8 ms·

After spending eight years in the military (where everyone's salary is public, even Generals) I was kind of shocked when I got out and everyone was so secretive

After spending eight years in the military (where everyone's salary is public, even Generals) I was kind of shocked when I got out and everyone was so secretive about how much money they made. When I got my first office job a few friends had to coach me to not talk about salary. To me it seems the only one really benefiting from not talking about money is the company paying you.

kenko 11y ago
Yep! Some companies try to prohibit their employees from discussing compensation, precisely because they see the benefit of keeping people in the dark about each others' salaries, benefits, etc. This practice is actually illegal, but it's also mostly unnecessary, because so many people have internalized the idea that such things are Not To Be Spoken Of anyway.
- ryanmarsh 11y ago
  What about the reverse where I can negotiate an outsized salary to feed my family with so long as our dealings are private.
  - RodericDay 11y ago
    What about the reverse-reverse, when another engineer, as talented as you, but less charismatic or more ignorant about labor economics unrelated to his day-to-day job, isn't able to? Is it really the for the best if you and your boss split the money he left on the table?
    - ryanmarsh 11y ago
      Better for my children or his?
  - kenko 11y ago
    Why would you only be able to do this if your dealings are private?
    - ryanmarsh 11y ago
      Jealousy.
dominotw 11y ago
Do people get performance bonuses in the military?
- MatthewMcDonald 11y ago
  It's not really the same as in civilian jobs, but there are several pay bonuses for people in hazardous areas, imminent danger, at sea, etc.
  - ryanmarsh 11y ago
    The answer is no. You do not get performance bonuses. You get little bits of colored ribbon.
netcan 11y ago
I agree The other side of the coin is totally taboo free. IE, people on the employer side freely talk about salaries with people at other companies & recruiters in order to d exactly what the employee-side taboo prevents, get information to help them negotiate.
brightball 11y ago
Well, there's a couple of reasons for it. The main reason is that there is this idea of equal pay for equal work which only works if your work is producing widgets per hour. That's fine on a manufacturing line, an hourly job, or a job where the variance in performance of a job isn't measurably valuable to a business. I've got a lot of experience as a programmer/devops guy, but if somebody hired me to setup Wordpress with a template for them I'm not really adding much more value than anybody else who could do the job. From the business perspective, they just want the site to be setup and look nice. If a company is looking to hire a developer who can both develop the application, help manage the infrastructure and identify programming decisions that are going to cause a negative impact down the line...I'm going to add a lot more value for that business. But...if my salary at that business was public and you could clearly see on paper that I made more money that another programmer on the team who really felt like he was contributing just as much it's going to cause resentment. The only way to clear up that resentment is for somebody to sit down with said guy and say, "Look, this guy does X, Y and Z and has experience and a track record of identifying problems and preventing us from making expensive mistakes. His salary is based on the value proposition. You are focussed on an area of programming for the app and you do a great job with it." There's no way to explain it without causing resentment, having another person constantly having to justify themselves, or backhandedly belittling the contributions of another person. This is essentially why people don't talk about it. Because nobody thinks their work isn't as valuable or their contributions are as valuable as the most valuable people at the company...and they have no way of understanding that without actually doing those people's jobs. There's not a PC way to say "there's no such thing as equal work" unless your job is so specific, so thoroughly defined and so repetitive that anybody can be plugged in to perform the tasks...and at that point your job doesn't have much value anyway.
- debacle 11y ago
  This is completely untrue. People talk about salary in other places of the world very regularly, because it is often public. People don't talk about salary in the US because companies will fire you for it. Edit: See kasey_junk's response and my follow-up.
  - 11y ago
pavlov 11y ago
Discussing one's salary seems to be a particularly American taboo. Yet it's curiously dissonant with the overall American enthusiasm for all things money. I wonder when it started? Somehow I can't imagine 19th century Americans being so secretive about how much they're making.
- kedean 11y ago
  It probably comes down to pride. Americans are a prideful people, we don't like to admit to being wrong or inferior. If you go around telling all of your coworkers how much you make, chances are good that at least one of them is making quite a bit more for what you see as the same job. Most people would rather not find out that they get inferior pay to their coworkers, even if they could potentially do something about it, because it tells them that the employer sees them as the one worth less (whether justified or not). It's kind of like how most people aren't going to just ask their spouse if they're cheating, they'll wait until the evidence is clear. Nobody wants to confront the potentially ugly truth.
  - RodericDay 11y ago
    > Most people would rather not find out that they get inferior pay to their coworkers, even if they could potentially do something about it, because it tells them that the employer sees them as the one worth less (whether justified or not). I don't think you can actually assert that this is what people actually want on a meaningful psychological level. They're certainly scared away from doing it with unenforceable lines banning it in contracts, TV shows skirting away from mentioning salary figures at all times, etc. The word taboo is fitting precisely because of this.
    - kedean 11y ago
      I'm not saying that people want to be secretive about their own salary, I'm saying people are afraid to know the salaries of their peers. To use a childish simile, it's just like how most guys won't actually say how big their dick is, even if they'll talk about the general topic. It's not because it's "taboo", it's because they don't want to find out that their best friend is bigger.
ryanmarsh 11y ago
In the Army we were all broke so it didn't matter. Now there is no fucking way I want my peers knowing how much I make. I've been very successful in negotiating 25%+ higher salaries than them on balance. I commonly make more than my boss. Additionally, there is a privacy aspect to publishing this information on a public website. People I don't know or trust don't need to know how much I make. The reasons for this should be totes obvi to HN. I'm actually horrified that I'm able to see the salaries and so forth for complete strangers.
serve_yay 11y ago
> When I got my first office job a few friends had to coach me to not talk about salary. To me it seems the only one really benefiting from not talking about money is the company paying you. And the people who make more than you :). Sorry but I see this point thrown around often in this context, and there is truth to it, but also a little more to the situation than that.

kenko 11y ago

Yep! Some companies try to prohibit their employees from discussing compensation, precisely because they see the benefit of keeping people in the dark about each others' salaries, benefits, etc. This practice is actually illegal, but it's also mostly unnecessary, because so many people have internalized the idea that such things are Not To Be Spoken Of anyway.

ryanmarsh 11y ago
What about the reverse where I can negotiate an outsized salary to feed my family with so long as our dealings are private.
- RodericDay 11y ago
  What about the reverse-reverse, when another engineer, as talented as you, but less charismatic or more ignorant about labor economics unrelated to his day-to-day job, isn't able to? Is it really the for the best if you and your boss split the money he left on the table?
  - ryanmarsh 11y ago
    Better for my children or his?
- kenko 11y ago
  Why would you only be able to do this if your dealings are private?
  - ryanmarsh 11y ago
    Jealousy.

dominotw 11y ago

Do people get performance bonuses in the military?

MatthewMcDonald 11y ago
It's not really the same as in civilian jobs, but there are several pay bonuses for people in hazardous areas, imminent danger, at sea, etc.
- ryanmarsh 11y ago
  The answer is no. You do not get performance bonuses. You get little bits of colored ribbon.

netcan 11y ago

I agree The other side of the coin is totally taboo free. IE, people on the employer side freely talk about salaries with people at other companies & recruiters in order to d exactly what the employee-side taboo prevents, get information to help them negotiate.

brightball 11y ago

Well, there's a couple of reasons for it. The main reason is that there is this idea of equal pay for equal work which only works if your work is producing widgets per hour. That's fine on a manufacturing line, an hourly job, or a job where the variance in performance of a job isn't measurably valuable to a business. I've got a lot of experience as a programmer/devops guy, but if somebody hired me to setup Wordpress with a template for them I'm not really adding much more value than anybody else who could do the job. From the business perspective, they just want the site to be setup and look nice. If a company is looking to hire a developer who can both develop the application, help manage the infrastructure and identify programming decisions that are going to cause a negative impact down the line...I'm going to add a lot more value for that business. But...if my salary at that business was public and you could clearly see on paper that I made more money that another programmer on the team who really felt like he was contributing just as much it's going to cause resentment. The only way to clear up that resentment is for somebody to sit down with said guy and say, "Look, this guy does X, Y and Z and has experience and a track record of identifying problems and preventing us from making expensive mistakes. His salary is based on the value proposition. You are focussed on an area of programming for the app and you do a great job with it." There's no way to explain it without causing resentment, having another person constantly having to justify themselves, or backhandedly belittling the contributions of another person. This is essentially why people don't talk about it. Because nobody thinks their work isn't as valuable or their contributions are as valuable as the most valuable people at the company...and they have no way of understanding that without actually doing those people's jobs. There's not a PC way to say "there's no such thing as equal work" unless your job is so specific, so thoroughly defined and so repetitive that anybody can be plugged in to perform the tasks...and at that point your job doesn't have much value anyway.

debacle 11y ago
This is completely untrue. People talk about salary in other places of the world very regularly, because it is often public. People don't talk about salary in the US because companies will fire you for it. Edit: See kasey_junk's response and my follow-up.
- 11y ago

pavlov 11y ago

Discussing one's salary seems to be a particularly American taboo. Yet it's curiously dissonant with the overall American enthusiasm for all things money. I wonder when it started? Somehow I can't imagine 19th century Americans being so secretive about how much they're making.

kedean 11y ago
It probably comes down to pride. Americans are a prideful people, we don't like to admit to being wrong or inferior. If you go around telling all of your coworkers how much you make, chances are good that at least one of them is making quite a bit more for what you see as the same job. Most people would rather not find out that they get inferior pay to their coworkers, even if they could potentially do something about it, because it tells them that the employer sees them as the one worth less (whether justified or not). It's kind of like how most people aren't going to just ask their spouse if they're cheating, they'll wait until the evidence is clear. Nobody wants to confront the potentially ugly truth.
- RodericDay 11y ago
  > Most people would rather not find out that they get inferior pay to their coworkers, even if they could potentially do something about it, because it tells them that the employer sees them as the one worth less (whether justified or not). I don't think you can actually assert that this is what people actually want on a meaningful psychological level. They're certainly scared away from doing it with unenforceable lines banning it in contracts, TV shows skirting away from mentioning salary figures at all times, etc. The word taboo is fitting precisely because of this.
  - kedean 11y ago
    I'm not saying that people want to be secretive about their own salary, I'm saying people are afraid to know the salaries of their peers. To use a childish simile, it's just like how most guys won't actually say how big their dick is, even if they'll talk about the general topic. It's not because it's "taboo", it's because they don't want to find out that their best friend is bigger.

ryanmarsh 11y ago

In the Army we were all broke so it didn't matter. Now there is no fucking way I want my peers knowing how much I make. I've been very successful in negotiating 25%+ higher salaries than them on balance. I commonly make more than my boss. Additionally, there is a privacy aspect to publishing this information on a public website. People I don't know or trust don't need to know how much I make. The reasons for this should be totes obvi to HN. I'm actually horrified that I'm able to see the salaries and so forth for complete strangers.

serve_yay 11y ago

> When I got my first office job a few friends had to coach me to not talk about salary. To me it seems the only one really benefiting from not talking about money is the company paying you. And the people who make more than you :). Sorry but I see this point thrown around often in this context, and there is truth to it, but also a little more to the situation than that.