Buffer, the social sharing platform, released a blog post today detailing their employees’ pay scale and specific salaries. The approach of open salaries is very interesting to me, but I’m wondering about the public aspects of releasing it online.
Transparent vs. Public
In the article, Joel (Buffer’s CEO) refers to transparency as one of their core company values (which they’d previously released online as well). Transparency as a company value sounds noble, however reading their definition in the above link, I am feeling the real meaning is honesty instead.
I am of the opinion that not everything that goes on in the company needs to be shared as a default. I’m not talking about hiding or misleading information, rather not proactively sharing it. Mark Suster wrote a fantastic post on the topic of “How open should a startup CEO be with employees“, and it covers some instances where complete transparency might be a detriment.
Please remember that we’re all wired different to accept uncertainty, risk & stress. And remember the reason that most people aren’t startup CEOs is that deep down while they might want your job theoretically most of them don’t actually want the kind of life and pressures that come with your job.
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