Open to question
Some tech companies are taking open work culture to new extremes, publishing workloads and salaries
It’s generally accepted that a certain amount of openness in the workplace is a positive thing. But some technology companies are taking the idea of an open work culture to the extreme.
For them, transparency means opening up the company business to all, right down to salaries, emails and even employee objectives, successes and failures.
Procrastinator-free zone
It’s a daunting prospect. In an interview with the New York Times, Ryan Smith, co-founder and CEO of software firm Qualtrics, revealed just how much his employees were expected to share.
‘We have a system that sends everyone an email on Monday that says:, “What are you going to get done this week? And what did you get done last week that you said you were going to do?” Then that rolls up into one email that the entire organization gets.’
But what if you’re the kind of person that makes bold claims like ‘my workplace transparency article will definitely be finished by the end of the day’, but somehow finds that they’re only just getting round to writing it three and a half weeks later?
The thought of the Monday Email of Doom* would surely be too much. No doubt to be followed up by numerous emails from colleagues expressing their disappointment in your total failure to do what you said you were going to do.
You’d have to leave. Or get the article finished.
Money talks – and tweets
Sharing successes and failures on a grand scale is one thing. But is it ever going to be wise to extend that kind of openness to salaries? And surely you’d never want to share your employees’ salaries beyond the workplace?
Social media company Buffer thinks otherwise.
Buffer publishes every employee’s salary on its website for all to see. It includes their first names and a strange mix of job titles – ‘Happiness Hero’ is the one we’d most like to see a Buffer employee trying to explain when someone they’ve met at a dinner party asks them what they do for a living.
‘Happiness Hero’ Mary gets $70,000, which is pretty good considering that she’s on probation – or in Bootcamp, to use the official Buffer terminology. (Yes, we also get to know who’s in and who’s not quite there yet.)
Meanwhile, Senior iOS Engineer Andy is earning $107,900 a year, in spite of the fact that he presumably doesn’t have to bear any of Mary’s emotionally-draining happiness responsibilities.
Buffer has even provided a helpful link through to each employee’s Twitter account, so we can also see what they’re spending their cash on.
The next round’s on Joel
Buffer says that this is all about living its values – one of which is ‘Default to Transparency’.
It could also be an ingenious way of inspiring people to strive for that big-money promotion.
But here at HRville, we couldn’t help but think it’s more likely to have the opposite effect.
Firstly, because everyone knows that it’s an unwritten workplace rule that the people who earn the most have to buy the drinks.
In fact, if we were Joel ($158,800pa), Leo ($146,800) or Sunhil ($137,600), we’d either be paying ourselves less or be asking for an immediate demotion – safe in the knowledge that all those rounds we’d no longer have to buy would more than make up for the shortfall.
There’s another reason, too. Who doesn’t enjoy having a whinge at the water cooler about how they’re feeling undervalued and underpaid? If everyone knew you were getting paid what you deserved, it would soon put a stop to that kind of thing.
But as we do know exactly how much our friends at Buffer are taking home each year, we might as well make the most of it. As soon as this article is finished (a mere three and a half weeks later than planned), a friendly tweet will be winging its way over to Joel, Leo and Sunhil, just in case they weren’t aware that the HRville After-Work-Socials Fund is currently looking for three very generous US-based sponsors.
Maybe extreme transparency isn’t so bad after all.
* This isn’t its official name. And it’s possible that the people at Qualtrics actually manage to do what they said they were going to do, and that they really call the weekly name-and-shame email the ‘Monday Email of Joy and All-Round Pats on the Back’.
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