Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Between Transparency And The Paywall
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2007 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
You are important. You are worthwhile. Your time and effort have value. Right now, a very good way to indicate and articulate and leverage your value is by making sure you get money in return. And it is okay to make more than you absolutely need.
Josh Lyman: I know that you can parlay the Santos win into a doubling of your fee.
Louise Thornton: Tripling, if it figures into your memoirs.
Josh Lyman: Nothing is going to top this. Everything else's going to be a letdown.
Louise Thornton: Letdowns that make me semi-rich, that's a tradeoff I'm willing to endure.
Josh Lyman: You don't care about money.
Louise Thornton: Who doesn't?
Josh Lyman: You!
Louise Thornton: Not as such.
Josh Lyman: As what?
Louise Thornton: Scorekeeping. Quantitative evidence that I'm smarter than you. (Not YOU.)
Josh Lyman: Who?
Louise Thornton: Everybody else.
Prices send signals; one way for me to make sure Salon valued me was to get them to give me a raise. "Doing things that make work rewarding and pleasant is the most important part of attracting people." Once I'd hit the ceiling at Salon, and the work wasn't rewarding or pleasant anymore, I started looking for other work. But in the meantime, I got a raise from Salon to compensate me for my experience, value, and not-leaving-ness.
The easiest way to get a raise is to get a new job; a big jump in pay happens easier when you first get hired, while you still seem shiny and exotic and new to the new employer. But if you can get a raise from your existing employer, then the new employer will have to raise it to get you. So I make as much as I do at Fog Creek partly because I got that raise at Salon. Salaries accumulate over time, like compound interest, so getting up the ladder has long-term effects.
John Scalzi talks about how much he makes and talks about why he talks about it. I don't feel comfortable talking on the web about all of my finances without asking my husband first, because they are now his finances too. But I will tell you that I make $75 per column for my weekly MC Masala gig, and that I'd like to be making more from that, since I have delivered for two years now and built up a small fanbase and have a circulation in the hundreds of thousands. This summer I'd like to seriously look into syndication.
The more information we wage-earners and freelancers share, the better we can negotiate with the employers. Whom does it benefit when we are reticent in disclosing the pay scale of the world?
