[planet-and-halo]

The problem in doing that is you generate metric tons of resentment and politicking among people in the same role. If my title is the same as someone else's but I'm making 20% less than they are, even if I can bring myself to admit to myself that they're better at the job, I'm still going to feel we're "doing the same job" and I'm getting screwed. Those people don't immediately and quietly just look for a new job. They complain and moan and poison the well and generally destroy the social atmosphere of the company.

Studies of workplace motivation and performance often find that one of the worst things you can do is get everyone obsessing about salary all of the time instead of focusing on the work. (Notably, this isn't just bad for the company, it's bad for the workers' quality of life.) I think it's fair to say that sometimes companies are trying to screw the workers, but I also think some of the norms around discretion on this topic were an informal evolved mechanism to dampen the natural status competition people fall into and get them to work more as a unit focused on a goal. While I appreciate the aim behind transparency laws, I'd prefer it if certain things like choosing to talk about salary were protected. Publishing all of the salaries by default seems like a blunt mechanism and strikes me as very libertarian or Marxist thinking where you're either assuming a) a free and transparent market always produces the best result, or b) people fall into broad "classes" in which all individuals share the same interests and will work together. I generally think both of those modes of thought are simplistic and, despite some underlying truth, fail to account for many important complications and unintended side effects.

[jay_kyburz]

I can see it now, there a bunch of tasks in Trello to do, and all the shit jobs go to the guy that's getting 10k more than than his manager. They guy getting paid the least gets all the easy jobs so his productivity looks better so he can ask for the pay rise at the end of the yet.

Meanwhile, Everybody else is doing the bare minimum to close the ticket so they can look good when it comes to pay review time.

[only_as_i_fall]

I'd be interested to see those studies.

[planet-and-halo]

I did a quick search for the article "How to Ruin Motivation With Pay" but it's behind a paywall. The book "Punished By Rewards" has a lot of references if you're interested.