You have a right to know how much your coworkers are paid | Hacker News Reader

You have a right to know how much your coworkers are paid

jacobinmag.com

36 pointsFuturebot28 comments

So the basic premise of the article and this movement is that people assume that the default is for virtually everybody to be underpaid. So since there is obviously a Gaussian or poission distribution in salaries, then obviously some people will be above what "everybody gets paid". So unless the author solved the somewhat old emotion of ya know jealousy, then this is guaranteed to be a recipe for disaster for most companies. Especially the high performers would feel constantly like their peers would be saying under their breath "and he gets paid so much more for what??".. So yea likely they would be less likely to want to show even the smallest amount of weakness to those people and would likely try to work in a more cautious manner.

My thinking is that the problem people are trying to solve is noble but it turns a creative industry into a trade industry like electricians with various levels of seniority and levels of advancement.

I think it's better to simply rely upon the glass door type stuff and if you feel like you are underpaid, change your job. Asking for raises I honestly think is a bad way to increase your salary.

"So the basic premise of the article and this movement is that people assume that the default is for virtually everybody to be underpaid. So since there is obviously a Gaussian or poission distribution in salaries, then obviously some people will be above what "everybody gets paid"."

Except labor/capital share doesn't follow a gaussian distribution within a company. It's a ratio. It's perfectly plausible (probably likely, in fact) that salary transparency will increase wages for all employees.

The parent was not comparing labor vs. capital, but rather labor vs. labor e.g. the set of all software engineers at a company. It's perfectly reasonable to expect the salary distribution to fit a bell curve.

And I disagree with your conclusion that this would likely increase wages for all employees. In the least, it's very likely to penalize high performers by redistributing their wealth to low performers, so employers can maintain the appearance of "fairness".

It's equally likely that this would decrease wages for all employees. If the incentive to perform well is diminished (e.g. "why work harder if you won't be rewarded?"), then it will lower the bar for quality across the board, providing less value to employers, ultimately pushing the price (i.e. wage) downward.

    it's very likely to penalize high performers by redistributing their wealth to low performers

Seems to me that the problem here is that company isn't able to convince the low performers that they are low performing. If the high performers are paid more due to some objective metric, the low performers should be able to see their own path to higher performance. If not, then it's the company's problem for having a pay scale that rewards negotiating skills or nepotism over objective performance evaluations.

Any attempt to "objectively" measure performance to influence salary will actively harm company culture. Unless your company is literally an assembly line, Godhart's law takes over so quickly and your employees are going to spend their time abusing the metric.

Just paying employees the market rate, while imperfect, is overwhelmingly preferable.

Perhaps a right, but I'd be more comfortable if the data had was a touch anonymous. Like, no names but perhaps with job title and years of experience or similar.

Yeah if we're just declaring rights that sound good could I prioritize my right to privacy in this area instead?

Say a person X is paid more than person Y in the same role because X's child has a health issue that requires extra income for X's family to stay afloat. There was a private agreement between the X and the employer because X needs the extra money, and X is a valued employee. Then Y raises the issue. The employer can't afford to pay Y the same as X. Is Y owed some kind of explanation? How is that explanation given without violating the privacy of X?

So in essence you believe that employers keep secrets because they're terrified that everybody will discover that they're actually kind hearted?

Nice non sequitur. Rather, the intention of my example is to point out privacy concerns for employees.

I think that's kind of the point. X shouldn't get paid more just because they have children, sick or not. Y could have equal need for the money, and they oughtn't need to justify their cause against X's cause, for the sole reason that such subjective valuation leads most immediately to discriminatory remuneration.

(As an example, maybe Y needs money because she donates to nonprofits. Probably the kind-hearted boss would also give Y a raise if Y gave the money to curing childhood cancer. But what about if it went to the NAACP? Or an evangelical church? Normalizing subjective need-based remuneration promotes discrimination.)

> X shouldn't get paid more just because they have children, sick or not.

What is the moral basis for this claim? Do you also oppose welfare?

> Y could have equal need for the money, and they oughtn't need to justify their cause against X's cause

If Y has equal need for the money, then they can also make their case, privately. There's no reason for Y to even know about X's cause, because it's none of their business, which is more to my original point. The examples you provided are of a different category, because Y isn't facing insolvency if they don't make a donation.

> > X shouldn't get paid more just because they have children, sick or not.

> What is the moral basis for this claim? Do you also oppose welfare?

Those are completely different issues and I think the above commenter is right. Kids, sickness, mortgages should be as relevant to an employer as my potential affinity for expensive cars, audio equipment or playing golf. Which is to say not at all. The employee's value to the company is the only thing matters in my opinion. Should you be paid less because you opted for cheap living space and your coworker bought a mansion he can't afford? Of course not.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not indifferent to sick children - it's just that most other countries use social security systems like health care, financial child support, great public schools or welfare to deal with these issues. It is not the employer's responsibility to decide which misery is worthy to support.

> Do you also oppose welfare?

Absolutely not.

The distinction is one of objectivity. Programs like welfare, and policies such as tax deductions for dependents and charitable donations are objective. A boss's empathy is almost by definition subjective.

Y should not be forced to "make a case" to the boss for the exact reason that by placing their needs at the boss's judgement, they also subject themselves to the boss's discrimination.

I think this only will cause more problems than it will solve (unhappy employees, stressed managers and ultimately depressed salaries (because companies will then peg salaries at the least common denominator to avoid problems) and unmotivated employees (they won't see that doing a good job is appreciated by a nice pay bump once in a while)).

Maybe an easier approach is to have an external arbiter periodically comb through employee salaries to check for discrimination?

Next up: They should require freelance workers to disclose their full rate history, to ensure that greedy freelancers aren't ripping off less-knowledgeable clients. It's not fair if you charge one client a different rate than another based on opaque criteria or a reason your lawmaker doesn't approve of.

Yes, because the power imbalance between freelancers and their clients is just as bad as the power imbalance between companies and their employees.

It could be better, or it could be worse. If the freelancer is skilled and has a good reputation, then they probably have more leverage. If they're just starting out, they may have less than a full time employee who has a stable income.

The current imbalances aren't in the laborers' favor. Why should we pass laws that increase the corporation's leverage over workers when the current structure skews heavily in the corporation's favor?

Only in Iceland.

My pay is between me and my employer. It's none of anyone else's business.

I'm seeing a lot of pushback against this in here. Executive compensation disclosure laws in the US led to massively increasing pay for executives, who are some of the highest paid people in the company. Seeing how a major problem in the US is income and wealth inequality, why wouldn't this kind of legislation lead to the same race to the top for laborers' pay that executive compensation disclosure laws led to?

I doubt it. There is asymmetry in roles and value to a company. Id expect it to lower wages.

The executive compensation disclosures led to greater compensation because the top performers had a baseline from which to be paid and thus required higher wages. At the same time, nobody likes to think they're below average, and thus demanded at least near-average wages. What makes you think that mechanism wouldn't lead to increased wages for laborers?

Because workers are not executives.

Instead the push for 15 dollar min wages has pushed fast food industries to find ways to replace them.

Damn straight. Obfuscation only benefits the boss at your expense.

It also benefits the employees who are getting a larger slice of the pie. Deserving or not, would said employees have an obligation to disclose their higher salary to their peers?

How would they know that they have higher salaries?

Between the right to know how much my coworkers are paid and the right of privacy I will always prefer the latter.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com