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Comment by imglorp | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone have an opinion of open salaries? Ray Dalio's radical transparency idea is one example, and GitLab is another. Note it's also federally illegal to block employees from discussing salaries on their own.

It seems like salary negotiating -- and the necessary secrecy that goes with it -- benefits only employers who systematically shorting some workers and pocket the difference.

https://www.efinancialcareers.com/news/2019/10/salaries-brid...

https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation...

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> Ray Dalio's radical transparency idea is one example

May be worth to note that, as far as I know, radical transparency at Bridgewater does not extend to salaries. (Source: Was offered a job there about a decade ago). Maybe I am wrong or it has changed since I last checked, but even the link you posted is just a small sample taken from the H1B database, not something published by Bridgewater.

I'm not arguing for or against the idea, I just think its interesting that one of the companies most associated with the idea of radical transparency in the workplace doesn't extend that philosophy to compensation.

> Does anyone have an opinion of open salaries?

I worked at a large hospital system where our salary "bands" were all a matter of record for everyone else in the School of Medicine and it was awesome. You could see what level people were and what their band range was but not their specific W-2. It was fair and transparent and the bands were small enough ranges that you know when you were a Level A vs a G what you were looking at so you didn't have much cost of living anxiety etc and could reasonably calculate if you could afford to rent a nicer apartment when you got your promotion.

It made the workers have sort of a "yeah we all work here because we love it and we all get paid shit and we still love what we do" type of communal gripes.

By contrast, another large public hospital, one of our competitors, has individual drill down public salaries BY PERSON (you can literally google the docs, plug them in and see their exact specific salary) and that seems imo a bridge too far, at least for private employees to ever accept in corporate world. I thought the "bands" added enough privacy that people were comfortable with it but doesn't let your stalker ex boyfriend in Worchester come snoop your take home pay.

My opinion is that hidden salaries skew the edges (wider distribution) and transparent salaries flatten it.

What I mean is, with hidden salaries, yes, the low performers get less. Company is shorting them. But also, the high performers get more.

When salaries are transparent, you start making algorithms for whats "fair", so it becomes impossible to counter offer to keep to talent. You can afford to overpay 1-10% of people, but if paying someone more means paying everyone more, then the high performer salaries go down.

Essentially what this means is that hidden salaries are good for the top 10%. 50% of people think they are in the top 10%, so they think transparent salaries will hurt them.

My guess is:

a) First, the company be forced to give raises to all employees so that they match they level of the highest paid.

b) Not wanting to repeat this experience, the company will stop competing for valuable candidates and will no longer reward high performers financially.

> Does anyone have an opinion of open salaries?

There's no such thing as a secret. Anyone, CEO included, that thinks they have a secret tier of comp... we know. We all talk about you and what a sweet deal you got and we make jokes about how your one or two good attributes are worth at least $$$ and we roll out eyes and chuckle. I love gossiping about salary information in the open

"But, the thing about rumors..." Dude, we know what you make. We show each other screenshots. We could get fired for it and we still do it

> Anyone, CEO included, that thinks they have a secret tier of comp... we know

No you don't. You have no clue what benefits and comp the CEO gets. Not even the CFO, CTO, COO, CxO knows benefits and comp the CEO (or each other) gets unless they share with each other.

If it's a public company, the compensation of the top 5 people is disclosed once a year in SEC filings.[1] Overpaid CEO + company losing money is a big red flag to investors.

[1] https://www.sec.gov/answers/execcomp.htm

> If it's a public company

True. I was responding to the OP who left an impression they were talking about a private early stage company

> Not even the CFO, CTO, COO, CxO knows benefits and comp the CEO (or each other)

> unless they share with each other

Is that the only way? Because the method we use is we spy on the CEO and steal their documents and then we show each other so that we... know what you make

> We could get fired for it

Get it in writing :) That would be illegal under NLRA of 1935. And if you do get fired for that, you can sue.

https://www.thehrdigest.com/can-fire-employee-discussing-sal...

The NLRA prohibits employers from preventing you from talking about your own salary. You could absolutely be fired for accessing and sharing the compensation information of an employee who doesn't want their salary shared.

I worked in civil service (federal university), where the salary bands are public. Because they are public, it was easy to understand, going in, that the profs were rich, and I would not be. So I adjusted my expectation of what I'd get from that job in addition to salary (prestige, ability to be paid for Go when it was rare in my job market, contact with bright students). Worked for me.

I suspect that more states are going to go the Colorado model. If a big one like CA or NY adopts it, most tech companies will be forced to reveal.

As to its benefits: it absolutely benefits the workers as employers will need to pre-emptively raise salaries to compete for the candidates they want.

New York City has such a law, and New York state has a law like it up for vote soon: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2021/s5598

"Requires employers to disclose compensation or range of compensation to applicants and employees upon issuing an employment opportunity for internal or public viewing or upon employee request."

That turns on in New York City on May 15, 2022.[1] Employers will start coming around after that.

New York State is considering that statewide.

[1] https://www.natlawreview.com/article/nyc-requires-employers-...

> Range of compensation

Can’t a company just say that the range is $1-$1,000,000 for every single job? Or is there something in the law that requires a narrower range?

The law includes language that says an employer must make a “good faith” determination of the lowest and highest salary it would pay for that position. However, the law itself law does not define what “salary” is; presumably that definition exists elsewhere.

I would therefore hope that if a company posted a range of $1-$1,000,000 for a job (let alone all jobs) they would get some scrutiny from regulators. But I don't know. I don't live there and I'm not a lawyer.

Still, the could post something like $50k - $500k and say to the regulators that it depends on so many factors.

It might benefit workers in general but I don't think it will benefit me as a software engineer. The salary becomes tied to the job title/level and it becomes hard for me to individually negotiate. When the salary is tied to the job title, it is also much harder to get meaningful raises in many companies because the promotion process is a lot more bureaucratic.

That’s the point… pay transparency encodes a worldview wherein it is unjust for employees with ostensibly similar responsibilities to have different pay.

I agree with the general point but in practice you will find a range of people with the same supposed responsibilities. Not all of them would be executing them at the same level.

Of course, this could be rectified by having finer grained titles. However, finer grained titles introduce their own overhead, introducing more politics/bureaucracy into the system (people at Microsoft would be familiar with this scenario).

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