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Ask HN: Should the factors deciding salary be open information?

3 pointsby gearhartover 9 years ago
This comes up a lot, articles like: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;logbook.hanno.co&#x2F;open-team-salaries&#x2F; and subsequently https:&#x2F;&#x2F;logbook.hanno.co&#x2F;choose-your-own-salary&#x2F; from Hanno underscore the key issues for me.<p>I want to be as open about salaries (and equity) as possible with my employees, but at the same time, I appreciate that it&#x27;s a really complicated subject from both a personal, and social perspective and from an economic one, and that whilst the people who work with me are very bright this isn&#x27;t their field. People who are fantastic developers want to know they&#x27;re well-compensated, and treated fairly, and they&#x27;re always going to feel strongly about the outcome of the calculation that goes to determine salaries, but they&#x27;re not necessarily prepared to, and certainly shouldn&#x27;t be obliged to, delve into its intricacies.<p>I feel that the key is trust: if you don&#x27;t trust your employer then an open salary policy like Hanno&#x27;s seems a wonderful thing, but only because the alternative is something that you perceive to be an unfair system that&#x27;s affecting your life but is hidden away from you. The ideal, to me at least, seems to be a system in which you trust that the outcomes will be just, but you don&#x27;t know exactly how they&#x27;re achieved; one in which nothing is hidden from you, but nothing is forced in front of you - if you want to ask about your colleagues salaries or the factors that were considered when they were decided you&#x27;re welcome to and you&#x27;ll be told, but generally you don&#x27;t feel the need to, because nothing you see around you seems unjust.<p>It seems at first viewing that policies like Hanno&#x27;s take difficult decisions that should be made by CEOs and the like and make them the responsibility of everyone - at the best it&#x27;s lazy, at the worst it&#x27;s actively deceptive.<p>I&#x27;d love to hear other people&#x27;s thoughts - mine are still undecided.

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