Some years ago, I switched jobs soon after a lazy co-worker disclosed he was making more than me. Felt good to throw my new salary back at him after starting the new job!
Maybe the communism thing has something to do with that?
My salary is a matter of public record. Makes it easier to argue for equity. Nobody chats about it, but I do know the salary of everyone in my unit so I can advocate for them (I’m a supervisor).
Why DO we hide our pay from our co-workers?
The attitude that we should not discuss salary with our co-workers has been ingrained in out minds as a matter of politeness. This works to the advantage of the business or organization and allows it to freely discriminate.
As part of my annual training as an employee of a government contractor this comes up each year under “ethics” and could formerly become the cause of disciplinary action.
Not anymore. Due to an executive order from President Obama I can no longer be disciplined for discussing pay with other employees.
The attitude of not discussing pay is a tool for discrimination and part of the glass ceiling that works to prevent women and others for receiving equal pay for equal work. The is fundamentally what it is, a tool for discrimination.
In Jim Bouton’s Ball Four, he talks about how the culture of the clubhouse discouraged players from talking about their salaries with each other. He cast it as a way for management to keep players from seeking higher salaries, but it was definitely building on a social sense that it was crass to discuss salaries in public.
True, but at the federal agency where I work, there’s been a change in the transparency of promotions and bonuses. In the past, they would prominently announce who was getting promoted, and to which grade. Promotion announcements now are much more hush-hush, and don’t list grade (although sometimes they bin them; e.g., they publish a list of promotions below GG-13). So while it’s still public record what a GG-XX, step YY makes, that isn’t much use if grades are tightly held.
Also, performance bonuses used to be announced publicly - most offices had a tradition that recipients would buy donuts for the office. The last few bonuses I’ve received were presented privately, and I was told not to buy donuts.
I kind of agree with this. I do know that if I run a business, I’d make salaries at the very least open company record, if not public record. It keeps everyone involved honest.
Of course, if I did start a business after my PhD, I’d be unlikely to run a place with more than, like, 20 people at the absolute ridiculous maximum.
I’ve already contributed to this thread, but I’d like to add something more.
Turning the thread topic around, I don’t know why people would discuss their salary with others in most circumstances.
Also, I’m wondering if the people who least want to discuss their wages or hear about other people’s wages are people like me who don’t earn very much money.
Our salaries are public record and it causes nothing but trouble here. There’s one woman here who makes quite a bit more than the rest of us who works tirelessly at never having to do any work and constantly needs to be reminded how to use the copier or search her email. It’s done incalculable damage to morale.
I don’t look at my co-worker’s salaries because I don’t want to know, but plenty of people have told me that I make far less than others. Well, thanks for the little pick-me-up, folks.
Part of it was a job requirement. I used to work on the payroll applications for my previous employer, and it was as much as my job was worth to discuss how much anyone made.
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I’m wondering if the people who least want to discuss their wages or hear about other people’s wages are people like me who don’t earn very much money.
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My experience is the opposite. I am much more reluctant to talk about money now than back when I was scraping along.
But my mother always says it’s vulgar to talk about your money. Maybe that’s part of it too.
Regards,
Shodan
The difference is, in the government (and similar jobs), the pay structure is largely outside of managerial decretion and only very loosely related to performance. The issue of “I am more productive than her, I deserve the same (or more) salary” is off the table. The issue of “Give me a raise or I quit” is off the table.
It’s not a problem because for the most part, nobody can do anything about it.
Hewitt?
You can’t seriously think that salaries in the private sector are tightly tied to performance. They’re all about negotiation and timing.
Definitely agree with this too.
Bolding mine.
This isn’t true at all.
I agree with everyone who says it’s a matter of workplace harmony.
I mean, where I work now, I have some fairly intense curiosity as to how much my co-workers make, mostly because we all have the same ultimate job title, but our jobs and experience are pretty different.
I was hired under a different regime before the 2008 recession, and I’ve got graduate degrees and a lot of experience, and my salary was appropriate, if a bit low. I’m just mostly curious if they all make in the same ballpark as me, or if I’m making like 30% more than the rest of them (which is where I’d pay them relative to myself).
So knowing wouldn’t do us any good at all- they’d be irritated and envious, or if somehow they make as much or more than me, I’d be annoyed that I’m not paid more.
I used to work as a stagehand, and all the men & women I worked with pretty much made the same hourly rate. We all also socialized together, and it was never a big deal to realize we all knew pretty much everyone else’s annual take-home, as we were all pretty much in the same boat. If one person found out they had been bumped up a dollar or two due to seniority, it was high fives all around and genuine congrats to that person.
Today I am a salaried employee in a (more or less) 9-5 office job working for a big company. There are people of all levels here from VP’s to data entry, and I can’t imagine having the same kind of knowledge about what they all get paid. I guess it was because we were all at the same level and doing the same work at the old job that made it seem like less of an issue.
I also look at my peers, not necessarily in this job/company but friends with similar levels of education and similar types of jobs, and sometimes wonder “how is it that they’re living like that on what I imagine they must make?”, either because they appear to be just barely scraping by or because they are living a lifestyle that must run them twice what I expect they’re pulling in.
So I’d agree with the analysis that says knowing breeds contempt in one direction or the other, especially at higher income levels.
That’s as it should be. I think we’re discussing talking about your own salary, not anyone else’s.
Now, when you saw the payroll, did it seem rational to you, or was it badly out of line with performance as you saw it?
Not in big companies. There is a specific time where raises are given out, and asking for one outside that time would be useless and clueless.
My father worked for the UN which based its system on the federal government, but my understanding is that there are many pay grades, and raises within a pay grade are pretty much done in lockstep, with advancement coming from promotions. For him promotion within a category was pretty automatic - jumping to a new one was the way to get ahead. Is the federal government similar?
My experience in industry is that there are many fewer pay grades, raises are not done in lockstep within them, and promotions are not automatic. What is perceived as performance was a big factor in giving raises, but so was equity and other stuff, so I can understand why someone looking at the process from the outside couldn’t tell that performance had anything to do with it.
I was on the committee that set performance and salary review policies at our center, so I’ve been to lots of meetings on this.
I work for a private non-profit and typical ranges by position classification are published, so you have a general idea, so I don’t think that’s the reason. Again, on an individual basis you wouldn’t talk about it because it’s private.
There was a Planet Money story earlier this year on a company where salaries are public knowledge (here & here)
My thought is that it would work if it were built into the company culture from the ground (or nearly the ground) up. Starting that policy on a company where salaries were all over the place for a lot of bad reasons would result in a huge loss of morale and a lot of uncomfortable conversations for management who really didn’t have good explanations as for why certain employees made more than others for no defensible reason.
Discussing my salary with others usually-but-not-always involves them discussing their salaries with me.
It struck me as none of my business. As I mentioned, confidentiality was a sine qua non if I wanted to keep my job, and I found it easier to simply not bother about who was making what in relation to me. Much easier to avoid violating company policy that way - I had signed the agreement when I came aboard, and had to sit thru yearly training about how I could wind up fired and in prison if I didn’t keep my mouth tightly shut.
The only time I thought anything was excessive was one year-end when our jobs were abending because the accumulators were too small to hold the payouts. :eek: That was a bad week.
Regards,
Shodan