I worked in a company at one point where we discussed opening up the books of the company so that everyone would know exactly what financial shape the company was in at any time. We wanted sales, expenses, and salaries to be "query-able" to anyone in the company. This was a startup, only about 30 employees, and everyone was pretty much a white collar employee with the exception of a couple administrative staff.

We didn't do it, but myself and quite a few executives and managers debated it over a few weeks about the pros and cons. It was an interesting discussion and my recollection is that we decided that we might cause a lot of hard feelings between people in the company that were already working there. If the company had been started like this and all the technical staff hired with this policy in place, they would have approved it.

So for this Friday's poll, I'm wondering what the rest of you think.

Would you want salaries to be open at your company?

Now if you're at a large company, say more than 500 people, this might not be something you'd want since there might be huge disparities in pay between different positions. Even companies that are smaller, over 50 people, this might be an issue.

Consider a small company, or a company that you started. Would you think there is some benefit to being open with people about what compensation is being paid to people? Can it work? I'm curious because senior executives often have their pay disclosed, and low level workers are typically paid according to some legal requirements for minimum wages, or their salaries are listed in advertisements.

However us technical people have to negotiate our own pay and we often do some somewhat blindly. Does it make sense to have pay disclosed and not just trust what HR people tell you? Would you be comfortable with this? Let us know what you think.

Steve Jones

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