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Google Staffers Share Salary Info With Each Other; Management Freaks
Nerval's Lobster writes: Imagine a couple of employees at your company create a spreadsheet that lists their salaries. They place the spreadsheet on an internal network, where other employees soon add their own financial information. Within a day, the project has caught on like wildfire, with people not only listing their salaries but also their bonuses and other compensation-related info. While that might sound a little far-fetched, that's exactly the scenario that recently played out at Google, according to an employee, Erica Baker, who detailed the whole incident on Twitter. While management frowned upon employees sharing salary data, she wrote, "the world didn't end everything didn't go up in flames because salaries got shared." For years, employees and employers have debated the merits (and drawbacks) of revealing salaries. While most workplaces keep employee pay a tightly guarded secret, others have begun fiddling with varying degrees of transparency, taking inspiration from studies that have shown a higher degree of salary-related openness translates into happier workers. (Other studies (PDF) haven't suggested the same effect.) Baker claims the spreadsheet compelled more Google employees to ask and receive "equitable pay based on data in the sheet."
I firmly believe that when job-hunting, you should know how much you'll be making when you apply. I've been through a number of interviews for what seemed to be great positions, only to have to turn them down after being offered the job because they weren't paying a decent wage for the job at hand.
Making public how much everyone is making goes a long way to keeping job-seekers aware of how much they are worth. Hiding salaries only helps companies, who can then keep low-balling people.
Back when I was in the Army, we all knew exactly how much everyone else made in base pay, from E1 to O9. That at least gave incentive to work up the chain from the bottom.
It has been so taboo at many of the places that I have worked to talk about salary.
The place I work now is very guarded about this as well. We recently had someone canned because they opened someone else's offer letter (which was sitting on a shared workstation).
I have always just assumed it was conspiracy cooked up in a board room full of men long ago as a way to enable pay inequality.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
if you have two people doing the same and one is grossly underpaid, he or she will not sit back and take it as bosses dish it out. What is so surprising about this?
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The more I know people, the more I love animals
For those that have worked in the public sector this is often the norm -- at least it was where I worked. Back in the dark ages (pre Internet) the State Audit department published a book with every employee's actual earnings and travel expenses annually. That document was a public record and available to anyone who knew about it and took the trouble to get a copy. When the Internet came along the data is now on line and searchable on a public web site. When vendors came to sell us the latest and greatest security gismo or software their standard example of confidential information was the employee salary data. Once it was on line I always got a kick out of going to the Web site and calling up the application and showing them that salary data was NOT at all confidential where we worked!
At every company there's someone that works harder than you and makes far less money than you. Conversely, there's also someone that works far less than you and makes way more money than you.
If the company didn't think they were worth it, wouldn't be getting paid it.
You do realize that 'perfect information' is one of the defining characteristics of the idealized model of 'free market' behavior? You don't have to like it; but calling anything vaguely related to money that displeases you 'socialistic' is dumb beyond words.
In the US, at least, they can't prevent it. If people want to talk about that, let them do it.
Yup. Same law that says you can unionize says they can't stop you from sharing pay and benefits information. But like unionizing, this is a powerful tool for workers and they will do anything they can to keep you from asking.
It's a private sector thing, not an American thing. Public sector employees in America have their salaries in a database that can be searched by the citizens... e.g.: http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state-pay/article2642161.html Some places are not electronic, but the data itself is public. Citizens have a right to know how much they are paying their workers.
The employees know that the skill diversity exists. Everyone does. That is not the issue. The difference is that, if both sides of the negotiation have all of the information, then both sides can use the information to an equal advantage. The parity is not between employees, but between employee and employer. You are trying to make it out like the parity issue is between employees. The issue is merely that employers hide the information because it gives them an information advantage.
If everyone knew all of the information, the negotiations across the board would naturally be more equitable. To answer your specific question, the three others know that a specialist will demand more than them. They may try to argue that they deserve equal pay, but the manager can simply point to the fact that the specialist is a specialist. Everyone has all of the information, so it is actually *easier* to see fairness _when_fairness_exists_.
Base salary and bonuses are not the only forms of compensation to think about. Depending on your position you may have paid conferences and training that you are sent to. You may have a paid cell phone, internet services, bring your own device voucher, new technologies voucher, company vehicles, holiday and paid time off, stock options, retirement, health and wellness benefits, coveted vendor "gifts", etc. I could share my base salary and it would be an interesting to others. But it wouldn't show all the various other ways that my company might do to keep me happy. Sometimes compensation is hard to monetize as well. For one person time off or flexible working may be more valuable than increased pay.
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
If you click through to the "article," you'll get a long list of ten-word sentences formatted as tweets. When did this become an even remotely acceptable way of presenting something?
Good lord. If you work for Google, can't you figure out how to create a blog? My mother did it.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Uh. That's nothing like this. That's a completely different scenario. What's your point?
If you are willing to work for 80K, I am happy to give you bigger merit raises than your peers if you worked extra hard, but if you walk in the door unhappy with your base salary, should I cut into the bonus pool of others just so you can get a massive raise to make your salary equal to theirs?
You're creating what's called a "false dilemma". Why is it the "bonus pool" you're cutting into, and not just company profits? How about weighing paying someone what they're worth vs them quitting, and you having to find someone else to replace them, possibly at a higher salary or lower quality, or both?
Your promises of "well someday if you work really hard" are some kind of bullshit, work ethic fantasy. People get paid more for lots and lots of different reasons, and merit is just one of them.
And hey, maybe what you're saying is correct. But you're trying to speak generally, and most of the world isn't like you. Much of the world isn't based on merit, but based on what you can get away with. If someone thinks they can get away with paying people less, then they will. All these BS promises of suddenly paying people more because they're better than others are some kind of protestant work ethic lie.
If your employer/manager implies otherwise, or discriminates against you in any way for discussing compensation, they are in legal hot water.
In practice, sharing your salary in personally identifiable way is probably not beneficial for your career. Coworkers who earn less are likely to be resentful, and those who earn more may feel you must be somehow inferior. Sites like glassdoor are probably the best balance of transparency and privacy.
Many prices are open in public. If I want to know the prices my competitor offers, I just look up his price sheet. But for employees, appearently having a public price list is frowned upon, which gives employers an unfair advantage in the negotiation. Differently than the employee, the employer has perfect information, he knows how much he pays every employee. And thus the power in salary negotiation is very loopsided, as the employee has much less information about the market and the competition than the employer has. Thus salary negotiations in most cases don't happen in a free market environment.