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Comment by alimoeeny | Hacker News Reader

I understand that this is against the "wisdom", but I always wanted to build a compensation-transparent-company. In which it is open (at least internally) how much everybody makes (including equity). And people have ways to change their compensation over longish periods of time and the ratio of cash / equity.

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Buffer is quite well known for this, you can view the salary of everyone in the company here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgrWVeoG5divdE8....

It's a bit older, but an interesting take on open salaries: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000038.html

I have always wanted to own a company where we put the salaries on the wall of a employee-only conference room and paid profit sharing. I doubt it would work, but I would love to try it.

The state of California puts all its workers' compensation on the web: http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state-pay/#req...

I know that quite a few states do this, I don't have an exact number so I don't want to quantify it, but it's more than at least 8 (<- every state I have lived in does it + cali).

Also, while not directly disclosed on a per employee basis, every single federal employee salary can be determined since their level and years of service is not confidential and their salary is based on a schedule. Same for the military(even easier since they wear their 'level' on their sleeve).

Almost all employee salaries are accessible through freedom of information requests.

In the .gov I work for, HR is so incompetent and people are allowed to make up bullshit titles, that accessing the local newspaper's employee database is the quickest way to find out this type of info.

Both Sweden and Norway publish everyone's tax payments.

We do, but it takes quite a bit of work to actually look it up for someone.

Still better than nothing :).

Yes, but the numbers are always delayed two years. So today, I could look up what someone paid in tax in 2013 if I wanted. But it's just the total taxation amount for that year and doesnt tell you anything in detal. So if you had that number you could roughly estimate what someone earned by dividing with about 32% (the median tax rate). But due to tax deductions, sick days, vacation, pension fund deposits etc your salary guess would be very fuzzy.

There are some companies doing that, though obviously they're in the minority at this point. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/07/02/327758712/the-comp...

I know of at least two companies (in the UK) which do this. They are fairly small companies, however.

You mean, like Glassdoor?

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