"Don't discuss your salary with your colleagues."
It's one of those unwritten workplace rules most of us have heard at some point.
Salary is personal.
People have different experience.
Someone might get jealous.
It could affect morale.
It could create unnecessary tension within the team.
Fair enough.
But there is a question we don't ask nearly as often:
Who exactly are we protecting?
Because perhaps employees talking about their salaries isn't the problem.
Perhaps the problem is what they might discover when they do.
Imagine this
Two IT professionals work on the same project.
Similar responsibilities.
Similar working hours.
Similar experience.
One earns $3,200.
The other earns $3,800.
For months, everything is perfectly fine.
Then one afternoon, salary somehow enters the conversation.
"Wait. You're getting how much?"
Now someone is unhappy.
It's tempting to conclude that this is exactly why employees shouldn't discuss salaries.
Before the conversation, nobody had a problem.
After the conversation, someone did.
But did talking about salary create the problem?
Or did it simply reveal one that was already there?
Different salaries aren't necessarily the problem
Two people doing similar jobs don't necessarily have to earn exactly the same amount.
One may have more experience.
One may hold relevant certifications.
One may carry additional responsibilities.
One may work shifts or provide after-hours support.
One may simply perform at a different level.
There can be perfectly reasonable explanations for differences in pay.
So perhaps the question isn't:
“Why aren't we paid exactly the same?”
A better question might be:
“Can the difference be reasonably explained?”
Different pay can be fair.
An unexplained difference is where things become uncomfortable.
Salary secrecy creates an information gap
Consider a company looking for an IT support professional.
Internally, there is already some idea of what the organisation is prepared to pay.
The employer knows.
HR knows.
The recruiter probably knows.
The candidate often doesn't.
Then comes the familiar question:
"What's your expected salary?"
The candidate isn't quite sure.
Maybe they're currently underpaid.
Maybe they haven't interviewed in years.
Maybe they don't know what others doing similar work are earning.
And nobody wants to price themselves out of a job.
So they give a conservative number.
It happens to be considerably below what the employer was prepared to offer.
Great deal?
Perhaps.
But it raises an uncomfortable question.
If we had already determined that a role was worth more, should someone's lack of information suddenly make their work worth less?
Nobody necessarily did anything wrong.
The candidate gave the number voluntarily.
The employer accepted it.
That's negotiation.
But when one side consistently knows more than the other, we should at least acknowledge who holds the advantage.
And perhaps that's one of the conditions that allows lowballing to happen.
Being underpaid can follow you around
Then there is another familiar question:
"What's your current salary?"
At first, it sounds reasonable.
It's a useful reference point.
But consider someone who was already underpaid.
Their next employer offers them a respectable percentage increase.
Good news.
A few years later, another employer uses that new salary as the starting point for another increase.
Their salary keeps growing.
But if the original number was already significantly below the value of the work, they may simply be carrying that discount from employer to employer.
A previous salary tells us what someone else paid a person.
It doesn't necessarily tell us what the next role is worth.
Those are two different things.
This can be particularly visible in IT
Technology workers are constantly expected to keep up.
Learn cloud.
Learn cybersecurity.
Learn automation.
Get certified.
Understand the new platform.
Take ownership.
Be proactive.
Support another system.
Document everything.
And when something breaks after office hours:
"Can help check?"
None of these expectations are necessarily unreasonable.
Technology changes. People working in technology have to change with it.
But roles can evolve considerably over time.
Someone who started doing desktop support may eventually find themselves handling endpoint management, identity administration, security remediation, asset management, scripting, deployments and audit requirements.
The responsibilities move.
The skills move.
The expectations move.
Sometimes compensation doesn't move quite as quickly.
Eventually, people notice.
“No budget.”
Another familiar situation.
Someone gains experience.
Takes on additional responsibilities.
Becomes the person newer colleagues ask for help.
They ask whether their salary can be reviewed.
"No budget."
Perhaps there genuinely isn't.
Organisations have financial constraints. Contracts have limits. Managers don't always control compensation decisions.
But sometimes the employee eventually resigns.
Then comes a counteroffer.
And understandably, a question appears:
Where did the budget come from?
There may be a perfectly reasonable explanation.
But from the employee's perspective, it can feel as though their value became visible only when the cost of losing them did.
Then we blame job-hopping
"IT people always jump."
Some do.
Salary matters, and changing employers can be one of the fastest ways to increase it.
But not everyone actually wants to leave.
Changing jobs means learning a new environment, meeting a new team, proving yourself again and accepting the risk that the supposedly wonderful new workplace might be considerably less wonderful once you actually work there.
Many people would happily stay somewhere they enjoy working.
Until staying begins to feel like accepting a discount on themselves.
Then they answer the recruiter.
So should everyone's salary be public?
Probably not.
There is a difference between pay transparency and publishing everyone's individual salary.
Compensation can be personal.
Different people can reasonably receive different amounts.
Businesses also need flexibility when hiring for different skills, circumstances and market conditions.
But perhaps we can be more transparent about something else:
What is the role actually worth?
Salary ranges are one way.
Clearer explanations of what affects compensation are another.
Experience.
Relevant skills.
Certifications.
Responsibilities.
Working arrangements.
Scope.
Market conditions.
None of these approaches will make compensation perfectly equal.
And perhaps perfect equality isn't even the goal.
The goal is fairness.
Fair doesn't necessarily mean handsome
This distinction matters.
Businesses have budgets.
Service providers have operating costs.
Clients have commercial constraints.
And companies need to make money to continue employing people in the first place.
Paying fairly cannot simply mean paying everyone the highest salary available in the market.
That isn't realistic.
There will always be another employer willing or able to offer more.
There is, however, a considerable space between paying handsomely and lowballing someone.
That's where the harder conversation about fairness sits.
What is the role worth?
What are we asking from the person?
What experience and responsibility does it require?
And can we reasonably explain how we arrived at the number we're offering?
There won't always be a simple answer.
People are going to talk anyway
Maybe over lunch.
Maybe after work.
Maybe when someone receives another offer.
Maybe in a group chat.
Maybe with friends working elsewhere in the industry.
Salary information is becoming increasingly difficult to keep inside four walls.
Trying to prevent those conversations may not solve very much.
Because if two employees compare salaries tomorrow and one walks away feeling unfairly treated, perhaps the first question shouldn't be:
"Why were they discussing salary?"
Perhaps it should be:
“What did that conversation reveal?”
We don't think the answer is that every employer must pay the highest salary.
Nor do we think everyone's salary needs to be public.
Businesses have commercial realities, and compensation will probably never be perfectly uniform.
We don't have all the answers either.
Different roles, contracts, people and circumstances will always make compensation complicated.
But perhaps fair employment starts with something simpler:
Being able to explain why a role is valued the way it is.
We may not always get that balance perfectly right.
Few organisations will.
But at People Behind Systems, it's a conversation we think is worth having.
Because people are going to talk about salaries anyway.
Maybe the conversation isn't the problem.
Maybe we should pay more attention to what it reveals.