So if you wanted to see the actual salary of a particular coworker, all you would have to do is create a pool, enter in 3 bogus salaires yourself, and give the link to the other person?

Or get him really drunk and convince him he's underpaid. He'll tell you then.

I was thinking about this, also, what stops say a recruiter from this to figure out worker salaries?

Alright, so the obvious thing would seem to be to have a pool for HN readers, right?

http://www.salaryshare.me/10ffcd6db9cf188be1a1175de8ff8f3d

Now that we can see what a results page looks like, it seems like something more than a sorted list of numbers might be interesting. I mean, there's not enough data collected at the start to do something very interesting, but a chart and some statistics would be fairly simple and make it much more digestible. As it is, it's just a numberwall.

Kind of useless if everyone puts in bogus numbers, though. $10*pi million annually? Really, guys?

I did some analysis of numbers in the (10K, 500K] range:

    1st Q:  62K
    2nd Q:  92K
    3rd Q: 120K

    Mean: 99.8K.

I'm making the assumption that numbers outside my specified range are outliers, unemployed, or a joke.

> and have fun at the same time!

I'd say that's probably going to be false for approximately n-1 participants. :)

On the results page, it would be nice if all the salaries were vertically aligned. On the ranking, when you go from single digtis -> double digits -> triple digits the alignment changes.

If you have money going to you, doesn't the market benefit from making that knowledge public? Either you are capable and can defend your salary, or you are being overpaid and your position becomes more competitive. Something most corporations would want, right?

Too bad everyone who ranks highly at your company is severely overpaid and dreadfully scared of their competency being questioned in an open and quantitative manner...

It's a morale problem.

Anyone at the high end will see the numbers and say "Well, I'm worth it." No win, no loss.

Anyone at the low end will see the numbers and be really angry about being underpaid. Negative impact.

On net: not worth it.

Excellent!

Here in NZ a lot of professional contracts have a 'no salary disclosure clause' that prevents you from discussing your salary with coworkers.

We've generally worked around it by using things like tax and student loan deduction rates to work backwards. Against the spirit of the clause but nicely works around it.

On the other hand, we could just start a union...

Hypothetically, wouldn't it be to everyone's benefit if their salary and compensation was as publicized as professional player salaries?

If it were a benefit, don't you think you could elucidate it?

There is a challenge to 'open' salary information (which professional players get a pass on) which is that typically the interest is in the comparing. Do I make more or less than average? Than Bob? Than the President of the US? And yet the underlying jobs are rarely matched.

The common case is that someone who you think is a complete waste of oxygen is making more money than you. Does that make you feel motivated? Can you step outside your complexes of self evaluation to listen to your manager explain why they are in fact worth more to the company than you are?

The only successful way to play this game is decide for yourself how much compensation you require in order to work at the job you are working at. If it isn't enough, then quit, if it is more than enough, enjoy it, and if it is merely sufficient then don't sweat it.

Well, it's beneficial for you to know everyone else's salaries. It's not beneficial for you if a potential new employer knows your current salary. So it's a bit of a prisoner's dilemma.

That said, this is more a cultural issue-in some other countries, asking "How much do you make?" is just part of polite conversation, not a major taboo like it is in the US.

Interesting idea ;)

Almost 160k here