I wonder if you're right. What do you think the risks of disclosure are for those towards the right of the distribution?
* Coming across as bragging
* Having people who earn less than me be jealous/envious/resentful
* Making it harder for employers to justify my salary because people will be publicly envious about it and cause a stink. This could be anything from coworkers/candidates/random people saying "well why are you paying Knaek $X and not me?" (I have experienced people harassing my employers for lesser reasons) all the way to people seeing my industry as a political outlet for their envy
* It's leaking strategically valuable information, probably more valuable than the info I would get in return (plus no solution to free rider problem)
* It might help less aggressive people negotiate a larger slice of a finite salary budget, which has a negative impact on me
And so on
> It might help less aggressive people negotiate a larger slice of a finite salary budget, which has a negative impact on me
While it might indeed have a negative impact on you, if they deserve a higher salary, I'd personally feel bad for them too. I am fully aware that salary is highly related to negotiation skills (which is why job hobbing is so popular: you can at least always honestly say "my current salary is X, I'll only switch for more" — even if you are bad at negotiating), but that's the thing that's unfair.
So I like to consider those openly sharing their salaries as in service of those who do proper work and none of the shitty stuff you bring up, but simply can't negotiate their salaries properly.
Whether that's worth it is another matter altogether.
And tbh I don't like salary transparency because it usually tightens the range of comp for a position. I've always been on the right side of the curve (getting promoted faster etc) so that would suck for me.
Well yes, that's kind of the point. It's supposed to be a good thing, since the theory is that salary variance is caused by unseemly factors rather than simple skill variance.
The most bizarre one was a very formal review where I was told I needed to stop taking long lunches and be at my desk. I asked where in my contract it said I had to work at a desk rather than a picnic table. They couldn't point it out. In the end they terminated me four weeks before the end of my year long contract and had to pay out 6 weeks of severance.
I'm still deeply confused about the whole thing.
I once had a coworker concoct a story about me and report it to management because I interrupted him during a yoga session in the office gym...
Anyway, the less people like that know about the details of my employment, the better.