Keeping your Salary Confidential 19

[Dirtguy4587]

I was just thinking back to my previous employer. When it came time to review salaries, my supervisor would ask us to keep our new salaries confidential from the other employees. Personally, I didn't see an issue with this - I feel my salary is my own business. However, I had a co-worker who felt compelled to share his salary, with the attitude that it was his salary, and he could disclose it if he so chose. Our supervisor was not impressed, and we learned that (after all discussing salaries) there were significant discrepancies between level of experience and compensation.

I'm curious if others have encountered this, and what opinions are out there.

 

[KENAT]

From what I've seen, places with highly structured published pay grades like government/civil service have a lot less freedom to reward good work/efforts, or conversely often to punish the lack thereoff.

That said, we do have grades, with a pay range for each grade, so I suppose we don't keep our salary completely secret.

So maybe I'm talking %#$##, ignore me.

If you know other peoples pay how much time is spent/lost comparing yourself to them? I accidently found out what one of my colleagues made a couple of years ago (he left a print in the printer with it on). If I recall correctly he was making slightly more than me. I immediately started thinking things like 'but I'm so much more productive than him, more qualified...'. I knocked it off pretty quick and it's not exactly my proudest moment.

I'm torn because I agree that management are typically out to screw you, and arguably rightly so since their job is to get as much as they can for as little. However I like to think that you should try and determine your worth based primarily on how good you are/can be rather than comparing yourself to others. Of course you need to callibrate this worth which probably means comparing to others.

Now my brain hurts, I give up.

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of faq731-376 recently, or taken a look at posting policies:

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[cedarbluffranch]

I would take offense to any boss who says to keep your job you have to keep your salary secret.

I think it's important to do so. I learned my lesson when at a summer job just after graduating high school. I was collecting signatures for a ballot initiative along with someone else. She asked how much I was getting paid ($6.00/hr) and she said "haha I'm getting paid more. I get $7.00 / hr." I didn't think it was very nice how she said it.

But - I don't learn my lesson right away. Shortly afterwards I started working at a car dealership washing cars. A guy got hired after me, and asked how much I was making. I told him $6.00 / hr, and he laughed and said he got $6.50 an hr for the same job.

Thereafter, I decided to not tell anyone how much I am currently making and I stand behind that. I think it causes more problems than it is worth.

However - the decision on to disclose salary is managements decision. Management should be willing to stand and defend their reasons for paying a particular employee xxx if that employee finds out that he is getting paid less than a coworker. That's part of running a business.

 

[cksh]

I go back and forth from wanting to know what my coworkers make to not wanting. I know they make more then me. Alot more. As in probably 20-30k more per year. But I am happy with my current salary. I have not been here long, have nowhere near the xp they have with our product, and don't have the responsibility they have. And my salary can only go up (fingers crossed!)

On the other hand I feel it is important to know what you are worth and what competitors pay.

My last employer, for whatever reason, used to post the salary range of recently hired employees. It must of been for some law we have about disclosing certain things about new hires. No names were on it just the job desciption. But when the low end of the range was more than what I was making for the same position I got upset.

I tend to get myself worked up over such things. It's better to stay out of it.

I have even gone to online job sites to read the descriptions of new jobs at companies I was currently working at. HR would always post a salary range. Used to really get my blood boiling when I found out how little I was worth to them.

To sum up, know what you are worth, and don't worry about what others are making. It will give you an ulcer

 

[BigInch]

cksh, I really don't understand your position. Maybe you didn't fully explain, but if its being "happy as a clam", as they say, that's one concept that has eluded me. I'd suggest that you either totally justify to yourself that the others you mention are indeed worth more because of the inherent nature of their specific work roles in relation to yours and be happy with that, which you actually may have done already, or take the bull by the horns and make the changes you need to feel right about the apparent disparities. I actually believe that if you do something about it, you will personally feel better about your place there and probably also become a more productive and valuable contributor to the group effort as well. Did I get it wrong?

 

[jmw]

The real question isn't about what you are worth (even compared to co-workers and especially as management will never ever pay you what you are worth) but what you can screw out of management.

If a colleague earns more than you, it isn't necessarily because he is a better engineer than you but a better negotiator (or better at brown-nosing). See if you can find out how he did it.

If you know the salaries of others, then judge it in those terms but if you really want to worry about unequal pay, just ask why you, a smart and essential engineer, get paid so much less than the plug-in replaceable dime a dozen idiot who is a manager.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[floattuber]

A technician here found out that the technicians at the other plant a few miles away were making more than the techs here. Well he raised hell at a meeting and the company ended up bringing in an outside consulting firm to do a study and they reported that it was true. This resulted in higher wages for all techs at our plant.

 

[KENAT]

They had to get a consultant in to do a study? Someone couldn't just look at payroll?

That's worthy of my employer.

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of faq731-376 recently, or taken a look at posting policies:

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[jmw]

Giving out pay rises on their own judgement would get them in trouble with the "shareholders" but when there is bad news to give to the shareholders it is always better if it is someone else's bad news, with an "independent consultants" report to refer to it is obviously not the fault of management that they have had to increase salaries.

Of course, the shareholders might want to know why the employed a consultant in the first place.

Interesting thing about some consultants, especially I, suspect, those that conduct market research, is that in order for them to find the answers for you, you need to tell them the questions to ask (it's your business, not theirs).
This means that mostly what they tell you, you already know. That's OK, if there are any surprises then is the time to worry what else you didn't understand, but you'd be surprised how surprised management can be by this.

I had a situation like that where I'd done my homework but management don't easily part with $0.5m funding on a single market applications and obviously didn't like to trust my word for it and so they hired a respectable market research company and we worked out what questions to ask.

None of the answers they gave surprised us except one: when asked if they wanted a no-maintenance instrument most of the sample said no. The consultant went back to them and asked why not and they said they didn't believe they could have a zero maintenance instrument. We rephrased as "low maintenance" and got a strong positive response. I got the budget and that's what we gave them, zero to low maintenance.

I guess there is a simple rule about consultants reports;
the results should never surprise the below deck workers but should always surprise management. If that happens then God's in his heaven and all's right with the world.





JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[SomptingGuy]

When I was working in consulting and managing projects it was simple. People are always happy to book time to your job and when they do, they are implicitly giving away their salary details.

- Steve

 

[tbwttihs]

As has already been pointed out, it's in the company's interest not to publish salaries/raises, and it's generally in the employees interest (to some extent) to know what their peers are earning.

So... what tends to happen (in my limited experience) is that the companies tell people not to discuss it, and generally people will discuss it furtively behind the boss' backs.

Generally I also agree with the statement that it comes down to your negotiating skills (and willingness to back them up with actions). If you are valuable to your company and are prepared to leave for a better package, then you are in a strong position and a good manager will make the best offer he/she can. If you're not irreplacable and/or they know you'll never leave by choice, then you probably won't get the best deal.

I guess most of this comes down to market forces - and as in all things, people try to distort those forces in their own favour.

 

[zuccus]

As a manager I would like to make a few comments. Sometimes your manager or supervisor has no control over your raise and/or bonus. Most of the time the corporate policy will set what you get unless your manager goes and raises hell about it.

When I first hired on to my current company, I never bothered to review the salary level of the guys working for me until raise time. I was astonished how little we were paying these guys. The 5 guys in my department had been with the company for over 6 years (from the beginning) and had missed a big upswing in the oil and gas market.

I went to my boss and HR and raised hell and the hr guy came back with all of these charts and other reems of data. I will never forget I was lobbying for one guy to double his salary. HR guy says he was only worth a 10% raise. We ended up giving him a 16% raise.

Two months after his raise, the guy left for well over double his new salary. The HR guy couldn't believe it and figured it was an isolated case. I got the raises I wanted for my guys at the point.

Zuccus

 

[IRstuff]

I'll second that. There was a period of time when I worked for a manager who espoused "stacking", where every employee was ranked by performance and inversely ranked by pay. The net result was that senior engineers would get next to nothing, so that some of the younger engineers would get 10% or 15% raises.

An absolutely wonderful demotivator for the people that were actually the most productive. However, since their productivity was normalized against their salary, they got bupkis in raises.

So, we're now in a strict COLA regime of raises. It's boring, but steady...

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[moltenmetal]

IRStuff: get some salary survey data and then decide if COLA alone is sufficient for a young engineer.

In straight dollar terms(ie. NOT allowing for cost of living), the salary track of an Ontario engineer is basically X dollars per year at graduation, ~2X dollars per year once you're out about 20 years from graduation, and near zero real salary growth thereafter. The rate of salary growth is much faster in the 1st 10 years than in the 2nd. That's on average terms across all levels/categories, and hasn't changed much over the years.

If your young engineers aren't getting 10%/yr (including COLA), they're getting screwed.

 

[AutoXer]

If your young engineers aren't getting 10%/yr (including COLA), they're getting screwed.

The only time I've ever gotten a 10% raise was when I changed jobs. Sad, but true. And since pensions are a thing of the past, I'm not very loyal.

 

[jmw]

The rate of salary growth is much faster in the 1st 10 years than in the 2nd.

That probably just means that the more experienced you are the more stable you are and the less they feel they need to do to keep you happy. This is when the kids are going to college, and the wife will be back to full time work? That's when they think they've got you.

I'm sure we could make a case for an exponential growth in value due to years served.... so why do the "rewards" tail off in the second 10 years?
Are we less productive, less valuable?

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[ScottyUK]

I tried your 10% per year and it is remarkably close to the actual salaries I've made. I knew I should have bargained harder when I was young. An extra grand or two back then would have compounded up nicely.

As for why the rate-of-rise of salary tails off... could it be related to the similar plateau which will be happening in an engineer's knowledge?


----------------------------------

If we learn from our mistakes I'm getting a great education!

 

[moltenmetal]

Did a project back in engineering economics calculating the NPV of a Masters or PhD (neither pay off (in Canada) unless you do them really FAST!). Reviewing and analyzing salary survey data was very informative- and helped greatly with future salary negotiations. Early information, like early money, is most valuable!

jmw: as we get older it's not that we're less productive or less valuable- it's just that we're considered by business to be very little more valuable or productive after 25 years of experience than after 20 years.

Regardless whether you or I believe that to be untrue, the marketplace begs to differ with us...

 

[KENAT]

Scotty, I proposed the same thing about an engineers value plateauing a little as they reach the second half of their career.

Even I notice it, I'm still learning stuff but as a % of what I know it's smaller.

Someone in their first few years might easily double the amount of usefull skills/knowledge. Going from say 20 to 25 years though you probably wont increase your usefull skills/knowledge by 50%.

I still think experience is undervalued by many though, at least in some of the stuff I'm involved in. The guys in their 60's really know their stuff.

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of faq731-376 recently, or taken a look at posting policies:

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[JakeAdkins]

I'm on the early side of my career (3 years in) I grew up watching companies screw my dads generation with down sizing, firing well paid employees, going off shore and sob story after sob story. As a result my loyalty to a company is only as long as it is until my next pay check.

With guys my age (at least in my circle) we tend to talk about how much we make more that some of the older guys (not old, just older). I know pretty close to what everyone is making (with in 5K or so).

You have to be wise with the way you use that information. Don't throw your buddy under the bus and tell you boss he told you. Use it like you would KBB or NADA when buying a car. You know what they are willing to pay for someone like you, so demand it.

Life isn't all about money, but work is. Enjoying work (I do a lot) is just a bonus. My real life is with my family and friends. When my job gets in the way of that it is time to get a new one.

 

[Dinosaur]

All the decent raises I ever received came when I changed jobs.

I always did much better in the class and grade system like government than I did in the real private world. I never talked saleries and found everything out when I put in my resignation. At that point it was too late.

If you want what you really deserve, go into business for yourself.