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.