Live data from Hacker News

Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

resumebuilder.com

211–220 of 281 posts

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#211

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…

You're not making yourself look very good here. If you didn't realize this was happening then you're niave. Your response is immature and selfish.

Either accept this and start managing it to your advantage, your employees advantage and the companies or just accept that you've proven the Peter principle.

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#212
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because kids are good for essentially everything and we don't want to disadvantage people for having children? I mean the saying goes they are the future, and it a very literal sense, they are.

> we don't want to disadvantage people for having children Why do "we" want that?

Because you want society to exist, and keep existing. More concretely: you want to have people around you until you die, and it'd be kind of immoral to demand they kill themselves when you kick the bucket. So they will want people around until they die. And so on and so forth.

TLDR: you want children to exist now.

And that's ignoring how our society works, because the way pensions work you want about 4 times as many children as old people. That's a lot of kids we haven't had, but the alternative to that is way more taxes. Clearly we don't want way more taxes, so 4 times as many kids it is. Except we're not doing that either, and ... uh ... I guess we're hoping God will save us?

TLDR: you want children to exist now. And, actually, you should want the number of kids to roughly double from what we have now (in the US, in Europe, a minimum of 4x is needed)

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's almost impossible to negotiate anything unless you have leverage, and leverage only exists when there is a decision-point: "I'll pick this other job unless.." or in the beginning "I won't join your company unless..." Randomly asking for a raise doesn't work.

[deleted]

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I hate dealing with this aspect of my job. Everybody just wants wants wants and act like children when they don't get. I go to work everyday for one reason: to exchange labor for money to support my addiction to food and shelter. All three things being nearly equal, my goal is to extract as much money for my labor as possible as long as my job choice doesn’t make me hate my life

I find it kind of sad that's all you get out of your job to be honest.

Then why are you upset you were paid less than someone else?

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#215

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…

No post body was provided.

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#216

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.

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.…

> 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.

That is not how pricing works. How much of your budget is spent on food? How much profit does food generate in your life?

Supply and demand curves. If the team or coworkers thinks they can make more than $200k each without their employer, they are free to start their own business and pay themselves $1.9M each.

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ability doesn't equal value to the company. If you have Einstein in and all he does is sweep your floors, you pay him a floor sweeper's wage. You pay for value.

No I agree, but if you hire Einstein for Physics lectures, but for whatever reason let him mop the floors, you still take into account his abilities. Fellow floor moppers might say "Einstein mops slower and worse then me, I want more than his salary", but that would not attribute abilities and that it is not his first choice to mop floors, the company made that strange decision.

If you hired him for lectures and he doesn't do them, then you fire him. Or if he does them and mops, then maybe he needs a raise!

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#219

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.

well, it's true. The first people to go in every layoff operation, at every company I've worked for, were always the "rockstar programmers". The guys that came in with reputation, because they are known in the tech world. The conference speakers, bloggers, open source heroes, etc. They come in, command a huge salary, and give a big PR/awareness boost to the company. But then turns out they're about as productive as e…

Can you provide citation because quite frankly I don't believe your assertion

Re: Survey of workers’ views on salary transparency

#220

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

But you don't need as much money as your co-worker with multiple kids. This is true.

Alright I'll make the case then.

People who have kids have to put a bunch of their resources towards those kids: money, time, lost sleep, lost interactions with friends, and so on on. Nothing controversial here so far. Some view this as a choice of those people because they simply want to have kids, raise a family, and so on. But regardless of their intentions, there is a positive outcome for society in that there now exists a next generation that will keep society functioning. Those kids will grow up to be the doctors and farmers and so on that do all the things that need doing. These kids really are an investment in the future. People who don't have kids, but still grow old and live in society, say retired on purpose, or simply because their bodies and minds degraded to the point they can no longer work (happens to everybody), then those people are living in society that is functioning because of the time/money/resource investments of the people who had kids. The people who didn't have kids got a free ride because they didn't have to do any of that, but still get to see food in the grocery store that go there because other people had kids who then grew up and made that happen.

It's fine if you don't want to have kids, but if you plan on being alive and in society in 20-30 years, then you are living off the investments of others. So why not let them have a bit more salary then you?

Post reply on HN