Why you should know how much your coworkers get paid

How much do you get paid? Don't answer that out loud. But put a number in your head. Now: How much do
you think the person sitting next to you gets paid? Again, don't answer out loud.

00:27. (Laughter)

00:29. At work, how much do you think the person sitting in the cubicle or the desk next to you gets paid? Do
you know? Should you know?

00:38. Notice, it's a little uncomfortable for me to even ask you those questions. But admit it -- you kind of
want to know. Most of us are uncomfortable with the idea of broadcasting our salary.We're not supposed to
tell our neighbors, and we're definitely not supposed to tell our office neighbors. The assumed reason is that if
everybody knew what everybody got paid, then all hell would break loose. There'd be arguments, there'd be
fights, there might even be a few people who quit. But what if secrecy is actually the reason for all that
strife? And what would happen if we removed that secrecy? What if openness actually increased the sense of
fairness and collaboration inside a company? What would happen if we had total pay transparency?

01:22. For the past several years, I've been studying the corporate and entrepreneurial leaders who question
the conventional wisdom about how to run a company. And the question of pay keeps coming up. And the
answers keep surprising.

01:36. It turns out that pay transparency -- sharing salaries openly across a company -- makes for a better
workplace for both the employee and for the organization. When people don't know how their pay compares
to their peers', they're more likely to feel underpaid and maybe even discriminated against. Do you want to
work at a place that tolerates the idea that you feel underpaid or discriminated against? But keeping salaries
secret does exactly that, and it's a practice as old as it is common, despite the fact that in the United States, the
law protects an employee's right to discuss their pay.

02:11.
In one famous example from decades ago, the management of Vanity Fair magazine actually circulated a
memo entitled: "Forbidding Discussion Among Employees of Salary Received.""Forbidding" discussion
among employees of salary received. Now that memo didn't sit well with everybody. New York literary
figures Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley and Robert Sherwood, all writers in the Algonquin Round
Table, decided to stand up for transparency and showed up for work the next day with their salary written on
signs hanging from their neck.

02:40.
(Laughter)

02:42.
Imagine showing up for work with your salary just written across your chest for all to see.

02:49.
But why would a company even want to discourage salary discussions? Why do some people go along with it,
while others revolt against it? It turns out that in addition to the assumed reasons, pay secrecy is actually a
way to save a lot of money. You see, keeping salaries secretleads to what economists call "information
asymmetry." This is a situation where, in a negotiation, one party has loads more information than the
other. And in hiring or promotion or annual raise discussions, an employer can use that secrecy to save a lot of
money. Imagine how much better you could negotiate for a raise if you knew everybody's salary.

03:29.
Economists warn that information asymmetry can cause markets to go awry. Someone leaves a pay stub on
the copier, and suddenly everybody is shouting at each other. In fact, they even warn that information
asymmetry can lead to a total market failure. And I think we're almost there. Here's why: first, most
employees have no idea how their pay compares to their peers'.In a 2015 survey of 70,000 employees, two-
thirds of everyone who is paid at the market ratesaid that they felt they were underpaid. And of everybody
who felt that they were underpaid, 60 percent said that they intended to quit, regardless of where they were --
underpaid, overpaid or right at the market rate. If you were part of this survey, what would you say? Are you
underpaid? Well, wait -- how do you even know, because you're not allowed to talk about it?

04:24.
Next, information asymmetry, pay secrecy, makes it easier to ignore the discrimination that's already present
in the market today. In a 2011 report from the Institute for Women's Policy Research, the gender wage gap
between men and women was 23 percent. This is where that 77 cents on the dollar comes from. But in the
Federal Government, where salaries are pinned to certain levels and everybody knows what those levels
are, the gender wage gap shrinks to 11 percent -- and this is before controlling for any of the factors that
economists argue over whether or not to control for.

04:59.
If we really want to close the gender wage gap, maybe we should start by opening up the payroll. If this is
what total market failure looks like, then openness remains the only way to ensure fairness.

05:12.
Now, I realize that letting people know what you make might feel uncomfortable, but isn't it less
uncomfortable than always wondering if you're being discriminated against, or if your wife or your daughter
or your sister is being paid unfairly? Openness remains the best way to ensure fairness, and pay transparency
does that.

05:31.
That's why entrepreneurial leaders and corporate leaders have been experimenting with sharing salaries for
years. Like Dane Atkinson. Dane is a serial entrepreneur who started many companies in a pay secrecy
condition and even used that condition to pay two equally qualified people dramatically different
salaries, depending on how well they could negotiate. And Dane saw the strife that happened as a result of
this. So when he started his newest company, SumAll, he committed to salary transparency from the
beginning. And the results have been amazing. And in study after study, when people know how they're being
paid and how that pay compares to their peers', they're more likely to work hard to improve their
performance, more likely to be engaged, and they're less likely to quit.

06:15.
That's why Dane's not alone. From technology start-ups like Buffer, to the tens of thousands of employees at
Whole Foods, where not only is your salary available for everyone to see, but the performance data for the
store and for your department is available on the company intranet for all to see.

06:33.
Now, pay transparency takes a lot of forms. It's not one size fits all. Some post their salaries for all to
see. Some only keep it inside the company. Some post the formula for calculating pay,and others post the pay
levels and affix everybody to that level. So you don't have to make signs for all of your employees to wear
around the office. And you don't have to be the only one wearing a sign that you made at home. But we can all
take greater steps towards pay transparency. For those of you that have the authority to move forward towards
transparency:it's time to move forward. And for those of you that don't have that authority: it's time to stand
up for your right to.

07:13.
So how much do you get paid? And how does that compare to the people you work with? You should
know. And so should they.

07:23.
Thank you.
 A new American dream
I'm a journalist, so I like to look for the untold stories, the lives that quietly play out under the scream of
headlines. I've also been going about the business of putting down roots, choosing a partner, making
babies. So for the last few years, I've been trying to understand what constitutes the 21st-century good
life, both because I'm fascinated by the moral and philosophical implications, but also because I'm in
desperate need of answers myself.

00:43
We live in tenuous times. In fact, for the first time in American history, the majority of parents do not think
that their kids will be better off than they were. This is true of rich and poor, men and women. Now, some of
you might hear this and feel sad. After all, America is deeply invested in this idea of economic
transcendence, that every generation kind of leapfrogs the one before it, earning more, buying more, being
more. We've exported this dream all over the world, so kids in Brazil and China and even Kenya inherit our
insatiable expectation for more.But when I read this historic poll for the first time, it didn't actually make me
feel sad. It felt like a provocation. "Better off" -- based on whose standards?

01:37
Is "better off" finding a secure job that you can count on for the rest of your life? Those are nearly
extinct. People move jobs, on average, every 4.7 years, and it's estimated that by 2020,nearly half of
Americans will be freelancers. OK, so is better off just a number? Is it about earning as much as you possibly
can? By that singular measurement, we are failing. Median per capita income has been flat since about
2000, adjusted for inflation. All right, so is better off getting a big house with a white picket fence? Less of us
are doing that. Nearly five million people lost their homes in the Great Recession, and even more of us
sobered up about the lengths we were willing to go -- or be tricked into going, in many predatory cases -- to
hold that deed. Home-ownership rates are at their lowest since 1995.

02:34
All right, so we're not finding steady employment, we're not earning as much money, and we're not living in
big fancy houses. Toll the funeral bells for everything that made America great.But, are those the best
measurements of a country's greatness, of a life well lived? What I think makes America great is its spirit of
reinvention. In the wake of the Great Recession, more and more Americans are redefining what "better off"
really means. Turns out, it has more to do with community and creativity than dollars and cents.

03:12
Now, let me be very clear: the 14.8 percent of Americans living in poverty need money, plain and simple. And
all of us need policies that protect us from exploitation by employers and financial institutions. Nothing that
follows is meant to suggest that the gap between rich and poor is anything but profoundly immoral. But, too
often we let the conversation stop there. We talk about poverty as if it were a monolithic experience; about the
poor as if they were solely victims. Part of what I've learned in my research and reporting is that the art of
living well is often practiced most masterfully by the most vulnerable.

04:02
Now, if necessity is the mother of invention, I've come to believe that recession can be the father of
consciousness. It confronts us with profound questions, questions we might be too lazy or distracted to ask in
times of relative comfort. How should we work? How should we live? All of us, whether we realize it or
not, seek answers to these questions, with our ancestors kind of whispering in our ears.

04:31
My great-grandfather was a drunk in Detroit, who sometimes managed to hold down a factory job. He had, as
unbelievable as it might sound, 21 children, with one woman, my great-grandmother, who died at 47 years old
of ovarian cancer. Now, I'm pregnant with my second child, and I cannot even fathom what she must have
gone through. And if you're trying to do the math -- there were six sets of twins. So my grandfather, their
son, became a traveling salesman, and he lived boom and bust. So my dad grew up answering the door for
debt collectors and pretending his parents weren't home. He actually took his braces off himself with pliers in
the garage, when his father admitted he didn't have money to go back to the orthodontist. So my dad,
unsurprisingly, became a bankruptcy lawyer. Couldn't write this in a novel, right? He was obsessed with
providing a secure foundation for my brother and I.

05:34
So I ask these questions by way of a few generations of struggle. My parents made sure that I grew up on a
kind of steady ground that allows one to question and risk and leap. And ironically, and probably sometimes
to their frustration, it is their steadfast commitment to security that allows me to question its value, or at least
its value as we've historically defined itin the 21st century.

06:00
So let's dig into this first question: How should we work? We should work like our mothers.That's right --
we've spent decades trying to fit women into a work world built for company men. And many have done
backbends to fit in, but others have carved a more unconventional path, creating a patchwork of meaning and
money with enough flexibility to do what they need to do for those that they love. My mom called it "just
making it work." Today I hear life coaches call it "a portfolio career." Whatever you call it, more and more
men are craving these whole, if not harried, lives. They're waking up to their desire and duty to be present
fathers and sons.

06:48
Now, artist Ann Hamilton has said, "Labor is a way of knowing." Labor is a way of knowing. In other words,
what we work on is what we understand about the world. If this is true, and I think it is, then women who have
disproportionately cared for the little ones and the sick ones and the aging ones, have disproportionately
benefited from the most profound kind of knowing there is: knowing the human condition. By prioritizing
care, men are, in a sense, staking their claim to the full range of human existence.

07:27
Now, this means the nine-to-five no longer works for anyone. Punch clocks are becoming obsolete, as are
career ladders. Whole industries are being born and dying every day. It's all nonlinear from here. So we need
to stop asking kids, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" and start asking them, "How do you want
to be when you grow up?" Their work will constantly change. The common denominator is them. So the more
they understand their giftsand create crews of ideal collaborators, the better off they will be.

07:58
The challenge ahead is to reinvent the social safety net to fit this increasingly fragmented economy. We need
portable health benefits. We need policies that reflect that everyone deserves to be vulnerable or care for
vulnerable others, without becoming destitute. We need to seriously consider a universal basic income. We
need to reinvent labor organizing. The promise of a work world that is structured to actually fit our 21st
century values, not some archaic idea about bringing home the bacon, is long overdue -- just ask your mother.

08:31
Now, how about the second question: How should we live? We should live like our immigrant
ancestors. When they came to America, they often shared apartments, survival tactics, child care -- always
knew how to fill one more belly, no matter how small the food available. But they were told that success
meant leaving the village behind and pursuing that iconic symbol of the American Dream, the white picket
fence. And even today, we see a white picket fence and we think success, self-possession. But when you strip
away the sentimentality, what it really does is divides us. Many Americans are rejecting the white picket
fence and the kind of highly privatized life that happened within it, and reclaiming village life, reclaiming
interdependence instead.

09:21
Fifty million of us, for example, live in intergenerational households. This number exploded with the Great
Recession, but it turns out people actually like living this way. Two-thirds of those who are living with
multiple generations under one roof say it's improved their relationships.Some people are choosing to share
homes not with family, but with other people who understand the health and economic benefits of daily
community. CoAbode, an online platform for single moms looking to share homes with other single
moms, has 50,000 users. And people over 65 are especially prone to be looking for these alternative living
arrangements.They understand that their quality of life depends on a mix of solitude and solidarity. Which is
true of all of us when you think about it, young and old alike. For too long, we've pretended that happiness is a
king in his castle. But all the research proves otherwise. It shows that the healthiest, happiest and even safest -
- in terms of both climate change disaster, in terms of crime, all of that -- are Americans who live lives
intertwined with their neighbors.

10:32
Now, I've experienced this firsthand. For the last few years, I've been living in a cohousing community. It's
1.5 acres of persimmon trees, this prolific blackberry bush that snakes around a community garden, all smack-
dab, by the way, in the middle of urban Oakland. The nine units are all built to be different, different sizes,
different shapes, but they're meant to be as green as possible. So big, shiny black solar cells on our roof mean
our electricity bill rarely exceeds more than five bucks in a month. The 25 of us who live there are all different
ages and political persuasions and professions, and we live in homes that have everything a typical home
would have. But additionally, we share an industrial-sized kitchen and eating area,where we have common
meals twice a week.

11:15
Now, people, when I tell them I live like this, often have one of two extreme reactions. Either they say, "Why
doesn't everyone live like this?" Or they say, "That sounds totally horrifying. I would never want to do
that." So let me reassure you: there is a sacred respect for privacy among us, but also a commitment to what
we call "radical hospitality" -- not the kind advertised by the Four Seasons, but the kind that says that every
single person is worthy of kindness, full stop, end of sentence.

11:49
The biggest surprise for me of living in a community like this? You share all the domestic labor -- the
repairing, the cooking, the weeding -- but you also share the emotional labor. Rather than depending only on
the idealized family unit to get all of your emotional needs met, you have two dozen other people that you can
go to to talk about a hard day at work or troubleshoot how to handle an abusive teacher. Teenagers in our
community will often go to an adult that is not their parent to ask for advice. It's what bell hooks called
"revolutionary parenting," this humble acknowledgment that kids are healthier when they have a wider range
of adults to emulate and count on. Turns out, adults are healthier, too. It's a lot of pressure,trying to be that
perfect family behind that white picket fence.

12:40
The "new better off," as I've come to call it, is less about investing in the perfect family and more about
investing in the imperfect village, whether that's relatives living under one roof, a cohousing community like
mine, or just a bunch of neighbors who pledge to really know and look out for one another. It's good common
sense, right? And yet, money has often made us dumb about reaching out. The most reliable wealth is found in
relationship.

13:11
The new better off is not an individual prospect at all. In fact, if you're a failure or you think you're a
failure, I've got some good news for you: you might be a success by standards you have not yet
honored. Maybe you're a mediocre earner but a masterful father. Maybe you can't afford your dream
home, but you throw legendary neighborhood parties. If you're a textbook success, the implications of what
I'm saying could be more grim for you. You might be a failure by standards you hold dear but that the world
doesn't reward. Only you can know.

13:49
I know that I am not a tribute to my great-grandmother, who lived such a short and brutish life,if I earn
enough money to afford every creature comfort. You can't buy your way out of suffering or into
meaning. There is no home big enough to erase the pain that she must have endured. I am a tribute to her if I
live a life as connected and courageous as possible. In the midst of such widespread uncertainty, we may, in
fact, be insecure. But we can let that insecurity make us brittle or supple. We can turn inward, lose faith in the
power of institutions to change -- even lose faith in ourselves. Or we can turn outward, cultivate faith in our
ability to reach out, to connect, to create.

14:43
Turns out, the biggest danger is not failing to achieve the American Dream. The biggest danger is achieving a
dream that you don't actually believe in. So don't do that. Do the harder, more interesting thing, which is to
compose a life where what you do every single day, the people you give your best love and ingenuity and
energy to, aligns as closely as possible with what you believe. That, not something as mundane as making
money, is a tribute to your ancestors. That is the beautiful struggle.

15:20
Thank you.

15:22
(Applause)