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Comment by blululu | Hacker News Reader

One thing that is frequently overlooked in discussions of publicizing salaries is that there is also a strong social stigma to flaunting wealth or talking about affluence. Personally I think that this is a good thing since it encourages humility and a sense of equality. I realize that there is a clear market case for publishing salary information, but I also think that we should be considerate of why people generally frown upon such conversations in interpersonal contexts (anonymous listings like levels.fyi are different).

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> encourages humility and a sense of equality

You know what encourages equality? Open verification that there is actual equality.

Indeed. Sense of equality != equality. The OP almost suggests it's better for people to live under a false sense of equality.

A sense of equality is very important for a variety of good reasons. Whether this is more important than equality is a complicated question that is made more complicated by the fact that equality is hard to measure. True equality is generally rare in a high dimension space. People bring a lot of different things to the table so it is unlikely that two people are doing the exact same - hence differences in pay will always exist. Add to this the fact that people may feel that they are better than average (most people do) and thus entitled to a bump over their peers. Having approximate equality is more realistic. If you accept this, then a comparison against a distribution rather than against a specific individual comparison is a more realistic evaluation.

Like striving for just a sense of low-corruption. A big PR coverup of something bad is a huge win under this goal.

Verification of parity in compensation encourages equality only if there is a clear mechanism to equalize levels. In general there will be mismatches in market forces, budgets, and the like (as well as seniority, the difference between people's opinions of themselves and their opinions of others, etc...). Having some ambiguity about such levels is also an effective social mechanism that allows us to see each other as equals without needing to get out a ruler. Again, having an anonymous reporting scheme like levels.fyi strikes me as a very good idea, but open and interpersonal salary discussions strike me as a potentially bad idea.

> One thing that is frequently overlooked in discussions of publicizing salaries is that there is also a strong social stigma to flaunting wealth or talking about affluence.

That makes it inappropriate to bring up in a random conversation, but not inappropriate to have on record, or to provide within the shared context of helping each other.

Agreed, I mention that a service like levels.fyi is a very good idea. My point is more that a peer to peer discussion of salary has some potentially serious downsides and it offers an unrealistic comparison relative to a distribution of salaries.

You're not encouraged to talk about salaries but instead try and guess how much people make from social clues like what kind of car they drive, what brand clothes they wear, where they go on holiday, how new their phone is...

I like appearing poor. I tend to have conversations with much nicer people as opposed to when I dress well.

I like appearing poor because appearing rich is a completely unnecessary expense with almost no value to me. That said, I'm not particularly wealthy.

This makes it worse, of course, as people go into debt in order to appear wealthier than they are.

Interesting. I find that very few people care enough about what other people make to put any effort into deciphering such clues.

And wealthy people around here don't tend to offer many. Being flashy is considered a bit trashy.

>guess how much people make from social clues like what kind of car they drive, what brand clothes they wear, where they go on holiday, how new their phone is...

All poor indicators IMHO.

Indeed, towards the end of the piece, the author acknowledges this:

"Of course, many workers don’t withhold their salaries out of respect for their supervisors’ wishes but because it can be deeply awkward.

“We have a culture that discourages it,” Pardo said. “People don’t want to talk about money. It’s like talking about religion and politics. It’s uncomfortable.”

As a result, many may be unaware of what the person in the other cubicle or on the other end of the Zoom call earns.

While employer review websites like Glassdoor offer a window into company pay, UNC’s Hirsch pointed out this data is often incomplete and certainly not uploaded for all companies."

To what extent was this cultural stigma created by companies who wanted to discourage their workers from discussing pay, though? It seems more like an effect than a cause to me.

I think that this is a much older sentiment than modern corporations. For one thing the aversion to discussing wealth is more potent in contexts where the information is less related to market forces - people are more open to information about salaries when it is related to their line of work. Saying how much money you make in public (even among friends) is seen as a jerk thing to do. Instead people will say things like 'the starting salary in my field is...', or 'a senior level employee doing this makes around...' - a actual number for them personally is seldom offered (nor should it be outside of very intimate contexts (family). From an informal observation this prohibition is common across Protestant societies, though I think it also shows up around the globe. Talking about money publicly is seen as vulgar and viewing people in terms of money is seen as demeaning to their fundamental worth. You can find religious antecedents to such sentiments from thousands of years ago, so it is unlikely that these were promulgated by corporate interests.

It's completely cultural. Talking about money is considered by many to be crass. I mean, one might as well have tattoos!

Or we should change social norms so that people stop seeing that as a good thing and start seeing it as a bad thing.

If you want to practice some pretty deep humility consider that your opinions about what is right/wrong/polite/impolite might be on the wrong side of history.

> Personally I think that this is a good thing since it encourages humility and a sense of equality.

For whom? The richer ones who know they’re richer and not equal? That’s a really weird way of putting it, as pointed out on other comments.

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