There are multiple pros and – believe it or not – cons to salary  transparency. The transparency offered by companies will happen very granularly. There is a serious risk of having incumbent employees who will be very frustrated once they notice they are earning double digit % less than for example the salary range posted on a job advertisement for a similar job to their own. 

Next to this, discovering you are on the low end of a salary range, is never going to be a fun experience. Companies will have to work hard on establishing the right policies and create transparency in how salaries are set – even more than on the salary transparency itself. 

This will take a long time. So, how long do we have to wait?

Luckily for us, this whole movement is already accelerated by white knights contributing to open-source information. Salary ranges are often already posted on Glassdoor and on TikTok Hannah Williams kicked off a trend of posting your salary and bringing the power back to the people. 

Unfortunately, this information is often not specific for tech companies – the type of companies Preppally focuses on – hence we want to introduce you to: Levels.fyi.

Levels.fyi is a platform allowing you to compare different job levels, job titles and salaries between different tech companies. 

You can find a comparison of more than 100+ tech companies, filtering down on level, job title, job category and compensation range.

Lastly, pay transparency comes with a risk when it is not clear how pay is broken down and which elements of the breakdown are included. 

If company A posts a sales job with a salary of $120,000 and company B posts  the same job with a salary of $140,000 – which one would you choose assuming all other influencing factors are the same?

Every rational person would go for company B, as you will earn $20,000 more.

Now, what if I told you that company B posted their total salary, including baseline, on-target-earnings and vesting stock per year* while company A only posted a baseline salary?

Here it gets tricky, as company A potentially will have a way higher total compensation package – but you got tricked by a high level number.

* Baseline Salary: fixed salary regardless of target achievement
* On-Target Earnings: additional earnings for achieving your target
* Vesting Stocks: restricted stock units vesting or becoming available to you

It will become absolutely essential to understand how salary is broken down and what is included in the salary in a job advertisement. So before starting to celebrate, let’s conclude:

Asymmetry is almost dead, long live a small step towards transparency! 

Even with more pay transparency, it will still be crucial to ask the right questions during your screening interview to deeply understand how salary is defined. 

If you want to learn more about the breakdown of salaries, this is covered in more than 10 lessons of the Space and Galaxy Program on Preppally.