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Comment by febra_ | Hacker News Reader

Good. Hiding income only works for the company to exploit their workers.

Agree, but it's not just about exploitation. Many people are weird about money and honesty around their skillset. I think it would be a good change, but I'm not sure the majority of people would like working like a pro sports team. In pro sports you know what everyone makes and relative skillsets are ranked and on display.

I mean it's a corporate decision to have all the work be hidden. There's few laws requiring that your company operate on a dark web but they all choose to.

I think if a pro sports team could figure out how to make it so the opposing team couldn't tell which one of their players is which they would choose to. Good luck running a shift in the MLB if you don't know if the batter is swinging lefty or righty.

Also I think pro sports teams is probably one of the best examples that public information doesn't make perfect decisions. Anybody that seriously follows a team can tell you about numerous bonehead (perhaps bonehead in hindsight) trades that their team made. Or players that were offered a deal well beyond what they were worth.

I didn't say it led to perfect decisions. And while it's a corporate decision, my point was that not all employees are ready to have their company operate like a pro sports team. Many people aren't ready to have the conversation that Sue is better than they are and is paid more.

I mean that's still true at the pro sports level.

Athletes leave teams all the time over disagreements over compensation. At least in the NHL it's not uncommon for a player to take the team to arbitration over their salary [1].

[1]: https://www.capfriendly.com/arbitration

Does this not remove the ability for individuals to negotiate up past a certain point?

This is hiring salary only, so it removes some negotiation there, but other benefits and future raises can still be negotiated for.

Also, I'm not sure what happens if they offer more than that to someone after posting the offer. I suspect offering lower would be would be lawsuit time... But I don't think a higher offer is that much of a problem.

Not really - just now you'll be negotiating job title instead of salary.

Instead of negotiating for another $20k, you'll be negotiating to add prefixes like 'Senior' and 'Staff' and 'Architect' to your title, which will be worth $20k each.

Can you flesh out the scenario that you have in mind?

As far as I'm concerned, if you wanted 250k but the Jr. Dev's range caps at 220k then you can still negotiate to be hired as a Dev.

But if you wanted 250k and the Jr. Dev caps at 240k I think it's pretty reasonable for them to hire you at 250k as a Jr. Dev and just say that when they made the ad they reasonably believed the maximum salary was 240k.

> [1] A pay range must include a minimum and maximum annual salary or hourly rate of compensation for a job, promotion, or transfer opportunity that the employer in good faith believes to be accurate at the time of the posting.

[1]: https://dol.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2023/09/p687-pay-t...

Personally, I don't feel like having a higher skill at bullshitting and persuading people that is utterly unrelated to the job should get you paid more for the same work.

(If the job is sales, then negotiating for higher pay could just be part of proving your skill, of course.)

I think most people aren't in a position to negotiate salary

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