Pay the Docs: pay transparency at Write the Docs Portland

How can people who write the docs understand their and their peers' compensation better? I moderated a discussion to find out.

In 2016, I left a job that I was in for a long time. I thought I was being paid reasonably, until I began my job search and took a position that paid 80% more. In retrospect, I was being paid too little. It made think more about compensation. In a world where pay secrecy is the norm, how do workers know if they’re being paid fairly?

In 2018, the United Kingdom compelled companies with more than 250 employees to publish their gender pay gap. For the first time, workers in the UK have public data about their employers’ ability—or, more likely, inability—to pay men and women equally. But the published data only discloses the pay gap in relative terms. It’s missing the most useful information: how much workers are paid.

I was aware of movements for pay transparency, like Lauren Voswinkel’s #talkpay, but I wanted to talk to others who do similar work as me about pay secrecy and what we can do about it. In May, I realized I would have my chance at the 2018 edition of Write the Docs Portland, a conference for “documentarians” (technical writers, software developers, and others who care about documentation). While at the conference, I proposed and moderated a half-hour discussion about pay transparency.

To kick off the discussion, I spoke for a bit about what pay transparency is: the idea that workers ought to be able to freely discuss their compensation with their colleagues, managers, and professional peers in other organizations. In contrast, the status quo is pay secrecy. Pay secrecy comes from the taboo against talking about compensation and sometimes from policies that actively prohibit workers from talking about what they earn.

I also talked about the harms of pay secrecy. Pay secrecy is good for people who pay for labor, not the people who do it. Pay secrecy reinforces sexism, racism, ableism, and other forms of discrimination. What’s more, pay secrecy feels like an intractable problem: it’s hard to talk to others about compensation when there’s social pressure not to and harder still under management threats.

Then I turned the discussion over to the group. What can we do about it?

What we learned

The discussion that followed was eye-opening. The dozen or so participants each shared how pay secrecy and pay transparency had impacted them:

An attendee said that a long-running relationship with a recruiter helped her know what she could earn if she left her job, even though it’s been a long time since she has needed the recruiter’s services.
Another attendee said that he intervened on a candidate’s behalf to make sure she was paid fairly, above her requested salary.
Two attendees from the same tech company shared how a crowd-sourced compensation spreadsheet circulated internally, ultimately leading to raises correcting for unequal pay for women at the company.
Another attendee talked about how only a small percentage of women negotiate for more money at the time of a job offer, while about half of men do.

The discussion returned to a few points. As expected, employers and hiring managers hold most of the power when it comes to transparency and fairness in pay. The group had these recommendations for employers:

Employers should disclose salary ranges. Everyone knows you’ve got a budget, so just tell people. It wastes your time and applicants’ time to withhold this information.
Hiring managers should correct applicants who volunteer unrealistically low salary expectations.
Employers shouldn’t ask for and hiring managers shouldn’t consider an applicant’s salary history. Make a good faith offer based on how you value the work at your organization.

The group also had recommendations for workers:

Talk to your colleagues. Many of them are far more willing to disclose their compensation than you’d guess.
Build relationships with recruiters, even if you’re not actively looking for a position. They often have a broad perspective on rates and benefits.
Negotiate for higher pay, even if it takes you outside a stated range (exceptions are often made).
Avoid disclosing your current salary or your salary expectations as long as you can. If required to disclose on a form, an attendee suggested using “The Price Is Right” strategy: enter one dollar (or pound or euro) to dodge the question.

Also check out Erin Grace's live tweeting of the session. Erin took notes on a few things that I missed.

Pay the Docs

The entire group agreed that this should be the beginning of a discussion in the Write the Docs community, not the end of one. One idea that was especially popular was starting a spreadsheet for documentarians to talk about pay, even anonymously. An attendee even gave the idea a name: Pay the Docs.

To make that a reality, I’d like your help. Apart from salary and location, what information would be helpful to you in understanding other documentarians’ pay? What makes up your compensation? Salary? Bonus? Stock? What else? What would you need to feel comfortable sharing your compensation details?

If you’ve got something to say on this topic, please tweet about it on the #writethedocs hashtag or, if you’d like to talk privately, get in touch.