Ask HN: How to handle co-workers having a higher salary
What's the best way to handle a situation where you find out your co-workers, which do the same as you do (same position), have a higher salary and level within the company
If you don’t say anything to the person who can increase your compensation, you might start caring less about your work, which could be noticed. Worse, you might start having feelings of resentment towards the company, manager or even your colleagues, depending how much you like them.
If you ask for a raise without mentioning your colleagues, and don't get it, you won't be too happy knowing what you know. Or to be more specific, believing what you believe, that you deserve the same compensation as your co-workers.
If you ask for a raise, don’t get it and then bring up your co-workers, I assume this would prompt your manager to give you reasons why your situation is different. But it's possible you might think these reasons are BS.
These are, of course, hypothetical scenarios, but it's not bad to consider them.
There's nothing to handle, it happens.
steps carefully away from the guillotine
Amusingly, it is kind of a "two birds with one stone" situation where part of the reason why there is so much secrecy around salaries is that people will get upset when person x makes more than person y.
If salaries were equalized adjusting for certain things/on par then simultaneously, everyone knows roughly how much everyone else makes in the same role and you also somewhat alleviate the upset part when finding out.
Thanks for getting the hum(e)or ;)
But I think I agree with you, while at the same time a part of me wonders if there's not a bit of duality to the salary "finding out" frustration; part $mySalary < $theirSalary, part a function 'wish I had known earlier and asked for more earlier'.