
Sharing Salary Figures on Facebook - chaostheory
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/fashion/27salary.html?_r=1&ref=fashion&oref=slogin
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jeremytliles
When I was getting my MBA, one of my professors discussed the idea of a
workplace where everyone's compensation was disclosed. The basic conclusion of
the discussion was that since there are virtually no workplaces in which
compensation is truly tied to value (and value is impossible to measure
anyway), knowing what co-workers make will always lead to morale issues.

As far as friends go, I think we will experience feelings of resentment,
jealously, inferiority, or superiority to a lesser degree than with coworkers,
and are more likely to be happy for a friend who is compensated above what we
see as her perceived value, and more willing to try to help someonse who is
compensated below what we see as her perceived value. This is at least partly
because we are not competing for pieces of the same pie as we are in the
workplace.

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ryanmahoski
As the number of measurable work metrics increases, it becomes (roughly)
exponentially more difficult to assess employee net value. If we can
triangulate this measured value, we still may have immeasurable metrics--which
will always break the formula. To the extent compensation is tied to
immeasurable quantities, all employees should resent the system as unfairly
hackable.

Some work systems are possible to measure and thus compensation may be
formulaic and (roughly) just. For example, if I offered you a monetary reward
to enter a boolean into a form, you either do the work (by entering a 1 or 0)
or you don't. With Mechanical Turk, I can design complex algorithms with
failsafe controls that will objectively assess and reward worker value. To the
degree I can describe real-world problems and automate inputs and outputs, I
can build an efficient and viable organization. Is a fair, transparent system
intrinsically "happier"? I am not sure, but I do know the wealth creation
potential here is massive.

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hugh
Is this a real trend, or just another trend made up by the New York Times to
fill in space?

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simianstyle
The only other company that I know that does this is Whole Foods Stores. Each
store has all the salaries listed up for all the employees to portray a
completely transparent display of trust.

However, i'm not quite convinced that it works.

