ALL pay at companies should be transparent (job interview, owner, employer)
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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.
My post was to point out that there are pay scales in which companies operate. Whether or not you are at the top or bottom depends on how well you negotiated and is no one else's business. Transparency is irrelevant, as I would not pay someone with no experience the same as someone with 5 years experience because they hold the same title. All transparency is going to do is cause turmoil between employees. My wife works in budgets, so she and everyone in her group sees everyone's salaries and she constantly tells me how people are always complaining about how others with the same titles make more than they do. There is a lot more to it than just looking at a number.
I was actually responding to someone else who previously was arguing this:
"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.
"
Transparent salaries would be like opening a can of worms for everyone. You will need to hire a special person just to resolve the issues between employees. Only the manager knows how much hard work you put in a project because you are reporting to them, not your colleagues. If I can find a quick way to do a project & save time, then I am worth more. For example, I am very good with excel, programming & I often use macro shortcuts to process data that would take couple of days, if done manually. So my projects get done quickly & it might seem like I am slacking off after doing 5 days worth of work in just 2hrs. My efficiency goes up tremendously & I get more work done. I dont announce it to the team but my manager knows about it. My colleague with the same title, who might not be as good at excel as me, will take 5 days for the same work. I was not hired to work on excel but being good with excel is a skill that helps me do my job quickly so I will be rewarded for that. I worked for just 2hrs whereas my colleagues will be seen struggling for entire week. Our titles might be the same but the way we perform our tasks are entirely different. Its not just about working hard, but working smart as well. Its impossible to keep tabs on your colleagues & judge their efficiency. Some of us work even after going home, weekends to stay ahead & meet deadlines - with or without the overtime. The manager keeps tabs on such efforts by approving your timesheets. Others cant & it will create misunderstandings because we dont know everything.
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.
Why don't you know the value of yourself? You apparently already work in the industry.
Every time I have talked to other companies and they ask me what my range is I give it to them. If we are off they will tell me. I can then decide to continue discussions with them or not.
I don't really get your post. There are tons of reasons why people may be making different salaries for similar work. If you don't feel you are being paid fairly go get a job somewhere else.
Most large companies have pay ranges for each level, so even if you mistakenly come in at the bottom of the pay range you will get larger pay raises until you are more penetrated into the pay band.
I just don't get what good would come from knowing how much your cube mates make. It would just stir jealousy because there will always be someone making more than someone else.
My post was to point out that there are pay scales in which companies operate. Whether or not you are at the top or bottom depends on how well you negotiated and is no one else's business. Transparency is irrelevant, as I would not pay someone with no experience the same as someone with 5 years experience because they hold the same title. All transparency is going to do is cause turmoil between employees. My wife works in budgets, so she and everyone in her group sees everyone's salaries and she constantly tells me how people are always complaining about how others with the same titles make more than they do. There is a lot more to it than just looking at a number.
I was actually responding to someone else who previously was arguing this:
"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.
"
This is false.
No it doesn't only depend on how well you negotiated, that's opinion, but that's not an argument against pay transparency. It's an argument for. If someone is getting paid less based not on job skills but negotiations it's be nice if they knew that's why they were being paid less.
Well it being irrelevant to you is an opinion, but if course you stated your job was to have known pay scale and try to get people as low on that scale as possible based on their negotiating skills, that screams for pa transparency.
Good imagine the fact of being paid less. Income determines where you live, the value of your home, the quality if the schools your children may attend, the opportunities you may gain from living next or close to some one.
I'd say that is far worse outcome for people than social awkwardness associated with honesty.
Again so far no reason against pay transparency.
Again pay transparency allows every to see what every one makes and forces companies to explain those discrepancies in pay.
If the pay differences are legit and not based on racial or gender bias and can be explained , then pay transparency will lead to zero changes with in a company and therefore should be embraced.
How anyone can be "for" hidden pay is BEYOND me. It's not about socialism or everyone making the same pay, but allowing people to KNOW what they are worth and what their market value is! If I go to buy a house, I might think it's worth 250,000, but you better be damn sure I'm going to check comparable sales to find out if that is in fact the market value. I compare prices on everything I buy to find out what a fair price is. Without knowing the true market rate for your job, how can you possibly know if you are even being compensated fairly? All of these posts about socialism and whining are bs.
How anyone can be "for" hidden pay is BEYOND me. It's not about socialism or everyone making the same pay, but allowing people to KNOW what they are worth and what their market value is! If I go to buy a house, I might think it's worth 250,000, but you better be damn sure I'm going to check comparable sales to find out if that is in fact the market value. I compare prices on everything I buy to find out what a fair price is. Without knowing the true market rate for your job, how can you possibly know if you are even being compensated fairly? All of these posts about socialism and whining are bs.
You are talking about from the outside looking in. What about once you get into the company and you know that Joe makes 10k more than you, yet you think you are more qualified than him. Unless you know everything about every employee's working situation you are making assumptions about them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Iamme73
No it doesn't only depend on how well you negotiated, that's opinion, but that's not an argument against pay transparency. It's an argument for. If someone is getting paid less based not on job skills but negotiations it's be nice if they knew that's why they were being paid less.
Well it being irrelevant to you is an opinion, but if course you stated your job was to have known pay scale and try to get people as low on that scale as possible based on their negotiating skills, that screams for pa transparency.
Good imagine the fact of being paid less. Income determines where you live, the value of your home, the quality if the schools your children may attend, the opportunities you may gain from living next or close to some one.
I'd say that is far worse outcome for people than social awkwardness associated with honesty.
Again so far no reason against pay transparency.
Again pay transparency allows every to see what every one makes and forces companies to explain those discrepancies in pay.
If the pay differences are legit and not based on racial or gender bias and can be explained , then pay transparency will lead to zero changes with in a company and therefore should be embraced.
It would take an entire book for a company to explain why each person makes what they make. There are an astronomical # of factors that come into it. I can see it now.
Jim Smith
-We had been looking for a person for 6 months and none were qualified.
-Jim was at a rival company
-Jim was able to negotiate a large salary because we needed someone badly and he was already in a job he liked
-See Jim's attached resume for his requisite skill set at the time of hire
I'm not completely against companies posting ranges for positions, but most of the time GlassDoor does a good job of this unless it is a smaller company. Another thing is most professional organizations provide good insight into what you can expect in your profession given the area of the US you are in.
I used to work for an organization that published (internally) the salary for each position at the company. IIRC it was minimum, midpoint, maximum, etc. They were committed to transparency there. I thought it was pretty cool.
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.
Wow - a whole 1%?! Even the SSI increase for 2014 was 1.5%, so not only did some employees not get an actual raise(improve their standard of living), but they are falling further behind with the COLA going up more than their 'raise'.
With that said, if your company actually does COLA increases separately then I stand corrected.
One thing that is similar to this is real estate transactions. Anybody can accurately lookup what was paid for a house and who owns it. I bet if it wasn't already transparent that some people would be defending their privacy and say that the sales price should be confidential. People would say "Just go look at the 'zestimate' on Zillow" instead of pointing you to glassdoor.
Wow - a whole 1%?! Even the SSI increase for 2014 was 1.5%, so not only did some employees not get an actual raise(improve their standard of living), but they are falling further behind with the COLA going up more than their 'raise'.
With that said, if your company actually does COLA increases separately then I stand corrected.
Nope, this company was notoriously cheap even though they make billions of dollars in revenue every year. If you were not a high performer, your raises will not keep up with SSI increases.
In many ways this is like real estate in that you can see what other folks make at various websites. But if you are putting in an offer for a house, you can't see what everyone else's offer is...
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Even the SSI increase for 2014 was 1.5%, so not only did some employees not get an actual raise(improve their standard of living), but they are falling further behind with the COLA going up more than their 'raise'. 
