Keeping your Salary Confidential
Keeping your Salary Confidential
(OP)
I was just thinking back to my previous employer. When it came time to review salaries, my supervisor would ask us to keep our new salaries confidential from the other employees. Personally, I didn't see an issue with this - I feel my salary is my own business. However, I had a co-worker who felt compelled to share his salary, with the attitude that it was his salary, and he could disclose it if he so chose. Our supervisor was not impressed, and we learned that (after all discussing salaries) there were significant discrepancies between level of experience and compensation.
I'm curious if others have encountered this, and what opinions are out there.
I'm curious if others have encountered this, and what opinions are out there.





RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
The company will pay an employee just enough to keep the employee 'happy' enough to continue working. The most productive employee could be paid the least if his/her bargaining skills are lacking.
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
Which is precisely why your supervisor doesn't want you talking. I've spoke with a few people who left our company and they readily told me what they were paid here vs. what they're earning now. I was quiet astonished to find out that some rather inexperienced employees earned more than their much more experienced and technically knowledgeable peers.
-Christine
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
Hone your negotiating skills and define what you are worth - go for it - and be happy with it.
For what it is worth - I think the Bible even has a story regarding this - something about guys starting in the morning at one level and guys starting a noon for the same amount. My biblical studies are at best very slim - but obviously this has been a problem for a long time.
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
The literal meaning is that you agree your pay/contract with your boss when you started. If shortly after someone else gets a better deal then what right have you got to complain - you were happy with your deal when you negotiated it?
(The spiritual significance is either about Gentiles being saved or death bed confession type deals)
I haven't discussed my pay with current colleagues, partly because I was under the impression I was doing better than many of them and didn't want to rub their noses in it. Of cours I could be wrong, maybe they're doing better than me!
KENAT,
Have you reminded yourself of FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies recently, or taken a look at posting policies: http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
At another company my manager told a coworker my salary. My coworker had been there a lot longer than me and was very upset that my salary was more than his.
My suggestion, keep your personal business to yourself.
Chris
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 08 3.1
AutoCAD 08
ctopher's home (updated Aug 5, 2008)
ctopher's blog
SolidWorks Legion
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
A year later I was offered a job over there myself. The money was substantially less than I'd been told a year ago, by someone essentially my equal. Plus he would have had a raise since then.
When I mentioned this to the boss making me the offer, all hell broke loose. I got bumped up quite a bit, but from then on, all offers were made on the grounds that they were secret.
- Steve
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
Or, more simply, life is only as fair as you can make it.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
I agree with keeping salaries confidential, however, my colleagues point was that it is his salary, and the boss has no right to tell him to keep it quiet. To some point I agree with him, albeit I do not like sharing my compensation details with anyone other than my wife.
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
David
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
As time goes on maybe merit raises will disappear and the job will pay only one salary regardless of years or qualifications, but that's in someone elses lifetime.
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
Cheers
Greg Locock
SIG:Please see FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
In the market place the confusopoly works to defeat the downward trend in prices that competition might otherwise engender but in the workplace it works toward keeping down overheads and costs i.e. salaries.
It is never as simple as comparing salaries, there is a whole package of "benefits" which makes comparisons as difficult as choosing a phone provider, we all know we are getting shafted but can never really figure out if we are being shafted more or less than if we worked somewhere else.
The only way to gain is to keep trading employers and take advantage of all those "0% interest on money transfer when you take our credit card today" offers and even then, you know there is no such thing as a free lunch.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
Again, Scot Adams has it nailed: companies select the best people they can find, and then want to pay them the industry average. As the pointy-haired boss says, "That's the way we like 'em- bright, but clueless!" And just like Wally, I feel sorry for people like that!
Information is power, so those who have the power like to control the information for their own benefit.
It's amazing that ordinary working people have this one figured out, but we "professionals" are the ones who get confused...
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
An old manager trick is to tell each employee during the review that their raise was one of the best and they get paid more than anyone else, and by the way keep that to yourself.
My opinion/strategy is to keep an eye on sources like monster.com, salary.com and Design News to determine what fair market value is. I make sure I get paid at or above what the sources say I should make and that keeps me happy. Oh, and I don't tell others what I make because that would make my supervisor's job harder and he would stop giving me good raises....
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
That said, we do have grades, with a pay range for each grade, so I suppose we don't keep our salary completely secret.
So maybe I'm talking %#$##, ignore me.
If you know other peoples pay how much time is spent/lost comparing yourself to them? I accidently found out what one of my colleagues made a couple of years ago (he left a print in the printer with it on). If I recall correctly he was making slightly more than me. I immediately started thinking things like 'but I'm so much more productive than him, more qualified...'. I knocked it off pretty quick and it's not exactly my proudest moment.
I'm torn because I agree that management are typically out to screw you, and arguably rightly so since their job is to get as much as they can for as little. However I like to think that you should try and determine your worth based primarily on how good you are/can be rather than comparing yourself to others. Of course you need to callibrate this worth which probably means comparing to others.
Now my brain hurts, I give up.
KENAT,
Have you reminded yourself of FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies recently, or taken a look at posting policies: http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
I think it's important to do so. I learned my lesson when at a summer job just after graduating high school. I was collecting signatures for a ballot initiative along with someone else. She asked how much I was getting paid ($6.00/hr) and she said "haha I'm getting paid more. I get $7.00 / hr." I didn't think it was very nice how she said it.
But - I don't learn my lesson right away. Shortly afterwards I started working at a car dealership washing cars. A guy got hired after me, and asked how much I was making. I told him $6.00 / hr, and he laughed and said he got $6.50 an hr for the same job.
Thereafter, I decided to not tell anyone how much I am currently making and I stand behind that. I think it causes more problems than it is worth.
However - the decision on to disclose salary is managements decision. Management should be willing to stand and defend their reasons for paying a particular employee xxx if that employee finds out that he is getting paid less than a coworker. That's part of running a business.
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
On the other hand I feel it is important to know what you are worth and what competitors pay.
My last employer, for whatever reason, used to post the salary range of recently hired employees. It must of been for some law we have about disclosing certain things about new hires. No names were on it just the job desciption. But when the low end of the range was more than what I was making for the same position I got upset.
I tend to get myself worked up over such things. It's better to stay out of it.
I have even gone to online job sites to read the descriptions of new jobs at companies I was currently working at. HR would always post a salary range. Used to really get my blood boiling when I found out how little I was worth to them.
To sum up, know what you are worth, and don't worry about what others are making. It will give you an ulcer ;)
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
If a colleague earns more than you, it isn't necessarily because he is a better engineer than you but a better negotiator (or better at brown-nosing). See if you can find out how he did it.
If you know the salaries of others, then judge it in those terms but if you really want to worry about unequal pay, just ask why you, a smart and essential engineer, get paid so much less than the plug-in replaceable dime a dozen idiot who is a manager.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
That's worthy of my employer.
KENAT,
Have you reminded yourself of FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies recently, or taken a look at posting policies: http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
Of course, the shareholders might want to know why the employed a consultant in the first place.
Interesting thing about some consultants, especially I, suspect, those that conduct market research, is that in order for them to find the answers for you, you need to tell them the questions to ask (it's your business, not theirs).
This means that mostly what they tell you, you already know. That's OK, if there are any surprises then is the time to worry what else you didn't understand, but you'd be surprised how surprised management can be by this.
I had a situation like that where I'd done my homework but management don't easily part with $0.5m funding on a single market applications and obviously didn't like to trust my word for it and so they hired a respectable market research company and we worked out what questions to ask.
None of the answers they gave surprised us except one: when asked if they wanted a no-maintenance instrument most of the sample said no. The consultant went back to them and asked why not and they said they didn't believe they could have a zero maintenance instrument. We rephrased as "low maintenance" and got a strong positive response. I got the budget and that's what we gave them, zero to low maintenance.
I guess there is a simple rule about consultants reports;
the results should never surprise the below deck workers but should always surprise management. If that happens then God's in his heaven and all's right with the world.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
- Steve
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
So... what tends to happen (in my limited experience) is that the companies tell people not to discuss it, and generally people will discuss it furtively behind the boss' backs.
Generally I also agree with the statement that it comes down to your negotiating skills (and willingness to back them up with actions). If you are valuable to your company and are prepared to leave for a better package, then you are in a strong position and a good manager will make the best offer he/she can. If you're not irreplacable and/or they know you'll never leave by choice, then you probably won't get the best deal.
I guess most of this comes down to market forces - and as in all things, people try to distort those forces in their own favour.
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
When I first hired on to my current company, I never bothered to review the salary level of the guys working for me until raise time. I was astonished how little we were paying these guys. The 5 guys in my department had been with the company for over 6 years (from the beginning) and had missed a big upswing in the oil and gas market.
I went to my boss and HR and raised hell and the hr guy came back with all of these charts and other reems of data. I will never forget I was lobbying for one guy to double his salary. HR guy says he was only worth a 10% raise. We ended up giving him a 16% raise.
Two months after his raise, the guy left for well over double his new salary. The HR guy couldn't believe it and figured it was an isolated case. I got the raises I wanted for my guys at the point.
Zuccus
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
An absolutely wonderful demotivator for the people that were actually the most productive. However, since their productivity was normalized against their salary, they got bupkis in raises.
So, we're now in a strict COLA regime of raises. It's boring, but steady...
TTFN
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
In straight dollar terms(ie. NOT allowing for cost of living), the salary track of an Ontario engineer is basically X dollars per year at graduation, ~2X dollars per year once you're out about 20 years from graduation, and near zero real salary growth thereafter. The rate of salary growth is much faster in the 1st 10 years than in the 2nd. That's on average terms across all levels/categories, and hasn't changed much over the years.
If your young engineers aren't getting 10%/yr (including COLA), they're getting screwed.
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
The only time I've ever gotten a 10% raise was when I changed jobs. Sad, but true. And since pensions are a thing of the past, I'm not very loyal.
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
I'm sure we could make a case for an exponential growth in value due to years served.... so why do the "rewards" tail off in the second 10 years?
Are we less productive, less valuable?
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
As for why the rate-of-rise of salary tails off... could it be related to the similar plateau which will be happening in an engineer's knowledge?
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If we learn from our mistakes I'm getting a great education!
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
jmw: as we get older it's not that we're less productive or less valuable- it's just that we're considered by business to be very little more valuable or productive after 25 years of experience than after 20 years.
Regardless whether you or I believe that to be untrue, the marketplace begs to differ with us...
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
Even I notice it, I'm still learning stuff but as a % of what I know it's smaller.
Someone in their first few years might easily double the amount of usefull skills/knowledge. Going from say 20 to 25 years though you probably wont increase your usefull skills/knowledge by 50%.
I still think experience is undervalued by many though, at least in some of the stuff I'm involved in. The guys in their 60's really know their stuff.
KENAT,
Have you reminded yourself of FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies recently, or taken a look at posting policies: http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
With guys my age (at least in my circle) we tend to talk about how much we make more that some of the older guys (not old, just older). I know pretty close to what everyone is making (with in 5K or so).
You have to be wise with the way you use that information. Don't throw your buddy under the bus and tell you boss he told you. Use it like you would KBB or NADA when buying a car. You know what they are willing to pay for someone like you, so demand it.
Life isn't all about money, but work is. Enjoying work (I do a lot) is just a bonus. My real life is with my family and friends. When my job gets in the way of that it is time to get a new one.
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
I always did much better in the class and grade system like government than I did in the real private world. I never talked saleries and found everything out when I put in my resignation. At that point it was too late.
If you want what you really deserve, go into business for yourself.
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
I understand the desire to go it alone to get what you deserve, however I think that education and open salary knowledge is much better for our Profession; The stratification of our specialist knowledge into a multitude of suppliers is tremendously dangerous, and certainly not in our best interest.
I believe the engineering profession, but perhaps even more particularly our specialisation ie Consulting Structural Engineers, as I believe we both are, is so poorly paid compared to fifty years ago precisely because of everyone going it alone. The market sees us a mature commodity style service, and the competitive bid process ensures that there is always a temptation to cut rates to get work. I do not, however, see this as simply supply versus demand, it is in fact supply plus stratification vs. demand.
Every person who "goes it alone" does two things, the first of which is pull in better take home pay through profits than they had been in salary, while the second is to further reduce the overall profitability throughout their field of works by adding another bidder to the basket of tenders.
Just my personal opinion.
Regards,
YS
B.Eng (Carleton)
Working in New Zealand, thinking of my snow covered home...
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
Having been on both sides, the more ammo you have going in, the better off you are. If you base your case on a specific individual, look to get blind sighted. Having worked for a family owned energy consulting business, then seeing them nearly go bankrupt after turning in contracts after walking, dollars aren't always the bottom line, and some people will go for a pyrrhic victory.
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
With salaries is the same.
AS I mentioned in other post, I never felt underpaid until I find my current job. It was then that I found that my previous job was underapid fo rhte responsibilities that I was taking. Or that my current job is largely overpaying me... shhh.... Don´t tell anybody...
Regarding discussing salaries, I only do it with my wife and a some very close friends which are not in the same industry or even country, so no direct comparison can be made.
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
who defines what is under and what is overpaid? oft times we have a very inflated sense of our abilities and accomplishmentts in relation to our coworkers.
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
Personally I'd be happy with a pay grade structure being made visible to employees and knowing the salary range for my position within the company. I don't particularly need to know to the last penny what colleagues are paid, but I expect to be paid at a similar rate to colleagues when I'm doing a similar role.
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If we learn from our mistakes I'm getting a great education!
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
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If we learn from our mistakes I'm getting a great education!
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
Of course management would never keep someone in a lower grade when they ought to be pushing them up the ladder to more responsible and productive positions.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
Thank you, at least someone understood what I was trying and failing to say!
jmw,
Yes, seen that happen quite a bit. The decision process follows the lines of "Shall we move an experienced and talented engineer into a management position and leave a hole which is almost impossible to fill in today's recruitment market, or shall we move someone less capable into the management position and avoid weakening the engineering core by moving one of the best engineers?". I understand the logic which arrives at this decision, but am continuously surprised that the thought process doesn't continue into "What will we do when the talented and experienced guy gets so pissed off being passed over time and again that his motivation dies, he resigns and we lose the skills and experience entirely?".
In my simple non-manager view of the world - and as one of the guys who has caught the fallout when talented people left - I always thought it made more sense to keep the experience within the company in some role rather than lose it to a competitor.
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If we learn from our mistakes I'm getting a great education!
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
My Dad always said "At the end of the day, you and your employer had better be even because they will let you go with nothing if they have to".
As an engineer and then an engineering manager I have to admit it makes life EASIER for management if employees are in the dark.
As you get older, your value to most firms will be presumed to be less (they think they are paying you too much). Companies do not pay for experience. Experience is far underrated and poorly paid.
Like Dad said, "Your are marketing and selling yourself everyday . . . ." Which means you should be looking to move up or another job all the time.
Companies love the complacent (salary wise) engineer.
Regards
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
What you make when you are initially hired not only depends on your skills and knowledge, but also what kind of demand there is for people similar to you that are looking for jobs at the same time that you are. Obviously if the supply is low and the demand is high then the pay will be higher.
Salaries should always be confidential. There really is no benefit to knowing what somebody else makes.
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
And how is that in the interest of anyone but the employer? As an employee your comment is precisely why some salary data should be made public.
If today's employers ever wonder why there is no loyalty from their employees then this thread should be a useful starting point. By the admission of diarmud above it seems the loyal staff guy is a mug being taken for a ride. Faced with employers like you the only way to keep your pay competitive in a bouyant job market is to keep moving, to the long-term detriment of the company. If that's the new rules then I'll play by them, but it's not how I would like to see the game played. A bit of mutual respect goes a long way.
jerry,
Are you saying that you think it is reasonable for someone recruited when the job market was flat mean should make less for the rest of their career than someone recruited at another time when the job market is buoyant? That seems a little unreasonable.
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If we learn from our mistakes I'm getting a great education!
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
Unfortunately, this is the world we live in. I've seen partners and owners mortgage their homes and cash in their IRA's to keep the firm going.
What I am trying to say is you have to remember, no one will take care of you except yourself, they cannot afford to for long. For the same reason you keep educating yourself through your career (to keep yourself useful to your employer and to learn) you have to recognize that this is the world you live in.
As far as long term detriment to the firm, in the USA where I am, no one looks further than the next few years. Few can look at the long term...bills have to be paid today.
These are not NEW rules. They are the rules the world has played for for thousand of years.
As far as mutual respect, engineering in the US has become a sort of back room operation. The front office is full of salesmen, lawyers and accountants. Get used to it.
Regards
RE: Keeping your Salary Confidential
The massive rise in the numbers of
industrial prostitutescontractors in the UK is the result of management who, as a group throughout the nation, can't see further into the future than their next bonus, and the management themselves are a symptom of companies run by accountants and shareholders who are only interested in the five-year forecast and the next dividend. Neither group has any interest in investing in the long term future of the company. No wonder our economy is f_cked.----------------------------------
If we learn from our mistakes I'm getting a great education!