Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Should You Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Make?
An anonymous reader writes: Asking someone how much money they make is often -- if not always? -- considered impolite. But over the years, there has been a movement in toward more salary transparency. Some say salary transparency can make workplaces more equitable by helping to eliminate the gender and racial pay gaps. Even in companies that haven't decided to officially make all salaries open, some employees are taking matters into their own hands and sharing their pay rate with their coworkers. What's your take on this?
The province where I work has mandated that all university employees paid over a certain amount must have their salaries publicly disclosed because they are, at least partly, publicly funded. While I don't have a problem with this per se I think it is unfair to single out those of us working at universities. This rule should also apply to all companies who accept government contracts too since, by extension, their salaries are also being paid for, at least in part, by government money.
In the case of contracts, the amount of the contract should be made public, but how the contractor pays its employees is really their own business. All the public needs to know is the amount of the contract, and possibly, competing bids to ensure the public is getting a good value for its money. The employees of the contractor are not government employees.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
The idea of keeping wages secret exists mainly because employers don't want everyone knowing what others make. If they did, they might all want to be "more equal" (deservedly or otherwise). For the most, the secrecy is still a tool employers use to maintain low wages.
Transparency puts the onus on employers to explain wage inequality.
Spoken like a true "Lower-paid worker" </snark>
All kidding aside, I think what the GP is saying is that regardless of whether or not the lower paid worker *ACTUALLY* has a valid grievance, they will in every case *PERCEIVE* that they have one. Personally I don't think I would engage in that kind of talk with any of my co-workers because while it is easy to understand the equal pay part, I think it's nearly impossible to objectively assess the equal work part. It might be easy in a factory setting where you each pump out 100 widgets a day, but no two people on my team have the exact same skill set... that's kind of the point: different skills make for a well rounded team.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
If you are in the US your employer is in violation of federal law specifically section 7 of the national labor relations act, where discussion of salary is a protected act.
https://www.nlrb.gov/resources/national-labor-relations-act
RIGHTS OF EMPLOYEES
Sec. 7. [Â 157.] Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and shall also have the right to refrain from any or all of such activities except to the extent that such right may be affected by an agreement requiring membership in a labor organization as a condition of employment as authorized in section 8(a)(3) [section 158(a)(3) of this title].
https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/hr-qa/pages/prohibitdiscussingsalaries.aspx
I bet if I was paid more I would know who or what Dunning Kruger is - should I find out before of after I ask for a raise in the morning?
... and you have the keys.
Just sayin'.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
$125/hr - was my last billing rate before I retired at age 42. I was a consultant, paid hourly and was taking about 8 weeks off a year.
I always billed for every hour, period. The client sent me to a conference and I billed 8 hrs a day. The flights back home, the client's policies prevented me taking a 1st class seat which cost less than a coach seat and had better connections. I billed 16 hrs that day when I could have been home in 6 hrs had the 1st class seat been approved ... on a commuter jet.
I got a new boss, who tried to suggest that I should only bill 40 hrs a week but work more to be a "team player." I pointed out that he was asking me to violate US labor laws. Seems he'd asked all the other contractors in the group the same thing. I was limited to 40 hours, which suited me fine.
My first "real" job paid $3.35/hr ... washing dishes at Big Boy. I got fired.
My first salaried job paid just under $30K/yr - about $14/hr - but it was common to work 60+ hrs/week, which dropped the hourly average pay drastically. I ran the numbers and promised I'd try to minimize "exempt employee abuse" the rest of my career.
Worked at a 100 person company in the late 1990s. Found a spreadsheet with all the salaries, bonuses and stock option grants for everyone in the company. I copied the file off and took it home - studied it. It was very fair. I wasn't "highly compensated" at the time, but managed a small team of software developers. The option grants made perfect sense based on who not only worked the hardest, but who provided real results for the company. A few of my team had 3x more options than I did. They deserved it. I was paid more - not too much more, but more. The company hired a new President who was given options - like 40x more than I had. His prior track record was impressive, but he failed completely at our company. He left after about 11 months, 13 months before any options vested. The sales team had terrible salaries, but huge bonuses and some added options when they made a sizeable sale. About half the sales team made huge money yearly. The other half earned below the poverty line. Marketing guys would ruin my team's schedules, holidays, vacations constantly. The sales guys were always fairly demanding when at a client location, with good reason.
Oh ... and I've never lived in NYC or anywhere in California.
Duning-Kruger is about people thinking that they are better at random fields than they really are. Or as often stated "incompetents don't realize they are incompetent." However this is often misunderstood - it is not talking about someone's competence in their area of expertise, their job, etc. Instead it is about people misjudging how good they are at a different field from their normal competence. Ie, an above average engineer who thinks they're also above average at wine tasting on their first try. An engineer who is incompetent at engineering will quickly learn that they are indeed incompetent.
The original results were based on people being given some tests (humor, logic, grammar, etc). Afterwords they were asked to rate how good they thought they did on it. Those who were in the bottom of the ranking tended to rate themselves a bit above average. The hypothesis was that if they're bad enough at it that they scored low, they're also bad enough to not be able to effectively rank themselves. After some minimal tutoring they tended to become much better at estimating their own abilities.
Additionally, those who ranked near the top also assumed they were closer to average. Presumably because they thought everyone else did better because the tests didn't seem hard.
That's the background anyway. But the Dunning-Kruger effect has sort of taking on a life of its own with the general public, and is misused a lot. Such as being misused by slashdot right now. The Dunning-Kruger effect is not the same as the Peter principle. Being "incompetent" does not mean that the person is an idiot, instead it's more that they're ignorant of a particular subject.