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> As someone running a large organization, this is also a logistical nightmare since I usually have very good reasons to compensate X more than Y even if Y might think they should be paid the same amount.

That's the key. I want to know what reasons. It is the best possible feedback for me. If you want to earn X more, you need to do this and that like this colleague does.

It will force management to have better salary policies. I have seen people getting offered almost doubling their salaries when they say that they are leaving. Just because they were badly underpaid to begin with.

Openness forces for better justifications of your actions.

> Besides, even as a hiring manager, I really think it's none of my business how much that previous employer valued this person. What matters is here and now. I just ask people how much they want then I counter with what we're comfortable paying, and then we negotiate.

That's a really good approach. And looks like you are someone that will easily be able to justify the salaries of your hires. But there is a lot of managers that will not, and they will need to get better at their jobs if salaries where open.

> It is the best possible feedback for me.

See the little role play I offered in my other answer.

It's not always the best possible feedback for you.

First, because you might think the feedback is not justified. Your manager will tell you that other person is better than you according to some metric and you are very likely to disagree. And then what? Anguish, stress on your end. Resentment of your manager, your peers, your job. You'll start losing sleep over this and you'll probably quit because you feel you're not being appreciated.

But assuming the feedback is warranted and you are mature enough to take it as a positive criticism that you're going to work on. You will then probably expect to get that raise that evens out your salary with that other person, but what if you never do? Again anguish, resentment, etc...

There's really hardly any chance anything positive comes out of this kind of transparency.

> First, because you might think the feedback is not justified.

That is a clear signal that there is a misalignment between my expectations and company expectations. It is important to clarify the point. And to see how it can be resolved so I can offer to the company what it's expected from me.

> Your manager will tell you that other person is better than you according to some metric and you are very likely to disagree.

Maybe it is because "Sweden". But I have had really interesting discussions with my direct reports about this topic when I was a manager. And it was my job to explain what they could improve and to do it in a way that they will understand. You are right that I didn't always manage at the first attempt. But, usually, I was at fault for not giving clear enough metrics.

That's why transparency can improve a company so much. It forces management to be more data-driven and to have better metrics. When a company doesn't know how to set salaries they need to improve.

> But assuming the feedback is warranted and you are mature enough to take it as a positive criticism that you're going to work on.

Do you hire people knowing that they are not able to react positively to feedback? That's a mistake. A non-blaming feedback culture will help the company and employees to improve drastically their skills and output.

> You will then probably expect to get that raise that evens out your salary with that other person, but what if you never do? Again anguish, resentment, etc...

Of course, I will expect to get the same salary if I improve to the point that I'm seen as someone as good as my colleague. Isn't that fair? Isn't that the correct point where the company pays for what it gets, and I get paid for my productivity? What is the reason to not get a salary accordingly to my seniority, expertise and work output?

> There's really hardly any chance anything positive comes out of this kind of transparency.

If the company wants to underpay people and lie to get away with it. It may be seen bad by the company. But it will still be a good thing, because it will force it to improve.

>What is the reason to not get a salary accordingly to my seniority, expertise and work output?

I've said this many times and will say it again, most people's salaries are more closely aligned with their leverage than their output. Now leverage can be value too, so it's a complicated picture to unpack and I won't get into it too much.

People who are benefitting more so from leverage (which tends to be the people with the best salaries) will HATE this move. Salary transparency would take away their leverage and they would have to focus more on their output to justify their high salaries.

> It will force management to have better salary policies.

Totally agreed. Quite often the reason X gets paid more than Y is that X demanded the money and had the social power to get away with it.

This is, of course, a really bad idea. If one believes in salary as any sort of incentive for specific behavior, then it encourages people being aggressive and demanding. It also encourages people to create situations where they are necessary, irreplaceable, and noticed due to regular heroics. While discouraging people from being polite, unassuming, dedicated team players who work hard to share knowledge, improve truck factor, and invest in long-term sustainability.

Interestingly in Norway every tax return is public

https://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2016/apr/11/when-it-c...

Scandinavia broadly has a culture that isn't replicated anywhere else on earth. There's a strong argument to be had that such very long established cultures cannot easily be shared or adopted, that they build up over hundreds or thousands of years from thousands of impossible to duplicate events and contributions.

There are various traits that Scandinavian people also take with them in regards to culture. For example, second and third generation Scandinavian people in the US have been known to do particularly well financially, beyond what the typical person in either America or Scandinavia does.

It's not unique to Scandinavia of course. Japan as another example has their own highly distinct, long established culture that leads them to behave in numerous unique ways vs other developed nations.

Simply put, due to its culture Norway may be entirely comfortable with one of its norms, while few other nations will be. People aren't just people, so to speak, they're products of the cultures they grow up in; the learned and preferred things acquired in that process, tend to be extremely difficult to alter, even under conscious effort.

"As someone running a large organization, this is also a logistical nightmare since I usually have very good reasons to compensate X more than Y even if Y might think they should be paid the same amount."

So what stops you from sharing this 'hidden' metric with Y? If there was some weasel reason X would have never recieved package in the first place if everything was public when he got his package.

Now, the reason X got his comp is therefore sane and you can just explain to Y what he needs to accomplish to reach X:s level.

> So what stops you from sharing this 'hidden' metric with Y?

"John is making $10k more than you because his code is usually higher quality than yours and he has a better attitude".

You closed one can of worms and you just opened five new ones.

I wish everything worked like this. The reason it would be insane is it would be massively filled with x got a raise because he hangs out with y after work, y slept with so and so, w has a penis, z has big boobs, g was hired by h who sucks at negotiating, b completely oversold himself but wasn't bad enough at life to actually fire.

Good. Get those worms on the floor so you can stomp them out.

If the "you" in this situation never hears that they need to work on their code quality or their attitude, then they'll never know what needs to improve.

As a manager, it's my job to open those cans of worms. It's also my job to be continually helping people improve, so that issues like this never get to the "can of worms" stage.

Surely as a manager you understand that pitting people against each other is a recipe for disaster and not a path toward improvement.

In other words, never say "John's code is cleaner than yours", say "I suggest you work on polishing these pull requests".

I think there are plenty of ways to tell person A that they should learn from person B without pitting them against one another.

Normally I talk about this in terms of rubrics for roles and levels. E.g., it's not about Amy versus Betty; it's about how Amy can get from SWE 1 to SWE 2. In the course of that discussion I am totally willing to say, "Pay more attention to the code Betty submits for a code review. She's a solid SWE 2 and you could learn from the way she does X, Y, and Z."

All H1b salary data is already public.