“How much do you make?” Such a question has historically been in bad taste, at best. But today, with new tools and a movement towards transparency, tech employees are freely sharing compensation information and learning there are (no surprise!) significant pay gaps based on gender and race–and it’s not much of a leap to presume, age.
“Google Doc Activism” is said to have begun in 2015 when a former Google employee, Erica Baker, began circulating a spreadsheet to expose pay inequities. Today, it’s common practice even beyond tech companies. Sharing via spreadsheet is a lot less intimidating than having a one-on-one conversation to answer the “How much do you make” question, and there’s added motivation to participate: You, too, can see the collective data.
In fact, this information-sharing method has even been implemented across entire industries.
This year, published authors began using a hashtag #publishingpaidme, tweeting the amounts of their advances, and the data was collected in a public spreadsheet. This exposed the gap between advances for white writers and those of color. You can see an analysis here.
In tech, Google Doc activism has exposed the systemic bias against female employees. This year a spreadsheet documenting female salaries in tech grew to over 2000 entries, and also includes information on options and other benefits, as well as years experience for context.
The benefits of transparency are obvious: The spreadsheets can make gaps clear, but they can also give employees the information to be able to ask for what they deserve (or at least what others are earning). The hope is that eventually, companies themselves will assume the responsibility of being clear and fair about how compensation is derived. And all sorts of benefits flow from that. For example, HBR found that companies that are required to disclose salaries are most likely to reduce the gender gap.
Some companies are even simplifying their pay structures so that salaries are not negotiated but calculated. Social media company Buffer shocked the startup world in 2013 with complete transparency by publishing all its employee salaries online. Since then, it has evolved to take on a formula approach. You can input your job title and location to calculate, “what you’d make at Buffer.” The Buffer calculator is here.
Similarly, Basecamp founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson have been very vocal about how the company determines compensation: They pay at the top 10% of San Francisco market rates for any given role. This is significant because the company is fully remote and many employees live in very low-cost geographies.
Enter: 2020, and a very large wrench in the salary transparency landscape, Covid-19. Most U.S. tech companies were forced into a fully remote workplace this spring. And as the pandemic continues, many have extended the option for employees to remain remote for a significant period of time. Once forced to be remote, management quickly saw the benefits of not paying for office space. But was it “fair” for compensation to be based on pricey Silicon Valley or San Francisco rates, when many employees had now moved to more economically favorable locations? This problem opens a proverbial can of worms, and it’ll be interesting to observe how companies resolve the dynamic of reaping the lowered real estate costs, but also seeing an opportunity to lower the compensation burden. Hopefully, the strides made in transparency over the years will remain and even inform the conversation.