Why is asking what a person’s salary is so taboo in the workplace?

1.14K viewsEconomicsOther

There’s like this weird culture around it where some may even consider it rude or too personal like it’s equivalent to asking someone their social security number or something
I’ve heard a rumor it’s because companies/bosses don’t want people to talk about their pay between employees because they may find discrepancies compared to their coworkers, but I’m not 100% sure that’s actually why since even their employees consider it taboo.

In: Economics

30 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because if there’s not a transparent wage grid senior employees often get underpaid to their newer colleagues. The workplace doesn’t keep up with pay raises so when it comes to hire someone new and they have to meet current market rate, sometimes it’s as much or more than what they’re paying the senior employee.

If they talk about it senior employee finds out they’re getting really underpaid and wants an immediate raise. The workplace usually has some stupid raise policy and says they’re handcuffed or they’ll try and drag it on to the next “performance evaluation” or some BS.
Anyways it usually either ends up with workplace being angry because they have to pay senior employee what they’re actually worth or senior employee leaves where they get paid what their worth.

You are viewing 1 out of 30 answers, click here to view all answers.