Agreed, the line

> Higher pay for those with higher influence and negotiation skills

being portrayed as a negative seems like a main goal was to make it harder for people to negotiate higher salaries.

I think that's a bit cynical. There is the very reasonable idea that your compensation should reflect your skills, abilities, and worth to the company, rather than how good you are at negotiation.

I'm not sure if there's any reasonable way to remedy that problem though.

Your worth to the company is reflective of your worth to the market.

The company doesn't want to admit that at first but you are already aware.

This is where negotiation comes into play, and negotiating something higher than what your peers in the company perceive, while remaining in line with reality. Best case is that you move the "average salary" for that position upwards a notch.

> Your worth to the company is reflective of your worth to the market.

Not necessarily. You could certainly be worth less or more to your company than what you're worth on the open market. If it's the former, you probably need a new job.

Not to be cynical. But totally fair I am sure.

Especially for people that do great work but maybe are a little less extraverted.

If you can't perfectly negotiate and influence multiple people you are practically f..ed.

Glad not to have such types of so called managers trying to tell me what's good for me.

Assertiveness isn't some superpower that only extroverts have. You can't expect things to happen for you, you need to stand up for yourself and explain why you're worth more to your company than they are paying you.

It's also a skill that is not directly proportional to your value in a company. Effectively, this just moves the problem of compensating fairly somewhere else, without actually solving it.

On the other hand, public data could make it easier for employees to bargain more collectively. Benefiting everyone more evenly.

I totally agree! However, it seems like the weird political system created around this works to make negotiating a higher pay very difficult.

I had the same thought of it just shifted who you had to negotiate and convince group to the entire office instead of eliminating that aspect.

Especially considering Buffer was mentioned and their formula was average for the role adjusted for cost of living, time with company, experience and equity level in a very straight forward way.

Seems like the "democractic" solution here is effectively mutiny. Or maybe a better analogy would be to form a union and threaten strike.

I'd worry about what this does for employee behavior too. Seems like the dominant strategy becomes one of getting on the good side of the largest number of people, and the specific needs of your actual position in the company take a back seat.

This sounds truly horrifying. This is the kind of BS that is done at law firms (or Amazon) in order to get promoted.

Does "rest of our team" mean management or all of the employees?

"rest of our team" means all of the employees