Netflix yanks back senior managers' ability to see their coworkers' pay:
The streaming giant's director-level executives—senior managers who are neither C-suite execs nor vice presidents—have long had the ability to see their colleagues' salaries. Now they're in the same boat as the rest of us, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
According to the Journal's sources at Netflix, the walkback stemmed from the vast expansion of director-level hires in recent years, some of whom demanded explanations for their pay discrepancies. Despite rounds of layoffs, Netflix employed 11,300 full-time workers at the end of 2021, representing a nearly 60% headcount growth from 2018.
The move comes as an embattled Netflix attempts to tighten its belt after hemorrhaging subscribers in the first half of 2022. The revoke of access, instituted late last year, is a contradictory move by a company that, as the Journal puts it, has heretofore "offered a rare degree of transparency to its workforce." That was mainly thanks to its co-CEO Reed Hastings, who has said transparency is vital to a healthy company culture.
"Transparency has become [our employees'] biggest symbol of how much we trust them to act responsibly," Hastings wrote in his 2020 book, No Rules Rules. Netflix has historically relied on a laissez-faire approach to leadership and management, he wrote, which necessitated "increasing organizational transparency and eliminating company secrets."
There's also the fact that Netflix, like many Fortune 500 companies, must comply with new salary transparency requirements in places like Washington, Colorado, California, and New York City. Like many companies, they've been taking a backhanded approach, putting enormously wide bands on their job postings. One software engineer job provided a salary range of $90,000 to $900,000.
[...] When institutions increased wage transparency in a centralized way like Netflix did, the Utah researchers saw the gender pay gap close by 50%, and wage adjustment policies "substantially" changed—namely by granting bigger pay increases to historically underpaid groups.
[...] Companies that pay their workers low wages, Flynn writes in his conclusion, "have a strong incentive to keep salary information secret, while higher-paying firms could benefit from policies designed to increase salary transparency."
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday January 17, @09:49AM (7 children)
So to much transparency that they later then couldn't defend? Or was it to expensive to bring everyone up to the same level? Or couldn't they come up then with some other perk-system to differentiate the employees, cause after all not everyone is equal and if you can't pay them differently you have to have some other incentive system in place to keep the good from the ok.
If the range is between $90k and $900k that isn't really a salary range that is very interesting. Which is perhaps why this whole show the range thing isn't working if they are not even trying. Cause it could be X or ten times that amount is just to wide a range to be useful. Who would want to take that job at the bottom of the scale?
(Score: 1) by end rant on Tuesday January 17, @12:53PM (3 children)
>> Who would want to take that job at the bottom of the scale?
Maybe someone who can work remotely and doesn't live in silicon valley?
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday January 17, @12:58PM (2 children)
But why would you accept 90k if you know that roof is 900k? Sure 900k might be Silicon Valley money but say $500k should be like somewhere in between money at least.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 17, @08:39PM (1 child)
If there's no more transparency than "range 90-900" then they can bluff you: oh, nobody makes 900 now, maybe someday...
It's going to be painful, but sooner or later public information is going to be enough to infer people's net worth. You can already look up people's real-estate ownership numbers, and history. That tells a lot... starting with people who own a home that they obviously never could afford on their education/income.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday January 17, @11:54PM
This is why it's important that workers have the right to talk about their salaries with coworkers and require that the advertised wage range on job postings be representative of what is actually on offer. It's hard to suggest that we've got a functioning jobs market when there are fewer and fewer companies doing a larger portion of the hiring as it is.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 17, @08:36PM (2 children)
It's a psychological game. How best (read: cheapest) to keep everybody you need happy enough to stay?
Transparency can be a big plus, but maybe not big enough to balance the cost of keeping everybody satisfied. See, when you don't have transparency you can push that little button: "Pssst. Don't tell anyone, but you're the highest paid X that we've got..." and some people reallly get off on that, even when it's an obvious lie.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday January 17, @11:57PM (1 child)
The cheapest is generally whatever the lowest number to keep people from thinking about money. The problem is that companies usually don't want to pay even that if they can avoid doing so.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 18, @12:43AM
Out of school I always looked at it as: there is a "market rate" and I am worth at least that, and I generally got raises that kept that in line.
After about 15 years experience I made a move and bid market +15% because: reasons, and got it, in 2006. Some of those reasons were: unstable employers. Changed jobs 5x in 8 years, they never offered me less than my previous salary, but neither did I get a raise in those 8 years. Back near market rate I am finally in a bigger more stable company getting those COL * 0.83 raises every year and a bigger bump every 5 or so years. Works for me for now, maybe forever...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 17, @03:44PM
Who the fuck that is a serious grown up wanting to make something of their life is going to be impressed with this grade-school shit? Nerr nerr I have power over you. You need to say.... poopy head 4 times in a row. I'm the boss, you have to do what I sa-ay. Ha ha.