<story><title>Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer</title><url>http://open.bufferapp.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-buffer-including-our-transparent-formula-and-all-individual-salaries</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Arnor</author><text>Edit (add quote for clarity)
&amp;gt; I see this openness at buffer essentially being a tool for management to deny raise requests, etc... with... If we do it for you, we have to do it for everybody...&lt;p&gt;More likely, the response would be along the lines of: &amp;quot;You&amp;#x27;ll get a raise when you qualify based on the criteria that have been clearly explained to you and the rest of the world.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>davemel37</author><text>I had a boss bully his employees with fellow employee salary information. (i.e. bill took a pay cut because of the recessions, so should you...)&lt;p&gt;As far as I&amp;#x27;m concerned, salary is a completely private matter that is no one elses business, and no good could possibly come from sharing it.&lt;p&gt;I see this openness at buffer essentially being a tool for management to deny raise requests, etc... with... If we do it for you, we have to do it for everybody... which is a just a BS excuse to not face the reality that every persons value and work situation is different, and should be treated differently.</text></item><item><author>tikhonj</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve always felt the culture of hiding salaries was doing a  significant disservice to employees. It creates a significant and largely artificial information disparity, giving a major market advantage to the employer. In turn, this makes the entire labor market less efficient for the employee.&lt;p&gt;This also makes the employer less accountable to the employees. The employer can easily pay somebody significantly more or less than they contribute, and the rest of the team cannot really say anything about this.&lt;p&gt;Now, there are some cultural reasons to do this--preventing jealousy, hiding inequality. But it really feels like a social band-aid, a temporary solution hiding the symptoms but not the underlying problem. Besides, everyone ends up having a reasonable guess as to who makes more and who makes less anyhow! The same dynamics develop, just with more uncertainty.&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, making salaries public takes these problems head-on. Inequality isn&amp;#x27;t bad in and of itself; some is basically necessary. But hiding that fact doesn&amp;#x27;t really help anyone. Instead, forcing people to see it head-on, deal with it and talk about it is probably a better solution.&lt;p&gt;I really applaud Buffer and the general movement towards transparency. I think it&amp;#x27;s a very healthy cultural progression and hope it catches on more widely, so that people stop having knee-jerk reactions to salary information.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: As an interesting additional note, all salaries (beyond a token minimum) at Berkeley (and the whole UC system) are publicly available at &lt;a href=&quot;http://ucpay.globl.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ucpay.globl.org&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve looked up various professors at the ParLab (where I did some undergraduate research). The fact that their salaries range from ~120k to ~350k did not change my perspective of anyone and did not seem to affect the lab&amp;#x27;s culture at all.&lt;p&gt;Essentially, I&amp;#x27;d be perfectly happy to see this outside of public universities.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>smenko</author><text>Oh really? And what makes one&lt;p&gt;Senior?
Lead?
VP?
C-level?
COO?
CEO?&lt;p&gt;Master?
Advanced?
Intermediate?
Junior?&lt;p&gt;Who decides that? What makes it objective? Can you dispute it if your boss happens to be a bitter idiot who is completely detached from reality? What happens if your boss and their boss have different views? What happens if you are a perfect employee, but you were a bit of dick at the last Christmas party? And what happens if you are very nice and social and everyone likes you, but you are not really much of a programmer?&lt;p&gt;This whole thing is BS. The only model that can possibly work is the scaffolder model - you get a worker for a job. If they&amp;#x27;re shit they get sacked the net day. If they&amp;#x27;re good, you have to pay them more to keep them from running away...</text></comment>
<story><title>Introducing Open Salaries at Buffer</title><url>http://open.bufferapp.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-buffer-including-our-transparent-formula-and-all-individual-salaries</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Arnor</author><text>Edit (add quote for clarity)
&amp;gt; I see this openness at buffer essentially being a tool for management to deny raise requests, etc... with... If we do it for you, we have to do it for everybody...&lt;p&gt;More likely, the response would be along the lines of: &amp;quot;You&amp;#x27;ll get a raise when you qualify based on the criteria that have been clearly explained to you and the rest of the world.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>davemel37</author><text>I had a boss bully his employees with fellow employee salary information. (i.e. bill took a pay cut because of the recessions, so should you...)&lt;p&gt;As far as I&amp;#x27;m concerned, salary is a completely private matter that is no one elses business, and no good could possibly come from sharing it.&lt;p&gt;I see this openness at buffer essentially being a tool for management to deny raise requests, etc... with... If we do it for you, we have to do it for everybody... which is a just a BS excuse to not face the reality that every persons value and work situation is different, and should be treated differently.</text></item><item><author>tikhonj</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve always felt the culture of hiding salaries was doing a  significant disservice to employees. It creates a significant and largely artificial information disparity, giving a major market advantage to the employer. In turn, this makes the entire labor market less efficient for the employee.&lt;p&gt;This also makes the employer less accountable to the employees. The employer can easily pay somebody significantly more or less than they contribute, and the rest of the team cannot really say anything about this.&lt;p&gt;Now, there are some cultural reasons to do this--preventing jealousy, hiding inequality. But it really feels like a social band-aid, a temporary solution hiding the symptoms but not the underlying problem. Besides, everyone ends up having a reasonable guess as to who makes more and who makes less anyhow! The same dynamics develop, just with more uncertainty.&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, making salaries public takes these problems head-on. Inequality isn&amp;#x27;t bad in and of itself; some is basically necessary. But hiding that fact doesn&amp;#x27;t really help anyone. Instead, forcing people to see it head-on, deal with it and talk about it is probably a better solution.&lt;p&gt;I really applaud Buffer and the general movement towards transparency. I think it&amp;#x27;s a very healthy cultural progression and hope it catches on more widely, so that people stop having knee-jerk reactions to salary information.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: As an interesting additional note, all salaries (beyond a token minimum) at Berkeley (and the whole UC system) are publicly available at &lt;a href=&quot;http://ucpay.globl.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ucpay.globl.org&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve looked up various professors at the ParLab (where I did some undergraduate research). The fact that their salaries range from ~120k to ~350k did not change my perspective of anyone and did not seem to affect the lab&amp;#x27;s culture at all.&lt;p&gt;Essentially, I&amp;#x27;d be perfectly happy to see this outside of public universities.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lhnz</author><text>Something which doesn&amp;#x27;t seem clear to me is whether the team is able to properly evaluate the pay of their colleagues. Surely the people that are most friendly and fit most of the in-group traits of the group will benefit most? What about the creative and non socially-correct members that don&amp;#x27;t fit in - should they move to different companies?&lt;p&gt;In general, I cast doubt on the idea that employees really know what&amp;#x27;s important because of principle-agent problems and culture.</text></comment>