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Europe to End "Salary Secrecy": Employee Salaries to Become Public by 2026

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Re: Europe to End "Salary Secrecy": Employee Salaries to Become Public by 2026

#91

Post by surgical_fire »

pdonis wrote: post #87
surgical_fire wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fundamentally disagree with most everything you said. Worker protections do not reduce productivity, this is a typical talking point of employers who only seek to reduce costs of employment, at the expense of employees. Even if it increased productivity, without regulation protecting employees the profits of that increased productivity are all harnessed by the elites who own the capital, and the workers are all poo…

> Worker protections do not reduce productivity To the extent that they protect workers who are genuinely productive, of course they don't reduce the productivity of those workers. But to the extent that they protect workers who aren't genuinely productive (by making them harder to fire, and more generally making it harder to reduce their impact), they do reduce overall productivity. > without regulation protecting e…

Perhaps we need stronger regulations and more aggressive taxation on the top of the chain, instead of more lax rules that would allow the elites to more freely harness the benefits of any increased productivity.

Re: Europe to End "Salary Secrecy": Employee Salaries to Become Public by 2026

#92

Post by diggan »

jppope wrote: post #62
diggan wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does more information reduce the bargaining power for potential employees? In my mind its the opposite, but maybe I miss something obvious?

Other companies know easily what their competitors are paying... you can't leverage labor market competition to bump your salary. You can't start a bidding war between employers.

That sounds better for the employees since you can see what others at competitors are earning, so you can ask management to either bump you or you'll go offer your time somewhere else.

Re: Europe to End "Salary Secrecy": Employee Salaries to Become Public by 2026

#93

Post by monkeyfun »

voytec wrote: post #82
switch007 wrote: post #6

Clickbait. Google 'Directive 2023/970' for many better other articles A very amateur looking site too. Domain registered in 2023. Few Google references to the name. Can't handle HN load. The "About Us" contains a link to https://7bn.org/team , which gives a Cloudflare error and https://7bn.org returns a web hosting "Default Web Site Page" And 50 upvotes while the site isn't even loading? Hilarious

Looks like ML-generated garbage with multiple accounts driving "traffic". HN is heavily infested with ML-generated posts and what appears to be account botnets voting or commenting with LLM-generated output. Setting "showdead" to "yes" in HN profile settings is the red pill. I recently triggered[0] some LLM-based robot, by mentioning poor air quality in India in scope of reported cancer rates. You can read the first…

Wow, thanks for posting that, it was seriously impressive and surreal.

I mean, even if it was entirely some random Indian poster with no automated assistance, which is still more than plausible, that speaks to a pretty shocking amount of dedication to shit things up that I usually only see on imageboards.

Then add in the obvious signs he tried to use AI at at least some stages, and that's where it gets actually wild to me, because if the posts were even slightly: - more coherent - less irrelevant - less duplicated - timed a bit further apart

I can totally see most undiscerning readers never assuming that was all one person or arguably less than one person with automation.

Re: Europe to End "Salary Secrecy": Employee Salaries to Become Public by 2026

#94

Post by pdonis »

surgical_fire wrote: post #91
pdonis wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Worker protections do not reduce productivity To the extent that they protect workers who are genuinely productive, of course they don't reduce the productivity of those workers. But to the extent that they protect workers who aren't genuinely productive (by making them harder to fire, and more generally making it harder to reduce their impact), they do reduce overall productivity. > without regulation protecting e…

Perhaps we need stronger regulations and more aggressive taxation on the top of the chain, instead of more lax rules that would allow the elites to more freely harness the benefits of any increased productivity.

Perhaps we need to stop believing that government intervention can solve problems. The elites taking most of the benefits of increased productivity, to the extent that it's happening, is happening because of government regulations, not in spite of them. Government regulations make it much harder for people to start new businesses that could out-compete the existing ones. Much of the reason that large corporations dominate so many industries is not economies of scale--they are actually less productive than multiple smaller businesses producing the same goods or services would be--but the fact that only large corporations can afford to absorb the costs of regulatory compliance.

Re: Europe to End "Salary Secrecy": Employee Salaries to Become Public by 2026

#95

Post by marssaxman »

pdonis wrote: post #72
diggan wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does more information reduce the bargaining power for potential employees? In my mind its the opposite, but maybe I miss something obvious?

If the company is committed by law to honoring a published salary range, it can't make a private exception for you even if you can show them that you bring more value to the table. That reduces your bargaining power.

That's a good thing. Individual bargaining over compensation is only good for those individuals who happen to be good at bargaining, not for the employer nor the other employees. Most of us never have to dicker about money in the course of our work, so it's not actually a skill worth paying extra for; an employer who nevertheless pays a premium for good bargainers it doesn't need will conversely tend to undercompensate everyone else, which is bad for cohesion and retention.

Re: Europe to End "Salary Secrecy": Employee Salaries to Become Public by 2026

#96

Post by surgical_fire »

pdonis wrote: post #94
surgical_fire wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps we need stronger regulations and more aggressive taxation on the top of the chain, instead of more lax rules that would allow the elites to more freely harness the benefits of any increased productivity.

Perhaps we need to stop believing that government intervention can solve problems. The elites taking most of the benefits of increased productivity, to the extent that it's happening, is happening because of government regulations, not in spite of them. Government regulations make it much harder for people to start new businesses that could out-compete the existing ones. Much of the reason that large corporations dom…

Sorry, I have a lot less faith in corporations, businesses and entrepreneurs than you do.

Those entities only goal is generating ever increasing profits, all else be damned, no matter the harm they cause to society and employees.

Re: Europe to End "Salary Secrecy": Employee Salaries to Become Public by 2026

#97

Post by School-Cotton »

fragmede wrote: post #78
School-Cotton wrote: post #22

How will this work with VC-backed startup where a large chunk of compensation is options of unknown value?

they have a paper value, it's not unknown, it's listed on the 409A. it's just that there isn't a free market for those shares.

My understanding is startups try to minimize 409A value as much as possible while staying within IRS rules. The market value of options, if it were possible to sell them on the open market, would be higher.

I don’t know what the equivalent concept is in EU countries (or if there even is one).

Re: Europe to End "Salary Secrecy": Employee Salaries to Become Public by 2026

#98

Post by pdonis »

surgical_fire wrote: post #96
pdonis wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps we need to stop believing that government intervention can solve problems. The elites taking most of the benefits of increased productivity, to the extent that it's happening, is happening because of government regulations, not in spite of them. Government regulations make it much harder for people to start new businesses that could out-compete the existing ones. Much of the reason that large corporations dom…

Sorry, I have a lot less faith in corporations, businesses and entrepreneurs than you do. Those entities only goal is generating ever increasing profits, all else be damned, no matter the harm they cause to society and employees.

> I have a lot less faith in corporations, businesses and entrepreneurs than you do.

I didn't say I had lots of faith in those entities. I just have even less faith in governments. Given the respective historical track records, I think that's reasonable.

> Those entities only goal is generating ever increasing profits, all else be damned, no matter the harm they cause to society and employees.

Some corporations, businesses, and entrepreneurs are like this. But many are not. The problem is that the ones that are like that are the ones who benefit the most from government regulations.

Also, your implication is that governments have better goals, like respecting people's rights--but those goals are an even worse description of what governments actually do, than your jaundiced description above is of what most corporations, businesses, and entrepreneurs actually do.

Re: Europe to End "Salary Secrecy": Employee Salaries to Become Public by 2026

#99

Post by jppope »

surgical_fire wrote: post #77
pdonis wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> companies don't collude to suppress salaries If companies treat employees as commodities, which is largely the case, they don't have to collude to suppress salaries. The basic economics of commodities is enough. The only way for employees to really have any bargaining power is to not be commodities; but trying to do that as employees is swimming against a strong economic current, because companies who can't treat t…

Which is why proper regulations that ensure labor protections is a good thing. The relationship between employee and employer is fundamentally adversarial, and the employer has all the power in that relationship.

Not really. I think you would be surprised if/when you cross over to the side of being an employer or maybe even a hiring manager. Its a different job sure (being the employer or directing work) but you and the people doing the work can choose to have an adversarial relationship or a cooperative relationship ... I'll let you take a guess which companies generally do better.
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