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Comment by danlugo92 | Hacker News Reader

>Nothing can come good out of sharing my salary with current coworkers.

Care to expand?

It can lead to unnecessary hard feelings about small differences in pay. I’ve definitely had relationships go awkward when people discovered I made a bit more then them, and have struggled not to think “why did that doofus get $5k more than me last year” myself.

I work for a large company with a well defined level structure. When I need to, I’ll say around $XXX, where XXX is what Glassdoor / levels.fyi says. It’s pretty close to accurate, and it also rounded enough that coworkers can project whatever number makes them happy.

If I make more than they do and they think they should make the same amount, what’s to stop them from storming into the HR department and bringing my name up as a reason that they should make more?

Even though it is illegal to fire someone for discussing salary, that and a nickel will buy me a piece of five cent candy.

If they make more than I do, what am I going to do with that piece of information? I can’t very well bring it up at salary negotiations.

Besides, I have been around long enough to know that the best way to “get a raise” is to change companies.

When I learned that the (more talented) women on a team earned less than the men (maybe less negotiating, IDK), I said something to the team manager. No idea if it did anything, but I hope it did. And I certainly wouldn't have said anything if I hadn't known the discrepancy.

If you know what your coworkers make, you have a better idea what you can negotiate up to than if you didn't. That's true even if you can't go into a discussion and name names and dollar amounts that you know.

If a coworker told me their compensation, I would not reveal that in a discussion about my own pay. I hope that the reverse is also true. I think it's a mature and cool-headed position to have. Not everybody is mature and cool-headed though.

I have also heard the best way to get a raise is to move companies. I like my job though.

I can “hope” that my coworkers wouldn’t bring my name up. But I’m not putting my career in the hands of my coworkers.

Would hate to work in the kind of environment where coworkers don't trust each other. At last big tech company, people willingly added their compensation to an internal spreadsheet.

And this goes back to the old Netflix presentation. “We are a team not a family”. The minute you think otherwise is the minute that you start doing stuff “for the good of the company” and putting the company before your own priorities.

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