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Things would be a lot more fair if we just had a list of the compensation of every employee at companies.
Fair for whom? And when is life always 'fair'?
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Originally Posted by HedgeYourInvestments
The way it works now with everything being totally confidential is supposed to benefit the employees, but it really benefits the company because it allows them to pretend that a salary range for a role is X when it's really Y. I know my last firm did this a lot, and your pay in a department was wildly divergent from the guy next to you.
Who said the sole purpose is to protect the employee? I know keeping it private is what I prefer. But I also know that they're not doing it to protect ME.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HedgeYourInvestments
We had three people with the same job, essentially the same experience and same qualifications, one made $45,000, one made $57,500, and one made $70,000. It would allow for better negotiations for new employees as well as for existing employees at review time.
Employers aren't there for YOU. You aren't the 'consumer' or 'customer' in this relationship. Would you disclose your budget or price point when you go to the car dealership, appliance store, landscaper, or home improvement contractor?
Quote:
Originally Posted by HedgeYourInvestments
Yes, the whole idea of "privacy" is lost, but do I really care if John or Kelly knows how much I make? I'd rather have one bargaining chip in a salary negotiation.
Or - they'll just tell you that you don't deserve any more. Your lack of ability to negotiate or determine your market value isn't anyone else's problem but yours.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HedgeYourInvestments
I recently took a new job for a decent raise, but there's a woman in the same role who may be making significantly more than me for all I know. Had I been able to see "well, the other Analyst at this firm makes X", I could have had a better position for the salary negotiation.
Plus, knowing how much upper management makes would probably cause some backlash among their employees but it may also help to curb this rampant widening of the gap between the pay of upper management and the average worker.
After all, publicly traded companies are required to show the compensation for "key employees" so there is some precedence.
As other's have said - two people with the same titles doesn't always mean they are equal in skill/potential/productivity.
And publicly traded companies disclose income of key personnel because their ownership is technically bought and sold on the open market. Just as all Federal employees's salaries are disclosed because they technically serve the people.
Why are people assuming that OP thinks people in the same position should make exactly the same amount? I think a discrepancy is fine, so long as it's justified. And if it's justified, what's wrong with having it be public info?
There's so much drama and stress in the workplace created by people under/over estimating their coworkers and managers wages.
Just because someone does the same job as you do, doesn't necessarily entitle you to their pay. You could be in the same position but someone could be far better at it as you are, hence the higher pay. Or they could have been in that role for 20 years, whereas you're new to the company. Sounds a little socialist to me......
In the end, do well at your job and more times than not you'll be compensated for it. Typically those folks complaining about pay are the ones least deserving of more money.
How is it in any way "socialist"? You people never cease to amaze me. I was in no way saying anything about how everyone deserves equal pay. Did I say that? No, you just can't comprehend the OP.
In the end, corporations will stifle pay as much as possible. Their #1 goal is to maximize profit. How is giving people more transparency a bad thing? This isn't just for people who are at the same company, it's also for when you're going to a new company and you see how much other people in the department get paid. Pay and qualifications/tenure are not all that related. Pay and performance even less so. You could use it as fodder for a raise, like if you're the most productive person in the department (I worked once in a department where we opened accounts, our stats would be posted on a board) you could use that as a way to prove that you deserve to be paid as much or more than a coworker who makes more than you do.
Seriously, your response is the reason why CEO-Worker pay has gone from 20-1 to 350-1. This is the problem in our economy. It's not about redistribution, not once did I say anything about that, it's about FAIRNESS AND TRANSPARENCY.
Things would be a lot more fair if we just had a list of the compensation of every employee at companies. The way it works now with everything being totally confidential is supposed to benefit the employees, but it really benefits the company because it allows them to pretend that a salary range for a role is X when it's really Y. I know my last firm did this a lot, and your pay in a department was wildly divergent from the guy next to you. We had three people with the same job, essentially the same experience and same qualifications, one made $45,000, one made $57,500, and one made $70,000. It would allow for better negotiations for new employees as well as for existing employees at review time.
Yes, the whole idea of "privacy" is lost, but do I really care if John or Kelly knows how much I make? I'd rather have one bargaining chip in a salary negotiation.
I recently took a new job for a decent raise, but there's a woman in the same role who may be making significantly more than me for all I know. Had I been able to see "well, the other Analyst at this firm makes X", I could have had a better position for the salary negotiation.
Plus, knowing how much upper management makes would probably cause some backlash among their employees but it may also help to curb this rampant widening of the gap between the pay of upper management and the average worker.
After all, publicly traded companies are required to show the compensation for "key employees" so there is some precedence.
I agree with this any employee in a company should be able to see the Income of anyone at the company.
Pay secrecy allows rampant discrimination in pay on the basis of race and gender to remain.
It gives companies a huge advantage when negotiating salaries with individual employees.
If companies had to show and explain why two people doing the same job with similar experience were paid vastly differently, that would go along way towards equity in America.
Why are people assuming that OP thinks people in the same position should make exactly the same amount? I think a discrepancy is fine, so long as it's justified. And if it's justified, what's wrong with having it be public info?
There's so much drama and stress in the workplace created by people under/over estimating their coworkers and managers wages.
Because they are all very dumb. They don't understand anything about my original post and think I'm a socialist. I'm a Libertarian (registered Republican) and I make good money. I have been with other firms that were very shady in their compensation structure and very top heavy. I became a shareholder in the last one and discovered that the boss used company money to buy his kid a Hummer H2 and somehow justified it as a "business expense".
Public employees salaries are available. There's a list of every single employee in the county and their exact pay. It should be the same at all companies. It's not the actual person's name, just their job title.
Glassdoor is idiotic. It's self-reported and it's based solely on people who actually put info in. It's highly inaccurate and useless as a negotiation tool.
I never said "I work less but deserve more!" I said that it should be open so we as workers have another tool in our shed when negotiations happen. It allows us to say "I am 20% more productive than him, but he makes 10% more than me" instead of "I work hard, give me a raise".
I'm always amazed at the depth of stupidity in the "WE HATE SOCIALISM!!!" crowd. They think anything fair is socialist, or anything where people get information is socialist. They don't understand socialism and probably have never read a single word of Marx and Engels.
Just wanted to add, I am union, and basically once we get qualified we all make close to the same hourly rate of pay give or take $1and some change.
So there is no income secrecy amongst the operators, because we know exactly why one operator makes more then another, it's because that operator has went beyond and either got a higher level of job skills which bumps up their pay slightly and or they work more over time then the other operator.
I like that about my job. Pay is all about gaining new skills or working more hours, not based on skin color or gender(although that's a factor in who gets hired) or who is good buddies with this or that person, who puts down co workers to look better, who kisses the most butt.
So here it is..... directly from a previous manager who was directly involved in hiring employees and their salaries/merit increases, etc...
Hiring an employee is purely a business transaction and shouldn't be taken as anything personal. I would find a need for a position, and send my justification to management. We would review the requirements and determine whether or not the money was in the budget for another employee. Once that happened we determined the payscale for the position and it was based off of a payscale chart that we kept.
My job was to get you on board at as competitive a rate as I could within reason. Your part to this is to know the payscale in the area and negotiate your rate. The company was not responsible for providing that to you.
With that being said, I had an approved range that I could work from. I typically started out at the bottom and negotiated up. If you wanted more money, I would use the interview to determine whether or not I felt that you were worth the extra money. If you were I would offer you the job and agree to your salary. If not, I'd tell you thanks, but no thanks.
Companies are not out to try and get you for nothing. Most that I've dealt with have a payscale and HR requires that payscale to be approved by management and any new hires for specific positions must fall somewhere within that scale. If you're outside of the scale (too low) HR would reject the management request to hire the employee at the lower rate. If higher, management would have to approve paying someone above the payscale for the job, or even change the position from say a level 1 to a 2 or 3.
People need to get out of the mentality that corporations have nothing better to do with their time than screw over the working man. Most of them don't. There are rules and policies in place in these companies that limit what can be done.
So here it is..... directly from a previous manager who was directly involved in hiring employees and their salaries/merit increases, etc...
Hiring an employee is purely a business transaction and shouldn't be taken as anything personal. I would find a need for a position, and send my justification to management. We would review the requirements and determine whether or not the money was in the budget for another employee. Once that happened we determined the payscale for the position and it was based off of a payscale chart that we kept.
My job was to get you on board at as competitive a rate as I could within reason. Your part to this is to know the payscale in the area and negotiate your rate. The company was not responsible for providing that to you.
With that being said, I had an approved range that I could work from. I typically started out at the bottom and negotiated up. If you wanted more money, I would use the interview to determine whether or not I felt that you were worth the extra money. If you were I would offer you the job and agree to your salary. If not, I'd tell you thanks, but no thanks.
Companies are not out to try and get you for nothing. Most that I've dealt with have a payscale and HR requires that payscale to be approved by management and any new hires for specific positions must fall somewhere within that scale. If you're outside of the scale (too low) HR would reject the management request to hire the employee at the lower rate. If higher, management would have to approve paying someone above the payscale for the job, or even change the position from say a level 1 to a 2 or 3.
People need to get out of the mentality that corporations have nothing better to do with their time than screw over the working man. Most of them don't. There are rules and policies in place in these companies that limit what can be done.
That's a long post about nothing having to do with the thread topic. And None of that post is an argument against pay transparency within a company.
Now, if a company publicly posted titles and ranges, but no names, I would be ok with that. Sort of like Glassdoor, but reported by the company rather than employees self-reporting anonymously. Many of us say the salary for any job opening should be posted in the ad. This way, it would be available in some form (for existing positions). Anything beyond that, I would not be ok with. I think for the average person the more that is private about you, the better. I really don't want that creepy uncle who always wants to borrow money being able to easily go somewhere and find out my specific salary (just an example). Overall, I think people are just happier the way it is currently.
At most companies that I have worked for I was able to see the salaries for those who reported to me. I had a list of each of their names, their title/level, salary, bonus, stock, and the compensation range (lower and higher cap) for their level. When it came time to give raises, the default was that everyone would get a small raise (around 1%) but if your performance was good, you would usually get more.
They wanted people to be in the middle of their compensation range so if you were underpaid but had high reviews, you would get a big raise (at this company it'd be like 4%). If you were overpaid and had high reviews, you would get a small raise (e.g., 1.5%). This was so that people who were underpaid would go up quickly to get them to the average quicker and if you were overpaid, we'd slow you down from being even more overpaid.
There was a little bit of overlap between the levels so a guy at the top of one level would likely be getting paid more than a guy at the bottom of the next level up.
if you got promoted (moved levels), you'd get a salary increase higher than a normal raise...usually around 10% or so and that was usually enough to get you above your pay range and somewhere below the middle of the next pay range.
Everyone who came in as a college hire made exactly the same though...there was no negotiation. Luckily it was at the high end of the industry but we would sometimes lose candidates because of this but for a college hire to come in off the bat and make 6 figures, I don't think it was too bad.
Pay ranges were never disclosed to employees so you didn't know where you were on the scale (if you're underpaid or overpaid). I happened to know my pay range because I had a guy reporting to me who was at the exact same level as me so essentially he was a peer reporting to me. Funny enough he was getting paid more than me but it was close enough that I didn't care. He was older than me too though.
I did have a job once at a startup where my manager gave me a spreadsheet of all of the engineering team's compensation. Problem is that he forgot to remove himself and his boss (CTO) so I knew their salary. He quickly deleted it after an hour or so when he realized but I had already seen it by then. I wasn't really that offended by my manager's salary as it was only a little more than mine but the CTO's salary was pretty ridiculously high.
I also had another boss at a startup (he was the CEO) who would make comments every now and then that I thought was inappropriate. he would comment to employees things like "Oh come on, I know you can afford to go out with us tonight...I know how much you make remember?" or "How can you be broke? I know what we pay you..." or the guilt trip "I pay you guys a lot of money so is it really asking too much for you to be here this weekend to help?"
As for peers knowing, if everyone makes the same then I think it's cool but since we don't, I don't think it's good.
RVD.
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