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Comment by johnny99k | Hacker News Reader

Pay transparency only helps the employer in the long-run. It essentially allows every employer to collude on how much they will pay a candidate. It also allows the employer to take most of your negotiating power away.

It might work right now because not every company is transparent, but if these laws were in place everywhere, it will be a different story.

"Pay transparency in some ways moves the competition away from salaries, away from wages and toward non cash benefits, or toward equity comp, toward flexibility,"

This puts more of the risk on the employee with very little control over how the company is run. Equity often forces you to stay at a poorly-run company or with a terrible manager because you won't be able to cash-out for at least a couple of years (if at all).

I would much rather have the money up front and invest as I please.

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Why would this reduce negotiating power outside of cases where one *shouldn't* have leverage in the first place?

Someone who just happens to be a smooth talker shouldn't be earning more than someone else. If they actually bring more to the table, that is why they should earn more.

In a company with transparent compensation you have access to what everyone else is making so you can demonstrate you bring more value to the company than other people making $X.

> Someone who just happens to be a smooth talker shouldn't be earning more than someone else. If they actually bring more to the table, that is why they should earn more.

I love this mindset, in my experience it's a hard problem to solve.

Smooth talkers tend to fall into a few different categories that give them a leg up in negotiations - being part of a majority (usually straight male in engineering) or narcissists. (And yes, I'm oversimplifying things here just to get my point across.)

Everyone else? Some will be able to advocate for themselves, but others (especially under-represented groups) can easily downplay their worth. I've seen multiple times when women especially are trying to please the hiring manager/company and 'be flexible' in what they take. Other times it's from people outside of the U.S. where cultural expectations are different. To fix this we need people to have enough self-worth/self-esteem/trust to push on what they are worth and/or the company needs to act as an advocate on behalf of the employee. I've seen both be pretty tricky to figure out over the years.

I agree it's a hard problem to solve. And pay transparency alone won't solve it.

But it helps, as not only do you know what other people are making but they'd know what you're making. So people who manage to talk their way into some extra bucks on the way in, well now their coworkers know. And if that person isn't performing at a higher level, they'll start complaining.

And then yes, there are problems with the above. But my larger point is this puts more information in the hands of more employees, which can only be a good thing. The set of employees it hurts are the one set of employees who I think shouldn't be getting ahead in the first place.

Employers already had a form of pay transparency in market research. Typically business pay to receive compensation ranges in return for money and for data.

>I would much rather have the money up front and invest as I please.

Find a company that offers the pay you want then, simple. If that ceases to exist somehow, change your skills for those positions or prove your worth with your own product.

That's another thing that makes startups attractive, they have no equity to offer. So more cash upfront.

Entities like The Work Number already give companies 100% transparency, to the cent, of your full compensation history.

I doubt this take. How is every employer going to collude?

It will be public information, hence 'transparency'.

Employers already can pay for this data through companies that literally provide this. Employees do not have access to the same data due to cost (unless you count stuff like levels.fyi or Glassdoor). How would making this info more public help employers more than employees?

Glassdoor doesn’t count. It’s all self reported and full of biases. Taking a look at the median salaries for a few positions in SF and it’s grossly too low. Plus a lot of people might have the same job title as you but it doesn’t mean they do the exact same job as you

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