Only my wife, my boss, the HR department at work, and the IRS know exactly how much I make.
In this respect I would hate to be a government employee here. Their salaries are all public, down to the janitor in the city hall.
I’m not particularly private about it. My wife, obviously, but also my parents and many of my friends discuss salaries and benefits all the time in relatively specific terms–but then again, we’re all IT people of varying stripes and we’ve all worked for a series of the same companies in different combinations.
I’m with BlackNight–the only people benefiting from our cultural conditioning about keeping salaries private are employers, because lack of information creates artificial bargaining position advantages in a marketplace.
For the record: If you’re in system administration and want to know what someone with the title of Senior System Administrator is making in central PA, it’s $72k plus benefits. I’m accepting a somewhat lower salary than what I’m ostensibly worth because I get almost five weeks of paid vacation a year and incredible health/vision/dental benefits.
And y’know, it was pretty hard to type that, my beliefs be damned. Culture being what it is.
Yes, I was an engineer with the city for four years. I started writing down evidence of each phone conversation, site visit, etc. in my day-timer in order to combat just what you’ve mentioned. Even that didn’t shut some of them up.
Mine is also a matter of public record but I was raised to believe it’s always rude to ask and it even surprises me how much I’ve internalized this feeling.
I don’t like my parents or elders asking at all, though they feel they have a right. I feel like they don’t have a right unless I give it to them.
My partner and I each knows about the other’s income and net worth. That’s it.
I don’t understand the secracy with peoples’ income. It’s just not a big deal to me. I wonder if this is a generational thing?
Or maybe it’s just because my income is public information.
I don’t really get the point of keeping this information private between friends. I don’t have any problem with anyone beside my coworkers knowing how much I get paid. Still, my friends don’t know because they are too polite to ask and I don’t offer it because it would seem like bragging. My girlfriend, my parents and one close coworker knows how much I make. I’ll make a little over a 100k this year.
Me.
My boss knows my salary, but he has no idea what my other income is. I do my own taxes. My husband has a rough idea, but I handle all the finances, I know what he makes better than he does.
You guys have about as specific an idea as anyone does.
Another government employee here. You’d have to know my pay grade and step to know my annual salary, and most people wouldn’t know that I also get some incentive pay that adds up quite nicely.
Other than that, only my dad/financial advisor knows what I make. He’s the only one besides me who knows exactly what I make. Well, him and some folks in HR, I guess.
I’m a civil servant, so anyone who knows where I work, what I do, and how long I’ve done it would be able to guess my salary with a very high degree of confidence. (It’d just be a matter of picking between a couple different grades on the GS scale.)
That’s awesome, Bone. I just confirmed what I suspected… that I’m being paid significantly less than people in my company that have the same job title.