[crdoconnor]

>I haven't seen a scalable way to roll out total salary transparency with a net gain in company psychology

#1 Make sure everybody is paid as much as they deserve as far as you can tell. #2 Roll out total salary transparency.

Not being "scalable" sounds like another way of saying "we don't want to do #1, it sounds expensive. Secrecy is cheaper.".

[WhitneyLand]

This implies some sort of unfairness is being hidden, which should be the easy part of the problem.

The hard part is that equitable salaries do not mean equal salaries. If you there are large differences based completely on merit it's very difficult to make someone feel good about being lower than the person sitting next to them, even if it's objectively fair.

[crdoconnor]

>This implies some sort of unfairness is being hidden, which should be the easy part of the problem.

You seem to be implying that voluntarily giving out pay rises to the underpaid is easy. It isn't easy.

>The hard part is that equitable salaries do not mean equal salaries. If you there are large differences based completely on merit it's very difficult to make someone feel good about being lower than the person sitting next to them, even if it's objectively fair.

This would be the hard part if American were mostly all secret communists.

[s73v3r]

If those differences actually exist, they should be pretty easy to demonstrate.

[sukilot]

"Scalable" means like airline prices or how westerners get consumer products from slave- or near-slave labor: the system only works if someone employees subsidize others, and they won't consent to that, so the subsidize are done secretly.

[mikeash]

I imagine there would be potential problems due to the fact that people have differing opinions about what people deserve.

For one thing, there are different but equally reasonable criteria on which to base "deserve." Maybe Bob in Engineering contributes more to company profits than Steve in janitorial, so Bob deserves to get paid more. Or maybe Steve is intensely loyal and stuck with the company through hard times and often stays late to get everything done, so Steve deserves to get paid more. Or Joe in sales hasn't been selling well this year, but his kid has cancer and he's obviously distracted and he deserves high pay because he's having such a hard time.

And of course, given a choice of criteria, people will invariably tend to choose whichever one gives them the results they like. Bob will be more likely to think the profit-based evaluation is best. Someone who's good friends with Steve will think that loyalty is more important.

Maybe it can be made to work (and it definitely can work in a smaller company), but I don't think it's as easy as you make it sound. Sometimes it's just impossible to please everybody, and if you try then you'll only succeed in displeasing everybody.

[crdoconnor]

>I imagine

Perhaps you should look at some real examples rather than your imagination:

http://99u.com/articles/15527/the-age-of-salary-transparency

[mikeash]

I said, "and it definitely can work in a smaller company." I don't have to look at outside examples, I'm part of such a company myself. But if you want to say I'm wrong, show me a company doing this with 10,000 employees rather than 10.

[crdoconnor]

I believe there are some government departments out there (Norway perhaps?) that do this.