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>If you're happy to make $88k and the guy doing the same job next to you is making $110k, I don't see any problem

One problem is that the first person is often female, not white or foreign.

Another is the demotivational effect when the first person eventually does find out they are underpaid versus colleagues or the market - and they generally do. And then they will leave.

It gets worse when the lower paid person is clearly outperforming the higher paid person, or where the higher paid person is clearly under performing.

And finally it's just not the right thing to treat people unfairly versus their peers. If the lower paid person is being underpaid then quietly fix the issue.

100% agreed.

I absolutely hate salary systems that give an advantage to people who are pushy, jerky, entitled, or privileged. Some of the best developers I know are pleasant, friendly, modest, don't like confrontation, and pay more attention to the work and the team than how much they're pocketing. Those people shouldn't be paid less.

Is asking for what you want pushy? I'm not sure we want to be praising people for being good little doormats.

Learn to defend your work and ask for what you deserve.

There is so, so much more to this story that I don't even know where to begin. People "asking for what they want" takes on completely different contexts depending on their situation, background, gender. The system you are advocating will always pay more to the privileged, encourage a competitive, low-trust culture, and disadvantage many skilled people for reasons out of their control. Ultimately, it's the company that will miss out on the best talent.

Yes, exactly.

Asking for what you want isn't necessarily pushy. And yes, people should learn to ask for what they deserve.

But knowing what you deserve is a complicated art that involves measuring yourself against your coworkers and your industry, and having a good working knowledge of the current market. For the people who don't know what they want, some of them are going to err on the side of asking for too little, and some will ask for too much. I would much rather spend my time bringing the shy up than battering the arrogant down to something reasonable.

"And then they will leave."

Surely that's a risk that a company takes knowingly and can adjust if they wish?

"I can't fathom what being aware of your coworkers salaries could possibly do for positive team building."

Everyone knows what each other makes in the Army. When I was in, we never talked about relative pay at all. We didn't need to.

Oh, and we had tons of positive team building. :)

I was in the Army as well and have worked as GS. That has absolutely no bearing on this conversation. Why? Because you don't negotiate your salary in the Army. You're an E1, you make E1 pay. You're in combat? You make E1 + hazard. You didn't go in and negotiate for an extra $30k because you attended MIT over FSU.

>> You should, as the potential employee, be well aware of the market pay and what you are willing to be paid to perform the job that you're applying for.

Yeah, well, not easy when everyone is hiding it. All info I can get is too generalized.

How can you determine market pay when salaries are private?

You end up with what we have now: looking at what companies post publicly for salary offers. Some companies don't publish those numbers publicly, and that's only 'new hire' salaries. So it's inaccurate.

You as the employee with that skill DETERMINE the market value. If every IOS developer refuses to work for $40k and want $80k the market will start having to pay $80k. Yeah there will be outliers, maybe someone desperate for a chance to prove themselves, or someone who was unemployed will take that $40k but that is not the market value.

It's not some vooodoo a company makes up, you yourself have a direct affect on the market value by turning down and taking positions. If I can't find anybody to hire at $40k I might start offering $60k and more until I get the amount and quality of applicants I desire.

Right, but it'd be easier, for example, for every iOS developer to not take $40k if they knew that other developers are being paid more.

Basically, keeping information private gives an advantage to the people who know the private info versus people who don't. If no information is private, that edge is lost, aka, a more level playing field.

Resarch firms buy and sell salary data in bulk.

There are plenty of people already aware of their coworker's salaries; government employees, including military. It isn't like you don't know some salary info, you know your boss gets paid more for example.

>You should, as the potential employee, be well aware of the market pay and what you are willing to be paid to perform the job that you're applying for.

And when you know what everyone makes you have a much better grasp of the market pay, and if what you were offered was fair. If they tell you "we only pay x" you can only take their word on it if they are keeping their salary data private. If not you have more room for negotiations.

And your example of unfair pay doesn't jive well with me. It is still wrong to take advantage of someone just because they let you take advantage of them. I think a lot of cases of grossly unfair pay fall into that category.

We are dealing with adults here.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/my-boss-revealed-everyones-salar...

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-if-you-knew-everyones-salar...

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-are-salary-ranges-secret/

I have you ever thought that maybe human beings are not computer programs that you have written and so therefore there may be a reason someone may be unhappy someone sitting next them makes 20% more for the same work? You act as if it is some logical fallacy because you were naive enough to accept the smaller amount or something. I'm not surprised. This kind of reasoning is very common on here.

Exactly. I know precisely what I'm worth because I poll the market frequently. I don't need my employer to push mandatory transparency to know what I'm worth; in fact, I feel the informational asymmetry actually benefits me, because my employer doesn't know how much it'd cost to replace me (unless they're interviewing potential replacements as often as I'm speaking with recruiters / getting inbound interest from other companies, which they're probably not, because it's expensive and time consuming) yet I know exactly how much I can fetch elsewhere. So when I negotiate for a salary increase, the employer assumes all the risk in the transaction.

This can only be true in a mom&pop company size. Any company with a decent staff management know a lot more than any employee: they make constant offers that get accepted or reject, and see more candidates than you ever will, even if you are in 100% of the interviews.

The information asymmetry you think benefits you is only protecting you , at best, from getting something worse than other employees. Thats not a success. A transparent system would mean everybody gets the benefits of that.

If you dont have a problem with someone making more or less money than you in the same company as you, why would you ever mind to make it public.

Is it because you fear people will resent you if they know your salary? Are you getting bullied by your HR department because of it? I doubt so. If someone makes a decision because of he has more accurate information, i have to believe its going to be a better decision.

This is a very basic case of information asymmetry and it always benefits the one with more information.

Do I agree with showing salary by name? I dont, so directly. But the mindset on the policy is healthy and can only sin from being naive.