HR leaked my salary. Now my team knows I make 3x they do | Hacker News Reader

HR leaked my salary. Now my team knows I make 3x they do

brightjourney.com

56 pointsnishankkhanna52 comments

First of all, sure the HR person is obviously out of line. Second of all, I hope I've never worked with any team of people who'd be disturbed with my salary. To me that's a sign that either I'm not worth my pay or they're being taken advantage of (or both). Throughout my career I've gladly told anyone who asked what I make, and ironically the only people who've ever asked are junior folks like the ones the author says are upset (because they want to understand how things go). Salary obfuscation serves injustice. I really think it's that simple.

Further... dunno what industry, dunno what market.. but in my experience in west coast software 3x a junior employee would be a bit fishy at a company that size. Sounds like someplace I would not want to work :)

If they make 50k and he makes 150k and they are all paid under market but have stock in the early stage company, this could make sense. Especially if the guy has tons of experience. (And obviously, this could be true at 60k/180k or 70k/210k, just depending.)

Maybe, but I doubt it. First off we know exactly four things for sure:

1. It's a 30 person shop

2. Author makes 3x the juniors

3. The juniors don't think author is worth 3x them

4. the HR person was a bad hire

Dollars to donuts this is a very poorly run company (each of 2-4 essentially prove so alone, so they definitely point that way in combination).

Let's assume developers (cause I'm not qualified to talk anything else). Let's assume the 50/150 since 150 I'd estimate is about market for a senior dev at least in CA at that size shop. Juniors are more like 70k (or more? I may be a bit out of touch), so 50k is 40% short.

The chances that the junior folks are paid well short of market with great equity and the senior hire is market with little equity? Yeaaaah.

Honestly in my experience it's more likely that everyone at this company is fucked for equity, and everyone that didn't know better was fucked for salary also.

The second and fourth are still unknown:

> Author makes 3x the juniors

That assumes the author accurately knows the salaries and equity positions of the employees, which is unclear and raises more questions if true.

> the HR person was a bad hire

This is a clever way to get someone to leave the company: create in-company tension in a way that drives the person to leave.

> This is a clever way to get someone to leave the company: create in-company tension in a way that drives the person to leave.

Excuse my french, but companies that need "clever ways to get people to leave", are fucked. SUPER fucked.

It's possible the OP negotiated for more salary and less equity.

Sure, but it's not really plausible that the junior ones did the opposite and are still really upset to hear what the senior person's making.

Also, I think very few companies have lots of latitude with equity. I've seen plenty of double offers (higher-salary/lower-equity and then visa-versa, take your pick) but very few of them have a super big swing. Most shops (rightfully) have a particular bent in terms of the type of risk they want their folks to be taking.

Anyways, yeah. I'll stick with my bet that the company, the senior person, and the HR person are all entities that you should stay far away from.

For a non-dev job such as UI designer, 50k junior salary vs 150k senior salary sounds perfectly normal.

I can see this being a problem if you think you are "pulling one over" on the folks making less, but if you've got some reasoning to back it up, you just own up to it. If it makes you "feel bad" then take a deep look inside yourself and ask why that is.

If your boss doesn't think you add 3X the value of one of your team then you've got a bigger problem still. One of the biggest challenges in tech is that people who stay at the same company for a long time can get 'ratcheted' up to a salary that is over their actual value. Correcting that usually involves a conversation about your future elsewhere.

Your comment strikes me as a bit odd ... Are you suggesting that one should be wary about making too much money and if you find yourself at a company for awhile and making a lot of money you should discuss with your employer about reducing your salary or moving to a future elsewhere so you can make less money? ...

Software is a strange, if not bizarre, place for people interested in money if that is the case.

At some point, after a series of raises for doing excellent work, your employer may reevaluate the situation and come to the conclusion that, while you're excellent, you might not be worth what you're getting paid. (This can get particularly fun when there's a high-performing employee who isn't very high up the totem pole, making more money than people with fancy titles). You aren't often the one who's going to initiate the next conversation.

I am pretty sure this line:

> Correcting that usually involves a conversation about your future elsewhere.

... is a euphemism for getting fired. I read it as: you get very senior, you get lots of raises, you get the axe, you get replaced with someone cheaper.

Personally I have also heard about the opposite happening: during these boom times the new grads might get "market rate" salaries that end up higher than someone who has been in the industry for a while and hasn't caught up through raises.

What? There's no reason for the employee to correct it.

Via a quirk in the system an employee ends up making more money than they're worth. Manager notices it too late and decides to correct the problem by firing them, aka "conversation about a future elsewhere".

The word picture that ChuckMcM painted wasn't that difficult to grasp.

Either everyone knows you are worth it and respects you, or you are an overpaid fraud, or your teammates are underpaid. Either way, sunshine is the best disinfectant.

I agree with this more or less. I make about twice what my least employee makes, and about 1.5 times what my highest paid employee makes. Since I work for the government though, everyone knows everyone else's salary is, and if they don't it's just an IPRA request away (inspection of public records act.) In fact the local paper publishes the names and salaries of all the employees of all the local government entities every year online, and the top 20 (of which I'm one) in the print edition.

However, there are always some people (usually on the lower end of the pay scale, but not always) for whom pay, and specifically comparing pay, is an unremitting source of conflict. So, in a non-governmental setting, without easy access to other's pay information, the leak of salary information can move that conflict from general abstract anger, and give it a specific focus, which can exacerbate problems.

yeah, because real life totally works like that

I'd love to know the actual numbers and the job involved.

Thinking in terms of developer salaries (just a hypothetical tangent here, there's nothing saying this lady [I assume lady based on the name?] is a developer), 3x is a pretty huge spread between one employee and the rest of them without some sort of jump into a clearly more senior level position, even when the others are all recent grads.

Looking at some specific 3x multipliers:

$100k->$33k

$150k->$50k

$225k->$75k

$300k->$100k

If it were a developer job (and again, there's no specific indication it is) she's either making out like a bandit (consider that she said she works for a 30 person startup, not Google or Facebook) or her peers are really getting shafted relative to market rates.

If it was HR, they should be fired and find a new career. If it was a recruiter they should sever ties with that recruiter.

I work in HR and it's unimaginable that the person wouldn't be fired. "Do not disclose anybody's salary" is as close to a Prime Directive as it gets in the HR world.

Edit: Thought it over for a bit and now I'm suspicious of the original story. "HR told somebody my salary over lunch and I happen to make three times as much as everybody else" seems really fishy...

> "Do not disclose anybody's salary" is as close to a Prime Directive as it gets in the HR world.

This has been my understanding as a non-HR person, which contributes toward my personal discomfort over "let's all know everyone's salary by name and number as a matter of course" lines of thinking. Not to say I don't understand where these lines of thinking come from.

Some people say all salaries should be open by default. I am not sure if this would be a good idea, but it would a pretty strong incentive against cronyism.

This is really interesting, I can see how this must cause a lot of negativity at work. It's one of the reasons we've made salaries completely transparent within Buffer to avoid situations like this: http://open.bufferapp.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-buffe...

Do you guys think open salaries can help with this?

Lots of CEOs' salaries are public, but that doesn't stop people from resenting them for making so damn much. It's really hard for people to accept that someone is 3X or 5X or 100X more valuable than they are--either way, it's not a positive thought. I think more important than exposing salary numbers is being transparent about why those numbers are the way they are. Having the company tell me that Bill makes twice as much as me, by itself, might actually make things worse (especially if I don't think Bill deserves it), but knowing that he makes twice as much because he is highly specialized in a specific thing that the company really needs is useful because it gives me a hint as to how I can reach that level.

But aren't most salary discrepancies because you are a better negotiator than someone? Or what if the reason is that you are getting offers from other companies and so your company is giving you a higher salary to keep you around? The company wouldn't like to tell THAT is why they are paying you more, because then everyone would be "pay us more or we leave"

I don't think requiring as part of your employment that the whole world know your salary is a good thing in the private sector. But no one is forcing anyone to work at your company, although how it affects people that were there before this decision, to me is a bit questionable.

Unless it is in a contract or some such, I am not sure that you have a right to privacy about your salary information.

Honestly though, this is the kind of thing that is probably best to clear the air with. If I was fresh out of school, I'd actually look at this rather positively, as there is room for improvement, and of course now I have leverage to ask for increases in compensation.

How did this guy know he makes 3x, without knowing peers' salaries?

If you're senior or a team-lead or involved in hiring, I don't see why you wouldn't (I don't think it says that he's their peer in the post).

I had similar incident at a former employer. HR sent out department list with all the remaining employees after a layoff. We noticed that the listing wasn't alphabetically sorted and few of us knew what each other made and quickly figured it out was sorted by compensation. One of the engineers replied all and pointed out it wasn't professional to send out a list sorted by compensation.

The guy uses his real name on brightjourney (also his entire profile is up) and now this post is on the front page of HN just makes things worse.

seems like he made himself pretty untraceable because google and other people search sites can't find almost anything on him

Wow, 19 comments and not one of them questioning how the person knows their salary is 3 times their peers ? Isn't it obvious that anything that can be said about the HR's actions can also be said about the manner in which the person themselves got the information to make the comparison ? Why is this even a legal issue ? overreaction, much ?

He could have interviewed the junior employees. Perhaps even gave them their offers

Maybe OP hired/interviewed others teammates. In my experience in small teams, when I've interviewed candidates, I knew the salary range for that position.

salary ranges are commonly posted on job listings on AngelList, etc. so he could of saw it there when they were hiring for the position or if they are currently hiring for that position

also glassdoor posts salaries of different positions at companies so he could of saw it there

For people questioning why the other people are pissed, it could be because the company lied to them during the process and said they could only afford to pay a certain amount when being hired now this comes out and they feel they got swindled and he just happens to be in the crosshairs

I don't have any idea why this person would want to get into the legality of this. If you didn't sign up for an open door policy, it is certainly a breach of privacy in an ethical sense but ... You're the one making more money, is this the worst thing imaginable? OK, you colleagues at a startup may be unhappy with this fact but does this really matter that much in reality? On some level, it just seems like you should just take the money not care so much. Sure, if it bothers you, you should bring it up and perhaps the HR person should be disciplined. If it bothers you that much then probably you should move on but I don't think anyone would benefit by bringing discussion of legality here.

Unless someone is being paid over or under what they're worth, this isn't a problem.

If they are being paid under, then now is the right time for them to leave to an employer who rewards employees fairly.

If you're been paid over, then it's time you got your butt in gear and worked your ass off to prove to everyone your worth! :D

Personally I believe in 100% transparency across the board from day 1 (at Trak.io and all my previous companies). That way, situations like this can't arise, and new people coming in are unlikely to ask for misaligned salaries they know wouldn't stand up under peer review.

happened to me, too, some folks from hr and finance would disclose to their friends in the office over lunch and then word just spread like wildfire. however, i work abroad (shanghai), and sure it was awkward for me personally as there was lots of jealousy and spite amongst so called peers, but the main onus was on upper management to retain people, so you'd see someone clearly not my equal get promoted twice in a year. for the record, i worked in the states for a long time so my pay scale was obviously going to be different from local pay.

Beijing here.

Local companies are really bad about this, but international companies are more equitable between local and foreign employees, given that the environment would otherwise be quite hostile.

that happened at a multi-national company. nevermind hr/finance talking about it, but people also ask very directly about how much you make.

I was never asked by any colleague at my company in all my 6+ years, but this is Beijing and not Shanghai :)

I would collect evidence of the recruiter having disclosed my salary and bring that directly to the CEO. Legality aside, it is highly unprofessional to discuss private information in that way.

> it is highly unprofessional to discuss private information in that way

I too feel this way.

I worked somewhere where I found out after the fact that I made twice as much as my peers. I also was given harder tasks and higher expectations. So you make 3x... do the work to show how you earned it. If they resent it, keep working.

At the end of the day, experience is one thing, but you need to show the value on a day to day basis, not just how you earned it in retrospect.

Salary transparency is a good value. I think managers that are uncomfortable with other people knowing their wages, are uncomfortable because the people that know they do nothing, now know they are overpaid as well.

The thing I've come to learn about salaries over the years is that, and I quote (myself): "If that person can get that, good for them. It's probably not their fault I didn't get it."

So? Show some spine about why you earn that salary.

Give it a month. If nothing happens, you have a Nash equilibrium and no further action is necessary.

Probably should get a new HR manager.

I think this is why bonuses/options were invented ... lol

hhjjjbbggg

Reply on news.ycombinator.com