When the Boss Says, 'Don't Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Get Paid' • Hacker News Board

Re: When the Boss Says, 'Don't Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Get Paid'

#161

Post by Terr_ » Sat, Jan 24, 2015, 8:05 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #106

bithush wrote: post #76

In my opinion salary information should not be kept a secret except on personal request. Openness in pay, responsibilities and performance[0] leads to a far healthier company in my opinion and experience. That is not to say you stick the salary information out in the open in a database for all to check at will but during [pay] reviews I feel it is important to be able to see how much you earn compared to your direct…

I wonder if the data could be displayed anonymously, i.e. "your salary is 80th percentile in your department" or something like that. It would give you the information without disclosing how much each individual makes.

> i.e. "your salary is 80th percentile in your department" or something like that.

Too little information: There could be 90 people paid peanuts and 10 people paid lavishly, and even in the same "department" some jobs might be radically different.

Re: When the Boss Says, 'Don't Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Get Paid'

#162

Post by seekingcharlie » Sat, Jan 24, 2015, 8:09 PM UTC

Marazan wrote: post #129

smm2000 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

18% number is bullshit debunked many times. When you control for occupation, working hours, etc between male and female - the difference in pay is only 2-3%

You say that like 2-3% is not completely fucking outrageous.

I know right?! Female here just cracked up reading that. 2-3% is still 2-3% too low.

Re: When the Boss Says, 'Don't Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Get Paid'

#163

Post by NegativeK » Sat, Jan 24, 2015, 8:10 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #119

What we need in the US is tough enforcement of the existing labor laws. The Wage and Hour Act, classification of employees vs contractors, and the right to organize are all in US law, but the penalties are weak. Did you know that you have the legal right in the US to organize a union whether your employer likes it or not? In Canada, those rights have more teeth, and that alone produces much higher unionization.

Wal-Mart closes stores when unionization gains momentum. Pizza Hut (hearsay) has an undocumented policy of "fire people who talk about unions." When you're pulling near minimum wage, losing your job over labor laws isn't very appealing. I believe Chick-fil-A put wage discussions as fireable in my paperwork, as have other tech companies.

Some of the people who need unions the most can't get them, as the Labor Board hasn't enough teeth and the public isn't very favorable toward unions.

Re: When the Boss Says, 'Don't Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Get Paid'

#164

Post by geebee » Sat, Jan 24, 2015, 8:13 PM UTC

I'm generally in favor of making information public. I work for a public university, and my salary is public info, so is everyone else's. The sky hasn't fallen.

Real estate transactions tend to be public as well. I can look up how much the house down the street sold for. Imagine if this information were not public, but a few insiders were able to get at it. They'd have a monumental advantage over everyone else. That's kind of the position employers are in relative to employees.

One angle on this - I think that any employer that uses the H1B or other worker visas should be obligated to share compensation information for all workers (not just the visa recipients), the same way public universities and government organizations are required to. That means name, job title, and total yearly compensation.

Re: When the Boss Says, 'Don't Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Get Paid'

#165

Post by lotsofmangos » Sat, Jan 24, 2015, 8:16 PM UTC

nawitus wrote: post #78

lotsofmangos wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If women stopped getting pregnant then maternity would cease to be a societal cost, however the economy might get a little screwed as the human race dies off. Parents are your most productive employees. They are the only ones who are making more employees.

That's a good reason for the state to pay for maternity leave instead of individual companies.

If the state pays then the companies are paying anyway, and it is still a spread cost as long as anti-discrimination law is being enforced. The continued existence of the species through childbirth is something that organizations should really factor into their budgets. Is not exactly a difficult cost to foresee as people have been doing it for quite a while now.

Re: When the Boss Says, 'Don't Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Get Paid'

#166

Post by Amezarak » Sat, Jan 24, 2015, 8:17 PM UTC

nickbauman wrote: post #143

sxp wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you know the salary of the people you're directly working with, things can get awkward. One alternative is to discuss salary with people who are sufficiently distant from your daily work but are expected to be making the same amount as you. For large companies, this would be people in different divisions who have the same title and years of experience. For small companies, you will probably need to talk to people…

Honest question: Why is it awkward? I think if people dig down deep and think about the answer to this question, there is no reason for this. Because nobody is ever paid what they're "worth." Assume for a moment that you don't need the money. Would you show up for your job tomorrow if they stopped paying you? If the answer is "no", I sincerely hope you are looking for a job that the answer could be "yes". If you aren…

> Would you show up for your job tomorrow if they stopped paying you? If the answer is "no", I sincerely hope you are looking for a job that the answer could be "yes". If you aren't, then I assert you are in the process of tacit self-immolation.

I haven't yet found a job that pays me to sit around and read a lot, or spend time with my girlfriend, or take long walks in the woods to think, or any of the other things I would actually do whether I got paid or not.

Let me know if you know where I can find one. It's not that I don't enjoy my work. I just don't enjoy it enough to do on any kind of regular basis without getting paid. Maybe one day I'll somehow come into money and never have to work again, but otherwise I'll be spending the rest of my life in self-immolation.

I guess I should feel a little envious of people that enjoy their job so much they'd do it without getting paid, but most of the time I can't muster it up. Most work most people do just seems so dreary to me.

Re: When the Boss Says, 'Don't Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Get Paid'

#167

Post by aklemm » Sat, Jan 24, 2015, 8:18 PM UTC

nawitus wrote: post #150

aklemm wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If maternity leave really is a large cost, then the reason not to pay them less is because we all have a stake in the healthy propagation of the species. Women bare the children, but that doesn't mean they ought to bare the entire burden of it.

I don't think individual companies have such a responsibility. It's better to have the state pay for these costs.

Yes, I agree with you. I made the assumption that the state would likely end up collecting through payrolls or something like that. Perhaps a tax credit to businesses for employees losing hours to parenting and a tax increase on the other employees.

Re: When the Boss Says, 'Don't Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Get Paid'

#168

Post by NegativeK » Sat, Jan 24, 2015, 8:20 PM UTC

nraynaud wrote: post #37

throwaway217384 wrote: post #25

I work for a smaller software company (~25 employees) and basically manage all things IT (internal business IT and software development). I'm responsible for the IT budget, our software developer salaries are the single largest company "expense". When I started several years ago it came to my attention that the existing developers and IT staff were drastically underpaid (there was one other internal developer, an int…

I would like to see some kind of framework for people to discuss salaries, should we pay everybody the same? do group evaluation? live with the knowledge of disparity? When I was a team leader, I didn't have a big disparity of salaries in my team, so I think I had it easy, but when you have a tester or a designer among developers, their salaries might be way different (testers are not engineers, and I have no idea of…

I'm a tester. Some of my work is manual; some of it is coding.

I know I get paid less than the devs (both at my company and in the industry on average,) but I'm paid well and enjoy testing more than the work the devs are doing.

All it takes is for a tester to go on Glassdoor to find out that their average salary is lower.

Re: When the Boss Says, 'Don't Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Get Paid'

#169

Post by Steuard » Sat, Jan 24, 2015, 8:21 PM UTC

smm2000 wrote: post #69

ordinary wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are an employer despicable enough to systematically be paying women less just for being women, I don't think another redundant law is going to change your behavior. Women don't earn about 18% less than men (OECD median, 2008)[0] because a small minority of employers pay women almost nothing, but because the vast majority of employers pay women (or blacks, or handicapped people) slightly less. Just like laws th…

18% number is bullshit debunked many times. When you control for occupation, working hours, etc between male and female - the difference in pay is only 2-3%

I have no idea what the right number is. But as the article points out, part of the issue is precisely that traditionally female jobs tend to pay less because they are traditionally female. Here's one apparent example of that in action:

"One of my lecturers at university once presented us with this thought exercise: why are doctors so highly paid, and so well-respected? Our answers were predictable. Because they save lives, their skills are extremely important, and it takes years and years of education to become one. All sound, logical reasons. But these traits that doctors possess are universal. So why is it, she asked, that doctors in Russia are so lowly paid? Making less than £7,500 a year, it is one of the lowest paid professions in Russia, and poorly respected at that. Why is this?"

The answer? It doesn't seem to be a coincidence that in Russia, doctors have been a traditionally female profession, unlike western Europe and the USA. The low pay and low status of medicine in Russia appears to be directly tied to its identity as a "women's career" there.

(Quote from this page: http://cratesandribbons.com/2013/12/13/patriarchys-magic-tri... I don't know whether this site was the first place I heard about this fact, but it's the top hit for it on Google.)

Re: When the Boss Says, 'Don't Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Get Paid'

#170

Post by lotsofmangos » Sat, Jan 24, 2015, 8:25 PM UTC

Robadob wrote: post #102

Karunamon wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I don't believe you, but could you link to said debunking?

This article[1] links to various sources which cite different values. Of those, this report[2] (research funded by US Department of Labour) states in it's summary (page 35); "Specifically, variables have been developed to represent career interruption among workers with specific gender, age, and number of children. Statistical analysis that includes those variables has produced results that collectively account for b…

4.8 to 7.1% is quite a bit more significant than your initial claim of 2 to 3%

edit - also, how do you claim to have any kind of confidence in the accuracy of your own estimate, while simultaneously arguing that reaching any sort of accurate value is impossible?