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Comment by arjunvpaul | Hacker News Reader

Why does it annoy you? Are you concerned that you may not get a fair deal? Less happy that colleagues at the same job level may be getting paid more or less?

To get a balanced perspective it would useful to read up on both sides of the approach. For example, on one end you have Google's Laszlo Bock arguing in his book Work Rules, that its good that Google "pays unfairly" (https://goo.gl/3hWbQw). On the other end, are the Scandinavian countries like Norway where you can walk into a tax office and see anyone's tax return (https://goo.gl/P5WqW1)

Ricardo Perez-Truglia (https://goo.gl/4DemkS) is someone whose research touches this topic. His findings are briefly mentioned in this video (https://goo.gl/m7ECXM)

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I find it annoying at the company where I work at because it's impossible for me to determine where I can be financially if I stay with the company for another 2/3/4/5/10 years. I have no idea what the pay grades are for seniors, experts, leads, managers - and HR refuses to answer even a simple question of "if, in 5 years, I am a team lead, how much money could I be making, plus/minus 5k".

One thing I personally looked for is the tenure of senior folks at the companies I used to work at. It is a better indicator of whether it is worth your while staying at a company. As corny as it sounds, money isn't everything. And tenure is a great indicator of "everything considered, is this a good place to invest my working years?"

But I see that you have an immediate need. philosophical and theoretical answers won't help you :-) .

- One useful source I found was http://h1bdata.info/index.php . If your company hires H1B's then this source is gold. - Look at job postings your company does and have a friend who would fit the profile call them and ask for a salary range for that position. - One thing I have found effective is actually asking the "seniors, experts, leads, managers" the question you want answered.

I think this is a good point. The company I used to work for had a different hierarchy that people would get promoted within but it was never made clear a) what you had to do to get that promotion and b) what sort of pay increases got you there. It was a small company that grew into a medium-sized one (30 to 150 people in four years) but any discussion of more formalization or salary bands going forward was poo-poo'd as being "too corporate".

This despite any time annual reviews coming around and there being a round of promotions that would kill morale the following week.

Yeah I am unhappy. I’ve given them 4 years only to find the role I was in had no upward mobility and then I move into a role with an industry standard title and the loyalty and experience I bring from my previous role (non sw dev to sw dev) brought a measly 5% raise.

But I will read your links as I think I might be one sided and / or still jaded.

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