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Comment by encoderer | Hacker News Reader

Anybody in the United States may be interested to know that they are permitted by federal law to discuss their salaries with their co-workers.

The NLRB is known primarily as the board that governs unions and union organizing. Well, for many years they've considered employees discussing salary info as protected organizing activity. Any employee that experiences adverse action by an employer after discussing salary with a coworker should contact the NLRB. They will pursue the issue on the employees behalf.

This advice comes from my lawyer, but you should consult your own before you do anything. Also, my 0.02 is that as an employee, I feel I'm often at the higher or top end of my employers range, and despite the fact that I legally COULD, I don't really see any value in discussing my pay with a coworker.

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> Also, my 0.02 is that as an employee, I feel I'm often at the higher or top end of my employers range

That's what you think, and that's why your employer also likes you to keep your mouth shut. Or?

(After all, more than 50% of people are above average drivers, or whatever the exact anecdote is...)

While I appreciate your concern for my general welfare, you can see some write-ups about my negotiation experience in my comment history, and in a few instances where I've been privy to department payroll information, I've been at or near the top.

> I feel I'm often at the higher or top end of my employers range, and despite the fact that I legally COULD, I don't really see any value in discussing my pay with a coworker.

Back in the day, I used to work for this place where, you've guessed it, according to the people who did my salary reviews, I was always close to the top end of my employers range. So, yeah, you can imagine how that worked out :)

While it's always possible to get a general impression of what a coworker earns (always assuming it's possible, or legal), it's no substitute for numbers.

When I went to buy a new car, the salesman said the "market for trade-ins was awful", and my car was worth like $8,000. Meanwhile, not 50 feet away, the same car with more miles was listed for $22,000.

The salesman fluff I heard is identical to the "you're near the top end of the range for this title" crap that you hear from HR. It's fluff, intended to make you suck it up and go away.

Yes, exactly - I only wish someone had explained that to a younger, dumber me back then.

See my reply below. But suffice to say, don't be so quick to apply your experience to others. My comfort that I'm either the highest or nearly the highest paid developer where I've worked isn't coming from some blind promise from HR.

If it seemed that I was trying to apply my experience to you, I apologize - that wasn't my intention. Keeping salary details secret is usually a valuable form of information asymmetry that HR, in general, try their best to maintain (funnily enough, that was a clause of my NDA.)

> despite the fact that I legally COULD, I don't really see any value in discussing my pay with a coworker.

It depends on your goals. If your main goal is negotiating more money for yourself, and it's true that you're already at the high end, then yes, not much motivation. If you're interested in seeing a more equitable distribution among your coworkers, letting them know your salary can help them negotiate a better salary.

Other reasons to publicise your salary include helping to recruit people to your field (if you're paid a lot) or debunking the idea that you're well-paid (if you're not).

For instance: I teach college, and I'm happy to do so, but I'm not in it for the money. I discovered that my students often think that us professors make a lot more than we actually do, and I decided to start telling them: in my seventh year as an assistant professor (in my previous job) I made $52k/yr, and was (I think) the highest-paid member of the junior faculty. Many of my students made more than that as starting salary. It was enough for me, but the students were shocked, and came out with a better understanding of where graduate school might lead them. Knowing my salary also helped some of my colleagues negotiate a better salary for themselves.

The trouble is, if coworkers know you're paid more, it seldom engenders trust, appreciation and respect.

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