Hmm. My experience tells me that a lot of this depends on the details of the team, and that there isn't a right-for-everyone policy.<p>My story:<p>I worked for a company that paid a bit below market salaries, for the SF Bay Area. I was on a team with two more junior engineers. At one point one disclosed to me that they felt underpaid. That led to a salary discussion where I explained that the company habitually underpaid people, and I was happy to share my salary with them so they would know they're not the only ones underpaid (and also, implicitly, so they'd know if they were getting taken advantage of, since I'm all about employees looking out for each other).<p>As it turned out, however, I was making around 40% more than both of them. Some of that was due to more experience, but it was more a matter of me being underpaid versus them being outright screwed. Naturally they went and asked for a well-deserved raise, and the company, of course, said no.<p>This changed the team dynamics in a fundamental, toxic way. It engendered bitterness from them not only toward the company but to me as well, which ultimately led to all of us leaving the company for greener pastures but with lots of bad feelings all around.<p>You could say the takeaway is don't work for companies out to screw their workers, but that's most of them.
I read about this idea once as a case study. I think it was first tried at a manufacturing company[0] in Brazil where everyone from the CEO down to the packers in the dispatch shed has their salary decided by a consensus employees. It's a 3000 person company with a revenue of $160m now.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler</a>
<a href="http://www.freibergs.com/resources/articles/leadership/semco-insanity-that-works/" rel="nofollow">http://www.freibergs.com/resources/articles/leadership/semco...</a> <a href="https://hbr.org/1989/09/managing-without-managers" rel="nofollow">https://hbr.org/1989/09/managing-without-managers</a>
Also worthwhile reading:<p>Buffer's transparency dashboard: Public salaries, equity and more [0].<p>The original post: Open salaries at Buffer [1].<p>[0] <a href="https://buffer.com/transparency" rel="nofollow">https://buffer.com/transparency</a><p>[1] <a href="https://open.buffer.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-buffer-including-our-transparent-formula-and-all-individual-salaries/" rel="nofollow">https://open.buffer.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-buffer-...</a>
While this sounds awesome in theory, I don't think I'd find it fun to have everyone deciding on what everyone in the company should be paid. It seems like weird office politics, jealousy, and unrelated things would get involved. This is all just my opinion, but I feel like even though this idea is good in theory, it will be ruined by people, just like valve's org structure model.<p>The truth is, no one knows what anyone should be paid, really. The market decides it. I feel like this kind of policy just creates a powderkeg of opinion and emotion. Maybe it works for a team of 25 (at least as far as we can see), but definitely not for a company of 500.<p>Please everyone just put your salaries in Glassdoor and call it a day. Everyone make sure they get paid market or above, be a responsible adult and look out for yourself.
I'd like to get push-back to the idea of everyone earning the same salary. Why wouldn't it work from some people who seem to have some experience like you have?
Reminds me of 360-degree feedback -- which may not lead directly to a raise but provide the employee with frequent feedback and build social support for the reviewee.
Some people prefer a compensation model with a base pay + bonuses. Others to have a peer review process like this one.<p>The problem is that those processes work only when there is certain level of mutual trust, selflessness and honesty. If you have really selfish people this thing can start being gamed... e.g: I refer 100 friends in exchange and have them recommend me for a promotion, raise and bonus every quarter.
If these 25 employees would be clever then you'd get 25 massive pay rises in a very short amount of time by everyone quickly realizing that if you all praise yourself endlessly in those discussions then it is difficult for 1 single boss to push back on 25 people's amazingly positive feedback. Not trying to plant an idea though. Just saying.
After you define salary ranges for positions the only variables left are promotions and experience within the role. I don't think it makes sense to have people that are not working with a person decide that. I think the direct boss of the person should decide after getting input from others and subject to approval by the boss' boss.
We can see from this article (50% raises happening after implementation) that even in the most cognizant companies wanting as much fairness as possible in salaries, you have huge discrepancies and hugely underpaid people because they can get away with it. They only time it was fixed was when they were essentially shamed into doing it, even if that shaming was self-inflicted.<p>Why did it take implementing this program to give those people a 50% raise? Was it not obvious prior to this that they were below market rate? Did Lunar do the traditional salary negotiation discussion with new hires prior to open salaries?
When I've seen companies make their salaries publicly transparent, they've been below market rate (eg Buffer).<p>I wonder if the same tendency exists for companies that become internally transparently?
I wonder how many of these open salary companies are just doing LLC payments to people for additional compensation so they can still say they disclose all of the "salary" information?
Companies love open salaries. Why? They can now pay a developer with 5 years of experience and the developer with one year experience the same low salary for the same position.<p>Salary should be based on the individual (relevant experience and education) not just a job title.<p>Why would an employee give away one of the only bargaining chips they have to get a higher salary? When I was working a regular job, I was regularly able to negotiate a 20-30% higher salary than co-workers with the same title.