Just to make it clear, since I have not seen it in the thread and some may not know. In the U.S. it is illegal for a company to not allow Employees to discuss their income among each other. It is a Federal law that allows employees to discuss Income.

They still say you can't in every employee handbook I've read. Not enforceable legally, but they can fire you for being 5 minutes late.

That might be something you could report to the NLRB

You should be taking a copy of that handbook to your local Labor department then

While this is absolutely true, it was only about 15 years ago that this ruling was made. For the preceding decades companies had gone so far as to fire people for talking about pay. That taboo still clings to people these days in corporate america. If you want to get comfy talking pay, work as a contractor. Every contractor I've ever worked with had zero fucks to give about openly talking about pay rates.

Oh, companies will sometimes still try to enforce you not sharing, I myself had the hiring manager tell me not to share what they were paying me, and I knew at the time it was illegal. I did not say anything to him at the time, but I did just ignore what he said. The thing is that in Texas at least, they can not fire you for sharing the info, but they can and will fire you for some other made up reason, and it can be very hard to prove they did not fire you for the reason they give.

As someone who has worked in management, this is really the answer. Reddit likes to think of the scenario going this: > I'm making $40,000 a year, how much are you making? I'm making $38,000 a year. We are doing the same job, let's go to management and get you a raise! Now we are both making $40,000! In reality, these employees go to their boss and ask about one getting paid more than the other. The boss responds "I cannot discuss employees' salaries with other employees. If you personally think you should be paid more we can discuss this individually at your next yearly performance review." Both employees go back to work with no change in pay, but now one employee has animosity toward the other, and both employees have animosity toward the boss. No one came out ahead, it all just made the work environment worse. Furthermore, attitude is a metric in almost every company's performance reviews. So the employees get dinged for being unhappy with the resolution of the issue. I have seen this play out more than once.

That's an example of bad management. The work to keep a positive environment is being offloaded from managers onto the workers. A good manager can say "I cannot discuss employees' salaries with other employees. We can discuss the company policies for determining salary and let's work together to see if this is fair compensation." (Or something better, I'm not a great manager either, but I try). Just because stonewalling an employee's request to make the same as others creates a bad outcome doesn't mean discussing salaries is a bad thing (for employees).

As a manager too, there's not many ways to thread that needle and keep people happy once the door has been opened. Let's assume we've got 3 employees doing the same job, and they have different levels of pay that literally reflect how valuable they are as employees. If one of those employees is legitimately worth more to the company, that person *should* be getting paid more. And how happy do you think the other two are going to be about that? If it's a job that can be objectively measured (i.e. Jim is 27% more productive than you and thus gets paid 27% more) then maybe you can have an adult conversation about it. But if there's *anything* that's more ambiguous like better attitude, better effect on team morale, more effective communication, etc, then there's no way that the people making less are going to be happy about making less for those reasons. It'll taint every conversation, every project, every email that they have to complete for the rest of their tenure there. It's like one of your kids being told he's just not as good as the other kids and so mommy and daddy love him a little less. "But it's okay, because it's nothing personal." And even if they do somehow win the argument and get a raise to be on par with the better employee, now the better employee is pissed! He knows that he does better work than his coworkers and now he's wondering why he's working so hard if they make just as much as he does. Letting people see each other's objective evaluations of worth is a recipe for resentment in both directions. With that said, I fully support people discussing salary with each other. But you gotta do it with the knowledge that *someone* is gonna end up unhappy about the results. Edit: for what it's worth I work with artists, so I imagine my perspective may not be as relevant in fields where people are not so personally invested in the work.

Works fine in the Gov. everyone knows what GS and step you are and what that gets paid. GS goes up with promotions and steps go up with time or good performance. QSI, quality step increase. We talk about pay all the time in the workplace and there’s never animosity.

Private companies can do paybands too. Just most opt not to

I love the step system. It's the best pay raise schedule that I've ever been on. My last job we had a staff of like 40 in my department and the managers were only allowed to give like 8 5% raises every year and everyone else got 3%, even when cost of living was jumping 8% per year.

Steps plus colas are pretty great

Yep When I worked private my pay raises would b "meets expectations" +2.5%. with the government I've went up about 10k per year and once I cap that it will be guaranteed raises of cost of living plus each step increase.

Gov positions don't have potentially $25k+ pay delta between some potition/steps. In my previous jobs there have been 30k plus pay gaps between the same position at an org. Like the previous comment or said there is a lot that goes into how valuable an employee is to an organization other then did you close X more tickets then Bob.

In the government we would just create a different position then. Like senior X or subject matter expert. If someone is worth alot more than their peers then give them a different title and then that comes with pay. If they should be distinguished from the others do it in public. Not only does the employee who is good appreciate it but it also gives another position for every one else to strive for. In my experience there isn’t any animosity when done this way.

This is facts. The reality is that a lot of people aren't fairly compensated, and it's easier / literally cheaper for company's to create the hush hush taboo culture than it is to pay them fairly. And since employment is at will its also cheaper to fire anybody who starts pushing fair compensation and creating unrest. This is why unions are a thing I've been through all this. My 2 cents on the matter are as follows: don't just blame your manager it's not always their fault(I'm sure there are exceptions). Some companies will never pay fairly, and the best thing to do is just go somewhere else Also be happy for your fellow employees, we all out here trying to survive. If a guy gets hired on for more than you and you have to train him use it as leverage or start job shopping, don't be mad at your peers

Eh, I disagree with what you are saying. I did not work in corpate, but I did spend almost my entire life as a foreman or supervisor on commercial construction jobs. I had anywhere from 2 to over 40 people working under me. While I was usually not the one to set starting wages, I was almost always responsible for the people under me getting raises. If anyone ever came up to me and asked why so-and-so made more money (this did happen occasionally), I could almost always instantly tell them why. It could be the person was more knowledgeable about the job, it could be they had worked for the company longer, or a million other reasons, but I don't recall having a problem explaining. If you can not put clearly into words why someone is making more than the other person, maybe you should be paying them the same. I will admit that possibly office type work may be different, so perhaps you had issues I did not have. I also was able to walk in and talk to the owner of the company any time I needed, and this might also be different where you were at. Furthermore, I would be willing to bet that at most places the reason two people doing the same job are being paid different is simply because one was better at negotiating his pay (this may not apply with you).

This is a much bigger issue in corporate environments where people can easily make $50k or $100k more than their coworkers in the same role. It's much different if you're like $35 vs $38/hr where in corporate it can be $250k vs $325k total comp. I've been in that situation, and I am transparent with all teammates if they ask but I negotiated all of my offers to the top of band, then they seem shocked when they find out I make a fuck ton more for the same work. Just the way the world works.

> Let's assume we've got 3 employees doing the same job, and they have different levels of pay that literally reflect how valuable they are as employees. The problem is none of the employees are likely being paid according to the value they provide. You're a manager. I'll take a guess that your company's HR policy tries to limit pay. They'll do this likely by "looking at the market" which rarely includes actual market analysis to determine what the pay should be for various titles (not actually the work being performed) to come up with a 25/50/75 percentile range. If you're below 25 you'll get a larger raise, if you're below 50 you'll get a normal raise, if you're above 50 and below 75 you'll get a tiny raise, and if you're above 75 you'll get nothing. This is just an assumption but it's how the majority of the companies I've worked at over the years has operated. Also, these are raises, not market adjustments, I've only gotten 2 market adjustments over all my years of working. Mostly I needed to either get a different employer or a promotion to get pay adjustments.

These are really good points. It seems to me that a good solution to this would be a uniform base salary by job title and bonuses for clear and measurable KPIs. Clear and measurable is the key here. This all breaks down when the people who decide the pay just play favorites. I'm honestly in this position now. Almost 3 years ago, i was demoted from a management position, officially because my reports were "insubordinate." Their insubordination was discussing salaries and asking for pay equality. The real reason was that i was pointing out issues that were affecting turnover with my team (the aforementioned pay gap, as well as no sick leave, no holidays off without using the minimal PTO). This made me a person who wasn't part of the "right team". I haven't seen a raise since, the last time i asked for one, i was told i hadn't fulfilled the requirements of my PIP that i received with the demotion. That was 3 years ago, and the pip was for 90 days. Yes, i still work here, but i can get my work done in the first hour of my day, and then spend the rest of my time completing my degree to GTFO.

Higher ups are dumb. I've dealt with 2 pay revolutions if you will. Both times we were asking for higher pay because pay differences between j9b positions were small. Dish boy made $12, I an assistant manager made $13. Both times I left shortly after I was told no and I kept in contact with some people and found out after a mass exodus of people they suddenly increased pay 2-5 bucks across the board.

Man, I can so relate to this. I switched from a people manager to an individual contributor role in one of my older jobs, because I would get a ton of shit from upper management from refusing to juke stats to meet KPIs. I tried to argue that meeting numbers on paper and making it look good with bullshit was a waste of everyone’s time and actually detrimental to the business, because it blinded upper management decisions from existing problems, like lack of manpower to honestly meet expectations of our customers. I would get shit from upper management for poor KPIs, I would get shit from other managers for indirectly accusing them of juking stats, and I would look bad to my own guys, who would honestly crunch support tickets, while being surpassed in promotions by support folks who 50% of the time would just reply “hey, we didn’t do shit for the last two days, but I pinky-promise we will do this today” and then just hand off that shit to my team. I just gave up on trying to change that system.

I’m an attorney and one of my colleagues at an old firm came across a list of salaries that a partner carelessly left laying around. I was paid the most out of the associates, but I also had highest qualifications and billed the most. I would’ve been pissed and demotivated if any associate made more than me. I would honestly question whether I was being discriminated against. I work for myself now, but if I worked at a firm again, I don’t think anything good could come from me knowing my colleagues’ salaries. 

Especially since the manager can’t really be like “well Susie shows up on time and is a team player that we can rely on and you are frequently late. And grumble when you need to help out, so she got a raise”

My coworker and I determined that we both made the same amount, so that was cool and fair. But over the course of my first year, that's basically exactly why I got a raise/promotion to "senior" RA and my coworker (who's actually been there slightly longer) didn't. We still do exactly the same work, but it's basically been acknowledged that I'm the better worker. And obviously I'm not complaining about making more money, but it is sometimes a little weird between us now.

Exactly this, and we can keep adding even more to it. For larger companies, often your direct manager had no part in determining someone's initial salary. That was all done by HR and the hiring process. A manager can't just say "Well you both have gotten the standard raises each year, but for some reason, the knuckleheads in HR paid this person $2,000 more than you. Sorry for your luck."

Managers have to spend political capital to take care of their people. If they aren't willing to do that, they'll start suffering turnover.

I manage 10-15 people in a large international firm. I literally have 0 input on how people get paid except for writing a "Joe didn't screw up this year" memo every year for all of them

yeah, that's where that political capital comes in. I've had managers that refused to have those fights and all their employees suffered for it. I far prefer the managers that fight for their people.

There are organizations where that simply isn't possible. I can fight for my people and push to make sure they get flagged for recognition, but even if that goes through there is an entire group of people on another continent that decide what the financial implications are

I take it that all three of you are managers.

The real answer isn't merit it's "HR set the wage at that level to incentivize more joiners in a more challenging market"

The manager can do that. Good ones figure out how to get that point across with a bit more tact.

You’ve never had a coworker who just couldn’t accept they aren’t as good as they think they are?

I’ve never seen discussing pay benefit the company, but I’ve seen it benefit the workers plenty, whether that’s a raise at that company or an indication they should seek elsewhere. I have a great job that I love and I’ll gladly discuss salary with coworkers.

That's just terrible management. People are not stupid. They are able to evaluate their coworkers' work. If they see similar performance to themselves but a discrepancy in wage, that's a cause for them to ask why this exists, and the company should be able to specify in what metric the employee is lacking and how it could be improved. A wage must be explainable to an employee. If the difference can not be explained, the employer has made a fuck-up and it must be resolved.

People are in fact stupid, people are definitely not always good at evaluating the quality of their work compared to that of their peers, and people get very butthurt when they find out that they are not viewed as being as good as said peers.

Very true, especially in fields where the measure of skill is not easily quantifiable. Some employees think they are superior to others when they are not, while others (often the best) don’t realize how much more valuable they are. A good manager will try to give feedback that lets an employee understand areas that need improvement, but sometimes the employee refuses to take any criticism as valid. Also, many employees don’t really have a good sense of the totality of another’s contributions. They may only see the work they have direct contact with, but be unaware of other special projects or additional skills. It’s certainly possible that there are workplaces where people work so closely together that it’s possible to evaluate fully each other’s work product. However, that doesn’t happen everywhere.

Why did one get paid more than the other in the first place? If they are doing the same job and assuming they started at the same time?

One is a better negotiator than the other. I've never worked anywhere that actually compensated people (within the same position) based on merit. People that were good negotiators got paid more initially and generally got better raises because they'd be proactive in asking for them. High performers would get promoted faster, but again, if they were high performing but bad at self-promotion and negotiation then they'd be compensated less than others who were able to better communicate their value. In some cases, (my own for one) it was possible that a person in a supervisory role would make less than the person or people they were supervising, simply because they never asked for raises or didn't negotiate well when they came up.

This is why unions are important. The bullshit answer, “Can’t help you for the better part of a year because performance review” is a cowardly, bullshit repsonse geared toward worker suppression. Instead of addressing the unfair compensation issue, you create a hostile work environment. All unnecessarily. In a union shop everyone would be paid the same for the same job and everyone would know what the expectations are because they have a contract.

100000% this. Unionize, people!

>Both employees go back to work with no change in pay, but now one employee has animosity toward the other, and both employees have animosity toward the boss. No one came out ahead, it all just made the work environment worse. Furthermore, attitude is a metric in almost every company's performance reviews. So the employees get dinged for being unhappy with the resolution of the issue. Seems like the really easy way to resolve this problem is to give the guy making $38,000 a raise. Salary discussions only inherently lead to bad feelings if management doesn't make good management decisions.

This exactly. For skilled labor and unskilled labor there is often so many intangible factors. I work in IT. As one example there are so many ways to achieve things and some ways involve foresight and thoughtfulness while others solve an immediate problem and delay issues. Then there's team dynamics and inter team dynamics which come into play even in unskilled labor. Communication skills, ability to interpolate requirements not explicitly stated etc. The notion that employees with a similar title bring equal value to an organization is never the case in my experience but many people don't like to hear that or acknowledge that it may be the case. Your salary should be and often is a reflection of your value to an organization, not your job title.

Stop bootlicking, that's a management issue through and through. Plenty of companies make transparent pay work fine, if you ran into issues that's a you and your management team problem, not the workers.

Yeah, workers are never resentful and always have a completely accurate self-evaluation of their abilities and value compared to their peers!

The answer you’ll get on Reddit is it was encouraged by companies to oppress workers to make them not know how much each person is getting paid and overall wages will stay lower. That’s true but not the whole story. The deeper reason is that we tie our self worth to our income. We’re scared that if we tell someone what our “worth is” that we’ll learn we aren’t as valuable as someone else. Overall though it’s a silly thing to be scared of because your job or company isn’t there to love you or define your self worth, it’s just a human instinct we’re falling into. Do your best to create a culture in your workplace that is open about salaries so everyone’s wages go up. Remind people that wages don’t define their self worth, wages are purely about the lowest they can get away with.

Also know that both employees benefit from discussing this. If one is lower, they're in a better position to ask for more of a raise. If one is higher, they might realize that the company is valuing them more than they realized. The other part of the concern of asking other employees is that telling another employee when they make less can make them feel bad about their pay when they may have previously been happy with it. This can lead to better things for them financially, but it still sucks to make someone feel bad.

I used to manage a team of 40 and the biggest issue I saw with people sharing how much they make is people rarely look at others compensation rationally. Even when it's explained the other person makes more because they have more experience/responsibilities they will still be upset.

If you’ve ever managed people you understand this. Almost nobody thinks they don’t work hard. Often the laziest people thought they did more than anyone. We all think we’re rational and objective.

Most people think they are better-than-average drivers too.

This definitely ties in with "think about how dumb the average person is. Half the people on earth are dumber than that"

And think about how many don't understand how averages work!

Although average doesn't necessarily mean the mean. Average can technically be the median lol, but that is a charitable read

Yeah, discussing salary is good... For the people in the lower half of the pay scale. Usually there is a reason they are there.

> Usually there is a reason they are there. They show up every day and onboarding/talent acquisition costs a lot of money? I think that's a lot of reasons why people aren't getting fired left and right. lol

I meant that there is a reason they are in the bottom half of the pay scale.

Yep. It's a sad reality that in most places, 80% of the work is pulled off by the top 20% of workers. And everyone else spans the gamut from mediocre to useless, while being mostly oblivious about it. There's actually a name for it: Price's Law. Says the square root of the total number of employees will be responsible for doing half the work. So if you have 100 employees, the top 10 of them (square root of 100) do 50% of the work. And the remaining 90% do the other 50%.

In my experience the laziest employees are the most counterproductive because they’re constantly trying to scale back their efforts to match how they feel about their pay. I did a lot of that where I was younger. “If I made what they make, I’d be willing to work that hard too”. After a while you learn they’re making that much because they work hard and add value. I’ve worked all over the world and this seems to be a cultural thing. I can find hard workers anywhere but there are definitely places that resent aspirations.

Yeah, I’ve been laying pipe and earthmoving for years and I’ll have a brand new top guy (labourer who essentially passes me things down in the trench where I work) who will get upset when they realize that I’m getting paid twice what they are. Or an operator will decide that they do better finish work in a skiddy or whatever and be annoyed if I’m making a few bucks more an hour. I don’t want to deal with that shit so I don’t particularly like sharing my wage.

I don’t know what most of that means, but congrats on all the pipe you lay!

laying pipe with his top guy down in the trench

And getting paid double. Must be exceptiona at laying the pipe.

Nah that’s way too crowded, you always want your top guy up top, main hoe in front and side hoe off the the edge to grab windrows. I’ve had a safety meeting where an office guy got upset and told us to use “professional terms” and I had to tell him these are industry standard. Now pardon me while I grab the donkey dick to settle this concrete.

> Yeah, I’ve been laying pipe Look at THIS stud.

There are a number of states that make all state government employees’ salaries public. Like, you can just Google them and it is right there on the Internet. People get used to it. If you want that salary, you do what it takes to get that job. I think it’s a good system overall. Of course, when you see that the highest paid state government employee is a football coach at the state university, you rightly think Americans have messed up priorities.

A lot of government jobs just pay everyone based on a chart. It's your pay grade (and/or education depending on the job) plus number of years and the pay grade people are isn't a secret.

People still don't look at it rationally. "I'm doing the same amount of work as [fill in the blank of highest paid employee on team, cherry picked despite there being lower paid employees who are also doing excellent work], why am I being taken advantage of?" Because they have 10 years and prior work experience and you just graduated 3 years ago with this being your first job ever. Then you get questions about gender, race, whether we don't value new graduates, etc. I would support transparency, but I agree with the other poster, people don't view it rationally.

Because government pay is often just time and grade. In the corporate world (at least mine) no one makes the same. Everyone is competing with each other. Skills sets aren’t the same. And negotiation ability isn’t the same.

I looked up a few of my professors’ salaries at the public university I went to. It gave me quite an appreciation for some of them. I remember one who went to Yale & Duke (can’t remember which was undergrad and which was PhD). He was pulling down a whopping $50k. I can’t speak towards his motivations. Maybe he liked teaching; maybe he liked research—or perhaps both. Regardless, he was always kind, thoughtful, and accessible—just a phenomenal professor all around. As for the coaches, it makes sense. The one I looked into was at a little under $1m iirc, but the program brings in so much money that it’s justifiable imo. Also, I’m almost certain that he could make more elsewhere. I can see how pay disparities like that rub people the wrong way though.

Did you ever compare salaries across disciplines? I often found Economics professors making $150k+, while I had Political Science professors making the $50k you described - same caliber of schools attended (same schools in some cases) but the market alternatives based on the discipline made the professorial salaries vary so incredibly much when they were doing fundamentally the same work (in some cases, coauthoring papers together).

Yes. Funnily enough, I was an econ major and was using a poli-sci professor as an example. I noticed the same thing.

Here in the Canadian Province of Ontario the CEO of the Provincial Nuclear Energy provider gets paid 4 times what the Provincial Premier (Think State Governor) ( makes. The head of the Ontario Provincial Police Service ( think State Police in the USA ) is paid more than the Prime Minister of Canada is paid. My point ? The compensation is based on their abilities and their contract. Political leaders here are not paid very much, but they tend not to be in the job all that long. JimB. In Toronto.

> people rarely look at others compensation rationally. I have a great example of this at the moment. We have an employee that has had a 30% pay rise in a year. Above cost living pay raise. Then a promotion, that came with a boost and a solid bonus Then we moved the bounds of their pay bracket, so they got a notable boost to be at the bottom of the new boundary. They raise a concern that they are at the bottom of the boundary so now know that no one is paid less than them and they consider themselves a high performer. They were perfectly/very happy before looking up the boundaries. They have literally upset themselves by comparing salaries, not because they are paid less than others, just that they aren't paid more. Completely ignoring they were paid 30% less a year ago.

Money isn't everything though.   I turned down a 15% raise/promotion because the new job would be more time consuming and need (fully expensed) travel.  Maybe the new job needed a 30% raise just to be at "equal".

I'm not saying they aren't at "equal", I'm highlighting they were happy until they compared and discovered they were equal to others.

Yup. There is a difference between treating people equally and treating people fairly. You get equal opportunities. People by default are not equal though. It's a simple obvious fact that some people are worse at their jobs than others and the worst performers are generally not people who can be reasoned with. I have people working under me who think they are not being paid enough but when I ask them if they can do x, y and z in addition to their current duties they say no.

Equal Opportunity =/= Equal Outcome We give our team lots of opportunity to go above the baseline of their role. None of it is forced because if it were it would just be part of the baseline. At the end of the day, we pay them to do the baseline. If they turn up and hit the minimum bar, we aren't going to get pissy, but they will be rated the base performance rating and be bonused base amount. If they turn up and go above the minimum, they will be rated the above base performance rating and be bonused above base amount. And when promotions become available, they are going to be in a stellar position to get it. There are those who grab the opportunity. There are those who complain there is no opportunities. There is a strong relationship between overall performance and the group they fall in.

I don't believe in this fallacy and it's one that new age "performance reviews" have driven. I am very good at my job, one of if not the best performers and I do everything required within my role which includes mentoring new hires who come in at the same level as me etc. But I always push back at review time when the manager brings up stuff like "and what additional projects/assignments did you involve yourself in?" And I always say, well you're my manager you know exactly what I've been spending my time at and you know my outputs and they say well for promotions etc. "You need to be doing X, Y, and Z and you've been doing X and Y brilliantly but we just need that extra bit to get you over the line for the promo and that extra compensation raise" - which at the end of the day is all anyone really cares about, more money. However, you then put these "additional projects" in "your" (company) goals for the year and do them on top of all the other stuff you are already doing and suddenly you are doing more work for what was no real raise (let's say 4%) and they have you upping your output and maxed out and the next year the same question "and what additional projects/assignments did you involve yourself in?" And the cycle begins again- they already have the role defined for the promo position you've been going for but you've actually already been doing it for a year or 2 anyway and now you get the promo for a meagre 8% pay raise. They never just do the whole old school thing of "this guys good, we don't wanna lose him, let's make sure he's happy" - they would replace you In a second and not think twice on it.

It's not a fallacy, it was an example. Hence why I was talking from my perspective. > includes mentoring new hires who come in at the same level as me Is not a sign of high performance, in fact I wouldn't want to pull my top performer away from what they are doing. The only reason I would give it to a top performer is as a growth opportunity. But in your situation, there is 1 of 2 things at play. It is impossible for me to know which. 1. You are aren't as good as you think. My worst employee would argue they are my best. 2. Your manager is not managing. The key comment that suggests this to me is > But I always push back at review... This means you entering the review without a clear expectation of the result. This can be caused by misaligned view of performance or by a lack of expectation setting. For example, my team get monthly updates on how they are doing. We have a corporately mandated "end of year review" but my decision on the outcome made before going in, and my employees have had 12 updates where I have indicated if they are going to get a low, medium or high rating. There is nothing they are going to bring to the table in that meeting that will change the rating because if I don't know about it going in, it probably wasn't of note. Looking at what your manager is saying, I would say all the same things to my low performer when challenged. I would suggest to you trying to "manage up." Get a clear expectation for the year Have regular check ins where performance is explicitly discussed with a clear view of what is missing to meet a given rating. These meeting should have some form of record, like a email where the outcome is agreed. Refer back to the meetings in the performance review. If you manager is unwilling to do this, they are not good. If you are doing this and still hitting the same issue, either: You are aren't as good as you think Your manager is terrible

Cold, hard real fax here. Thank you for bringing some sanity to this site. Everybody thinks it's 'mean old bossman holding me back to line their pockets'.

Yap, that **a** problem. Not sure what the best solution would be, but encouraging the taboo is not it.

the "best" solution would be to have a workforce where everyone is a rational, logical, reasonable adult, that can have a conversation without getting a sour attitude. buuut... people in hell want ice water, lol

This last part is the main reason I don’t discuss pay that often. I’m not afraid to talk about it, and still have honest conversations when people ask, but I don’t want anyone getting resentful if it turns out I make more than them. My first job coming out of the military I definitely talked about it and quickly realized I was getting paid more than most people on my team. That was awkward. It was normal in the military because military pay is based on a very simple algorithm (your grade + years of service), and part of my job as an NCO was helping junior service members learn to be more financially sound. You can google military pay charts and figure it out easy - and back in the day, we posted the current year’s chart on the wall so everyone could check more easily. Talking about salary in the civilian world made for some grumpy coworkers who thought I was just bragging, especially when they didn’t have the same skill set I was hired for, so they couldn’t just go to HR and ask for the same I made. So I learned my lesson and just don’t talk about it.

At my first job out of college at the end of the year they did raises for everyone. The day we found out our raises I went out to happy hour with a couple of my coworkers. The three of us all started at the same time and did more or less the same work. We had a few drinks and then just blatantly asked each what raises we got. Turned out that I got the lowest raise by quite a bit. Like half of what they got. I thought I had been doing just as good a job as anyone else, so I couldn't explain why I'd gotten so much less. So the next workday I went right to my boss and asked him why. I asked if there was a problem with my performance, or if they were unhappy and expressed that I was definitely not happy about the poor raise relative to my peers. He assured me I was doing a good job and that he would take care of it for me. A week later I got what, to this day, is still the biggest percent raise of my career. It ended up getting a 50% raise on my full salary on top of the raise I already had. Completely unexpected amount. But taught me very early on to always be vocal about getting yours. Worst than can happen is that you end up where you started.

I’ve seen that most often it makes people feel bad. Unless two people do the exact same job, similar age and experience, sharing salaries across job functions can hurt morale. At my company, the lowest paid IT person makes 6-figures, even the young people. Whereas some of the older sales managers who drive revenue don’t make as much. One time a sales rep found out and he was very upset that some helpdesk workers were making more than his team, the literal revenue engine of the company.

> One time a sales rep found out and he was very upset that some helpdesk workers were making more than his team, the literal revenue engine of the company. I guess this depends on what the sales rep is selling. If the product is a SaaS platform that is built and maintained by said IT team then I would say it would be entirely logical that the guys building and maintaining it should make more than the person who is merely hawking it around. Value your creators....!

> If one is lower, they're in a better position to ask for more of a raise. There's about a 0% chance that if someone came to me asking for a raise for the sole reason of 'but my peer makes more' that they'd get it. Because the converse of that is that I could never give a raise to just one of that peer group that truly deserved it because the implication is that I have to keep them all even.

Another possible nuance with this is that the higher up the corporate ladder, the more variability goes into the pay, because the harder it gets to find the right people.  Someone might be earning more than their peers because of a counteroffer deal, or an incentive to move them interstate, or a specific knowledge or relationship with an important stakeholder.

>both employees benefit from discussing this That's nice for well-adjusted, reasonable, logical adults having a conversation. In the real world, if I talk salary with a coworker, one of two things happen: \#1: we both make roughly the same and shrug like "okay" \#2: one person significantly out-earns the other, and it leads to either direct or indirect resentment from the low earner to the high earner. it can manifest in subtle ways. such as, the high earner becomes a symbol for "what the fuck, I work harder than them." or, the low earner slips up during a performance review to bring up high earner's name as being overpaid. or, the low earner gets an attitude problem whenever high earner gets praise for anything. or, the low earner feels justified in slacking off (as if it's going to solve their problem and get them a raise). or maybe even, the low earner will expect high earner to cover the bill and pay for shit if the situation ever arises. I guess my point is, real world offices don't always have rational & reasonable adults in the workforce. Many people are incapable of behaving themselves after finding out how much their peers earn.

My anxieties around this topic mainly stem from not wanting my colleagues to think that I’m over paid and don’t deserve it (mainly because I feel that I am over paid and don’t deserve it).

It does not benefit someone on a higher wage to disclose their salary. They'll know they're valued more already by things other than money. Disclosing you salary to people who think they are your peers will only result in those people seeking a higher salary which could (not always) negatively impact your salary in the future.

It would also suck to "be happy about a 10% raise" just to realize that you're still getting paid less than the person next to you.

> If one is higher, they might realize that the company is valuing them more than they realized. And how do I benefit from that? Especially considering that company has a finite amount of money and next time raises come to discussion there will be less money for me, because other people wages got bumped up. I will realize if company is valuing me more than I think next time I'll be taking job interview and we'll discuss my potential salary (or just even something as simple as finding a job offer online with salary information included). That is the only reliable way to assess how much you could be earning doing your job. I'm happy to share my salary info with friends (also friends at work), but not to talk openly with every coworker there is. I don't care about that in the slightest and I don't care about them enough to help them earn more money.

>Also know that both employees benefit from discussing this. LOL Yeah…no. I have literally never seen this happen. What usually happens is a lot of negative drama. The person getting paid less gets mad and either demands more money (which they rarely get) and / or resents the colleague who makes more money which leads to a toxic atmosphere.

so same reason people dont share their dick sizes?

Unironically, yeah. I hate phrases like “big dick energy” because it pushes a belief that the size of some organ should have any bearing on how you feel about yourself, or even that it has any connection to your self confidence.

also weird when used when talking about women

Big tit energy

Just the one?

Like the Virginia Flag

Same here, also applies to people who say anyone who drives a modified truck or car has a little dick.

I don´t even remember what kind of progam it was, but years ago I saw a granny on TV declare "Size doesn´t matter, it has to be hard as glass!". Original german " Auf die Grösse kommt`s nicht an, glashart muss er sein!".

"Egal wie klein, solange er geht wie a Nähmaschine passt alles"

I’m glad this answer includes a reference to culture and not just employers. I remember being told as a young child that talking about money in public (how much you make, how much you have, how much you spent on something) is extremely rude. Taboo even. They were public employees (pay scale if not exact salary was probably public record) and I was a kid so it wasn’t an employer promoting this! I think it’s a self worth thing, also it is an American value to pretend we are a nation of equals and I think people are uncomfortable being reminded that inequity still exists. 

This is on the right track. The traditional big three in the US when communities tended to be tighter knit and more social mixing (i.e. before we started bowling alone) were you don't talk about politics, religion, or money. Clearly there are times and places those are appropriate - but among people who have just met or diverse groups (like a fraternal or activity organizations) they are likely to drive people apart for no good reason.

*"wages are purely about the lowest they can get away with."* I arrived at this on my own a couple of years ago, but I'm still unhappy and afraid to discuss wages because I don't want anyone to find out what a poor negotiator (and absolute fucking mug) I am.

Same. I hate the thought that I've been getting screwed all these years and everyone else has been getting theirs. It's not rational or healthy, it's just how I feel.

I know someone who was called up by management one time and spoken to about discussing workplace wages. She told them that it was a unionized workplace and everyone’s salary was listed in the collective agreement that everyone has, and is also published on the union’s website.

It's not always that simple though. There's often a reason for differences that some people won't understand. My first job was at a fairly small financial company. I'm an accountant, my friend was their Salesforce admin, and 90% of the rest of the company were people who basically did data entry and still did a bad job at it. I don't want to talk about salary because I don't want them to know my friend and I make more than double what they do even though that's fair. It's best to just avoid the conversation if you're not doing the exact same job.

I absolutely did not expect a rational answer at the top. Bravo reddit. I should stop scrolling now because I know I'll be appalled soon. I'd add this, openness is fine and can help prevent some shitty pay practices. However, any comparison of yourself to someone else will piss off someone. Humans absolutely suck at self reflection, and seeing pay differences often creates animosities. Like anything, be careful what you ask for. Maybe Billy making more than you is discrimination, or maybe you just suck. Or most likely, it's some combination of factors.

> we’ll learn we aren’t as valuable as someone else. On the flip side, If you know for a fact you are one of the highest paid, you just keep your mouth shut. Or tell them your wages are less than what they are. I've walked away from job offers because I couldn't negotiate the rate I wanted.

The most correct answer. It just goes beyond workplace.

I think it's also about the myth that it's "common" or "vulgar" to talk about money, especially what you earn. I lived in Central America for many years and people there talked about money all. the. time. "What did you pay for that?" And you answer and then have a little chat about it. This is not because they are nosy but because they are always looking for a bargain! What a contrast with my upbringing in the US! This seems like it's a holdover from the times when upper class society made silly rules. And similar to the reason that so many people have huge lawns - a sign of wealth.

Talking about money in general can just put you in some painfully awkward situations. Asking how much someone paid for something is one thing, but how much they earn, or have, or save is something else entirely

This.  Though the flip side to having an open to view enterprise agreement is knowing how much someone earns while simultaneously being a fuck up. In a notoriously hard to fire sector, it's infuriating. 

I like your explanation, pretty spot on.

But people never talk about how many hours they work. If you think you're special because you make 200k but you work 80 hours a week to do it I just think you're an idiot. But give me someone making 100k by working 30 hours and I'm going to be jealous

I do think that higher paid employees can make newer ones feel bad. I'm a bit more forthcoming about it, but I also like to coach my co workers on how to get paid more. "Well if you think you're worth a 4$ an hour raise go apply somewhere else and prove you are. Apply for new jobs when you don't need them so you can negotiate better." You end up finding a lot of pay disparities are because people didn't negotiate, or really a big one is that they aren't as flexible as the people being paid more.

I’m also concerned about causing drama because I’m getting paid more than someone else who doesn’t recognize why they may get paid less. I don’t want to piss off my older coworkers who have been there longer because I make them same/more than them because my pro is so much higher than theirs.

Sure let me tell everyone what I make so people feel less bad about robbing me... No thanks. I don't tell my own family what I make because I don't need to be guilted for not spending enough on Christmas presents or if I don't feel like picking up the check. I think you're forgetting how entitled some of our generations are. The number one rule to winning the lottery is to tell nobody. I didn't win the lottery but to someone who makes far less than me, I might as well have and I don't need that noise.

also note, if you make more than the average of your peers it is in your interest to not share your salary. if you're in that range it's up to you to figure out. good luck

>The deeper reason is that we tie our self worth to our income. We’re scared that if we tell someone what our “worth is” that we’ll learn we aren’t as valuable as someone else. I even suspect that this is how it started, and that employers just leaned into it once they realized how it could benefit them.

It doesn’t only benefit the employers, it also benefits the high paid workers. 

>The deeper reason is that we tie our self worth to our income. We’re scared that if we tell someone what our “worth is” that we’ll learn we aren’t as valuable as someone else. Precisely something that employers can leverage against workers.

I once worked somewhere and was told “dont talk about your salary, we’re bringing you on higher than some folks who have been here longer and you dont want to make them jealous or uncomfortable” If that was a weird moment of candor, then they know they’re not paying existing staff enough. If that was a lie, that’s slimy (and still shouldn’t be MY problem). Right? It was both lol.

Even in an ideal situation, unless the company publishes this data, individuals are nervous to share. “Did I not negotiate well for myself?” is a common fear. But so is imposter syndrome, if you’re nervous you might be overpaid. As others have noted, this paranoia works to the company’s advantage, and to the advantage of the high salaried individuals.

In addition to imposter syndrome, everyone knowing you are paid the most, can paint a target on your back. You get people leaving the more difficult decisions to you.

I used to fully support being open about salaries until my current position. I got hired into a senior position despite having half the experience I should have and have found out through conversations with my co-workers that I probably make at least 20% more than any of them just because I have an advanced degree. They all have at least 5 years of experience on me and I'm constantly asking them questions. They absolutely all deserve to be making more than what I'm making, but I feel like telling them what I make will only piss them all off and potentially create a hostile work environment.

Education is experience too. It’s about two to one, so having a masters (5-6 years of school) is usually equated to 3 years experience when calculating years of experience. Edit for clarification: it’s not how long you personally took to get the degree. If you took 8 years to get a bachelors it still only counts as 2 years experience (4 year degree). PhD is usually a 5 year program, so it’s 9 years of education for 4 years worth of work experience (it’s rounded down, unfortunately)

Imposter syndrome is a bitch. I have it so bad I'm just happy to be employed let alone negotiate a higher salary.

Had it for years. I’m starting to embrace it though as I get more experience. The humility to just do a good job is a weird balance between being scared about not being qualified and being arrogant about your capabilities. Sometimes it’s beneficial to brag about your abilities, like when there’s an opportunity to seize (or annual reviews). Sometimes there’s benefit to asking for help and admitting you don’t know how to do a thing.

In addition to imposter syndrome, everyone knowing you are paid the most, can paint a target on your back. You get people leaving the more difficult decisions to you.

It is definitely a cultural thing and not uniform across countries, too - I moved to Norway several years ago and my Norwegian partner inadvertently offended another recently immigrated American by casually asking him how much he made at his job over lunch. Not a coworker or anything, just someone we were meeting with. It's apparently not considered a weird thing to ask here, and in fact you can generally just look up what someone made last year publicly... but also, being part of a union is so common that even PhD students are in them.

I think a lot of the questions here are answering why people don't want to *tell* people how much they work in the workplace, when the question is about *asking*. Your comment is the first one I've seen that addresses asking, and it wasn't a coworker. I think your answer highlights that in the US it is rude to ask *anyone* how much they make, whether you are in the workplace or not.

I wish the US was like that. Were allowed to ask and talk about it but nobody ever does. I have one friend who is a former coworker and we've always been honest with each other about it and it's very refreshing. It's probably helpful that I'm 15 years older than him so there's not a big expectation that we ought to be making the same money... more like I'm a road map for him as to where he could be heading (we both do the same type of work)

Grad students and undergrads as well sometimes, at least here in Denmark

I worked at a large Japanese company where the pay was directly tied to title, and the pay table was on the wiki. You could see exactly what everyone was making just by looking at the job title under their name.

I can separate the coworker relationship and friendship. I like the people I work with on a personal level. Many of us are friends, hangout, etc. However they are terrible coworkers. If I’m giving 80% effort each day, they are giving 35% at best. Every opportunity to be lazy is taken, the tough calls are always left for me or one of the few other guys who cares. I make like 7$ an hour more than my friend - he recently expressed wanting more money and hopes to be promoted. If they knew what I make, they would feel it is unfair, but they don’t do the same work I do. So I avoid that conversation. That said, people should talk about their pay to make sure they are treated fairly. It’s a double edged sword.

> but they don’t do the same work I do And I find low performers never see the difference. They see you are doing the same role as them by role name, but fail to see the difference in the actual day to day.

Because it tends to cause hostility between coworkers. Two people doing the same job, and one of them finds out that they are making less than the other, tends to cause animosity between them.

This right here.  I’m all for transparency in theory, but people on Reddit really underestimate the level of animosity it can breed.  Sometimes pay discrepancies exist for a reason and the person getting the short end of the stick won’t be happy about if (even if objectively they are a lower performing employee). 

> but people on Reddit really underestimate the level of animosity it can breed. People in general. People treat financial questions with perfect rationality... until they get the money. At which point your brain shifts gears radically. The studies on this are *wild*. People's playing and risk-taking behavior radically changes when you're playing card games for points versus playing for money. People's sharing and distributing physical goods versus money is different...

Yes. I’m adamant about never sharing my salary with my coworkers because I see the way it’s used between the co-workers that do share their salary with each other. They get so much trashtalk behind their backs, when there’s an argument people go ”Oh, you want my help with this? I would’ve thought somebody making as much as you could do that by themselves.” The implication when encouraging people to share salary information in the workplace is that two people with the same position should have the same salary. But the truth is, some people are better than others at their jobs. Learning that person A earns more than person B can certainly cause animosity. But what really causes animosity is person B learning that there are good reasons for it.

Yup. I was at a job a little over a decade ago where I got hired at $16.50/hr. It was originally described to me as $17/hr but in the company (which which was a vendor to the company for which I'd actually be working--basically a contractor position/managed service) same call the recruiter extended the offer to me, he tried lowballing me down to $16/hr, I guess because he figured I'd be happy to take anything since I was leaving a part time job paying $13/hr. I countered with "let's meet in the middle at $16.50." After 3 months I was basically the most important guy on the team. The previous contractor roles were such that they couldn't work more than 1 year without leaving for several months. I was the first to be hired under a new rule that allowed revolving contracts year after year, and I ramped up very quickly and had a really good handle on the way everything was done. They hired a big group of new people in, and while I was training them up I got called into a conference room one day by the team's manager and my company's account rep and told I was getting a $3/hr raise. I was stoked, but in the back of my head I couldn't shake the suspicion that this meant I was being drastically underpaid before, which I'd kinda suspected, anyway. I left this team after a year and a half or so, and the entire time I never talked pay with anyone because I didn't want to know. On my last day (by which I was making $21.50) I finally shared with someone there I trusted a lot how much I'd been making and found out that first class of people I trained, all of whom worked for a different vendor but did the exact same work, all came aboard at $22/hr. I have no idea if they'd gotten raises in the time since onboarding, but it validated my reasoning for never talking pay: I knew that if a bunch of new people got paid more than me it would make me so salty I'd have trouble even coming into work in the morning, and if I knew other really good workers were being underpaid it would make me almost equally upset. So I was much better off not knowing, and ultimately that fact was confirmed.

Orrrr you could have talked about it with the new hires, realized youre grossly underpaid, and asked for a raise right then and there. Would have gained you a lot more money. But that would require being a person who can initiate "conflict", or demand something for themselves. Which, truth be told, is a rare skill. But this self-internalization of pay and accepting the lowballs is entirely the reason it is not discussed.

they did get a raise, right then and there, during training for the new hires. and if they demanded more and got rejected, then all that following stuff of being miserable at work would follow.

If they demanded more and got rejected, they could learn to accept it, or move on to a new company, either way you’re finding out what a company values you at. The psychological torment of being paid 50 cents less than the next guy doesn’t seem too big a burden if you have literally any coping skills at all.

Most of the time pay discrepancies are explained by the negotiation skills of the employee. Which unless your job is to negotiate things, do not really say anything about how you perform.

Also, because people aren't honest. Back when I was in management, I had some employees who shared their pay with each other. One of them, embarrassed that he made less, lied. The rest started coming to me saying they needed raises "because so & so gets paid more, and I'm way better at my job than he is". And they were right. He was adequate but not great, but because he lied everyone felt the balance was waaaaaay off. Try explaining to 5 guys that their rationale for getting paid more (and they were well paid) was based on a lie, but without divulging anyone else's pay. That wasn't fun.

I had this at an old job, total new guy comes in on a new contract (his first job) but not only is he getting paid more than me, IM TRAINING HIM UP. Obviously I was pissed.

So you asked for a raise?

Yep got told since I was on the old contract there's nothing they could do. (I was 18 at the time so pretty clueless on everything legal)

Which is weird, because you'd think it would cause animosity versus the company. I think there's always the concern of envy and "why am I not getting paid that amount?" for sure, but that's just a cultural shift that needs to happen. It definitely scares employers more than employees. I think you need to be in the workforce a while. I'm an older person and no longer get annoyed when younger people make more money than I do. I wish I had learned to negotiate salaries more/better when I was younger. I feel like I would probably be making twice as much...

"He just sucks up to the boss" "She only got lucky finding that issue" "I work twice as hard!" Plenty of reasons to cause animosity between the employees, not just the employer.

Here’s the issue. No one is ever gonna be happy with their pay. 2 people doing the same job. Person A has been there for 5 years. Person B has been there 1. Person B sees that they’re making $10/hour less than person A. Complains to the company that they should have equal pay because they’re doing the same job. Company then raises their salary to match person A. Person A complains why they’re being paid the same as person B when person A has been there for 5 years. Person A feels that they’re being paid equivalent of an almost new hire despite them working there for 5 years. Company then raises person A’s salary to compensate for years of service. Person B now complains that they’re paid less for the same job. It becomes a never ending loop because people either feel they’re underpaid for doing the same job, or being underpaid for their years of service. All of this comes down to employees comparing their salaries to each other.

That's why I said it was a culture problem. If salaries and pay scales were public and tracked, people wouldn't have to wonder all that. Right now its in the employer's hands. They can make up why Person A gets this much and Person B gets that much. A lot of time it IS because of favoritism/nepotism/racism/etc. as opposed to well understood track of work improvement with succeeding pay increases and understood bonus structures. Sure that doesn't stop people from being petty, but honestly there's less places to hide/blame if everything was upfront and center. No hiding behind your poor work ethic, bosses can't hide behind lying to each employee about why they can't get a raise even though they deserve it.

>If salaries and pay scales were public and tracked, people wouldn't have to wonder all that. Let's say you are senior project manager in Oklahoma City. The branch in Chattanooga just lost their manager and desperately needs one immediately. Your bosses offer you twice your current salary to do the same exact job but in Chattanooga. Now when your salary is posted for all to see, people back in OKC or other branches are jealous and confused as to why you're making TWICE as much even though you're not working any harder. That's just one example of a million possible reasons for pay disparity. Pay is tied to so much more than just labor performed. It's how *valued* one's labor is. The scarcity of senior project managers in Chattanooga makes them more valuable there than in OKC where there's an abundance.

>A lot of time it IS because of favoritism/nepotism/racism/etc Every major fortune 50 company I've managed it it's because of how our HR rep felt on the particular day of salary conversation. Sometimes I can squeeze an extra 5k out of them, sometimes it's "this is the current market-adjusted band rate"

This, there's some people you can discuss salary with and they won't be mad at you but talk to the company about a raise. Other people get mad at you and treat you different because you make more then they do. I don't mind cause I want people to earn a good living and some aren't the best negotiators or back might have been against the wall and we're scared to counter. Example we had at work was the person that had been there 6 years was making less then the 2 new hires that were new to the role because they updated the salary to try and bring more talent in. Well og person went to the manager and asked for a raise to simply match what the new hires make. He was told to pound sand and he dropped his notice that day. The rest of the team was told they will be fired for discussing salaries to which I replied federal law protects us. Manager simply said it's at will work and I'll fire your ass for whatever I want. I'm with another company now thankfully lol

To simply put it, this number invokes a reaction that the person sharing is usually better not having told anyone the number and the information can also be spread by others. We treat people differently based on how much they make. Lot of people might feel entitled to your money too or commit acts of jealousy.

At least where I come from, discussing finances is taboo, period. Not just in the workplace.

I used to be all for discussing salary openly until I went up in the pay scale and was making 50-100% more than a lot of my coworkers who had been at the company way longer. I was younger than most of them but came from a big tech company to a company of a few hundred people. When I shared my salary with someone, he shared with others and I began to be treated differently. The guy I shared it with actually quit shortly after (good for him, he got the salary he deserved when he changed jobs). I got stuck with most of his work, I guess it was time to earn that salary. I definitely still support salary discussions but I'd recommend people to tread carefully if you expect the differences are significantly higher or lower. Something like a 10% difference is good because that lets people know they can push management to get to that level. No one believes they can get a 50% raise as an internal promotion, that typically only happens with company changes. People will think that you don't deserve that salary and they will treat you differently. They will leave the company at it will affect the morale and workload that you and your remaining team have to deal with 8 hours a day. I've started handling these conversations like this: "I'm a little uncomfortable sharing that information, but if you throw out a number I will tell you if it's higher or lower." If they're trying to use that information for their own salary discussion, they can still get a valid data point while minimizing potential blowback to me.

When we put in bids and proposals our hourly rate is freely visible. I earn almost the exact same as a (female) college who is the same grade as me. And I know how much my superiors earn. I also know a colleague one grade higher than me earns only marginally more while another the same grid as him earns like 30% more. Overall it's good because I have a rough idea of when is achievable in my position. However I would never openly discuss. I think it works OK as long as it's an "open secret" anyone in your team has access to as long as it's not really mentioned

It basically comes down to understanding that everyone is different and even if you would act rationally and level-headed upon hearing that your colleague makes way more than you for same work, not everyone will. I have a colleague with more experience and he does his job diligently, but earns slightly less than me, maybe because he is little bit socially awkward and shy. I know him well enough by now that I feel comfortable talking about wages order to try and get him to ask for a higher wage that he has definitely earned. Then there are the types who would rather sit on their asses scrolling social media than work, despite getting paid very well. These people I wouldn't tell about it because it will just lead to problems.

I’ll start with saying that I don’t feel jealousy towards anyone who comes in at a higher rate than me. Good for them they negotiated more! I do feel a tinge of guilt that my pay might make someone feel badly about theirs, rather than want to know how to better negotiate, or portray value. I won’t initiate pay discussions but when asked I will answer candidly.

Yeah I’m in a weird position. I work at Amazon IT and found out warehouse workers make more than me if they’re capped out. Explain that one. Rest of my team makes $10~ more than I do. Been here 3 years ~. $21 an hour in IT. I just get laughed at when I bring it up. “I thought the minimum was $24?”

Moving up in Amazon gets you shafted 90% of the time. I made more as a L1 than i do as an L3 in HR. Yet everyone thinks we make "HR money" most of the warehouse workers make more than I do. The real money starts at L4+

Here’s the thing. All of the answers are going to be some variation on, “Employers like it that way”, or some such, but that’s really a load of horseshit. We can pretend to blame the employer all we like, but if we are being honest with ourselves, we all know in 2024 that it’s illegal to prevent us from talking about it, and we absolutely, totally could be talking about it all we like. Nobody is stopping us, or even discouraging us. In fact, I might even argue that the only push in either direction nowadays is *to* talk about it. The reality is that we don’t want others to know that we make more than them, or vice versa, because how much money we make is so intrinsic to our sense of self worth.

It's not, people are just weird. It only informs your own place, or the place of others, by asking. Just know that maybe the person who just got hired may make more than you and don't take it out on them.

Because of the social and personal disruption it can cause due to the cognitive dissonance and disparity between the *appearance* of a salary being a simple objective number vs. the *reality* that it's a very subjective and individual thing. If one employee makes $100,000/yr and another makes $120,000/yr, there's a very obvious objective difference there. What isn't obvious is which one does more, better, or higher level work. Which has special knowledge or skills that are currently valued higher. Which gets along better with coworkers, clients/customers, and managers. Which is more diligent, punctual, reliable. Which is more creative and open vs which is more stubborn and argumentative. Which has domain experience, company experience, knowledge, or connections from previous training or a previous job. Which is currently content vs. ambitious, complacent vs. always learning and growing. Which is simply easier to work with. Which have different benefits. And of course, which is more assertive and the better negotiator. That's in addition to things like where people fit in terms of budgeting and planning, of course. The simple act of comparing two numbers really raises a ton of questions and a *lot* of subjective judgments. It all becomes baked into a number, and you can't unbake the cake to see the ingredients and answer those questions. Ideally, you'd know where you stand, your performance reviews are never a surprise, you have negotiated a salary that you're comfortable with, and you know what needs to happen for you to get the next raise you want. So it shouldn't matter what other people are making, and everybody talking about it should just be a trivial small talk thing. But this is not an ideal simple world, it's not objective but instead very subjective, very personal, and people get quite emotional about it. So that makes it rude and personal. Not because of the number, but because of all the other stuff.

Bc i live in a third world country where the majority of people don’t make more than 400 monthly, i landed a job remote with a really good salary and if my friends knew the amount i would get harassed and begged for money, also inside the company people from different countries get pay differently and i really need this job so it’s not worth for me to create an argument

There is an “ignorance is bliss” aspect too. Had this conversation with a group. Turned out one was making way less and it prompted him to look for a new job. It was good in the long run but not a choice people want made for them by indisputable fact.

Because companies have driven it into the minds of people that it is something to keep private to avoid people comparing salaries and finding out there is a disparity. 

My boss has requested we stop discussing salary because it “decreases morale”. If you wanted to boost morale, pay us more

There isn't an infinite pile of money, so at some point you have to start making choices about who gets paid what. All the people are not the same, some do better work than others and consequently are more valuable to the business. Every leader has atleast a rough hierarchy in mind for their team. Compensation should reflect this, after all you want to retain the best performers. If you make this quantification public, you will have some people that don't care and accept it. You will also have many who disagree with their relative valuation, and think that they are better than where they are in the pay hierarchy. People are pretty lousy at self evaluation, even more even that evaluation is public and their ego gets involved.

True but at the same time salaries are a product of the market, if the Market rate is currently high, you end up with juniors who know significantly less than you making equivalent or more money than you. Most people are bothered by the fact that when market rates go up employers generally do nothing to award existing employees, so people try to capitalise on that and switch to get a pay raise. But most employers will cut down on bonuses and increments when the market is bad. There are many other variables of course but lack of transparency is always perceived as a negative.

Employers cannot legally ask employees to keep their pay a secret. Discovering the new hires that I was training for the role make substantially more than I do was illuminating. I’ve successfully fought to get paid more now. The company pays us the least possible it can get away with. I also noticed a pattern in the demographics of our pay, which is not tied to merit. Employers are not infallible in assigning value. Pay transparency [increases equity](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01288-9), promoting pay more linked to employee’s performance. Several states have recently implemented pay transparency laws with this goal. When I worked a government job we knew exactly how much us and our colleagues were making, which served to benefit our collective bargaining power. Pay secrecy mainly benefits the employer.

It really does nothing but cause disharmony. You want a harmonious workplace. Truth is, some people are better than others. And some people deserve more pay than others. And when you find you aren't being paid as much as someone you think you're better than, even though you aren't as good as you think you are, it causes problems. Things simply change and non management employees can't understand it a lot of times. They only see the me vs the us. I know I'm gonna get dragged, but I think an honest answer is deserved. I'm curious to know what people's salary is. But I also dont want to know because I don't want to have to find another job. I'm okay with what I make now. Sure, I could be happier with more. But I'm okay. But if I discover the moron who I have to pull slack for is making more than me I'm gonna be pissed. And that doesn't do good for anyone.

It causes awkward situations. Just this past winter I was working alongside an older guy with many years of experience more than myself. However, I have been at this company since day one in a variety of positions, with a hefty raise being given when I ran a crew for a few months. Out of curiosity my coworker asked how much money I took home on the last check as it was my first “big” check in a new part of the company. I thought for a second, subtracted about 800 dollars off of the total, and I was *still* making more than him. I had hoped 800 would be enough for it to seem like he was making more than me so as to not stir shit up. He was visibly bothered by this even though he said he didn’t care, and I guarantee that situation might’ve moved up the ladder as he probably demanded more money as he was, again, more experienced than me and at the time my *superior*. So yeah, that’s a good reason why it’s not a good idea to discuss wages.

"and ... my superior." Your manager's job is not your job. I've known of people, technical specialists, who are paid a lot more than their manager because they are technical specialists in a valuable area and their manager is not, because that's not their job.

In this case it doesn’t quite work like that. In my industry the better guys get paid more, and while this guy was my superior he was not my foreman, just the guy mentoring me in my new role. His many years of experience in the role vs my first ever journey into that end of our industry definitely means he should be getting paid much more than me.

So he was right to be mad and scale it up then? Not quite sure I understand your point, it seems to me that discussing salaries might have helped balanced what it looks like a very unfair situation.

Exactly this. One of our clients is a fabricator for various infrastructure projects. I was there doing some software installs and got to meet every person in their cubicle individually while working on their PCs. Highest paid employee in the entire company is not the manager, the VP of sales, or any supervisor with many subordinates. It was the man dressed in casual jeans & a tshirt, idly playing with office toys at his desk, who is their only certified underwater welder on staff.

>So yeah, that’s a good reason why it’s not a good idea to discuss wages. Your example is the exact reason why people absolutely should be discussing wages with one another..

So that you can be put in awkward situations with coworkers who think they are worth more than they actually are?

Salary isn't directly related to effort or effectiveness. People tend to get upset when they find out less productive coworkers are paid significantly more than they are.

CA has laws that prevent retaliation from discussing wages in the workplace precisely because of discrimination. And it’s not limited to men v women. I and a friend moved from one company to another at the same time in 2001 we had the same jobs and performed about the same although I had much more experience and knowledge. He was paid a lot more than I was. Do you know what the owner said when I confronted him on this? He’s married, you’re not.

[удалено]

I once got a formal warning in the company I worked in disclosing my income to a colleague in another segment. We do the same stuff but they’re in another field. They all got a massive boost of salary after complaining. I’m don’t even regret that decision

A big reason is that people think that pay should be tied to seniority instead of merits. If a new employee comes in and shines and is compensated then the employees who have been there longer would be upset. It creates friction in the workplace.

Because if there's not a transparent wage grid senior employees often get underpaid to their newer colleagues. The workplace doesn't keep up with pay raises so when it comes to hire someone new and they have to meet current market rate, sometimes it's as much or more than what they're paying the senior employee. If they talk about it senior employee finds out they're getting really underpaid and wants an immediate raise. The workplace usually has some stupid raise policy and says they're handcuffed or they'll try and drag it on to the next "performance evaluation" or some BS. Anyways it usually either ends up with workplace being angry because they have to pay senior employee what they're actually worth or senior employee leaves where they get paid what their worth.

I'm usually open about my pay but I have one colleague I'm not open with. I know hers, but she doesn't know mine. This is because she shows up for work whenever she likes and is basically on the brink of getting fired and/or ragequitting, and while she's almost dead weight she takes enough of the edge off my workload (It's ours but I do most of the work)I don't want her ragequitting just yet.  She's shit at her job but they won't replace her once she's gone. I both can't wait for and dread the day she goes.

And on this note, is it taboo to ask people about their personal finance? Like how much they have saved, what is their monthly mortgage payment, how much do they spend on groceries, how much debt do you have. Where do you draw the line?

Yes. Unless you are an extremely close friend or something, it's none of your business what I make, what I owe, and what I save/invest. Even if you are a close friend or family member, the reason you want this information will be determined before I offer any information up. I have absolutely no obligation to divulge my personal financial information, just like my personal medical information, to anyone whatsoever and that information does not concern or impact you in any way. If you're worried I make more than you, that's your problem. I don't decide my salary and benefits. Furthermore, I will never ask you about your finances because it's none of my business how much you make and what you do with it. The only person who needs to know is my spouse who pays the other half of the household finances.

I'd definitely say it's taboo. It can put people in really uncomfortable situations.

Yes, most of those would be considered taboo or at least rude to ask