But although many of the reasons given have merit, to me the biggest obstacle is the most obvious:
An example from a Reply All podcast episode highlights my point. In this episode - 'What Kind of Idiot Gets Phished?' - Matt Lieber, the president of Gimlet (the company that produces the podcast) gets phished. The whole thing starts when he panics after receiving a fake email informing him that his company's salaries are about to become public knowledge (1).
I've pulled the exact quote from the show's transcript:
MATT: Because he sent me an email saying, as though it were from Alex Goldman saying: “One of our producers found this document posted online, which reveals Gimlet’s salary levels. Um. Is this something that you think should be public?” And I was like (gasps). I was like, “Oh my god.” Like cause if everyone’s salaries got out it would be like a nightmare, right? So, I click on it. It’s a PDF and in order to view the PDF I have to log into my–my Gimlet account.
What's never explained is why this is such an issue. More specifically, I never learn why the salaries becoming public would be a nightmare. The show simply assumes listeners will comprehend the problem without further explanation. This assumption is completely reasonable, partly because most salaries are not public information but mostly because not even my closest friends or family ask me about my salary history with looking embarrassed or adding a few qualifiers first (1).
To put it another way, salaries and wages are considered taboo topics for all but the most intimate conversations. I don't know how much money most people make because most people don't discuss how much money they make. This is usually true even for those who work in sectors where pay is posted publicly and the information is only a click away on The Good Ol' Interwebs. When I get into conversations about work, I usually hear about everything except salary - how it aligns with skills, how interesting the job is, how satisfying the work is, how this position fits into a larger plan, and so on. And yet, whenever someone I know takes a new job, the reason I usually hear is that the new job paid better than the old one.
I don't think this is necessarily a problem (or at least, a problem worth writing about on TOA) - it's more like I sense an opportunity. And just the other day, it struck me how LinkedIn (or a competitor) could take this opportunity and run with it.
Currently, websites like LinkedIn exist for people to post their work histories, describe their skills, and share their interests. In other words, the website is a rough approximation of what I hear when people talk about their work.
But what if it became a place to publicly share salaries as well? If this happened, it would become a manifestation of what I hear when people talk about taking new work. This new version of the site would cut right to the chase in terms of what the site tells us it exists for (professional networking, which is the fancy term for finding a new job). It would allow employers to find underpaid candidates and employees to determine if they were being compensated fairly for their work.
It's not a perfect concept - I'm pretty much describing the job market equivalent of Tinder, and if Tinder is anything, it's imperfect - but I'm sure this would work for some people. For those in job markets, industries, or age ranges with higher career mobility, this could be a valuable tool.
Perhaps more importantly, as more information about salaries becomes public, more people will become comfortable with openly discussing income. I wonder if some of the current opacity I suspect leads to pay imbalances would start to work themselves out once the taboo aspect of the topic started to fade away.
Footnotes / how much do you think I get paid for this blog?
1. OK, and before we give you a chance to ask questions, how much...
Even during job interviews, the question about my salary history or wage expectations was posed to me with a strained casualness, my interviewer taking on the air of someone asking me how my weekend was as the words 'How much...' dripped clumsily from the lips...
