You Can’t Afford to Be ‘Polite’ About Money
As someone who’s determined employee salaries, I know that the highest earners are often simply the ones who make the most noise
The taboo around discussing money runs deep: It’s hard to have open conversations about earnings, even with close friends or co-workers, when you’ve always been told it was crass, gauche, or nosy to want to know what people around you were making.
But why should determining your value be a guessing game? In an age where people share the most intimate details of their lives on Instagram Stories, money seems to be one of the final frontiers. I get it: It can be uncomfortable to discover we earn more than our peers — or painful to realize we make much, much less.
But these are precisely the reasons why people should talk about money. I’ve been in the position of setting compensation for a company before, and I know that the highest earners aren’t always the smartest, most experienced, or most dedicated employees. Often, they’re the squeakiest wheels who make the most noise. And they are always the people who know their worth.
Whether you work for a big corporation or independently, here are some ways to know what you should be making — and to demand it effectively.
