Is it okay to not be a manager?

[Colonel Smoothie]

Originally Posted by Salzmann

Companies keep that information locked up with an armed guard protecting it, at least in the US. (I was told that in India it's part of the work culture that everyone knows what everyone else makes.) In one company I was told that sharing your compensation info with coworkers was grounds for dismissal. I think it's illegal to say that, but that's what they told us and that's how protective companies are when it comes to compensation.

Americans are weird, imo. You aren't going to solve problems by hiding statistics. This is kind of like how France hides everything about race, despite all the problems they have.

[FormLetter]

Originally Posted by Colonel Smoothie

So you can't just pay them more?

It depends on the HR bureaucratic rules.

Sometimes the only ways to increase someone's salary are:
a) annual increase (which is often limited to some %, like 5%)
b) promote from level N to level N+1

If giving out the highest annual increases you can justify (remember there are often HR rules around these too that prevent you from giving everyone in your department a 5% increase for example) doesn't keep someone in line with the market, them you might need to promote them to do it.

And like someone else pointed out, sometimes level N has a salary range, and the person is near the top end of that range, so the only way to pay them more is to move them to level N+1.

[FormLetter]

Originally Posted by Colonel Smoothie

Couldn't they just increase it?

On a more serious note, I think I get what you mean. Bah! Bureaucracy!

Usually the position has a cap that is tied to a "salary grade" or a 'salary class' or a "salary band" or some other classification that, again, lives inside the land of HR bureaucratic rules. So you can't just raise the max on one position because the max is tied to that entire "salary band".