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Comment by BurningFrog | Hacker News Reader

> It can be extremely demoralising for co-workers in all kinds of roles when they see that kind of recognition being given to someone who they feel don't deserve it.

This is why wages are secret. Everyone is convinced they deserve to be in the top half of earners.

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Businesses want wages to be secret and may even adopt policies that ban employees from discussing it, but in the U.S. employees' rights to discuss pay amongst themselves are protected under the NLRA.

https://www.insperity.com/blog/when-employees-discuss-wages/

In Norway all wages are viewable on a public website https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40669239 It's pretty interesting.

Well, sort of. Taxable income is, but since Norway allows e.g debt interest payments for mortgages etc. to be offset against mortgage, taxable income can vary quite a bit even for people with the same exact income.

Wages are tried to be kept secret by a company because a company wants to pay its employees as little as they can get away with.

Source? or is this a personal theory?

Personal theory!

I hope you landed on it independently via gut without thinking it through much, because this is one of the boilerplate reasons companies use to trick people into thinking that they'd be better off not knowing everyone's salaries, when in reality companies just want to keep it secret to have more power over salary negotiation.

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