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Salary Transparency

Thoughtful article on why we struggle so much to share our salary information with others. I do believe people will be comfortable sharing the data if anonymity was guaranteed and if the goal was to empower everyone to do better in their salary negotiations. But this is unlikely to be a 100% solution. There will always be the outliers on either side who will not like what they see. Those who are being grossly underpaid may feel too resentful to share. If being over-compensated, there will the desire to hide that fact. 

But salary is not a one-dimensional thing. Context is everything. The same salary can give two people completely different life-styles and buying power. A sole-earner in a family with two school age kids will end up having very different outcomes than a single person with no responsibilities. So the jealously is not based on the number itself - it is the same job earning same pay. It is based on what that number can do for one person versus the other. The author tries to dissect the degree of intimacy such sharing takes

..our discomfort around salary-sharing stems not just from our cultural brainwashing but from the fact that it's something we discuss only with the people closest to us — a significant other, say, or a best friend. So the act of sharing this private detail about myself on a date felt like an escalation of intimacy. I tried to remember when I first told my ex what I earned. It was certainly well after the first time she told me she loved me..

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