table of Contents
Why are programmers so taboo to talk about salary?
The company has only two strategies for wages
Programmer partnership does not need a boss
The blue-collar class also does not have to face this problem.
This is the end of the article!
Preface
It depends on your country and region. California's law is that employers cannot prohibit employees from exchanging salary information, and cannot engage in any retaliatory behavior after employees have exchanged salary information, so anyone who likes to discuss can discuss it casually.
There is a huge discussion group in Facebook called Compensation Discussion, and everyone directly sends the PDF that informs the salary adjustment after the performance cycle is over. In order to contribute data, some people even sent out the performance scores of each performance cycle of working at Facebook for many years, whether they were promoted, how much compensation was adjusted, and how many additional stocks were issued.
Facebook's salary is completely formulaic. Enter the current salary and last year's two performances to calculate the new salary and stocks. No one can "discretely" interfere with this calculation result. This is what makes Facebook very different from other companies. Facebook's doing this is based on a principle: resolutely not to negotiate compensation with employees, performance and progress is the only way to affect compensation. (Google is the opposite. Employees can negotiate with the company with a higher offer outside.)
Ironically, this completely formulaic and unambiguous calculation makes reverse engineering very easy. As long as enough people share their data points in the Compensation Discussion, everyone can infer the calculation formula and the constants used in the formula. Now, how many performance scores can be obtained at a certain level in Facebook is basically an open secret.
Why are programmers so taboo to talk about salary?
The crux of the question is what will you two do after asking the other party’s salary:
Suppose your salary is lower than the other party
And if you think that your level is not lower than that of the other party, then you will be unbalanced. This kind of unbalance will probably make you change jobs within two or three years;
Assuming your salary is higher than the other party
Then the opponent is unbalanced, and the opponent will quit with a high probability
In the end, the people who stayed behind were all people who got a salary higher than their actual level. Of course, the company didn't want this to happen.
But this kind of thing is inevitable, and it is useless for companies to prohibit them, because according to Peter's principle: in a hierarchical system, each employee tends to rise to a position where he is not competent.
To put it in plain language: You both will overestimate yourself. Even if you two are actually about the same level, your salary will be similar, but you will both think that your salary should be higher than the other's, making both parties feel unhappy. In the end, people with higher actual levels but less salaries will change jobs.
The company has only two strategies for wages
- Either announce everyone’s salary from the beginning, and announce bonuses and salary increases rules. If you are in this kind of company, you basically have no bargaining power. For example, HR will directly tell you "Our salary is calculated by formulas, and you cannot bargain. You can only choose more cash or more options", so use Companies using this strategy may have difficulty competing with companies using the second strategy.
- Either you will never announce anyone's salary, so that everyone thinks that the salary they get is reasonable when they start. Because once it is announced, it will inevitably lead to higher levels of dissatisfaction, and eventually cause some people to quit. And it is forbidden for employees to discuss wages publicly (actually, they can't help it, they can only scare newcomers. Old fried dough sticks ask in private. Every company I work in has colleagues asking about my salary). This is a pricing method that varies from person to person.
Ask yourself, if you were an applicant, which one would you prefer? (I would choose the second one because I often overestimate myself and feel that I can get a better price.)
As employees, we can do:
- When looking for a job, try to sell yourself at a high price. Don't expect an increase in the company's internal salary (in fact, a company with an internal salary increase is a healthy company). When you enter a job, you have the highest bargaining power.
- After joining the company, try to improve your business level (so that you can have a higher price next time you change jobs), and don’t consume too much energy to do irrelevant things for a little bonus, such as working overtime (if you have a lot of bonuses, just be me Did not say), read more books to charge yourself (to avoid being in a state where the actual level is lower than the post salary)
- If someone asks about your salary, try to keep it as low as possible to avoid the other party's upset. Don’t believe others who report your own salary. Some people like to show off, and some people like to cry poor. Only the salary quoted when you quit is credible (don’t believe in self-evaluation, self-evaluation is always high)
- If the company does not have a salary increase system, it will plan to quit when its ability exceeds the job requirements . If the company has a salary increase system, it will try its best to make a salary increase request. If the request is not passed, you can plan to change jobs . What is a plan to quit? Just start looking for a new company and ask for leave to go for an interview. If the company asks you if you want to change jobs, just don't admit it. Wait until you get the written offer before acknowledging it. Why do you do this? Because this will save you a lot of trouble. This is a talk of experience, so I won’t go into it.
Employees are consumers in another sense, they use their labor to buy money from enterprises. Therefore, the theory of price discrimination and Pareto improvement also applies to workers and enterprises. The book says that price discrimination can increase consumer surplus, which is a good thing. But what the book doesn't say is that the consumer surplus you get is an illusion that the enterprise weaves for you, and it is subject to the flow of information. Price discrimination does not have the premise of sufficient information circulation, and it is appropriate for enterprises to exploit the tool, only serving to increase the surplus of producers. Therefore, companies will make every effort to prevent consumers from obtaining more information, especially information about each transaction. Killing familiarity is not only in the field of online shopping. Various rules and regulations have been used within the company to restrict the flow of information among employees. In a one-way transparent environment, it should not be too simple for companies to kill familiar employees.
Programmers are brain workers
Broadly speaking, programmers are brain workers, and programmers mostly work in private companies. Therefore, you can even say that most of the white-collar social animals in domestic private companies are not allowed to exchange salary with each other.
This rule can actually be regarded as a double-insurance management method in office buildings.
Blue collar
For the blue-collar class, this basically does not apply. The blue-collar class directly faces the industry, and the finished products of industrial products must be counted by piece.
For example, we are both in the funeral supplies store, doing the job of making wreaths for the boss. I started talking about salary as the basic salary and the remuneration for extra output. After the basic work in one month is completed, we will work overtime to make a wreath for the boss to make money. I will tie a 10-inch wreath to the boss, and he will give me 5 yuan; you Put a 15-inch wreath for the boss, and he will give you 8 yuan; I will put another flower wreath, and he will give me 10 yuan; you will put another wreath with the boss’s black and white ID photo for the boss, and he will give you 15 Dollars, all the work done is on the table, whoever does the job well, who gets the money, colleagues and bosses collect more wreaths. You are also satisfied, and the boss is happy with his arms around the wreath.
White-collar workers
But white-collar workers cannot. White-collar workers all collaborate to complete the work. For example, let’s build an app according to the boss’s request, and send an electronic wreath to the boss. This job requires programmers to write codes, operational analysis data, marketing promotion, business contacts, and more bosses to receive wreaths. There is a PR to do a Forbes wreath list of the boss class...Finally, this thing is done. Everyone feels that they have done a lot, and even several people in the same programmer position feel that they do more and should get the highest salary. But the value of each person's work is really different in the boss's mind. He looks at each person's work ability, working years, development potential, obedience to management level, private relationship, trust, and even who licks the boss is more professional... these All considering the category.
summary
Therefore, different salaries for the same position are just commonplace from the management perspective. The evaluation criteria here are particularly perceptual, so employees must be required to keep secrets, otherwise the salary will be exchanged, and it is guaranteed that someone will hang up at the door of the president's office every day.
Have you ever seen that the salary of interns exceeds that of managers and catches up with the director? I have seen.
Have you ever seen the company’s top ten employees who have been with the company from its start-up to the listing, with more than ten years of service, and still get a 6K salary? I have also seen it.
And it is precisely because of the secret pay system that the same job and the same work are paid differently, so those who take advantage of it can not be irritable, and those who have suffered a big loss can not be depressed.
Crisis of Confidence
therefore
For blue-collar workers, especially in the piecework processing industry, no secret pay is required at all. Because everyone does their own work, physical strength determines the outcome.
For white-collar workers, especially those in large and medium-sized companies, they must be paid secretly. Because everyone is doing the same thing, they all feel that they have done a lot, and only the capitalists are responsible for the distribution.
People with brains are bound to ask questions now. In this case, why can't the salary of the people in the same post be equalized, and then based on the performance of each person, see the difference from the bonus?
This is the most perfect solution, but it cannot be achieved.
Realized, who will make the management office zz with? Who do you look down on?
All offices are based on the use of distrust between people.
The secret pay system can perfectly witness the deepest mistrust in the workplace.
Programmer partnership does not need a boss
For example, if we are both programmers, we have the same job position and the same salary. We also allow mutual inquiry and discussion. We are completely transparent and open. In our long career as a code farmer, we will not get away from Meng and Meng will not be out of focus, and we have achieved a deep comrade-in-arms. Friendship. If there are a few more people like this, we can leave the boss and start the company by ourselves!
Because the programmer's production material is just a computer, all the craftsmanship is in his head, and people gather together for minutes without playing with the boss.
But the secret system is different. We are still programmers, we are still working in the next room, the same craftsmanship, the same otaku, the same baldness, and we are very close together! However, when talking about speculation, the two brothers are vague when it comes to salary. They can't say that the company has regulations on who will say who will get rid of it.
This makes it difficult to achieve a deep trust relationship. After all, the core value of the workplace is to make money, and how much money you make is hidden by the other party. Even if it is the company's regulations, it is another expression of distrust of yourself. If they don't hand over their trump cards, they will not have the courage to confess their blood as an alliance. In this way, the probability of destroying the bosses will drop by a few percent.
Individual management who are well versed in this way will deliberately make a small salary difference of 1,000 to 800 yuan for a job category, and the salary is small. Although the money is not much, it is not small for the separated people.
This is why some companies prefer to make bonuses across the board and differentiate their compensation; they would not pay for equal work, but instead pay bonuses based on performance.
The blue-collar class also does not have to face this problem.
Salaries are almost the same. Overtime is paid by piece. The promotion of cadres is purely based on the boss' mood. Who likes to do it or not? Because the raw materials of the machine plant are tightly controlled by the boss of all the core means of production, if you leave, it is just a change of labor to replace you, he is afraid of being an egg!
Therefore, the manual workers in private enterprises are more like carbon-based extensions derived from the assembly line from the capital's perspective. Labor is only a part of the machine, and the salary is open, and replacement is like changing parts.
The mental workers in private enterprises seem to capital to be more like the relationship between the feudal monarch and the officials. Without this group of people, this group of people is too united. When the minister is split apart, on the side of the couch, tigers and wolves become cats and dogs.
Is this bad enough? No, it's still on the way!
With the gradual streamlining of technical work types such as programmers or designers, the management of mental workers has rapidly moved closer to manual workers.
The frequent occurrence of incidents of 996 normalization, free toilets fantasy, layoffs and salary reductions, and disorderly workplace ethics have shown from the action that brain workers are becoming more and more rapidly becoming a part of a huge project that can be replaced at any time. Up.
When one day, white-collar workers' salaries can be discussed publicly, and when the secret pay system is no longer...the white-collar workers from the capital perspective will be just a handyman...If this day comes, it will be the shackles of technological progress, the creative industry elegy.
In addition, everyone really likes to talk about it. I still talk a lot about salary in private. It’s just that if the company bans talking about salary, so you have found the imbalance in salary, you can’t use this to talk about it. After all, first It just stuck you to death and won't let you talk.
Finally, I wish everyone can talk about a satisfactory salary.
This is the end of the article!
Benefits from the editor
2020 soon passed, Xiao Bian came up with a set of core Java technical interview Zhenti, as well as some of the micro-services, SSM, Redis, and other technical information, need to apply for a small partner can point me to receive a free , here small blessing wanted The classmates who went to the big factory for interviews were triumphant, and the offer got cramps.
