Pay Transparency Is Coming
&gt; Think about it: Every business, from tiny boutiques to online giants like Amazon, tell you exactly how much each of their items costs. Why shouldn&#x27;t it be the same when we&#x27;re shopping for a job?<p>Despite the question being rhethorical, the answer is everything that&#x27;s wrong about this proposal: Because the most important attributes are very hard to gauge and almost impossible to prove — Grit, dedication, responsibility, excellence and loyalty.<p>I&#x27;ve got people with the same job title with almost a magnitude of difference in actual output. Sure, on paper, they&#x27;re &quot;doing the same thing&quot;, but if someone forced me to shoehorn them into categories, that would mostly serve to punish top performes with little credentials and push them somewhere else.<p>I feel strongly about this, mostly because it happened to myself: After being sold, the first company that employed me introduced a &quot;completely fair and transparent&quot; compensation scheme. After I saw the scheme projected to the wall in the big All-Hands, I realized that without any degree I&#x27;d have to wait 10 years for stock options while the PhDs would be in almost immediately.<p>I called a recruiter the next day and was out a few months after.<p>Pay transparency is something that has upsides imho, but isn&#x27;t a clear-cut win. It can turn out to be a net negative. Some further reading: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;the-downside-of-full-pay-transparency-1502676360" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;the-downside-of-full-pay-transp...</a>