>My salary is private. I do not want my family and friends to know how much I make.
But have you thought about why you feel this way? I assume you are American, as am I, and so I understand we've been socialized by our culture to feel this way, but it really makes no sense. It's just a way to harm workers by keeping us from seeing when we're being screwed. I'd even go so far as to wager that this entire concept of salary being private was fostered and encouraged by employers for that very reason, because it gives them enormous leverage.
Yes. I don't want to increase my attractiveness regarding a house robbery, as I live well below my means in a developing neighborhood, amongst other reasons.
I very much understand the concept of leverage and have no problems privately discussing my salary amongst groups that I trust. That doesn't include the entire Internet.
Like, if you own your house outright, it's often worthwhile to get a HELOC without ever drawing from it. That way, when an attorney tries to figure out if you're worth suing, it doesn't look like you have six figures worth of housing equity to go after.
That would require two things, I guess. My name, and the ability to estimate my salary based on the company I run. I am pretty sure even if I told you both you'd miss by a significant amount.
fierro:
I feel like this is kind of silly. Anyone could make a reasonable estimate of your salary based on your job, which is easily discoverable. At least enough to make a decision "should I rob this house." What are we even talking about here?
The entire point is that it's deeply screwed up for you to need to hide your wealth from your neighbors--or from some set of neighbors but not others--for fear of being robbed.
That's not the point of the commenter. Secondly, I reject your summary opinion that lacks evidence, but you are welcome to your own feelings.
That's a normative statement, not a positive one. I don't consider it at all screwed up or intrinsically wrong to want to hide my income from my neighbors.
And if it is significant, it would probably be worth a lot more than the security cost. Its economically senseless to reject a better job position for the fear that someone might notice your increased income and rob you. For the vast majority of people that would be utterly ridicolous.
Especially with all the factors to consider (neighbors, location, salary, relativity to peers, etc.)
There are tens of thousands very rich people in any country and nobody robs them specifically, despite only several percent of them using active guards or security. They are robbed with the same chance as anyone else.
If you live below your means, why would robbers target you? They don't care how much you make, they care what TV you have.
Seriously though, it's not hard to find targets for this sort of thing by looking at census data and sales records for nice homes, yet it really never happens in the US. WHen was the last time you heard of some random lawyer, ceo, or banker getting kidnapped in the US?
There was a home invasion a couple blocks away.
Lots of people prefer to keep a low profile and not attract these sorts of crimes.
But I haven't really bothered to think through any of that, because my point was about kidnapping, which almost never happens in the US. Fewer than 100 people are kidnapped for ransom in the US every year.
So, I guess a few years ago, I'd say.
0: https://qz.com/784186/in-norway-you-can-browse-everyones-tax...
1: http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Norway/Unit...
And what, hide cash in your mattress?
EDIT: Ah, I see, you were making a snarky joke about them breaking into my house and stealing stuff. I do have nice things in my house, yes, not cash under my mattress. Just because I live below my means doesn't mean I don't have things I wouldn't want them to steal. Expensive laptops, computing resources for work, and, oh, I don't know, just not a fan of people breaking into my house in general regardless of what I have?
They have your address and can quickly get a name from that, and probably find bread crumbs of work history, or that you're a "founder of a sports science" company.
Without even knowing the dollar amount of what you make, there's plenty of info on you that already exists in order to determine if you're a good target.
You have already decided to not pay for extra security by being in a poorer neihborhood, so we know safety is negotiable. What is that price to you? What if wage transparency increased your salary 10%?
I mean, that's not really true. I live in a poor(er) neighborhood but have cameras, an alarm, and home defense weapons. I still don't want my house being broken into.
>>What if wage transparency increased your salary 10%?
As my other comments (or my bio) will illustrate, these examples aren't too good. I am the founder of a small business who makes my wage public to my employees and offered to make their wages public to everyone, which was overwhelmingly voted down, even when I told them about the benefits.
People value their privacy in this country. It would be a mistake to assume that everyone is stupid for doing so.
Its like when people think that the tax incidence is always paid by the one that writes the check to the IRS, even though economists categorically say thats not how it is.
I am confident that if people had the choice at hand of a 10% increase or privacy, the majority would sell their privacy. We are used to sell it for a lot less than that! Even for a virtually free credit score.
Its an implementational challenge. The IRS can always just disclose everything, so the state can nuke this issue. A lighter approach might be making it opt-out in the future when you are employed: a lot of people would not care, and if you have 30% salary transparency, im sure everyone gets most of the benefit. And a private market approach might be for a site like glassdoor to only show real salary data when people send verified wage documentation.
Yet everyone goes to glassdoor to check salaries.
Not that it mattered that much, thanks to the hacking of the OPM.
Thieve's are opportunists, they only question they ask is "how easily can I get into that house without getting caught?".
As a thought experiment, if we were to add everyone else's information, it's not clear to me that everyone would come out as a winner.
[0]: https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/11/10/more-transparency-mo...
If you have jealous and spiteful family you might feel differently. Unless you like hearing sob stories or being blamed for other people's problems.
Knowing or not knowing the specific number doesn't change anything with regard to relatives/friends bothering you for money. People who know you see how you live, where you live, etc and know generally where things stand.
Some things that are perfectly normal in the US or South Korea or Colombia or China or Japan or Zambia or Saudi Arabia or India are without a doubt not considered acceptable or comfortable in Norway. That's how cultures work. What you're describing is an extension of Scandinavia's culture.
The hours worked in Japan or South Korea are culturally acceptable. They would not be in eg France. One could spend an immense amount of time listing the thousands of famous cultural variances between major nations, in regards to things being acceptable in one place but not in another.
You can choose to distance yourself from these people you know?
Blood is no reason to keep these kinds of emotional vampires in your life.
Compensation is an important conversation to make sure a job is a win/win. I think "What would you like to be paid?" is the most relevant question anyway.
Seeing how the right to privacy is not specifically enshrined, I would argue that the reasons for keeping some things private is very much at the heart of the matter. For instance, why does the government not think the benefits of transparency outweigh the disadvantages when it comes to individual reported income, versus say, divorce records (most of which will include income, among many many more private facts said in court).
Like most implied rights, the right to privacy is weak specifically because it is not enshrined. Even the explicitly stated rights have limits, particularly when they butt into the other explicitly stated rights.
When the implied "right to privacy" butts into the 1st Amendment rights of freedom of expression and a free press, on which side do you think the courts will err on, on a consistent basis?
The state has gained an absolute right to know your wage, which one could argue that abolishes the private nature of that information, much like your gender, or your face.
I know plenty of people with cars that cost 10x the price of mine, who earn far less than I do.
And outside of their immediate industry most people don’t know other salaries, or how to look them up.
If an programmer makes $100,000 in a company where programmers regularly earn that, it should not be public information. If the programmer is earning $2 million, it may be material to the shareholders to know that depending on the size of the company. If the company is Google and the programmer is regarded as extraordinary for some reason, $2 million (vs Google's overall financial picture) isn't a huge sum. If the entire sales of the company are $30 million, it blatantly would be material.
The most obvious argument against it, is that people aren't always rational (and are regularly irrational about things like money). I'd argue they frequently aren't able to accurately assess their own financial value (in either direction). It opens a pandora's box within corporations about why X person is worth $Z, while Joe or Jane thinks they should obviously be paid more vs X person. It's not easy to maintain harmony within organizations, that would make it far worse.
What would be the value gained from making all individual employee salaries public (within a public corporation)? It would have to be immense to offset the friction it would cause.
> But have you thought about why you feel this way?
Not every family is healthy. Some become _decidedly_ unhealthy as soon as money comes into play, and having precise figures available can be really destructive.
It might work better in more egalitarian societies, where the difference in pay is less to begin with (eg Scandinavia). But that's not a road the US (and many other places) is willing to take.
How? It doesn't change anything with regard to this specific concern about family. They already have an idea about how you live and how much you have from knowing you. They might not have a specific dollar amount, but they'll have a good idea.
That said, I don't think it should be necessary to defend privacy. The idea proposed up-thread is to publish all income data on everybody. Not merely to encourage people to share their income data so they can reduce the information differential with employers, or some central opt-in system to make it easier to compare the numbers. It's about fully _enforced_ transparency.
A proposal for such forced loss of agency needs explanation and must be defensible against scrutiny, not the request to leave people alone just like they're used to.
There are practical considerations beyond weird cultural mores.
It's not going to benefit me one bit to have my financial arrangements made public. I'm more than happy with the deal I've struck; the company's leverage is not reduced by 3rd parties knowing the numbers.
Just a unrelated comment. It's funny to hear that. In France there's a widespread stereotype that Americans are very open to talk about their salary.
My parents don’t know my income. My siblings don’t. I know a good bit about my mother-in-law’s income and net worth, but it’s because she is single and has asked for specific financial advice. My parents have recently been going through estate planning paperwork, and I suspect we may have discussions about finances in the next few years.
There are of course exceptions. Within niche hobbies, people may be a little more open after they know each other well about how much goods and services cost, but still not about income. A n00b walking up asking those sorts of questions may still get pushback — depends on how he asked.
I’m on the senior management team for a small technology company, but even though we can all see everything, we don’t discuss each other’s compensation directly and sort of pretend not to know.
I can see an argument for forcing public companies to post anonymized data about salaries, perhaps including gender, race and age. Thus ensuring employees or advocates can understand if they are being treated fairly. But, My salary is very private. Exposing it means I have less leverage in some negotiations. Not just wage, but sticking with that example, what if employers created a cabal that said "hey, we're not going to give anyone more than a 10% raise for jumping ship to ensure that theres still some incentive, but less, for 'disloyalty.'" This isn't exactly speculation either, there have been numerous reports of companies creating back door policies not to hire away from each other, which ultimately only hurts the employee.
I've got vague impressions about some family members, friends, and coworkers, but nothing solid (unless I wanted to look up the pay scales for the few with government jobs, I guess). I could probably get accurate answers from close friends if I "needed" to, but it would be an uncomfortable conversation.
[0] Among countries of substantial size. Countries that can have their entire economy based around a few niches aren't useful comparisons.
The biggest capitalist victory has been convincing people that sharing salary information is impolite.
It benefits "the ruling class" in several ways. First it prevents people from realizing they're underpaid and encouraging each other to get better rates. Second it encourages people to spend money on luxury and luxury-ish goods as a way to signal their welloffness to each other.
Because at the end of the day, everyone is still curious about this info and almost everyone likes to feel like they're even just a little better off than those around them. It soothes the ego.
Possible sources of salary info include
Job sites where people review and report on salary at their employer, even if anonymous its super likely that figuring out exactly who you are could be less than rocket science.
Credit reporting agencies.
Bullshit surveys where people answer questions like how much money you make.
Really smart educated guesses based on analyses of known good data from your own and similar employers/employees.
Big employers. As long as the data isn't directly shared with their fellow companies and only in fact with me they stand to benefit from me knowing how much they and their competitor pay so I can recommend the lowest salary an employee is likely to accept so they can minimize cost.
In short your employer doesn't know how much you make but I do and recommend based on that info. Further I can even perpetuate racism and sexism! If minorities and women are currently paid less I can let you know to offer less and still get applicants. If I train a computer to make that determination it can even decide such without me explicitly telling it to and we can blame the algorithm instead of me!
Go technology and go capitalism. High five!
This is of course entirely hypothetical but sufficiently trivial that I find it hard to imagine people not doing it.
> The bill also would prohibit an employer from seeking salary history information about an applicant for employment and would require an employer, upon reasonable request, to provide the pay scale for a position to an applicant for employment.
They're not allowed to try to find out from someone else, either.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
I'm not a lawyer but that doesn't seem to be illegal or even a loophole its out of scope.
Similar to how your FICO score is not part of your credit report; it's a separate paid service that the credit unions pay for so they can charge their own customers.
While they may have that information, federal laws require them to have you self-report income in regards to credit offers.
I suspect this one has more to do with trying to engage you so that they may sell you more credit.
Credit agencies measure whether you pay your debts, nothing more.
Trying to gauge the value of this privacy to you, what % of your wage would you be willing to pay for keep it private, or get to make it public?
Although in recent years, all lookups are logged and displayed to the other party, which has a chilling effect. I would like the old system back.
Tax records are records owned and controlled by the government. It's information that has already been collected, and is accessible by some institutions, but not others, creating an imbalance in information.
I want government to be transparent, and I generally support initiatives to make information public. But I'm not sure I like the idea of the government or some other big brother type knowing who is accessing what information. I say that as a general principle, with notable exceptions.
Edit: Look at how pay works in countries where such information is public (i.e. Scandinavia). My understanding is that within a given line of work, everyone makes just about the same amount, adjusted for seniority, regardless of performance.
Edit: Thanks
Yes, it's up to me to make sure I'm getting my fair share. If I'm too insecure to get what I'm worth, that seems like my problem, not anyone else's.
Its just america that pays so damn much for developers, because of the competing capital. Price transparency is definitely not harming employees, and its also not harming companies in the long run.
And while average pay is higher in America than in any other large (i.e. necessarily general purpose) economy, I'm specifically pointing out that performance/merit reward is greater in America.
Im sure there are less performant lawyers in america that have a higher pay than performant lawyers in europe. AFAIK high salaries in the U.S. dont come at the expense of low salaries of the low performing.
Doctors have constrained supply. Lawyers have a sort of costrained supply (your degree will determine your employment). U.S. has a peculiar law system and company sizes that allow payouts not possible in other countries which affect pay(corporate lawyers make the most money).
But again, almost surely, this is not due to information asymmetry in favor of the employer. Public wage data would almost unequivocally increase wages. The question would be how much.
Greenspan talks about how in a desire to punish high salary CEO's, they forced their salaries to be public, and they ended up exploding up because of it.
You're right that doctors and lawyers are not great examples for the reasons you state.
If everyone knows what everyone makes, it becomes much harder to give an excellent employee more money. Everyone thinks they deserve a raise, so now a manager has to confront the rest of the team when he gives one person a raise. Envy is a very powerful force.
Performance for this purpose doesn't need to be measured in OneTrueWay, the market provides a better solution: at what point your employer is willing to see you walk to another job instead of paying you more. (They may have their own formal performance ranking system, but if it's not very good they'll lose the battle for talent.) This has the side effect that assertive people are at an advantage, but I don't think that's a bad thing.
As for CEOs, that's a very interesting point. My intuition is that it's a totally different kind of market. The CEO is the boss, not one among many equals. And you can't deny that the information has stirred up animosity and resentment toward the CEO class, however ill- or well-founded that sentiment is.
I think economic modeling moves towards the opposite direction. First, people assume that other people make and still have that envy, and in that assumption they make mistakes. But there are severely underpaid people that would immediately get a better deal.
There are other interesting externality is that knowing what people make would allow people to jump jobs a lot clearer. One of my crusades in public opinion in argentina is that the salaries of college graduates is absolutely unknown, making it impossible to gauge how valuable each college degree is worth. Hence, lots of people commit to dead-end careers. If it were known how much the graduates made, less people would go there, and more people would go to the paying ones.
Same with jobs: knowing other company pays substantially more will move you, increasing the salary of the low paying companies and lowering the salary of the high paying companies.
In a very naive way, the lack of information prevents market efficiency, because if the information where there, people would do more and different trades. And this is algo good for companies in the long run, because they would more effectively attract the appropriate talent.
Think of it as any other market: housing for example. Is housing clearer or worse by having house sale prices open?
The "market solution" only awards to the best negotiators.
Personally I think I've gone a bit deeper in this topic, because I also think that if taxes were public, people with the same job but different tax situation will have a different bargaining position, meaning salaries will be affected by the actual tax rates people pay.
I'm also interested in the visible effects of wealth and income regarding wages: do people with some money in the bank earn more money in general? (would it thus mean that the best investment is to get some cash first ?) etc.
For the more emotional argument, wouldn't public wages also prevent people with lower incomes giving money to higher incomes? Something that happens often is many human relationships where wealth can be hidden? Wouldn't you tip higher to the waitress you know is gaining well below what you think she would, and wouldn you demand more of your boss if you knew exactly how much more they made?
I'm not going to say its strictly better for everyone to have the information public, but I can rarely fathom believing that hiding information leads to better decisions. And isn't that what its all about. At this moment all these objections are a sort of growing pain, not objections for the long term.
IIRC, it's been one of the biggest driving forces in CEO's salaries skyrocketing.
I don't think, however, that it would have a similar effect on our (i.e. employees) salaries.
Why not?
Ah yes, of course, Norway is a rational nation and others are not. For whatever value of "rational" there is. Maybe you mean Norway exceptionally tightening immigration rules after the Swedish terror attacks? Or is it just public reporting of salary you like so much?
Only on HN, would the same crowd that ferociously defends data privacy, decide to play devil's advocate on this comment.
(Regarding the thread under the parent post)
My salary is private. I do not want my family and friends to know how much I make.
I also have never told a potential employer my salary. I believe it stopped things from going on to the interview stage but the way they took my refusal made me assume they paid under market rate.