I think it's better to share salaries anonymously with the level and company information.<p>It's human nature to compare and I feel it would be counterproductive to know what individuals I'm close to make compared to having idea of the median, top, etc bands for the level I'm at.<p>I say this seeing younger folks quibble over a difference of few hundred dollars in compensation and worry they are getting underpaid compared to their peers.<p>Note: Above is an example of highly paid individuals starting out so a few hundred dollar difference wouldn't matter.
Good companies show salary bands to internal employees. If they don’t do it, I think the reasons are pretty obvious.
If you pay people fairly, why would you keep that information secret?
This happens with many companies when there is internal realization that the same labor is being paid unfairly. I’ll never forget hearing from a colleague whom I admired their work being paid half of what I was paid. The difference? They were much older and had no formal education. I was a new hire with a degree. This absolutely floored me and they gave our boss an ultimatum of matching the market rate. It worked out for them and their career.<p>You should know your market rate at the current company you’re at. Most people don’t have that transparency today and seek new opportunities because of it. It absolutely feels terrible to know that a loyal productive employee is getting paid significantly less than a new hire who will jump ship in a year or two.<p>If the company is going to min/max compensation, you have to take that into your own hands and play the game of getting what you’re worth in the market. Ironically most people do that by jumping ship temporarily and coming back with what they wanted in the first place.<p>Managers should be actively looking out for their employees. It’s their main priority of retention. HR needs to give them enough budget to keep up with the market and not be greedy. It costs much more in the long run when there’s retention issues anyway.
It pays for engineers to be able to inflate and justify their worth, especially when moving ships.<p>It is not about everyone getting equal pay. It is about everyone having equal visibility. The former creates unmotivated employees, the latter creates one of two outcomes:
1. Satisfaction of relative comp for the amount of work done -or-
2. Understanding of what is valuable in this venture; how to spend your time<p>Often times in larger establishments (after playing enough politics to gain visibility), I found myself in camp (2). What you think is important is seldom actually important to the powers that be. If you find yourself disagreeing with the last statement, go hug your management team / coworkers!
I would be concerned about the correlation to increased resentment to increased transparency. If you want to know if you are paid fairly there is a “talent marketplace” to do price/value discovery. Employees do not have the full breadth of information managers use to set compensation and mangers cannot share their reasoning. Some employees are more motivated by title or other types of recognition other than comp as well.
In Norway, everyone's salary data -- well, net income for tax purposes -- is public information.<p><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40669239" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40669239</a>
All salaries of all companies of all roles should be public. This info being kept from job seekers unfairly tips the balance of power to the job provider when negotiating salaries or even when deciding on which company to join.
There's a somewhat famous UK guy called Charlie Mullins who runs a plumbing Business called Pimlico Plumbers. I saw a clip the other day where he does this experiment with his own business, and the cameras film people finding out what their colleagues are earning. Some people feel quite shafted, others don't want to talk about it. In the end there's a not so satisfying solution. Or at least one that papers over the problem: they find some savings from their suppliers and give the money to the lower paid staff.<p>But I thought it was an interesting experiment to watch.
I think the problem with Hello Fresh is the quality of their food and drink. It is hotel quality. Smelly bacon, heat traeated orange juice. With a name Fresh, and a product Fully Packaged, there is a great disconnect between their 'mission' and their reality.
This shows the calibre of management and their real mission.
I've floated an idea previously here on HN: any company that applies for an H1B must make all salaries public the way public employees' salaries are public. By this, I mean total pay by name and position.<p>I feel that if I private firm is applying for the power to bestow a public good - the right to live and work in the United States - on the grounds that a qualified worker can't be hired otherwise, it's reasonable for the public to want to evaluate the truth of this claim, which requires information not just about wages for that one position but for all wages paid in that company.
> The spreadsheet will be shared with your work email address.<p>That means the company knows you’re doing this. It’s not legal for them to retaliate for it, but people do stuff that’s not legal.
So I know there's no real way around this, but the email address verification is kind of a killer isn't it? Can't an Outlook admin just filter for all the inboxes that received an email from hfsalary.org and immediately report which employees signed up for this? I mean, I know on paper they're not allowed to retaliate against this, but wouldn't this impact how management feels about you getting more responsibility and raises etc.?
Why bother? Recent salaries for SWE and SWM are already on levels.fyi: <a href="https://www.levels.fyi/company/HelloFresh/salaries/" rel="nofollow">https://www.levels.fyi/company/HelloFresh/salaries/</a><p>Sidenote: I live in Austin and I get their spam in the mail all the time. I had no idea they were based in Germany! But that explains the crazy-low (by US standards) comp for these roles.
the only reason to obfuscate salaries is to pay people as little as possible and maintain control. any other argument is trying to pit employees self interest against others.
Coinbase has a single salary per band. The only discretionary pay is performance based but everything has the same base salary and equity. I love this model.