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My Struggle with the Last Great Taboo: Admitting My Salary

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Re: My Struggle with the Last Great Taboo: Admitting My Salary

#41

Post by morgante »

pavlov wrote: post #37
pixie_ wrote: post #31

If salaries were transparent wouldn't that create an incredible amount of animosity between co-workers? When HR has to negotiate and pay someone more to join the company everyone else is going to be extremely jealous. You think people are going to understand? They are not going to. People are not rational. It's more common sense than fear. Disclosing salaries is going to create way more social problems than it solves…

You can already see how 100% salary transparency works in Finland or Sweden. Anyone can look up a co-worker's salary from data made available by the tax office. (Of course the information is about a year out of date because it's based on tax returns.) Are employees "reduced to numbers" in Sweden and Finland? Certainly not. On the contrary, these societies are considered some of the most open and equal in the world. M…

Actually, I believe employees are reduced to numbers in Sweden and Finland. You don't see star employees or developers making what they make in the US. Everyone is in something of an equilibrium—decent pay, but not much incentive to strive for more.

Re: My Struggle with the Last Great Taboo: Admitting My Salary

#43

Post by tincholio »

geon wrote: post #12
dennish00a wrote: post #9

I find it interesting to read about this "taboo" because, as a scientist at a public university, the issue is...nonexistent! If you are a scientist writing grant applications with other people (the norm), then you need to know their exact salaries in order to fill out the application. This includes the salaries of people above and below you in the food chain. There is no mystery or taboo in it whatsoever. Working at…

Here in Sweden, taxable income for everyone is bublicly available. I always find it amusing/sad to read about this taboo in the US.

It's the same in Finland, but people are still very reticent to talk about their salary.

Re: My Struggle with the Last Great Taboo: Admitting My Salary

#44

Post by PhasmaFelis »

pixie_ wrote: post #31

If salaries were transparent wouldn't that create an incredible amount of animosity between co-workers? When HR has to negotiate and pay someone more to join the company everyone else is going to be extremely jealous. You think people are going to understand? They are not going to. People are not rational. It's more common sense than fear. Disclosing salaries is going to create way more social problems than it solves…

> When HR has to negotiate and pay someone more to join the company everyone else is going to be extremely jealous.

You're assuming that this model, where pay is determined by how well you banter when you sign up, is the only possible one. This model is entirely manufactured by employers to let them fleece employees, and they make rules to forbid discussing your salary precisely to keep employees from realizing how bullshit it is.

In a transparent salary environment, the management is incentivized to pay everyone equitably based on their actual value to avoid the "OMG Susie gets paid 40% more than I do for exactly the same job" problem.

Re: My Struggle with the Last Great Taboo: Admitting My Salary

#45

Post by hliyan »

morgante wrote: post #41
pavlov wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can already see how 100% salary transparency works in Finland or Sweden. Anyone can look up a co-worker's salary from data made available by the tax office. (Of course the information is about a year out of date because it's based on tax returns.) Are employees "reduced to numbers" in Sweden and Finland? Certainly not. On the contrary, these societies are considered some of the most open and equal in the world. M…

Actually, I believe employees are reduced to numbers in Sweden and Finland. You don't see star employees or developers making what they make in the US. Everyone is in something of an equilibrium—decent pay, but not much incentive to strive for more.

   decent pay, but not much incentive to strive for more
Isn't that a good thing? I mean striving for more based on intrinsic motivation than financial. My observation in over the past 12 years working in the software industry is that bad motivation (both carrot and stick) tend to drive out the good (desire to build something or solve a problem).

Re: My Struggle with the Last Great Taboo: Admitting My Salary

#46

Post by notahacker »

mgalka wrote: post #17
teekert wrote: post #8

>"Without that knowledge, I would never have known I was being suckered." Suckered by yourself you mean, and suckered by the people that never taught you the principles of a free market where the assumption is that when two parties agree, the situation is satisfactory for both. If not, there is no agreement, no deal. The other party was not suckering you, you were happy with the deal, you took it. Why do you put some…

Despite being a libertarian, I Disagree. The salary of her colleague is not intrinsic value, it is a market-determined value. And her skills are similar enough that the comparison is relevant. If we were talking about a different market, I would probably agree with you, but labor markets are different. One side has all the information and all the bargaining power. The company starts off knowing pretty well the typica…

The most transparently-advertised salaries are minimum wage and other low-income commodity jobs, precisely because there's no bargaining power. The least transparently advertised salaries are senior management.

That's because salary opacity works in favour of those who do have market power and bargaining skills, and can negotiate high percentage wage increases each time because the cost of hiring somebody else is much higher to the firm, and their prospects of finding alternative employment are good. But not everybody in the company can be the highest paid member of the firm, and not everybody can have a 25% pay rise.

Firms don't give vague indications of salary because they have strong bargaining power, they give vague indications because the ideal candidate has strong bargaining power, and they don't want that to influence people's perceptions of their own market rate.

Re: My Struggle with the Last Great Taboo: Admitting My Salary

#48

Post by relet »

christkv wrote: post #38
kirsebaer wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you look it up on a website.

It's the same for Norway, all information is public. It does lead to salaries reaching some sort of equilibrium for the the same role, as it is much harder to argue against an employee, when he points out all his peers are making more money for the same work.

No. Tax information is public in anonymized form. That is different from wages, and the effect is absolutely not the same as if you knew exactly what your peers are making.

I'm trying to encourage talking wages at work, and have gotten my division to disclose theirs, but there's a lot of "oh, but it could lead to discontentment" in the rest of the company. And if you know Norwegians, being mildly at unease is the worst thing that can happen.

Re: My Struggle with the Last Great Taboo: Admitting My Salary

#49

Post by ersii »

hebdo wrote: post #24
geon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Sweden, taxable income for everyone is bublicly available. I always find it amusing/sad to read about this taboo in the US.

What do you mean? Can every citizen learn how much taxes has anybody else paid, including the incomes of the people outside the public sector?

Yes, you can even order complete records over your region where you see everyone's income tax as well as their capital gains tax in Sweden.

As far as I know, there's no completely open lookup service on the Internet - all of them are pay-walled. None the less, they're public.

I'm fairly confident that this is common amongst the Nordic countries - albeit not looking exactly the same, they share the same spirit of openness.

That said, in Sweden (Which is the only one I have anecdata from) - it's still frowned upon to ask someone what they earn. Talking about what you earn or how much of a raise you got is also socially awkward.

I don't feel talking about what kind of benefits/subsidy is as socially awkward. I'd say it's more accepted.

Something that is completely socially accepted and frequent each year is talking about how large of a tax return you got.

Re: My Struggle with the Last Great Taboo: Admitting My Salary

#50

Post by ersii »

Cederfjard wrote: post #39
geon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Sweden, taxable income for everyone is bublicly available. I always find it amusing/sad to read about this taboo in the US.

Isn't it sort of taboo here too, though? I've seen people being told to fuck off for asking that question, or at least politely declined. Even my close family have always been reluctant to divulge their exact income to me, with a few exceptions. It's not a thing that I would ask someone without feeling pretty certain they wouldn't mind.

In general? Yes, it's still socially frowned upon (ie. Taboo) and socially awkward to talk about your salary or someone you knows salary in Sweden.
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