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Comment by nxobject | Hacker News Reader

Federal salaries are public information.

Indeed. One of the highest paid people in my local school district is a librarian who teaches no classes and gets paid 275k. Do you think it would be a good idea to get a wired article published with his name address, and 4 similar teacher profiles?

Are you suggesting that the article we're discussing is "weird"? Does it list anyone's address? I feel like it just says their names and provides some basic bio info. Seems like pretty normal reporting on an important story at the top levels of the federal government.

Yeah I’m not suggesting anything weird either. I just think the community might want to know which teachers are really well paid. They have chosen employment in the public interest. Are you with me?

I suspect they read "wired" as "weird".

Yo there’s literally articles regularly published on the names and pay of all local city employees in my city with specific call outs to the top paid ones.

While it seems you are implying that is not cool, it’s actually unremarkable and common government transparency.

Yep. I feel like we should probably be taking more of a "you're one of today's ten thousand!"[0] approach to this thread. I think this person is probably just actually unfamiliar with the history of public interest reporting on government.

0: https://xkcd.com/1053/

This is public info in many states, by law as far as I am aware,

https://cthrupayroll.mass.gov/#!/year/2025/card/1

Federal pay is already supposed to be public knowledge and is highly regulated based on role https://www.federalpay.org/. Although who knows if that's true anymore. Seems like all precedent is up in the air nowadays

I mean, I don't love it because of my political ideology, but it wouldn't strike me as weird if I saw this kind of story in my local paper...

I got all pissed in college when I read a magazine article about how the football coach at the state school I attended was the highest paid state employee that year. There was nothing weird about that article, and I think it's very similar to your hypothetical.

I do, ideologically, think that it's much better for reporters to focus on powerful people near the top, but I don't think it's weird to report on government employees, in general.

Wow, I chose the wrong profession. $275k damn.

It’s certainly not typical - he just minmaxed the credentials to get into the top bracket.

Just unfortunate that the resources are going there.

That sounds like a job better suited for your local paper. The scope of national politics is far greater.

But even if Wired did, it still wouldn't be "doxxing", which used to imply publishing not just names but addresses and other PII (like SSNs) for non-public, non-governmental figures.

New stories routinely come out about the highest paid people in colleges typically being the head football coaches. The conservative media has been railing on academic administrator salaries for years.

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