June 5, 2015 at 8:58 am
Jeff, who does that hurt? Say we work together and I find out you make more than I do. I can look at that and go, hey, that's not fair, I work as hard/am as smart/am better looking, but my issue isn't with you directly. You negotiated better, or were hired in better days, or whatever. No, my issue is with a manager who isn't treating me fairly (or maybe is!). That's a hard conversation, but is it bad? Maybe he looks at it and says, yeah, you're worth more to me and I'll fix it. Or he looks at it and says no, Jeff is my guy that knows the business and always delivers, he gets a premium for that. Do x, y, and z and we'll talk about changing your salary. I guess I wonder isn't there a difference between how we treat employees and how we treat contractors when it comes to pay?
Does not talking about it make things better for us, better for the company, or just avoid what seem to be unpleasant conversations? Not sure I know!
June 5, 2015 at 8:58 am
robert.sterbal 56890 (6/5/2015)
Most government jobs have published salaries.This is for Illinois teachers:
http://www.familytaxpayers.org/ftf/ftf_salaries.php
I found a spreadsheet for the city of Pittsburgh at:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AgIDIpQ4B-u0C2RrnYFEgdnpJKlWH0qyBGkhRTiOK9A/edit?pli=1#gid=0
Wow... no wonder some cities and school districts go broke. As a taxpayer, I'm pretty pissed off at the extravagant salaries. Of course, that's also what I mean.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
June 5, 2015 at 9:12 am
I think the idea of publishing salaries is great. If a company wants to be dishonest and pay 2 people with the same experience and seniority doing the same job different amounts then those individuals should complain. If the difference is justified; person A has been here 10 years and is the de facto go to person for those needing help then they should be paid more than person B who is new and struggles to complete his tasks.
I worked at one place and I found that this other guy was being paid $15000 a year less than me and we had the same experience and time in the company. I told him what the difference was and he asked for a raise and got it. All management told us was the salary range was $30000 - $130000. Not too helpful. I wouldn't bother to compare my salary to my manager since its a different job and therefore not equivalent. If I make more than he does that is irrelevant. I care what other DBAs make and I care what developers make (just as a point of reference) Of course the real important statistic is the average salary and the range, not what some individual actually makes. The method for moving up the range needs to be fair and well known as well. Some companies may move your salary up the range on a yearly basis simply because you survived another year and others may move you up based on some criteria related to performance. So the facet that Jane makes $81000 and Bill makes $99000 as DBAs is frankly not as interesting as knowing the salary range for DBAs is $75000-$91000 for intermediate DBAa and the range for Senior DBAs is $87000 - $110000 (all figures made up based on what I wish were the case) and that for after each year your salary moves up 2% until you reach the top of the range or get promoted.
Transparency in salaries is only bad when working for a dishonest company that wants to hide their process often because that process is unfair or arbitrary. I think the formula mentions in the 'Buffer' company is great. Of course it is easier when the company is smaller.
Francis
June 5, 2015 at 9:20 am
steeleye1 (6/5/2015)
It seems to me that the only reason that it can be a "disaster" to share salary information is because of inequality.
Absolutely. In my personal life I am very cagey about money and I don't like to talk about how much I earn or how much my house cost, but I'm coming round to the thought that we (employees) could be a lot better served by being more open about this. (For example I am certain I earn 20% more than an older male colleague; this is unusual as I think it's women who tend to be low-balled at work, but the principle is the same; technically we do the same job.) Yes, I probably asked for more when I joined, but if there's no published salary scale, how are you supposed to know what to ask for (beyond a "finger in the air" comparison)? If a company is being fair and can justify its decisions, there should be nothing to hide.
June 5, 2015 at 9:28 am
fhanlon (6/5/2015)
I think the idea of publishing salaries is great. If a company wants to be dishonest and pay 2 people with the same experience and seniority doing the same job different amounts then those individuals should complain. If the difference is justified; person A has been here 10 years and is the de facto go to person for those needing help then they should be paid more than person B who is new and struggles to complete his tasks.I worked at one place and I found that this other guy was being paid $15000 a year less than me and we had the same experience and time in the company. I told him what the difference was and he asked for a raise and got it. All management told us was the salary range was $30000 - $130000. Not too helpful. I wouldn't bother to compare my salary to my manager since its a different job and therefore not equivalent. If I make more than he does that is irrelevant. I care what other DBAs make and I care what developers make (just as a point of reference) Of course the real important statistic is the average salary and the range, not what some individual actually makes. The method for moving up the range needs to be fair and well known as well. Some companies may move your salary up the range on a yearly basis simply because you survived another year and others may move you up based on some criteria related to performance. So the facet that Jane makes $81000 and Bill makes $99000 as DBAs is frankly not as interesting as knowing the salary range for DBAs is $75000-$91000 for intermediate DBAa and the range for Senior DBAs is $87000 - $110000 (all figures made up based on what I wish were the case) and that for after each year your salary moves up 2% until you reach the top of the range or get promoted.
Transparency in salaries is only bad when working for a dishonest company that wants to hide their process often because that process is unfair or arbitrary. I think the formula mentions in the 'Buffer' company is great. Of course it is easier when the company is smaller.
This would only apply in companies that do purely seniority based raises, many companies do not and use merit based awards. There would be some huge HR issues if people were suddenly seeing, hey why did X get a huge raise and bonus last year but I got a tiny one?
June 5, 2015 at 9:32 am
steeleye1 (6/5/2015)
It seems to me that the only reason that it can be a "disaster" to share salary information is because of inequality.
I'm guessing that was in response to my post. It's a disaster when you work in an office where there are people who want or think they should have other people's jobs. The place I was referring to had a few positions that were very coveted and management felt the need to go outside the company to fill that position. This caused some tension. Disclosing the salaries was like throwing gas the fire.
Edit: grammar.
-- Itzik Ben-Gan 2001
June 5, 2015 at 9:33 am
The price of all the houses in Allegheny County are published on their website. Furthermore Zillow publishes the sale price of a good chunk of all the houses in America.
412-977-3526 call/text
June 5, 2015 at 9:36 am
robert.sterbal 56890 (6/5/2015)
Most government jobs have published salaries.This is for Illinois teachers:
http://www.familytaxpayers.org/ftf/ftf_salaries.php
I found a spreadsheet for the city of Pittsburgh at:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AgIDIpQ4B-u0C2RrnYFEgdnpJKlWH0qyBGkhRTiOK9A/edit?pli=1#gid=0
That's totally different because we, as tax payers, pay those salaries.
-- Itzik Ben-Gan 2001
June 5, 2015 at 9:37 am
If I was to put a position forward, in my experience the 'don't talk about salaries' rule is there to benefit the employer in terms of minimising payroll. Of course those who are most satisfied with their lot are most likely to comply on this front. Personally I am happy to discuss behind closed doors but would always try and be sensitive to the situation of others.
June 5, 2015 at 9:50 am
I did acknowledge that some companies give raises based on merit. I worked for one place that evaluated everyone each year and said that based on performance you may get a raise (or not) and just because you got a raise the last few years doesn't mean you'll get one this year. It is absolutely no HR issue if Jane gets a 5% raise because she is awesome and Bill gets no raise if his performance was not up to par. The question to ask is "was the process fair" If Jane Jane got her raise because she slept with the boss and Bill did not get a raise because he slept with the boss's wife then there is some really unfair dynamics in place. On the other hand if Jane's raise was due to the 3 letters of thanks she got from other managers and the completion of the big project on time as well as the documented reconfiguration of a database that improved performance without having to add hardware then it is clear she deserved her raise. Perhaps Bill allowed some data corruption because of forgetting to run standard maintenance jobs and Jane had to save his butt. The idea is that if your pay is based on performance your successes and failures need to be documented and justified. That place I worked at that gave raises based on performance assigned "grades" to our tasks and at the end of projects and assigned a number (-1 to +1) based on our grades. If management increased salaries by say 3% then middle mangers had an overall 3% to work with and those that got a +1 or +.5 rating got a larger share of that increase than those with a +.2 or a 0 rating.
My point isn't the precise system used, it is that there must exist some system that is fairly applied to all and that that system be know by everyone. You may think its a great system or a poor one but it need to be a system that is open, transparent and understood. In the end the fact that Jane got a 4% raise and Bill got nothing should be easy to justify. The documentation should be there.
Francis
June 5, 2015 at 9:52 am
Andy Warren (6/5/2015)
Jeff, who does that hurt? Say we work together and I find out you make more than I do. I can look at that and go, hey, that's not fair, I work as hard/am as smart/am better looking, but my issue isn't with you directly. You negotiated better, or were hired in better days, or whatever. No, my issue is with a manager who isn't treating me fairly (or maybe is!). That's a hard conversation, but is it bad? Maybe he looks at it and says, yeah, you're worth more to me and I'll fix it. Or he looks at it and says no, Jeff is my guy that knows the business and always delivers, he gets a premium for that. Do x, y, and z and we'll talk about changing your salary. I guess I wonder isn't there a difference between how we treat employees and how we treat contractors when it comes to pay?Does not talking about it make things better for us, better for the company, or just avoid what seem to be unpleasant conversations? Not sure I know!
Andy, you are the exception.
Most people in the same situation would not take the high road. The issues this cause range from simple "complaining in the lunchroom" to filing discrimination complaints.
fhanlon (6/5/2015)
I think the idea of publishing salaries is great. If a company wants to be dishonest and pay 2 people with the same experience and seniority doing the same job different amounts then those individuals should complain. If the difference is justified; person A has been here 10 years and is the de facto go to person for those needing help then they should be paid more than person B who is new and struggles to complete his tasks.I worked at one place and I found that this other guy was being paid $15000 a year less than me and we had the same experience and time in the company. I told him what the difference was and he asked for a raise and got it. All management told us was the salary range was $30000 - $130000. Not too helpful. I wouldn't bother to compare my salary to my manager since its a different job and therefore not equivalent. If I make more than he does that is irrelevant. I care what other DBAs make and I care what developers make (just as a point of reference) Of course the real important statistic is the average salary and the range, not what some individual actually makes. The method for moving up the range needs to be fair and well known as well. Some companies may move your salary up the range on a yearly basis simply because you survived another year and others may move you up based on some criteria related to performance. So the facet that Jane makes $81000 and Bill makes $99000 as DBAs is frankly not as interesting as knowing the salary range for DBAs is $75000-$91000 for intermediate DBAa and the range for Senior DBAs is $87000 - $110000 (all figures made up based on what I wish were the case) and that for after each year your salary moves up 2% until you reach the top of the range or get promoted.
Transparency in salaries is only bad when working for a dishonest company that wants to hide their process often because that process is unfair or arbitrary. I think the formula mentions in the 'Buffer' company is great. Of course it is easier when the company is smaller.
Experience and seniority should have nothing to do with salary. This is the old mentality that I get paid a dollar for the first year, two for the second, and so forth.
Salary should be based upon quality of work and capabilities.
Saying a company is "dishonest" because it pays one employee 15k more than another is justification for keeping salaries private.
As an example, I had a person who was tasked with making modifications to the accounting system. They now had complete access to the salary data. They found out that they were making 12k less than another developer. The amount of complaining was unbearable.
Why were they getting 12k less? Because that was the salary they asked for when they started! It wasn't the company being dishonest.
Michael L John
If you assassinate a DBA, would you pull a trigger?
To properly post on a forum:
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/61537/
June 5, 2015 at 10:01 am
Not sure if anyone mentioned this yet but I figured I'd add in:
US military jobs, even civilian ones on bases, have ranks, and the pay for each rank is known to everyone, there's no mystery about how much you're getting paid for your job.
June 5, 2015 at 10:04 am
fhanlon (6/5/2015)
I did acknowledge that some companies give raises based on merit. I worked for one place that evaluated everyone each year and said that based on performance you may get a raise (or not) and just because you got a raise the last few years doesn't mean you'll get one this year. It is absolutely no HR issue if Jane gets a 5% raise because she is awesome and Bill gets no raise if his performance was not up to par. The question to ask is "was the process fair" If Jane Jane got her raise because she slept with the boss and Bill did not get a raise because he slept with the boss's wife then there is some really unfair dynamics in place. On the other hand if Jane's raise was due to the 3 letters of thanks she got from other managers and the completion of the big project on time as well as the documented reconfiguration of a database that improved performance without having to add hardware then it is clear she deserved her raise. Perhaps Bill allowed some data corruption because of forgetting to run standard maintenance jobs and Jane had to save his butt. The idea is that if your pay is based on performance your successes and failures need to be documented and justified. That place I worked at that gave raises based on performance assigned "grades" to our tasks and at the end of projects and assigned a number (-1 to +1) based on our grades. If management increased salaries by say 3% then middle mangers had an overall 3% to work with and those that got a +1 or +.5 rating got a larger share of that increase than those with a +.2 or a 0 rating.My point isn't the precise system used, it is that there must exist some system that is fairly applied to all and that that system be know by everyone. You may think its a great system or a poor one but it need to be a system that is open, transparent and understood. In the end the fact that Jane got a 4% raise and Bill got nothing should be easy to justify. The documentation should be there.
"How good he did" is often a highly subjective measurement at higher levels unless you royally screw something up, it's not like we're in a factory cranking out X cogs an hour. There's no purely objective way to measure it which is why disclosing it leads to nothing but animosity.
June 5, 2015 at 10:42 am
"How good he did" is often a highly subjective measurement at higher levels unless you royally screw something up, it's not like we're in a factory cranking out X cogs an hour. There's no purely objective way to measure it which is why disclosing it leads to nothing but animosity.
I don't agree. "How good he did" should be very objective. There are methods for evaluating performance in an objective and fair way. Some of these methods are pretty complex with entire books written on how to do it, which is why some companies either just fall back on the seniority system or more often just totally fail in their ability to evaluate performance and ever more important to to tie that performance to to salary. However this is off topic. The question is should salary be confidential. I think that salary range and the method of moving within that salary range must be open and transparent. If you want to hide where a particular person is within that range or even what range they get paid in (that is whether they are a DBA level 1 vs a DBA level 2) then fine. Although frankly everyone know who is the better DBA or better developer. If knowing others salaries leads to bad feelings then the system isn't fair. So I'd say if the company has unfair or arbitrary HR practices then they benefit from salary being confidential.
Francis
June 5, 2015 at 11:05 am
Well then we're arguing about two different things 🙂
The salary ranges and process for raises should be transparent if they aren't that would be huge red flag to flee that company or not even start there to begin with. That however has nothing to do with everyone having visibility to every else's salary.
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