You go first.
I was a senior engineer before I retired the first time. Then I was an overpaid mechanical drafter before retiring the second time. I was paid an outrageous amount of money, but I was worth it.
Now I’m living off a ridiculously large pension plus social security. I use $100 bills to start the charcoal in my grill.
My anecdotal response to this:
Right out of grad school, I was recruited into tech research in a small division of a big firm. For my first 6 months or so, I was put in a fairly large bullpen/cubicle (it was the 80’s, so no predesigned setup, just regular desks and file cabinets in a big enclosed space) with two other engineers. Both had been working at the company for a few years, both had Master’s degrees. Neither worked in R&D.
So, one day we were sitting around and the conversation got around to how much the senior folks in our division made and the conversation comes around to my boss.
*Coworker: Your boss probably makes something like XX thousand dollars a year
Me: No, he must make a lot more than that
Coworker: Look, you haven’t been here long. I’m sure that’s about right.
Me: No it isn’t.
Coworker: So, smart guy, what makes you so sure?
Me: Because I make more than that!*
The conversation ended abruptly at that point. I realized he viewed me as the new guy and figured I had a salary somewhere towards the bottom of his position’s salary range. While we were still friendly, things were never the same between us. It was the last time in my career I discussed salaries with fellow employees.
I my last job, they hired a guy who quickly was promoted and became my boss. He was originally hired as an engineer and they didn’t immediately give him a salary adjustment. He told me that I made more than he did. It happens. He got a salary bump a few months later and made more than I did at that time.
It’s a very easy question to answer… when the person asking has some reason to know the answer. Anonymous strangers on an internet messageboard? Not so much.
I don’t give out my legal name, my age, my birth date, my social security number, phone number address, or a lot of other things that could identify me in real life. There are reasons I don’t do that, just as I don’t leave my front door unlocked.
Kind of strange that in your OP you didn’t divulge your own information. Oh, something about feminists. Gotcha.
And yet, if he had comparable skills and comparable responsibilities, he should have been thanking you, and you should (IMHO) continue having such talks with your coworkers (and they should be willing to do likewise) because he just learned that he could be asking for a lot more money.
That’s the difference between some rando asking you how much you make vs. a coworker. Knowing how much money you make, and vice versa, could actually be of benefit to the other in negotiating a salary. Employers will pay you as little as they can, not what you deserve.
None of that, of course, legitimizes the original context of this thread, though, which I continue to believe has less to do with money and more to do with indulging a fantasy.
I don’t really mind sharing, since my salary is public record and is not negotiable. I am an infantryman in the US Army. Not counting income from rental properties, stocks, travel pay or other misc income, my monthly take-home pay is $7,400 per month after taxes. On top of that, I receive 100% free family medical with no premium or deductible as well as free dental for myself and family dental coverage for $12.00 per month. This includes a $500,000 life insurance policy. I also get $4,500 in tuition assistance each year which has helped me to earn a Master’s degree with zero student loan debt. My wife is currently between jobs, but we are usually a Dual Income; No Kids household.
Let me stop you right there. The only thing comparable at the time was our age. I was recruited from one of the top research programs in a particular technology. There were maybe a dozen people in the country with my skills and expertise. And I was relatively cheap, since I was right out of school. He had been hired in as an entry level engineer a few years back, gotten a Masters in the mean time,and been promoted once. I was hired in a grade or two above him because anything less wouldn’t have been a competitive offer.
It’s been my experience that the problem with comparing salaries is that it only works if you do the same job in the same business area and the same geographic area. Anything less leads to mistaken conclusions and discontent. Everybody has arrived at where they are through a different path.
One thing I’ve experienced in my business is that the companies always discourage discussions of individual’s salaries but are transparent in their salary bands and where those band lies within the industry. So, you always know what you make relative to low/average/high for your position and grade, but are discouraged from comparing salaries with your coworkers because someone’s going to come out of it unhappy.
When I ran an organization, it was part of my job to make sure that good employees where paid in the upper half of the band and employees at the top of the band were helped with what they needed to be promotable to the next grade (were the would start in the lower part of that band). I was not rewarded for keeping the payroll at a minimum, because good engineers can walk out the door and into a job at higher salary any time they want, so firms that consistently lowball their talent end up regretting it.
I’m a mid-level IT guy at a very, very large law firm (think 2,000-plus lawyers).
I don’t make nearly enough to give my wife the lifestyle to which she believes herself to be entitled. Or so she tells me. Often.
My job before last, I got used to the fact that most people at the firm made more than me. And confidentiality meant I got into the habit of not talking about salaries. Before that, I was a manager, and knew what people made, so that reinforced the habit.
At my last job, I found out in various ways, primarily during profit sharing week, how much other people were making. And I made a continued habit of not telling people how much I was making, because it was considerably more. Technically, we were all at the same level. But I got various raises and such that they weren’t eligible for. So, to avoid conflict, I kept my mouth shut.
Most of them were youngsters, whereas I have been doing this for 35 years or more. It doesn’t worry me if people make more than me. It also doesn’t worry me if they make less. If other people think they can get as much as I was making, good luck to them. Won’t bother me either way.
Of course, now I am sitting at home twiddling my thumbs and earning nothing.
Regards,
Shodan
You seem to harp on stuff like this a lot.
OP, what is the goal of this thread? You don’t want to share your salary and admit that other people don’t as well. So was there some other point you were trying to make? The complete non sequitur about feminists makes me wonder if this is really about jobs and salaries.
Forgetting the ridiculous posts by cornflakes2 for a second, I’ve heard the suggestion that this privacy serves the employers more than it serves the employees. The idea is that if we all knew what everyone else was making, we could ask legitimate questions, like, for a hypothetical example, why the guy who has been doing the job very well for fifteen years is paid less than the newly hired new college graduate who is still learning the ropes.
Are salaries more “fair” in open environments like among government employees?
People, being human, seem to care where they stand compared to their co-workers. Money is a good way to measure perceived worth.
The lead partner in our firm told everyone a few years back essentially this: “We do not try to even out pay levels. We consider a lot of tangible and intangible factors when setting pay. We value all of you. We are always willing to discuss your pay, but we are not interested in whether you think you should make more, less, or the same as someone else. If you think you’re not being fairly compensated let us know. We’ll either fix it or you can try your luck somewhere else if you don’t like what we pay you.”
Moderator Warning
I’m sure that you think you are somehow making a point here, but this is basically an anti-feminist rant and your use of it calls the sincerity of your entire thread into question.
Since you have joined this forum, you have demonstrated a pattern of misogynistic posts and attitudes that may have been socially acceptable ten to twenty years ago, but are no longer acceptable, especially on this message board where we are currently making a deliberate effort to end misogynistic posts.
If you continue to make posts like these, your posting privileges here will come under review.
Moderator Action
Since the sincerity of this thread is a bit questionable at the moment, I am going to close this.