Salary $hare: Wonder What Your Co-Workers Make?
Website lets people anonymously share their salaries with co-workers, friends.
April 18, 2011— -- Admit it. You've been dying to know your cube mates' salaries since your first day on the job.
Thanks to a new website called SalaryShare.com you can find out what your co-workers and friends make while minimizing the inevitable awkwardness.
The site lets users create an anonymous salary pool that can be shared with anyone online. Once four people have submitted their salaries through the private link, SalaryShare reveals a list of the salaries without disclosing whom they belong to.
"Ever wondered how your salary compared to your friends or co-workers? Now you can do it while protecting everyone's privacy and have fun at the same time!" the site says.
The website was launched by the folks behind Job4Dev, an online job board, and was inspired by a conversation thread on Hacker News, a popular technology forum, according to a note at the bottom of the site.
The creators of the site did not immediately respond to requests for comment from ABCNews.com.
Blog Post Sparks Discussion on 'Taboo' of Salary Disclosure
The online discussion was sparked by a blog post called "The Programmer Salary Taboo," which looked at why salary disclosure is such "a uniquely taboo subject."
"Since I'm about a month away from being done with University and entering the programmer workforce, I've taken to asking my classmates what type of starting salaries they're getting at their first jobs," wrote Derek Thurn. "The first thing I discovered is that not everybody is very comfortable with this question, and many companies are even less so."
Thurn's post and the lively conversation that focused on salary secrecy in the tech industry, but discomfort about salary disclosure is hardly limited to the tech world.
Survey: 17 Percent of People Not Comfortable Sharing Salary With Anyone
A 2010 Glassdoor.com survey found that 17 percent of about 2,300 survey respondents said they're uncomfortable sharing the details of their compensation with anyone (not even family and best friends), up from 11 percent in 2008.
About 66 percent said they'd share their salary information with their significant others, and about 33 percent said they'd give the number to a best friend. But only 15 percent said they'd open up about their income to other employees at their level. The percentage of those willing to share their salaries with co-workers above or below them drops down into the single digits.
Robert Hohman, Glassdoor's CEO and co-founder, said that in companies that have not been consistent in their compensation philosophy, it can be uncomfortable when employees tell each other how much they make. But even in those situations, he said, salary disclosure is ultimately productive -- it brings transparency to the work place, which "empowers employees, job seekers and employers to make more informed career or hiring decisions."
"Money affects our lives. It largely determines many of the things we're able to do," he said. "There's a very legitimate economic concern."
Still, curiosity about how much money others earn isn't only about economics, he said.
"There's an emotional fairness component," Hohman said. "There's a basic human desire for fairness and they want to know if, in fact, their company is being fair in how they're being paid."
While Glassdoor gives users a broader spectrum of salary and workplace data (the company says that over the past three years, more than 1.6 million people have contributed salary information and reviews for about 115,000 companies), he said SalaryShare is a "wonderful product."
"Any product that helps us to bring more transparency to careers and the workplace is a good thing," he said.
Unlike Glassdoor, SalaryShare doesn't use statistical models or human reviews to make sure that the information provided is accurate. But the simplicity of the site makes it easy to use.
To use SalaryShare, you just head to the site's home page and name a "salary pool." Once you enter your own salary, the site generates a private link specific to your pool that you can send to friends and co-workers. Once at least four people have entered their salaries, the site creates a results page that lists the salaries so you can see where you rank.
"No names revealed, no awkward discussions later," the site says.