Of course on the other hand it could mean your salary haunts you during future interviews and at future jobs. Salary Negotiation 101 is, don't tell them what your old salary was, right? But now the cards are all on the table, and they'll try to say "Well, I see you made $X, we'll beat that by 4%"

There's a difference between salary history and salary expectations.

And if they had the nerve to Google your past salary, then I think you could turn that around and ask for a similar matrix to what you had at your last, more transparent company.

If they refuse, and you can't justify the salary to yourself given the situation, you're probably better off staying at the transparent company. There's more to a job than money, after all.

You can try this or that tactic, and you can say "If they googled your salary, don't work for them", but best I can tell there's no angle where this is better for the prospective job seeker. The seeker can always elect to divulge his previous compensation if he likes; in this situation that option is removed. He now has fewer options, fewer plays.

I think the fear is that it will create animosity by making the information so accessible. On some level, the junior-level dev knows he's not making as much as the guy with the PhD in an esoteric mission critical topic, but he has a kind of plausible deniability that lets him avoid thinking about it. If everyone's making 80k and everyone knows that Jane The Expert is making 300k, there's going to be friction. "Hey Jane, why don't you pay for the dinner."

Worked as an intern once, had one of the full-timers complimenting my work and saying I was just as sharp/skilled as him at the job. I knew he was getting paid a lot more than me. The multiplier was probably a whole number. Yes, he was on-call and I wasn't. Yes, there are always other good reasons too. But it still rankled to be doing close to the same work, and paid so much less. As you say I made sure to stay ignorant of the exact number to help ignore it.

I think you are trying to say that he made at least 2x what you were making. I would be very surprised to find an intern making more than half of what the person they are interning under makes and normally I'd expect it to be much less.

Typically you aren't working at an internship because you have a proven track record of skills in a certain area. That is kind of the point of doing an internship. And having a proven track record is something employers are willing to pay a lot more money for.

At least 2x, possibly 3x, possibly more.

You don't have to justify it, I understand all the bullet points. I'm just corroborating the parent's statement that willful ignorance of someone else's wages can be a useful coping mechanism. Because no matter how many justifications there are, it still stung.

Do you think you would if you knew exactly why the other person was paid more, and how you could get to that level? I find the public table a lot fairer than not knowing how much the others make and why.

Oh, I knew how to get to that level and I knew for sure at least some of the specific reasons there was the discrepancy.

That doesn't stop unbidden thoughts from creeping into my head at 4AM when the two of us are working side-by-side doing the exact same thing.

They'll already know that the expert is making more. If she deserves it and the company pay structure is fair, then no good employee will complain.

... and she's already expected to pay for dinner. ;-)

No, the fear would be that employees look at someone with a 3x salary differently than they would if they didn't know what his salary was. It's just a distraction. I don't know how much my boss makes. It could be half what I make, it could be triple. I don't really care. If I found out suddenly that it's triple what I make, then maybe I'd look at him differently. Does he bring in 3x value to the company compared to me? Maybe in my opinion he doesn't--do I talk to the CEO to say "hey, we can replace this guy cheaply"? It just seems like pandora's box at that point.

Perhaps this is a good thing? One of the leading factors in wage disparity between men and women (other than outright sexism) is a difference in negotiating style. Men ask for more, more aggressively, and more often. If a female employee sees that her direct counterpart is making 15% more than her for some reason, perhaps this would cause her to ask for parity. Or, better yet, by making salaries a function rather than the outcome of a negotiation (as much as one can) perhaps the disparity never arises.

I had the same thought. I think approaches like this would go a long way to closing gender disparity gaps. The bottom line is that this is simply more information.

Another side benefit of this approach is recruiting. I've always felt that "salary negotiable depending on experience" is such a waste of ink. Being transparent let's individuals who have expectations way out of alignment opt-out entirely. Then you get a nice clean signal for when your pay is out of alignment with the market...good candidates don't apply.

I remember hearing about a Brazilian company where employees could pick their own salary, and everything was totally transparent. The catch, of course, is that you have to continue to show you're "worth" that salary. And if you don't hit deliverables, well, maybe your salary or expectations should change.

Why is a Senior iOS engineer (Andy) on a "Intermediate: 1.1X" multiplier? - you can't be Senior and be intermediate in my book. Seems he needs his multiplier upped to the proper level. $107k is low for a iOS Dev in the Bay Area.

Could be seniority relates to breadth and tenure of experience whereas experience is related to skill at the particular position.

So an ios dev who spent the last 10 years elbow-deep in the innards of some database code or something would arguably be "senior" but not "experienced".

Just one way this could fall out, I don't know how buffer defines the terms.

That's the first thing I noticed too. Senior iOS Dev making 1k more than a CHO? Only their employees know the culture and value everyone provides but that sort of thing would make me uncomfortable.

He may have taken more equity for a lower salary. I might be wrong but publishing everyone's information like this seems so dumb....focus on your startup not on gimmicky unproven hr practices

Why's that? The iOS Dev probably does more actual, real work.

In negotiation, typically the party with the most information has a better negotiating position. Posting salaries is a significant piece of information that will almost certainly help a competitor since it greatly reduces the cost of them acquiring the knowledge.

I think a big part of the problem is that people generally aren't good at judging the value of other's contributions unless they are working directly with them or managing them (and even then, hit or miss).

Having salaries be completely open invites comparison even when there is a lack of information. Bob the Developer in XYZ team makes 20k more than me, is that fair? Maybe, but I don't really know, and I can see that creating friction with the right (wrong?) personalities.

With closed salaries, you don't have to justify anything to your employees. They are called employees for a reason.