I see this as negative discrimination and feel it ought to be very illegal.

You are paying people more on the justification that their life choices suggest they were more privileged to begin with.

This is the same type of justification that people have used to pay women less, re-coded to fit modern social values.

Completely agreed. "I'm being punished [paid less] because I didn't take out that mortgage I couldn't afford?" Seems like it rewards irresponsible behaviour.

It's probably not very convincing as an argument, but take my word for it: the way we do this, openly and transparently, is not discriminative - on the contrary, it is collaborative, open, respectful, etc.

As I said, the "what are your needs?" side of things is fairly new and untested. It may not work out. Still, it's worth trying and seeing whether it works, I think.

It really isn't, sorry. Having to share what should be private personal details with my employer and coworkers in order to get fair compensation is unreasonable. Plus as others have mentioned it's a potential gold mine for lawyers.

First of all, there's no "have to share personal details to get a fair compensation" involved. People share personal details because they work closely with other people who become their friends.

That said, your overall attitude is perfectly reasonable, and it's great that you're aware that that's your position on this - because we would definitely not want to employ someone who is uncomfortable with transparency. I've found that the reaction that some people have to transparency is a great hiring filter.

In this case, privileged enough never to have observed any personal problem with transparency nor to have any aspect of a personal life that they might not wish to share with work colleagues.

You are trying to rationalise discriminatory practices.

Perhaps I wasn't clear about something: we do consider personal/medical issues to be a person's own thing to share if and when they're feeling like doing so. Business data secrecy is hunted out of existence, but personal sharing is entirely voluntary, and not everyone shares everything about their personal life obviously.

I don't believe you have any reason to pay people more than they are worth. That would be bad for your business and is not credible if we exclude nepotism.

So, by admitting that you pay people different amounts for the same work, you are paying some people less than their genuine value to you. You are paying people unequally because of their personal circumstances.

Although I don't doubt that many or most companies do this privately, I cannot see it as anything other than discrimination. The fact that you are open about this process is not an improvement. It's an admission that you're glad to have the ability to do this.

I found it a bit shocking that elsewhere you suggested being openly gay at work is somehow unusual - are you hiring openly gay people on the basis that they are cheaper than the market rate for the same skills? because they have fewer good options? Do you, in reality, use this justification to pay your black, gay, and female employees less than white, straight, male ones?

I don't suggest that is your motivation for this (nor even that it is realised in such a small sample), but that is how I interpret your line of reasoning and I would be spend significant time talking to a lawyer if I was entering an employment relationship with you.

> So, by admitting that you pay people different amounts for the same work, you are paying some people less than their genuine value to you. You are paying people unequally because of their personal circumstances.

That's an interesting perspective... But incorrect. I guess your perspective comes from a traditional work environment. Remember that all our finances are entirely transparent. Because of that transparency, any such unfairness (like paying black, gay and female employees less) would stand out painfully to everyone and drive people away from the company, particularly since many of us are quite sensitive to discrimination. For example, when we detected that one of our recruitment sources seemed to have a negative bias (sending us only candidates from fairly "elite" educational backgrounds), several people in the company (including senior people) declared that they would quit if we kept using this source of candidates. Imagine how they'd react if there was any kind of discernible policy to underpay black/gay/female people??

The rest of your comment is just extrapolating from this incorrect assumption, so I won't address it. Yes, if we did this it would be the worst kind of discrimination, but we don't.

As I've said elsewhere, our practices can't easily be translated to a secretive, control-based, non-open environment... Without trust none of this is possible. Perhaps a good analogy is surgery... without trust in the person doing the surgery, it's a criminal grievous bodily harm to cut people open... with trust it can life-saving, essential. You can't extract the action from its context and judge it in isolation.

I found it a bit shocking that elsewhere you suggested being openly gay at work is somehow unusual

I did not suggest that being openly gay at work is unusual, I was responding to someone who said that people wouldn't want to share their sexual orientation at work saying that several people here are clearly comfortable with that (and some others aren't).

Obviously no one is being forced to share their personal issues. All I'm arguing about here is whether someone's needs should be a part of the equation determining their pay.

There's a stanford case study on AES, an energy company that employed 40'000 people and had similar compensation practices. Here's one of their values, quoted in the study:

Fairness . . . the term `fairness' means `justice.' Often `fairness' is confused with `sameness' ... We don't mean that. AES aspires to give everyone special treatment. Everyone is unique ... And the effects of treating people justly in corporate systems and organizations can be profound.

They scaled that value to an international, public corporation with tens of thousands of employees. Worth pondering instead of rejecting outright, no?

And, likewise, I imagine quite a number of people here would definitely not want to be employed by someone who takes that sort of attitude.

There are some things that it's just not possible to ethically consent to within the context of an employer-employee relationship. It might seem like everyone is onboard with this transparency, but it might equally make someone deeply uncomfortable but also feel like they're unable to question it without putting their job in jeopardy–as your comment just here has hinted that it might.

If you disagree, fine. GrantTree only employs 20 people at the moment. You don't have to work with us. There are literally millions of other places you can work who do not have transparency as a core value.

I'll add that transparency is not something that's sprung on people at the last minute. It is explained abundantly upfront to people before they start. We're in central London, where there are a bajillion other startups and companies. It's not like they have to take a job with us.

Surely you can accept that some people out there are interested in working in a transparent company, even if you personally aren't.

Talk to your lawyer about how things play out in your jurisdiction, but in general, asking questions in the workplace which are virtually designed to solicit the comment "I have children. Please adjust my salary accordingly." seems designed to incur legal risk.

Please correct my reading of your comment, but it sounds like you're saying that "people who aren't naturally open about such things [like being gay] probably wouldn't be hired" because that sounds like the very definition of discrimination.

Don't misunderstand: the "being gay" part is completely irrelevant. What we discriminate on is the culture fit, in particular values. And we discriminate a LOT on that basis. If anyone throughout the interview process doesn't think the candidate is a culture fit, they are personally responsible for voicing that and ensuring the candidate is not hired.

One of our core values is transparency. We don't hire people who aren't open.

The best answer here would be to pay the two equal employees the same amount. The responsible one can save, or treat him/herself, or whatever. Paying irresponsible people more is dangerous for your company and your employees. I spent years on the pointy end of that stick. It was a really shitty situation; I knew that the guy "needed" a lot more money than I did, because he had a gaggle of kids, a nice house in an exclusive neighborhood, a bunch of cars, etc, while I live in a modest house, owned my car outright, and kept my expenses low. The worst part about my resentment was that I felt bad about feeling it; I denied to myself that I even felt it, because I really didn't feel that it was fair to deny this guy the ability to feed and pamper his kids, keep his house, etc. So, I worked hard, kept my head down, made about a third of what he did, and bottled up and denied my resentment for years. I'm still trying to repair the damage.

So, that was long-winded and just an anecdote, but seriously, be careful with treating people of roughly equal value differently because one of them needs more money than the other one. It can work out poorly.

Oof. Not sure how I feel about this rationale. If I were the other guy in this equation, I'd be pissed if I was making the same contribution as someone else, but got paid less because the other guy "needed it more". Why am I being punished because I live within my means?

Maybe the response to, "I need a higher salary because I have a large mortgage payment", should be, "maybe you shouldn't have bought a larger house than you could afford".

How about this: say this guy works at your company, and presents this rationale, and gets (takes?) his raise. Then the other guy, who is (for the sake of the argument) exactly equal in experience and skill, and provides the same value to your company, steps up to the plate and says, "I would like a raise as well, because I should make the same amount as someone who is my equal and peer". Would the group agree with that? I certainly hope so. If I were that guy, I'd quit on the spot if not.

And this extends to other things as well: one guy has 4 kids, the other has 2. Kids can be expensive. Does the first guy's decision to have more kids make him more deserving of a higher salary than the other guy?

I could extend this to just about anything. In the end, once you're above the poverty line, your "needs" aren't really based on anything rational or "fair". It's really just what you want. I'm not saying you shouldn't try to get what you want, but suggesting that one person's wants entitles them to a higher salary than someone who has more modest wants... well, that's ridiculous to me.

This is actually a great example of one of the reasons why employers like to keep compensation secret. If this hypothetical high-mortgage guy is that important to the company, you want to be able to give him more money if not doing so will cause him to quit, all without pissing off the other otherwise-equal guy with the now-lower salary.

So my thesis here, I guess, is that if you're going to be transparent about compensation, that compensation must be based on measures as objective as you can make them. Otherwise you have to keep compensation secret so you can make "unfair" deals with some employees as necessary, without pissing off other employees who don't get such a good deal.

At any rate, I do think what you're doing is a really cool (and brave!) experiment. I hope it works out for you and your company, but I'm very much afraid that making personal needs a component of public compensation decisions will lead to others harboring resentment.

A lot of your examples are somewhat linked to the issue of having just one person with a very limited supply of knowledge about their staff decide on salaries.

I'm not sure the one-person-decides bit really applies here. I object to "personal needs" being used as evidence for or against giving someone a raise, regardless of whether it's one person making the decision or many, or whether it's made by someone who knows the person and their work deeply, or only has superficial knowledge. I just don't think that matters for this particular case.

I don't see how employee's "needs" are at all relevant to what you should be paying them. In my experience, when a small company tries to do this kind of thing, people may play along to not look bad, but no one actually likes it. (Well, maybe the person that's getting a raise because they spent more.)

It also seems like there would be a lot of interpersonal complications; I mean, I'm far from a political sort of person but I know my relations with my coworkers tends to hit low and high points. Usually I just do what I think is right and try not to worry about who will be pleased or offended. While I want to be well liked, if they had a direct effect on my compensation the relationships would be a lot more distant and calculated.

Having a pressing need for the money just speeds up that process.