage to those with high incomes than for those with modest incomes.
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>people have time to accept that there's just that one incompetent guy making 20% more than he should and within a few hours they forget about it. Really? I'm not sure about that. >My contention is that people discover a lot of this information anyway and get more angry in a private-salary system. I've never personally heard of a person getting upset upon discovering someone else's private salary. I know lots of peop…
For me, what I can't stand is when an incompetent has more power and influence than I do. That will have be quitting on the spot. If he's making slightly more money than I am, but no one takes him seriously and his shitty ideas aren't being imposed on me or the rest of the team, then why do I care? He's not in an enviable position. As a highly-paid incompetent, he'll be the first one let go when there's a need to lay…