Salary Transparency Debate

You don't know what a fair salary is, because you don't know what your peers are earning. I mean, if you can find out what your competitors are paying their employees, surely their own employees can figure that out. So if you can figure it out, it's not a secret to anybody!The problem with your approach is that it is very easy to manipulate people when you permit a power/information differential like that. You end up saying "the slave is happy with the food we

It seems to be simple economics and negotiation tactics to me. Backed up by the fact that it's such a taboo subject among coworkers, almost always for reasons of 'don't want to rock the boat' and 'don't want to get fired'.From a negotiation standpoint, the employer (generally) wants to hire, or give raises to, the employee at the lowest possible total cost. Whereas the employee (generally) want to be hired, or get a raise, at the highest possible total cos

It's a matter of perspective.From a worker point of view, being open about what we're earning will help bring to light if we're being exploited.From a business owner point of view, employees having this knowledge disturbs the power imbalance employers enjoy when it comes to compensation negotiations.I think more people than you'd expect in HN are in the latter camp. This site was launched as Startup News, after all.

As soon as management finds out, you will be fired. This is a bad idea all around.In fact, it's really not going to help the employee in the long run. If everything were public, it will allow every company to pay the same rate for the same job.It will only take away any negotiating power you had and wages will converge to the middle (which means less money ). People are also generally jealous about things like this. Even if you are a better employee, your co-worker will never unde

Take aside legal aspects, why wouldn't any employee share their salary with their peers? All the secrecy just create noise, how could transparency be bad? I only see some incentive from the company's pov, you can position yourself somewhat better at bargaining salaries, when your employee has no access to the same data to debate, thus lowering costs a few percents. What am I missing?

I think you should share your salary with as many people as possible. This "don't share" policy is just a trick used by companies to keep labor costs down.If employees know each other's pay, they will start demanding raises - Then you get in a situation like in the finance sector where companies will be forced to pay big bonuses to hold on to important employees. Companies don't want that - They want their engineers to stay cheap, dependent and foolishly loyal.It&#

This ask HN post surfaces a question I have often wondered but haven't found a logical answer to.Why do people not share their salary information more openly when it is beneficial for them. Most people know that sharing would help them negotiate better and in some cases take away the extreme amount of leverage the employer has due to comp being secretive.I will post this as a separate question to see what the hive mind thinks.

What's wrong with knowing how much people around you are getting paid?

With salary transparency, wouldn’t everyone be paid less? (Not a challenge, just a curiosity.)

I can't think of any circumstance where it wouldn't be in the individual contributors' best interests to tell each other exactly what they all make. If everyone on my teams shared their salaries with each other, it would lead to two things: a) some short-term bad blood and awkwardness, and b) some underpaid people getting raises or quitting. And I think my bosses, especially the old-school ones, consciously play up a) and treat salary as a giant taboo to avoid b).A previ