6 ms·

Wouldn’t all the companies then just conspire to pay everyone lower wages?

lesuorac 3y ago
So right now all the companies do share salary data with each other. They typically wash it through a 3rd party so it's not that blatant. So, a change where the companies also posted their salary data publicly would only additionally inform employees not HR. But yes tech-HR has in the past gotten in trouble over salary fixing.
quietbritishjim 3y ago
Exactly the contrary: if all wages are public, that wouldn't be possible, because only one company would have to violate that conspiracy to get all employees at other companies to start applying to them.
pgeorgi 3y ago
There are already companies collecting such information and making them available for their customers (who supposedly provide some collated data set to them in exchange). That's what all the "paying top of market rate" talk in various companies is based on. So: the potential for collusion already exists, but unless regular folks can get access to the analysts' data sets as well, it's a very one-sided deal.
- lozenge 3y ago
  > paying top of market rate I thought that was just marketing puffery...
  - oblio 3y ago
    No, they actually buy that info from 3rd parties. The puffery is that they say "top 10%" when they're " 'top' 40%".
- hellweaver666 3y ago
  Yup... HR call it "benchmarking"
- kiklion 3y ago
  You don’t even always need a third party. My wife works in HR for the government and part of her job is literally to contact neighboring counties and send them requests for their salaries for various positions and levels while filling out salary requests from other counties. Of course, being government, it’s all public information anyway so collaborating in this way is seen more of a performance increase vs manually accessing each counties salary information but it’s the same premise.
barrysteve 3y ago
Wouldn't all the employees then just conspire to unionize around the highest paid employee? EDIT: forgot to mention I'm not advocating for it.
velcrovan 3y ago
Wait till you find out what they do under the current system where wages are secret information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
efitz 3y ago
No, because they need to attract employees and employees would generally not be attracted to uncompetitively low compensation packages. As a result, companies absolutely track how much employees of a type and level get paid elsewhere, so that they know where to aim compensation packages competitively.
- thinkharderdev 3y ago
  Not sure if the parent's concern is valid but I think the argument would be that companies can conspire to all suppress wages so they don't have to compete on comp. That would be hard to do now because they can't "officially" conspire in this way (eg sign a binding contract with each other) because that would be illegal. Without an enforcement mechanism it is too easy for any one company to defect from the "gentleman's agreement" and offer higher wages. If all salary information was public though, then as soon as one company defected and offered one high-value employee a higher salary everyone else would immediately know it and start competing on salary again. So that makes the informal agreement more stable and leads to lower wages.
somsak2 3y ago
They're way ahead of you! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

So right now all the companies do share salary data with each other. They typically wash it through a 3rd party so it's not that blatant. So, a change where the companies also posted their salary data publicly would only additionally inform employees not HR. But yes tech-HR has in the past gotten in trouble over salary fixing.

quietbritishjim 3y ago

Exactly the contrary: if all wages are public, that wouldn't be possible, because only one company would have to violate that conspiracy to get all employees at other companies to start applying to them.

pgeorgi 3y ago

There are already companies collecting such information and making them available for their customers (who supposedly provide some collated data set to them in exchange). That's what all the "paying top of market rate" talk in various companies is based on. So: the potential for collusion already exists, but unless regular folks can get access to the analysts' data sets as well, it's a very one-sided deal.

lozenge 3y ago
> paying top of market rate I thought that was just marketing puffery...
- oblio 3y ago
  No, they actually buy that info from 3rd parties. The puffery is that they say "top 10%" when they're " 'top' 40%".
hellweaver666 3y ago
Yup... HR call it "benchmarking"
kiklion 3y ago
You don’t even always need a third party. My wife works in HR for the government and part of her job is literally to contact neighboring counties and send them requests for their salaries for various positions and levels while filling out salary requests from other counties. Of course, being government, it’s all public information anyway so collaborating in this way is seen more of a performance increase vs manually accessing each counties salary information but it’s the same premise.

barrysteve 3y ago

Wouldn't all the employees then just conspire to unionize around the highest paid employee? EDIT: forgot to mention I'm not advocating for it.

velcrovan 3y ago

Wait till you find out what they do under the current system where wages are secret information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

efitz 3y ago

No, because they need to attract employees and employees would generally not be attracted to uncompetitively low compensation packages. As a result, companies absolutely track how much employees of a type and level get paid elsewhere, so that they know where to aim compensation packages competitively.

thinkharderdev 3y ago
Not sure if the parent's concern is valid but I think the argument would be that companies can conspire to all suppress wages so they don't have to compete on comp. That would be hard to do now because they can't "officially" conspire in this way (eg sign a binding contract with each other) because that would be illegal. Without an enforcement mechanism it is too easy for any one company to defect from the "gentleman's agreement" and offer higher wages. If all salary information was public though, then as soon as one company defected and offered one high-value employee a higher salary everyone else would immediately know it and start competing on salary again. So that makes the informal agreement more stable and leads to lower wages.

somsak2 3y ago

They're way ahead of you! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...