Transparency at the Office: Psst...This Is What Your Co-Worker Is Paid

I once did a short stint at a phone survey company that specialised in health and social welfare surveys. I wasn't on this particular survey crew, but I remember a colleague telling me that it was strange - a stranger rings up and with your consent conducts a 20-minute anonymous survery on the subject of abuse, sexual or otherwise, that the respondant suffered as a child.<p>It was a delicate survey and required a fair bit of rapport building, and <i>lots</i> of 'I need to remind you that the next question is voluntary'... but we were still getting plenty of respondants, and the weird thing was that despite being a (relatively) anonymous stranger with which you have just shared some sensitive, deep secrets about childhood abuse, the question that most balked at was the 'income level' question in the demographic rundown at the end.

Near the bottom of this article is an interesting post mortem of RethinkDB's transparent salary policy. When it was posted years ago [1] folks here took pretty kindly to it, though some were skeptical [2].<p>I'm kinda disappointed (who doesn't like to know?) but also not very surprised that it didn't work out. Negotiation doesn't work super well if the other players have complete information about your strategy.<p>[1] <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20100722162634/http://rethinkdb.com/jobs/" rel="nofollow">http://web.archive.org/web/20100722162634/http://rethinkdb.c...</a><p>[2a] <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1210336" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1210336</a><p>[2b] <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1190533" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1190533</a>

I've always felt uncomfortable about how employees are not supposed to talk to each other about their salaries.<p>To me, it reeks of manipulation feels just like saying to a child "Here's some candy, but you have to promise not to tell anyone I gave it to you, OK"<p>ugh.

When I was working in New York City, I always found employee secrecy over the salaries pretty interesting. It seemed like a taboo to tell someone your salary or ask them what they're paid.<p>I understand why employers would want to disincentive salary disclosures but employees? Your peers salary is clear indication of your valuation to the company and there should be every incentive to share. Back home in India, pretty much everyone knows each others salaries for all sizes of companies.

In my last job I was in a position where I got to see all the salary wrangling that goes on behind the scenes, and it was pretty awful. You get people with power dishing out preferential treatment to their mates, you get situations that are incredibly unfair but for whatever reason can't be easily resolved, and you get a lot of gossiping and speculation that is wildly unproductive for a company. I've never worked anywhere with salary transparency but I'd love to try it - I think with the right people it could work well but I'm sure there's plenty of scope for petty jealousies of other kinds. But I did come away with the fact that the secrecy in many cases is often to hide things that your average worker is going to be offended by, i.e. how much executives are paid.

This is not too uncommon for government employees, including (e.g.) professors, coaches, doctors at state schools. For example, I had no idea top surgeons raked in that kind of dough. Damn. <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/" rel="nofollow">http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/</a>

there are 2 types of people in the office, happy people and those who know the salaries of others.

I can see how this is interesting, but it seems like it would be too easy for no one to ever be happy. Employees tend to either over or under value themselves pretty strongly, and while trying to level the playing field seems like a good idea, it's just inviting confrontation if you have a mix of both (like a lot of workplaces). Combine that with the proclivity for workplace lawsuits at even a hint of discrimination (in the US) and I don't see how this could ever gain wide adoption.<p>I also think the idea of scheduled raises breeds a sense of complacency.

"...employees are each assigned to one of nine fixed salaries..."<p>Reminds me of a less-complicated general schedule salary table: <a href="http://archive.opm.gov/oca/12tables/html/gs.asp" rel="nofollow">http://archive.opm.gov/oca/12tables/html/gs.asp</a>