> “I asked, ‘Have I broken any policies? Have I posted anything on TikTok that is a security concern?’ And they said not at this time I have not but it could happen at any time in the future, so they’re just not going to take that risk.”
Utterly nonsensical.
It could happen at any time in the future applies to every single person with access to any private information.
Sharing your salary is protected by federal labor law, even if done over social media per the NLRB.
She should file a complaint with the NLRB, her state labor board, and hire an employment attorney to seek recourse. It’s the only way companies learn; you must apply economic pain and consequences.
TikTok is social media, not NPR or The Guardian. You will get laughed out of the room with that argument.
The NLRB and courts can sort it out, and at least the NLRB hasn’t been too fond of employer shenanigans and bad faith behavior as of late. An attorney quoted in the piece even mentions the person in question should contact an attorney, and she has nothing to lose and everything to gain by pursuing the employer through legal and regulatory mechanisms. What are they going to do, fire her more?
Saying that you are an employee at X company and make X dollars is giving away both your salary and corporate information.
The key is not involving the company. Share your salary as much as you want, but don't go on social media and say 'I work for X' unless you are actually their representative.
A company can’t tell you to not share your salary - it’s protected behavior. Whether you do that over a megaphone in the park or over TikTok they broke the law by firing her.
You can absolutely say "I work for X". Otherwise resumes don't work, forget LinkedIn. Telling people you work for X is not the same as claiming to represent X.
The exception here is executives and maybe in some instances management, where they need to be careful what they say because anything they say may be construed as representing the company. But having on your social media that you work for X and having other posts where you talk about normal social media things? 100% fine as long as your don't say something along the lines of "I work for X and our official policy on Y is..." (i.e. claiming to represent them)
Every company I've ever worked for has had employee guidelines stating "don't comment to the press or mention the company on social media without approval"
Its illegal in the usa to prevent someone from talking about their salary. Most companies don't have policies that expose them to legal issues.
I also think that its debatable if indicating your salary or admiting to the fact you work somewhere, counts as talking to the press or mentioning the company, the way most people interpret that phrase. I mean, i'll admit that its highly debatable, but for example putting your resume on linkedin usually does not count as mentioning the company on social media.
I guess it depends on the exact wording but usually clauses like that refer to speaking on behalf of the company. Otherwise it’d be a ban on LinkedIn altogether for example.
> She shared that she was nervous about disclosing too much information because she had to sign “a bunch” of documents upon her dismissal
You do not have to and almost certainly should not sign any paperwork when being fired, laid off, or even leaving voluntarily. The exception here is the company may offer you a severance package to sign some paperwork waiving your right to sue. Even then if you can afford it it's a good idea to run it through a lawyer first. But signing stuff for free? Don't do it, you have nothing to gain.
Last time I was laid off, I got $90K to keep my mouth shut. And you know what I did? I shut the hell up, and I'm not even all that thrilled to post about it anonymously here. It was all fairly amiable as well.
Yep, that's exactly what I mean. Paid to sign, sure thing, probably want to run it by a lawyer first to make sure the terms aren't too crazy and your getting a good deal, but for free? Forget it, nothing they are going to ask you to sign will help you, only them.
Even when being fired for cause severance is sometimes possible. All depends on how much they want those papers signed.
Yeah, it was pretty clear that they were paying you a decent chunk to not cause any trouble; I didn't need a lawyer to tell me that, but I agree that couldn't hurt as long as they aren't exorbitant. Honestly, it's my best piece of advice for any company that has to get rid of someone - money makes it better, and it's one thing that company did fairly well. I had a problematic co-worker who got fired in one spectacular event (like you see in movies) after getting into a dick measuring contest with a director or VP (forget his exact title at the time) after causing a serious outage. As far as I know he got a decent check out of the thing even though he absolutely deserved to be let go.
It's bad optics (and I personally think the company can piss off), but I don't think they technically broke the letter of the law. Colorado doesn't have good faith exemptions to at-will so as long as it wasn't a protected class thing, I think they can do whatever they want, AFAICT
I'm not a lawyer but does at will mean anything in cases where you are dismissed for an illegal reason? Basically your company can fire you at any time but if they fire you because your black it doesn't matter if in theory they could have fired you because you wore red on Tuesday if in fact they actually fired for being black.
If its protected to talk about your salary or wages and they fired her for doing so its illegal.
Why does it matter what they or any employee was doing in personal time anyway? So what, they have social media presence. A claim by the company that the employee was fired for _having_ a TikTok is still over the line. It's not their goddamn business.
The difference is it legal to fire someone for using TikTok. It’s just not believable, which makes it clear that the firing was illegal (discussing wages is one of the few things you can’t be fired for).
I have heard about cases where uneven application of policy is seen as discrimination. I wonder if they now have to fire anyone else they learn has a TikTok account.
"At-will" means at will, unless you're being fired for being a member of a protected class. TikTok users are not a protected class. You can be fired for wearing ugly shoes, chewing too loud, or because it amused the boss on an overcast Thursday morning.
edit: so maybe, I guess, to defend against the argument that they were fired for salary disclosure?
> defend against the argument that they were fired for salary disclosure
Exactly, if you fire the only black guy on the team for wearing a blue tie but other people wear them as well it could be argued you lied about the reason.
"She didnt get fired for disclosing her salary. She got fired because her employer feels they can't risk her disclosure of other, more sensitive, information on the future. If her immediate reaction to any exiting news is to shout it out for all the world to hear, what will happen if they are working on a project that they dont want a competitor to know about, or if they get a classified govt contract, or a myriad of other situations I could envision a tech company needing/wanting security. They decided that the risk she posed wasn't worth it."
Fire if that happens then? You can’t preemptively fire someone for something they haven’t done nor even attempted/planned to do.
Telling others your salary is allowed and should be encouraged, it is not a security concern at all nor does it imply you are going to release any actual confidential information.
So this person has at the very least demonstrated that they will broadcast to the public details of their financial relationship with their employer. Not just to their friends, or their co-workers, but to their company's competitors and to their manager's co-workers.
As far as I am aware though (and it depends on their contract/rules etc of course) that is completely fine and allowed?
Salaries are only secret if the person receiving it wants it to be. People should be able to say how much they earn without retribution. There is literally nothing wrong with it and it doesn't mean that they are going to broadcast actual company secrets.
If its a big deal for the employer then they should have put it in their contract/NDA and made that clear prior to employing them (but as I understand it that is illegal in a lot of places for good reason).
i work at a FAANG on a secret project. if i tweet about tech i’ve been using or my salary, my company would not do anything to me. i’ve even written about supporting remote work, and features we’ve shipped that i did not create.
this is such utter bs. no trust— typical shitty capitalist trash
Which is crazy. But just because you can fire someone for no reason doesn't mean you can fire them for illegal reasons, which appears to be the case here.
True, definitely depends on where you live although I also meant that in a more broad 'moral' sense. As in, giving the reason that they /may/ release 'secretive' information without any indication that it would actually occur is ridiculous to me.
By that logic, they should presumably be firing everyone who lists their job on their resume/linkedin.
After all, if her immediate reaction to exciting news, such as getting a job, is to tell evetyone about it, how can you trust what she would do with more serious information.
> “I asked, ‘Have I broken any policies? Have I posted anything on TikTok that is a security concern?’ And they said not at this time I have not but it could happen at any time in the future, so they’re just not going to take that risk.
This sounds absurd. How could a company punish an employee when the employee didn’t do anything wrong, just because they believe the employee might do something wrong? I’d love to hear an official response from that company.
>How could a company punish an employee when the employee didn’t do anything wrong, just because they believe the employee might do something wrong?
IANAL, but at-will employment means you can be fired for any reason (minus a narrow set of protected reasons). In this specific case it will not go well for the employer if it goes to court, since federal law protects employees disclosing their salary, but a company could conceivably have a policy of "you can't use tiktok".
> a company could conceivably have a policy of "you can't use tiktok".
How does this apply here? In this case the employee has been informed that they haven’t broken any policies (“I asked, ‘Have I broken any policies? Have I posted anything on TikTok that is a security concern?’ And they said not at this time I have not”).
Meta note: it's been disappointing seeing a bunch of NY Post articles on HN, not sure why this is particularly newsworthy and even if it was, it seems available elsewhere.
Why would you tell strangers a) your real identity b) where you work? This is why I think TikTok is moronic. That said, it's sort of insane that this is a legal reason to fire someone, insane that employers can still claim it's "illegal" to share your salary with co-workers etc.
It may be protected by law, but in my opinion, why the hell would you want anyone who doesn’t need to know your income, know your income if you can choose not to disclose it?
To quote that great philosopher Shoresy: “So dumb”
Generally having all your coworkers share salary puts you in a better negotiating position - so there is an obvious financial reason if its reciprocated.
I see a different perspective. Unless all salaries are equal and capabilities and efforts of those receiving them are perceived to be equal, the only thing that salary disclosure really does is create morale issues within an organization. If you perceive that John Smith is weak and lazy, but know he makes 20k more than you, that creates discord within you. If you attempt to negotiate an increase based on that knowledge, you might find that your organization doesn’t have the same opinion of John Smith’s value to the organization than you do.
> If you perceive that John Smith is weak and lazy, but know he makes 20k more than you, that creates discord within you
You say that like its a bad thing. Emotions exist for a reason. Ignorance may be bliss, but it is also slavery.
> your organization doesn’t have the same opinion of John Smith’s value to the organization than you do.
In which case there is two possibilities. Either:
They are right, in which case this gives you the insight to look into yourself and fix it or emulate john smith.
Or b) they are wrong, in which case you can probably go somewhere else to get more money. Or you could figure out why they are misestimating your value and fix it.
No matter the situation,more information always gives you an advantage.
If you have to have total salary knowledge of your co-workers and them you to measure your self worth and value to your organization, I find that unbelievably sad. You should know your value and whether or not it jives with your comp. If you are unhappy with your compensation as compared to your perceived value, ask for more. If you are unable to get a good “read” of your value from your employer, move on.
While I don’t have to manage people any more (PTL), I am pretty sure if I had an employee come to me demanding more comp because of a colleague makes more, I’d ask them why they weren’t arguing from their own merits and capabilities instead of from a colleague’s weaknesses.
You said anything about self-worth? If you measure your self-worth by how much you are paid, that's pathetic as it has very little to do with instrinsic factors.
We live in a capitalist society, and employment is a business arrangement. There is nothing wrong with trying to maximize what you get out of employment (whether monantary or otherwise). Why would you sell yourself, if not to get paid? Part of effective negotiation is knowing how much comparable people make. Your ecconomic value is not what you bring to the company. It is primarily how expensive it would be to replace you with someone who could bring something equivalent. Knowing that cost gives you the upper hand in negotiations.
After all, if you were doing it for the love of coding, you would just be working on open source projects, not working for a company.
> While I don’t have to manage people any more (PTL), I am pretty sure if I had an employee come to me demanding more comp because of a colleague makes more, I’d ask them why they weren’t arguing from their own merits and capabilities instead of from a colleague’s weaknesses.
When it comes right down to it, if you are a manager you have a budget. If you are on that side of the table, your job is to keep expenses down. One way of doing that is to manipulate people into thinking their ecconomic value is less than it is. A great way to do that is to steer the conversation away from objective measures like, the going rate is $x, and towards subjective things like, i do the job really well, which dont have an objective price tag attached. It's easy to argue the fair value of a job well done to whatever you want it to be. There is no wiggle room for: the going rate is $x.
I mean, if you really do truly think this way, do you do this in your other business dealings. If you were buying a car, the other car lot had an equivalent car for 10% less, and you wanted to try to negotiate down, but the car salesman said something like "why aren't you arguing from your own merits as a potential future car owner, instead of from the weakness of other car salesmens?", would you think that is a reasonable thing to say?
If one of your negotiation points why you should be paid more is because your colleagues are paid more, you are basing the starting part of your negotiation from a position of “I’m average”. I honestly cannot see how this helps you in anyway.
Sure, managers have budgets and want to keep costs down, but in a career that spanned a couple of decades+ in tech leadership, I always had the flexibility from my employers to assemble the best team I could within my budget. I never had to manipulate people like you are describing. Frankly if you are working for a company where you perceive that happening…you should probably exit asap. That’s toxic.
Yeah, this was also my first thought. Granted, TikTok and Bytedance although they exist in the US are basically operated just like their 996 sweatshop brethren in China.
There definitely is a social media trend not only on TikTok but on YouTube, Twitter, etc. of people publicly disclosing their salaries.
There might be some amount of clout-chasing and humblebragging to this, but it also fits the spirit of the trend towards pay transparency as expressed by tech and/or young workers online.
Yeah, definitely this. It's another gen-z fallacy that continues to encourage me to have nothing to do with that generation as someone on the fringe of the millennial / zoomer label.
I wonder what would have happened if she had shared her salary on LinkedIn.
I'd imagine defending the argument "because you have a LinkedIn account" would be pretty tough as upwards of 90% of employees including senior management works likely have one. And it's often crucial in the process of getting a job. Probably this company also has a box where you can apply and import your LinkedIn details when applying. That would make such a dismissal indefensible.
Utterly nonsensical.
It could happen at any time in the future applies to every single person with access to any private information.