Could Millennials End Salary Secrecy?

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2013/04/could-millennials-end-salary-secrecy/64317/

by cantbecool • 13 years ago

44 61 13 years ago

jheimark• 13 years ago

It's a ridiculous one-sided advantage to suppliers of labor if we keep our mouths shut. Perhaps by speaking "that which must not be spoken," we can make salary decisions more open and fair across the board.

roopeshv2• 13 years ago

no.

UberMouse• 13 years ago

Excellent rebuttal. You had me convinced at "n".

greyman• 13 years ago

Ok, so what are your perceived advantages of knowing your colleagues salary?

We also follow this so-called "taboo" in our office, and everything is peaceful. There is a rule to not talk about it, but it is not strictly enforced...if one really would like to reveal his salary, he could; but it seems that there just isn't a motivation to do that.

roopeshv2• 13 years ago

good thing I got you convinced. I thought really hard if I should put "o" at the end, because my argument was so airtight, but I did anyway.

afhof• 13 years ago

Yet another case of Betteridge's law.

cturner2• 13 years ago

Coworker pay is irrelevant. The contract is between you and your employer.

I've seen people tie themselves in terrible knots over this. It's a losers' game. Instead of getting organised and creating the life they want, they take the lazy option and get caught up over what people in their immediate context are doing.

When you apply for work, you need to have a good idea of what you're worth in the broader market, and what kind of work environments you'd like. Having done that, look broadly, negotiate thoroughly, and get something that works for you. When you're not happy, make new arrangements.

throwaway1304182• 13 years ago

"It's better for you to be kept in the dark about co-worker's salaries. It is better you be ignorant of it. Knowing too much is a 'bad habit'. It's none of your business. Just sit at your desk and code. It's better when you go get your yearly raise that your management chain holds all the cards and information, and that you are ignorant and isolated."

Thanks for the advice.

yen2232• 13 years ago

"When you apply for work, you need to have a good idea of what you're worth in the broader market"

Which is why coworker pay is not irrelevant.

cturner2• 13 years ago

Through your wage, the employer is already communicating to you the point at which they cut their losses on you and let you go. Maybe through hard bargaining you could inch a bit more out, but to do it you have to introduce an unpleasant penny pinching theme into your relationship with coworkers and employer.

If you're working in a situation where you feel you're tied to a single company needing to gouge out pay increases on the basis of what the guy next to you is being, you're already screwing yourself from so many angles that you have bigger problems to be thinking about. Instead of worrying about some fractional adjustment to your wage, you should be worrying about becoming more valuable, broader, flexible, self-sufficient.

This is an interesting topic because cultures have very different attitudes about negotiating. Here's a wave from the London morning crowd. The English tend to be silent-auction, sudden-death negotiators. It will be interesting to see what the Americans have to say when they get in.

throwaway1304182• 13 years ago

Regarding the HR comment, the Fair Labor Standards Act forbids employers from forbidding employees from discussing their salaries.

dizzystar• 13 years ago

Yep, but ask the average worker if they know this. That law doesn't keep this clause from appearing in employment contracts either.

michaelochurch4• 13 years ago

Yes and no. That is true, but it's also possible, with white-collar work, for people to be fired "for performance" for pretty much any reason. That's the danger when you work on stuff where performance is pretty much impossible to define or measure.

You have the legal right to disclose pay (except in a job with a security clearance) but most companies will isolate you, then make sure you get the worst work with impossible deadlines, document everything, ruin your reputation internally (though performance reviews that follow you if you try to transfer) and finally subject you to whatever passive-firing system they have around.

I'm not saying that it's bad to discuss salary. You should figure out if you're getting a fair deal. But you do not want your employer to catch you disclosing salary. It will end badly.

arocks2• 13 years ago

Job market is just like any other market - governed by supply and demand. Currently, it is not efficient. In fact, not even close to being efficient. This is because, a key characteristic of an efficient market is perfect sharing of information.

This is why ending Salary Secrecy is a good thing - for both the employer and employee. It might seem that the employer is most affected (as the article suggests), but that is not always true. If there is an equally talented person who is not paid well, someone would eventually make a better offer. He would take that offer thinking that his current company would never pay that well.

While tweeting your salary might be quite unlikely, most employees today don't mind sharing their salary details with their friends. It simply helps to understand what the market demand is and improves efficiency of a broken system.

rtpg• 13 years ago

There's an important detail about market efficiency in the atomicity of the market. For an individual job, are there really that many applicants (living in the area, for example) to be able to consider them mostly the same? Inversely for an individual, are there enough equivalent jobs for him to consider a 'job market' in the way economists consider markets for houses/apples/cars?

I honestly don't know.

theorique10• 13 years ago

equally talented person who is not paid well

People are naturally going to disagree about things like equally talented ("Of course my UI was equally difficult to make as Bob's graphics engine! Maybe even harder!") and paid well ("Are you serious? I made 30% than that at my last job!")

arocks2• 13 years ago

You are right, such terms are ambiguous. But I would be happy even if employees playing the _same role_ achieving the same results get paid the same. But that is often not the case.

jasonkester4• 13 years ago

The whole taboo about talking about salary isn't really about salary. It's about the end result of what happens several steps down the line from people talking about salary.

Say, for example, you and Steve have the same job description and Steve tells you that he makes $40k more than you. You naturally feel screwed, so you go talk to the boss about it. Now, one of two things might happen. It might turn out that you're actually as good as Steve, and just weren't as good at negotiating. That's the best case, and maybe you'll get yourself the raise that everybody always talks about when this topic comes up.

But more likely, you're just not as good at your job as Steve. And now your boss has no choice but tell you so directly. So now you feel even worse, your boss is uncomfortable, and Steve is all self-conscious.

Your boss has thought all this through, so he put that silly policy in place. (Notice how he loses in either case.) The fact that such a policy exists is probably an indicator that you're not actually as good as Steve (or possibly that Steve isn't as good as you), and that no real good will come from discussing salaries with each other.

If you want to talk salaries, do it with people working at other companies. Figure out your real market rate and if your current employer won't match it, go find somebody who will.

Incidentally, a corollary to the above is that you should avoid working at a place where all salaries are public and they pay all their developers the same, based on a few "tiers" or whatever. Unless you expect you're either bad enough at what you do or bad enough at negotiating that you'd normally end up with a salary below the "tier" level, you're guaranteed to leave money on the table in this situation. Probably about 50% of your actual value if you're genuinely good at what you do and can negotiate your way out of a paper bag.

Udo2• 13 years ago

This system is broken.

Just have discrete salary levels that are well understood and public. That way you know what levels everyone is on, there is no negotiation necessary (which is an amoral practice anyway) and everybody can focus on actual work instead of secretly wondering if they're getting screwed compared to some random no-talent clown on their team. You wouldn't need that many different levels either, maybe ten in total. In my country, government jobs already kind of work this way, and the military does, too.

When we were doing our startup, we had three tiers for a company of about 15 people. Everybody in the same tier made the same.

jasonkester4• 13 years ago

As I said in the comment you're replying to, that's a terrible idea. For, well, the reasons I gave in the comment you're replying to.

It's the same reason that Unions are such a bad idea for professions with wide variation in individual skill (such as software developers). I (and likely you) don't want to be lumped in with whatever the "average" worker of my years experience and skillset is making or able to negotiate. Unless you're in the bottom 50th percentile, you can do better on the open market.

To use your example, the system you advocate would ensure that you were earning the same as that no-talent clown on the next team. Me, I'd prefer to make twice his salary.

michaelochurch4• 13 years ago

But more likely, you're just not as good at your job as Steve.

If Steve is a better engineer than I am, then I'll be more likely to know that than most managers. Now, software is structurally cooperative so I am just not going to raise a stink if a superior engineer makes $40k more, because he's worth it. If he's genuinely better than I am, then my attitude is, "damn right he deserves to be better paid; look at how much I learn from him every day!"

I'm not one to make waves over differences in salary. I have too much other shit that I automatically raise hell over (unfairness in project allocation, unfair review policies). I tend to let salary flamewars go. Gotta pick your battles.

And now your boss has no choice but tell you so directly. So now you feel even worse, your boss is uncomfortable, and Steve is all self-conscious.

If he's a good boss, in that circumstance, he'd tell me what I need to do to be in Steve's position in 2 years. If he's going to pay Steve $40k more because he has more immediate-term value, then fine. If I want the boss to invest in my career so I can be a Steve in two years, and he's not willing to do that, then we have to break.

ProblemFactory• 13 years ago

While the differences skill levels are true, I don't think "you are just not as good as Steve" is the usual case for salary differences.

Salaries tend to stay mostly fixed while in employment at a single company, raises over 10% are rare. As a result, salary is much more related to your negotiation and self-marketing skills at the time of the interview - when the new employer has very little hard evidence of your developer skills - than any objective measure. You might in fact be much better than Steve, but may have changed jobs less often, or have worked on less marketable past projects.

For example, I've never heard of anyone negotiating upwards based on relative skills, as in "Bob is making X, I'm 3 times better, therefore my salary should be 3X".

vidarh3• 13 years ago

In Norway, taxable income is public information. It used to be that it was so public that newspapers would put up searchable databases where you could enter name and postcode to get a list of everyones income and fortune. It's been restricted a little bit. The idea is that it acts as a deterrent to tax evasion and money laundering (your neighbour gets suspicious about that new Ferrari you bought) etc..

I don't really have much of an opinion about whether it's good or bad - people mostly don't care other than 5 minutes of excitement when the numbers were out when online news sites still published them.

ZenzerNet• 13 years ago

It was mostly the media who got off on this, to the point of creating mobile apps that gave you information about how much people near you made. Ridiculous. I'm glad it's been restricted in that regard.

theorique10• 13 years ago

They do that in Ontario (and possibly other jurisdictions), but only with Public employees and only over $100,000.

The idea is that "my taxes pay your salary", so the public has a right to know in that situation.

In the case of a private company, it's confidential corporate information. Publicly owned companies have their own reporting rules (generally only requiring disclosure for officers).

disbelief• 13 years ago

When I first heard about how easy it was to look up a person's income in Norway, I was blown away. I'd personally hate for that information to be public. I think perhaps in Norway, there is a bit less disparity in incomes, it's a little closer to equal. The wealthy are also heavily taxed. So it makes things a little less uncomfortable when your friends, colleagues, family members, etc. know exactly how much you make.

vidarh3• 13 years ago

That's true. I'm Norwegian, but live in England now, and I make a lot more here than what I would in Norway, and my neighbours make a lot less here than what they would in ordinary "blue collar" jobs in Norway. But I think also the novelty wears off very quickly. It was fun to "spy" on friends and neighbours once or twice, but then it just starts feeling a bit icky.

Shivetya• 13 years ago

Well my employer does tell us the median salary for our roles. If you have clearly defined roles within your organization then salary woes should not be an issue. It is part of being a professional organization. Then you back this structure with a clear process for evaluation and advancement. Advancement does not necessarily need to be upward.

michaelochurch4• 13 years ago

I think the most important thing to know about Millennials is that we're the exact opposite of the smear thrown at us. Boomers call us "entitled" at work. We're actually disentitled.

An entitled person expects a social contract to be upheld, and usually the pejorative aspect of the word "entitled" implies that it's one-sided advocacy.

We're disentitled because we no longer believe in the corporate social contract at all. We'd be entitled if we expected the other side to follow the rules. We don't. We know they won't, so we break just as many rules. Sure, it's bad for social harmony to people to figure out if they're getting screwed. You know what? Fuck that! I find it worse that people are getting screwed.

theorique10• 13 years ago

I find it worst of all if I find that I am getting screwed. I'm much more able to keep the peace if it's other people.

GHFigs2• 13 years ago

Cynically, Millennials can be coaxed into doing anything if they can be convinced it's sticking it to The Man.

michaelochurch4• 13 years ago

There's a lot of truth in this. I can't stand hipsters because they're a bunch of cargo-culters who have no idea why they're rebelling, or which targets deserve it and which ones don't.

I've worked in corporations. I have the right to hate them. I have more insight into corporate evil than 99.99% of people alive. If you dick around in Williamsburg and haven't seen the morning sun since college, then you don't understand why corporations do what they do and have no right to complain about them.

Reflexively hating suburbia, for one example, is the epitome of being suburban. I'm surprised by how many people don't get that.

jstelly• 13 years ago

I am generally in favor of transparency. In this case I am definitely in favor of more high level transparency about wages. But when it gets to the specific data about one person and their coworkers it gets more difficult due to various cognitive biases (including the Dunning Kruger effect). I would be interested in the results of experiments in complete transparency and how they deal with these issues. I wouldn't currently undertake the experiment because I don't know of a way to structure it that allows it to fail and not be permanent.

Could Millennials End Salary Secrecy?

Related Stories