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Ask HN: Why not make everyone's salary public?

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Ask HN: Why not make everyone's salary public?

#1

Post by aiurtourist »

Say, hypothetically, I'm starting a new company that's extremely tech-heavy and I want to recruit the best engineers in the world. Fairness, recognition for effort, high hiring bar, the best equipment... all things that are important.

Why not go an extra step to be fair and make everyone's compensation public, including the founders? Why not open up the cap table to everyone, employed or potentially-employable? Then there's no question as to whether a candidate is getting a good deal.

What could possibly go wrong?

Re: Ask HN: Why not make everyone's salary public?

#2

Post by cjbprime »

I think Fog Creek does this: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000038.html

They also have "levels", with compensation tied to a level, so it looks like they've basically removed compensation negotiation from the company. You don't mention wanting to do that. If you do want to do that, something like Joel's setup sounds like it can work out fine.

If you don't want to remove the ability to let people negotiate their compensation, it sounds like you're setting yourself up for unhappy and jealous and resentful employees, because some of your employees will be much better negotiators than others.

Re: Ask HN: Why not make everyone's salary public?

#3

Post by jasonm23 »

cjbprime wrote: post #2

I think Fog Creek does this: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000038.html They also have "levels", with compensation tied to a level, so it looks like they've basically removed compensation negotiation from the company. You don't mention wanting to do that. If you do want to do that, something like Joel's setup sounds like it can work out fine. If you don't want to remove the ability to let people negoti…

To be fair, you'd just making a different set of people resentful, those who know they could negotiate a better deal, and they leave to start their own venture. If people feel like their wasting time, ie. getting paid less than they know they could earn, because they're folded into a salary level system, they're going to leave.

Frankly making salaries public knowledge is an egregious invasion of privacy, and a security risk.

Re: Ask HN: Why not make everyone's salary public?

#4

Post by cjbprime »

jasonm23 wrote: post #3
cjbprime wrote: post #2

I think Fog Creek does this: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000038.html They also have "levels", with compensation tied to a level, so it looks like they've basically removed compensation negotiation from the company. You don't mention wanting to do that. If you do want to do that, something like Joel's setup sounds like it can work out fine. If you don't want to remove the ability to let people negoti…

To be fair, you'd just making a different set of people resentful, those who know they could negotiate a better deal, and they leave to start their own venture. If people feel like their wasting time, ie. getting paid less than they know they could earn, because they're folded into a salary level system, they're going to leave. Frankly making salaries public knowledge is an egregious invasion of privacy, and a securi…

shrug I work at a US nonprofit, so the salaries of all our "key employees" are legally required to be public knowledge. As I understand it, this is also true of all H1-B recipients. You seem to be over-reacting.

Re: Ask HN: Why not make everyone's salary public?

#6

Post by aiurtourist »

coryl wrote: post #5

And if some employees don't want their salary to be shared?

That's not my question, exactly. Inevitably, as the company grows, the probability of someone not joining because we're "socialist assholes" goes up. I want to know what's wrong other than sentiment.

Re: Ask HN: Why not make everyone's salary public?

#7

Post by S4M »

In Norway, the salaries are public. I have never lived there, but a colleague who has worked in Norway told me that it was a pain, not because your neighbours know your salary, but because people can target you commercially as they know how much you can afford. But apart from that, nobody cares.

Re: Ask HN: Why not make everyone's salary public?

#8

Post by hjay »

From my limited understanding, it's not the best idea for companies who want to keep their costs to a minimum.

There are employees who are being underpaid and don't have many metrics to look at if they want a higher salary (win for the company). Then there's also that if companies make their employee's salaries public, there will be a more aggressive and obvious effort to poach employees from competition. Potential employees will benefit off of this war, while the companies will be just trying to one-up each other.

Not to say companies don't currently poach employees from competitors, but I think making those figures public would make that much more prevalent.

Re: Ask HN: Why not make everyone's salary public?

#9

Post by runarb »

S4M wrote: post #7

In Norway, the salaries are public. I have never lived there, but a colleague who has worked in Norway told me that it was a pain, not because your neighbours know your salary, but because people can target you commercially as they know how much you can afford. But apart from that, nobody cares.

I live in Norway. Its not the salaries per se that is public, but how much you pay in tax. But from that you can quite accurate estimate someones salaries. Your capital assets are also public.

This is nice reading for all kinds of scammers. Thus list are actively being analysed by banks and financial institutions when soliciting potential customers, and burglars are literally driving around with thus list when looking at houses to break into.

Until two years ago thus list was publicly available on the internet, but now you have to log in at a government run portal to search them. But everyone can still search anyone.

Re: Ask HN: Why not make everyone's salary public?

#10

Post by gamechangr »

It's hard to take this post serious??? There are soooo many reasons not to do that. I can assume you don't live in the valley or anywhere there is a shortage of developers.

Biggest one:

More expensive for the company initially and way less secure. Talk about telegraphing to your competition what it would take to poach your top employees!

You would end up with 80% of your staff believing they were underpaid (even if that was not even close to true--perspective is reality)

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