Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by louisswiss 3088 days ago
As an (hypothetical) employer I now know that, ceteris paribus, I only need to offer you around 65k USD to come and work for me, even if I was prepared to offer you 90k USD.

I agree though that we would, on average, be better off if all of us agreed to share salaries publicly.

1 comments

If other employees of yours also publicly share what they earn, you won't be able to do that, as you noted. Besides, other employers will see that you under pay and offer him more and you'll need to compete on price or you will use talented employees and left with lemons.
It's not quite that easy though. Let's assume sharing salaries is common. I see that you make 60k USD and your colleagues are on 70k USD each. As another potential employer, do I assume you are undervalued or just perform worse than your colleagues making 10k USD more?

We seem to be caught up in an uncomfortable hybrid world where salaries are sort of related to performance, but not really. If we just chose one way or another, that would sort out a lot of problems immediately.

I live in a country where income is public information.

It´s not really a problem as far as I know - and at any rate it definitely benefits employees.