Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

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Shredder
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by Shredder »

I feel better not knowing where I stand but ignorance is bliss.
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LowER
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by LowER »

Yes - with my direct "same job" peers only though.
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Wricha
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by Wricha »

I think it is interesting that most posts say absolutely no; yet they know what their peers make? OP has a pretty good handle on what others are making. It's been years since I was a W-2 person but my guess everyone who wants to know has a pretty good idea what others make,
68ShelbyGT500KR
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by 68ShelbyGT500KR »

No Discussion with anyone of my co-workers with my pay----and I don't care about their pay.

It would cause issues. I tend to work (as a verb) instead of being at work expecting a paycheck for doing the minimal amount of work.
I have more responsibility and look to advance up to get more pay which has resulted in a higher hourly rate. Others that do the minimal would expect to make as much as me though they don't have any drive or ambition to go anywhere. They want the money but don't want to work for it....

...and if you tell one person, you are subject to the can of worms to be let out and everybody will know.
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munemaker
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by munemaker »

I have seen this and even been involved in it early in my career, and have never seen anything good come from it. It creates dissatisfaction, jealousy and feelings of superiority, and undermines the work environment. I recommend not going there.

It is a different situation for public employees where salaries are public record or union employees where salaries are determined by a formula. There are web sites where you can look up most federal employee salaries and public school employee salaries in PA and NJ (probably many other states too), although they lag about a year behind. I don't see a problem for these categories of employees discussing salaries.
leonard
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by leonard »

So, the consensus is that the labor market is the one market that works better with less information disseminated.

How exactly does a market with less information - when more easily available "sharing" was happening - make any sense to the people that have to bargain with employers and set prices in that market - the employees?
Leonard | | Market Timing: Do you seriously think you can predict the future? What else do the voices tell you? | | If employees weren't taking jobs with bad 401k's, bad 401k's wouldn't exist.
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Qtman
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by Qtman »

Yes, transparency is good.
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dm200
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Discussing/revealing salary with others/coworkers

Post by dm200 »

[Thread merged into here --admin LadyGeek]

While discussing/revealing your salary/compensation to others, such as coworkers, may not be a good idea - an employer may not prohibit such actions - according to the NLRB http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/29/157 and this court case http://www.scribd.com/doc/214777582/Fle ... ics-v-NLRB .
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jeffyscott
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Re: Discussing/revealing salary with others/coworkers

Post by jeffyscott »

My employer will soon be putting my pay (as well as every other employee's pay) on the internet. I guess it is not enough that the newspaper and several other sources already do this, with a lag of about 18 months.
TejasPete
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by TejasPete »

I'm in the military so everybody knows what everybody they work with makes because it's a set payscale on rank and years in service. I don't discuss the sum of my investments except when it is someone I am close with and am trying to get them to start investing and living within their means. It can be eye opening to explain to someone who makes the exact same salary and is in debt that with some minor life changes they can easily invest.
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by LadyGeek »

FYI - I merged a similar thread (dm200) into here.
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Petrocelli
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by Petrocelli »

Only if you make more money than they do.
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Novine
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by Novine »

For those who believe ignorance is bliss, even companies with reputations for valuing their employees apparently engage in shady behavior when it comes to employee wages.
buckstar
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by buckstar »

I think this is a vestige of paternalistic corporate America - I'd be willing to bet that within generation it won't be as taboo as it is now to discuss salaries. I work in a medium sized partnership (physician), and we follow the "eat what you kill" formula. In all honesty, knowing what everyone makes helps motivate the junior guys to work harder. In a previous position, I worked in an academic practice and our Chairman had a "formula" for salaries based on clinical productivity, seniority, academic productivity and a peer-review ranking. We would all sit around a big conference table and openly discuss our salaries - again, if you weren't happy with your salary you could work harder or leave. Count me as a firm believer in transparency.
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dm200
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by dm200 »

Right out of college in the late 60's, my first job was with a very, very large corporation that, during those years, hired large numbers of new employees. Not knowing any better, since there were quite a few of us newly hired in a training program - we freely exchanged salary information. Soon after, we learned of that company's "culture" of salary "confidentiality".
Dandy
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by Dandy »

As an employee I never discussed my salary or bonus with other people except my wife. No peers, no co workers, no friends, no relatives - nobody. I never saw it having positive results. Never wanted other people's envy or pity. I never wanted to know what anyone else made. Not my business. To me it just leads to nothing positive.

As a member of management I preferred people didn't discuss their comp with others. While they are certainly free to do so. It leads to a lot of frustrated people. People are often the worst judges of their performance/potential vs peers. They tend to overweight their strengths and underweight their flaws. When a frustrated employee comes into your office and asks why is John making more than me. You really can't get too involved in John's performance or compensation, you can only really discuss the frustrated employees performance in detail. Often the differences are not objective/measurable i.e. attitude, potential, creativity, teamwork, etc.

On the other hand when employees discuss their compensation it exposes any management favoritism or other mismanagement even if it is often a biased view of those making less. For good management it is an annoyance for bad management it is a fear.
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markenx
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by markenx »

Only discuss with coworkers that I value as friends, trying to be constructive (eg what you did to get there, etc).

My best advice though is ask friends in other companies with similar positions. You may discover a new world of money that way :)

Also, for megacorps, check glass door.com
DDM
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by DDM »

At my old job it was actually in the employee handbook that your pay rate was not to be shared with others. This was a service company with lots of hourly employees (non-union).

In general I agree with Dandy. Allowing people to discuss it among themselves would usually lead to problems. I had a guy who transferred in from another state because his wife wanted to move closer to her family. He was a CDL certified driver in his old position, they are paid a premium compared to lateral (non-driver) positions, so he was going to be making several dollars an hour more than the other staff under me (the position was in our distribution center and so no driving). Two things would happen if the folks were to compare pay. First there would be questions about why he was being paid more and even after you explain it there are folks who would still feel cheated and wonder why he's so special that he got to keep his higher rate (for a bunch of "adults" some folks can be very childish - I have stories). Second was that since this person's pay was so far above the pay range for his new position he wasn't going to get the same percentage pay hike as his peers. This second part was pretty much my doing with the full support of my superiors and HR.

I should explain that they way our company awarded raises is that the corporate office would determine what percent the pay raise would be that year. This was applied across the board (though I couldn't tell you how high up this was applied). As a supervisor/manager this became your raise budget. If the raise was 2.5% and you wanted to give someone more than that, then it was literally rob Peter to pay Paul. Seems unfair but that was the way it was. While I was an hourly employee I enjoyed several above the norm raises and never realized the cost until I moved into management later.

Yes, some managers can abuse the secrecy but that's a corporate culture thing. I worked at a place that had good culture. My decisions were not made in a vacuum, my superior and HR both reviewed the pay raises I assigned in order to assure fairness. Not everyone does this so I felt lucky to have worked at a place that cultivated such a structure.
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by jjbiv »

Why would you allow the employee to keep his old rate of pay if he chose to move in to a different position which did not require the skills for which he was paid a premium in his last position? This seems like exactly the management behavior that would be made more difficult if salaries were transparent. Why should his new peers not be upset they are doing the same job and being paid less? If they are all equally productive, the employer should be paying them equally.
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by jackholloway »

leonard wrote:So, the consensus is that the labor market is the one market that works better with less information disseminated.

How exactly does a market with less information - when more easily available "sharing" was happening - make any sense to the people that have to bargain with employers and set prices in that market - the employees?
Not quite.

The consensus seems to be that there are two stable states - public sharing as the military, many universities, and virtually all municipalities do, and no sharing, as most companies do. Partial sharing where a small number of salaries are public is not a stable state, and people have attested to the human cost when a highly paid employee makes their salary public in an environment where that is not the norm.

The transition is expensive, and despite what you imply, the cost is not borne only by the employer. Consider, managers would plan for a number of weeks to transition just their own team, and during the time when they are doing that, they are not working on project planning, career management, or project acquisition. In general, compensation is at least half emotional, so the employees below the line are typically not going to feel that they earned their below average compensation unless prepped, and that preparation takes time.

The question comes down to what you want your leadership working on. If the organization is low trust, and salary is a big factor, then it is the right thing for them to fix. The cost of transition will hopefully be repaid by the increased productivity of a high trust environment.
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by DDM »

jjbiv wrote:Why would you allow the employee to keep his old rate of pay if he chose to move in to a different position which did not require the skills for which he was paid a premium in his last position? This seems like exactly the management behavior that would be made more difficult if salaries were transparent. Why should his new peers not be upset they are doing the same job and being paid less? If they are all equally productive, the employer should be paying them equally.
Ah, but upset at whom?

Back in the late 70's when I was in high school I got a job as an usher at a neighborhood movie theater. It was a small place with one screen that ran 50 cent matinees and $1.00 shows at night. I was being paid minimum wage which at the time was about $1.80/hour (too long ago to remember the correct amount but it was less than $2.00).

One night before we opened the doors we employees were talking amongst ourselves and I noticed one of the girls who worked the concession stand was visibly angry with me. I hardly knew her (this was during my first week on the job). I ended up asking her why she was mad at me and she proceeded to tell me that she found out I was getting full minimum wage while she was being paid student wage which was 85% of minimum. Small businesses were allowed this rate under state law and could pay a certain number of students hired at this rate. This was the first time I had ever heard of this pay rate and others confirmed that they, too were paid that rate. I was clueless as this was my first ever job.

The pay differential was not based on position as ushers and concessions were both paid each rate. I think it just depended on when you were hired whether they were allowed another person at the lower rate. If not then you got the full minimum wage.

Was it proper for her to be angry with me? No. I had no control over the starting wage much less knowledge of different rates. I was 17 and knew nothing. Yet the employees compared pay and the manifestation of the anger was directed at the employee. We were all high school kids and nobody was told not to discuss pay. She stayed resentful towards me the whole time. You never know how people will react.
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by AlohaJoe »

jackholloway wrote:The consensus seems to be that there are two stable states - public sharing as the military, many universities, and virtually all municipalities do, and no sharing, as most companies do.
You mean "most companies in the US". There are other countries with other cultural norms. The company I work for has an office in Vietnam and people there often talk to one another about their salaries. But it is very far from the "public sharing" of having all salaries public. I haven't seen any downsides to it.
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Epsilon Delta
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by Epsilon Delta »

DDM wrote:At my old job it was actually in the employee handbook that your pay rate was not to be shared with others.
...
I worked at a place that had good culture.
Maybe it's just me, but I do not think violating federal law contributes to a good culture.
Last edited by Epsilon Delta on Mon Mar 31, 2014 10:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
jlawrence01
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by jlawrence01 »

AlohaJoe wrote:
jackholloway wrote:The consensus seems to be that there are two stable states - public sharing as the military, many universities, and virtually all municipalities do, and no sharing, as most companies do.
You mean "most companies in the US". There are other countries with other cultural norms. The company I work for has an office in Vietnam and people there often talk to one another about their salaries. But it is very far from the "public sharing" of having all salaries public. I haven't seen any downsides to it.

That is very prevalent in the Philippines, especially in the call centers. Everybody discusses salaries and the like so it demands a transparency that is lacking in this country.
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by jackholloway »

AlohaJoe wrote:
jackholloway wrote:The consensus seems to be that there are two stable states - public sharing as the military, many universities, and virtually all municipalities do, and no sharing, as most companies do.
You mean "most companies in the US". There are other countries with other cultural norms. The company I work for has an office in Vietnam and people there often talk to one another about their salaries. But it is very far from the "public sharing" of having all salaries public. I haven't seen any downsides to it.
Quite true - I should have specified US only. There are many on here from Europe - what are the cultural norms there?
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by leonard »

jackholloway wrote:
leonard wrote:So, the consensus is that the labor market is the one market that works better with less information disseminated.

How exactly does a market with less information - when more easily available "sharing" was happening - make any sense to the people that have to bargain with employers and set prices in that market - the employees?
Not quite.

The consensus seems to be that there are two stable states - public sharing as the military, many universities, and virtually all municipalities do, and no sharing, as most companies do. Partial sharing where a small number of salaries are public is not a stable state, and people have attested to the human cost when a highly paid employee makes their salary public in an environment where that is not the norm.

The transition is expensive, and despite what you imply, the cost is not borne only by the employer. Consider, managers would plan for a number of weeks to transition just their own team, and during the time when they are doing that, they are not working on project planning, career management, or project acquisition. In general, compensation is at least half emotional, so the employees below the line are typically not going to feel that they earned their below average compensation unless prepped, and that preparation takes time.

The question comes down to what you want your leadership working on. If the organization is low trust, and salary is a big factor, then it is the right thing for them to fix. The cost of transition will hopefully be repaid by the increased productivity of a high trust environment.
So, you are saying the labor market is the one market that is more efficient when less information is available?

Not a "stable state" - seems jargon-ish to me. Why would I care if the situation was in a "stable state" - markets change constantly. I don't expect a "stable state". An undefined concept that doesn't have any back up in your post.

Sorry - simply don't believe that less information makes this market work better - especially not for employees, but likely employers too.
Leonard | | Market Timing: Do you seriously think you can predict the future? What else do the voices tell you? | | If employees weren't taking jobs with bad 401k's, bad 401k's wouldn't exist.
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greg24
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by greg24 »

DDM wrote:
jjbiv wrote:Why would you allow the employee to keep his old rate of pay if he chose to move in to a different position which did not require the skills for which he was paid a premium in his last position? This seems like exactly the management behavior that would be made more difficult if salaries were transparent. Why should his new peers not be upset they are doing the same job and being paid less? If they are all equally productive, the employer should be paying them equally.
Ah, but upset at whom?

Back in the late 70's when I was in high school I got a job as an usher at a neighborhood movie theater. It was a small place with one screen that ran 50 cent matinees and $1.00 shows at night. I was being paid minimum wage which at the time was about $1.80/hour (too long ago to remember the correct amount but it was less than $2.00).

One night before we opened the doors we employees were talking amongst ourselves and I noticed one of the girls who worked the concession stand was visibly angry with me. I hardly knew her (this was during my first week on the job). I ended up asking her why she was mad at me and she proceeded to tell me that she found out I was getting full minimum wage while she was being paid student wage which was 85% of minimum. Small businesses were allowed this rate under state law and could pay a certain number of students hired at this rate. This was the first time I had ever heard of this pay rate and others confirmed that they, too were paid that rate. I was clueless as this was my first ever job.

The pay differential was not based on position as ushers and concessions were both paid each rate. I think it just depended on when you were hired whether they were allowed another person at the lower rate. If not then you got the full minimum wage.

Was it proper for her to be angry with me? No. I had no control over the starting wage much less knowledge of different rates. I was 17 and knew nothing. Yet the employees compared pay and the manifestation of the anger was directed at the employee. We were all high school kids and nobody was told not to discuss pay. She stayed resentful towards me the whole time. You never know how people will react.
This is quite a long response, considering you completed ignored the question why you would pay your new employee a premium for a skill that isn't used in his new job. Management likes to keep things opaque so they can't get called on it...
DDM
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by DDM »

Sorry greg24 but I knew my post was long winded.

As for why I took on the transfer employee at the higher rate there is something of an explanation. Both the driver position he was leaving and the warehouse clerk position (that was the company job title) he was moving into were actually entry level so he was making a lateral move. Yes there was a pay discrepancy but it wasn't a demotion and HR stated that they couldn't ask him to take a pay cut in a lateral move. HR and managers above me let me know that there was a pay issue to hit our budget. After crunching the numbers it was decided his rate didn't hurt us since my department was lumped in with 2 others.

Another consideration was at the time, around 2006 or 2007, we were having problems finding good candidates to fill positions. In addition, taking him on as a transfer simplified my filling the open position I had plus there was his previous performance reviews so he was a more known quantity. He was already familiar with the company and products so I would have him up to speed more quickly which helped the department work load. So, we had our reasons to take him on and to allow him to keep his pay rate.

If everyone knew everyone else's pay rate then how would this all play out. I for one would have a hard time telling someone who is near the bottom of the pay scale (despite the premium $14/hour still isn't very much) that he was getting paid too much and needed to give some up. A higher paid position? I think a lot of CEOs, movie stars and pro athletes are horrendously overpaid. The rest of us what we are paid is very subjective. Some of us are better at our jobs than others. This creates a potential for differences in pay for the same job. Is it still useful to make their pay public? I don't know.
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SmileyFace
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by SmileyFace »

No. Never. It will do no good. Some companies also consider it grounds for dismissal.
jackholloway
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by jackholloway »

leonard wrote:
jackholloway wrote:
leonard wrote:So, the consensus is that the labor market is the one market that works better with less information disseminated.

How exactly does a market with less information - when more easily available "sharing" was happening - make any sense to the people that have to bargain with employers and set prices in that market - the employees?
Not quite.

The consensus seems to be that there are two stable states - public sharing as the military, many universities, and virtually all municipalities do, and no sharing, as most companies do. Partial sharing where a small number of salaries are public is not a stable state, and people have attested to the human cost when a highly paid employee makes their salary public in an environment where that is not the norm.

The transition is expensive, and despite what you imply, the cost is not borne only by the employer. Consider, managers would plan for a number of weeks to transition just their own team, and during the time when they are doing that, they are not working on project planning, career management, or project acquisition. In general, compensation is at least half emotional, so the employees below the line are typically not going to feel that they earned their below average compensation unless prepped, and that preparation takes time.

The question comes down to what you want your leadership working on. If the organization is low trust, and salary is a big factor, then it is the right thing for them to fix. The cost of transition will hopefully be repaid by the increased productivity of a high trust environment.
So, you are saying the labor market is the one market that is more efficient when less information is available?

Not a "stable state" - seems jargon-ish to me. Why would I care if the situation was in a "stable state" - markets change constantly. I don't expect a "stable state". An undefined concept that doesn't have any back up in your post.

Sorry - simply don't believe that less information makes this market work better - especially not for employees, but likely employers too.
What you choose not to think about is really not my problem.

Or do you not think that the boss types would have to spend a bunch of time trying to bring it about without serous morale problems and turnover? Do you not think that a big reveal would result in major turnover and jealousy? Do you believe that the new employees would not require training while the departing ones would take institutional knowledge with them?

These are not free, so you had best hope you get something of value out of the sudden change.
Last edited by jackholloway on Tue Apr 01, 2014 9:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
Karamatsu
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by Karamatsu »

Talking about your salary is very common here. What it leads to is a kind of levelling of compensation based on objective and quasi-objective criteria, so if need be a manager can essentially point to a chart or a spreadsheet that shows how a person's compensation was determined. Back in the 80's the only inputs were a person's age and gender. Once you knew those, you knew your salary. What's more you knew what it would be 20 years from now (with adjustment for inflation). These days the situation is more complex, thanks to a proliferation of quantitative management books and HR people who've learned to use Excel.

Most managers like the system because it lets them avoid responsibility, but it can also create problems if they haven't been allocating compensation fairly.
leonard
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by leonard »

jackholloway wrote:
leonard wrote:
jackholloway wrote:
leonard wrote:So, the consensus is that the labor market is the one market that works better with less information disseminated.

How exactly does a market with less information - when more easily available "sharing" was happening - make any sense to the people that have to bargain with employers and set prices in that market - the employees?
Not quite.

The consensus seems to be that there are two stable states - public sharing as the military, many universities, and virtually all municipalities do, and no sharing, as most companies do. Partial sharing where a small number of salaries are public is not a stable state, and people have attested to the human cost when a highly paid employee makes their salary public in an environment where that is not the norm.

The transition is expensive, and despite what you imply, the cost is not borne only by the employer. Consider, managers would plan for a number of weeks to transition just their own team, and during the time when they are doing that, they are not working on project planning, career management, or project acquisition. In general, compensation is at least half emotional, so the employees below the line are typically not going to feel that they earned their below average compensation unless prepped, and that preparation takes time.

The question comes down to what you want your leadership working on. If the organization is low trust, and salary is a big factor, then it is the right thing for them to fix. The cost of transition will hopefully be repaid by the increased productivity of a high trust environment.
So, you are saying the labor market is the one market that is more efficient when less information is available?

Not a "stable state" - seems jargon-ish to me. Why would I care if the situation was in a "stable state" - markets change constantly. I don't expect a "stable state". An undefined concept that doesn't have any back up in your post.

Sorry - simply don't believe that less information makes this market work better - especially not for employees, but likely employers too.
What you choose not to think about is really not my problem.

Or do you not think that the boss types would have to spend a bunch of time trying to bring it about without serous morale problems and turnover? Do you not think that a big reveal would result in major turnover and jealousy? Do you believe that the new employees would not require training while the departing ones would take institutional knowledge with them?

These are not free, so you had best hope you get something of value out of the sudden change.
You are talking about this whole issue from the bosses standpoint. What about the employee standpoint?

Plus, you are just assuming a bunch of morale problems. The only morale problems would come about if the bosses had been inequitable behind the scenes. If they had been fair an equitable - they have nothing to worry about.

Plus, you are naïve if you think the boss or the company are in total control here.

Any determined employee already has a good idea what the average is for their position. Employees talk.

BTW - the value you get is free information flow to maximize the efficiency of a market. Are you arguing the labor market is more efficient with less information flow?
Leonard | | Market Timing: Do you seriously think you can predict the future? What else do the voices tell you? | | If employees weren't taking jobs with bad 401k's, bad 401k's wouldn't exist.
goodbishop
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Re: Should you discuss your wages with your peers?

Post by goodbishop »

I personally think Glassdoor combined with salary surveys should give you the knowledge you require.

It's really not about your peers - it's about you. You should know what you're worth, and if it is fair or not.
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