To find talk of salary crass?

[peachese]

Met up with women I went to university with over the weekend and we haven’t seen each other since covid/lockdown. One is in the same job and she was explaining what she’s doing and then said “and it pays really well” and her husband earns a “shit load”.

I had another friend who every time I saw her she was telling me about a bonus or pay rise. Then I changed jobs (previously poorly paid) and she asked “is the salary better” and I just said “yeah is it” and suddenly now she doesn’t ever talk about pay.

Yes. Open discussions of salaries provide useful information on possible discrimination.

It certainly is different, because we’re discussing it being base level ‘crass’. One person being in distress about money is indeed a sensitivity issue, but that doesn’t come under the umbrella of general salary chat being ‘crass’ to discuss, and definitely not if both people do not feel distressed about finances.

It’s a different issue.

The point is how on earth do you know how people feel about finances?! I think opening up a conversation about salaries would shock most British people - they'd be pretty taken aback (unless you were in the same line of work, at broadly the same level etc.). You can justify it all you want, but most people would find you bloody rude! It's like asking who someone voted for - you don't do it!

I find that British people in general are really odd when it comes to discussing money. I'm not sure why it all has to be so secretive, lol.

But no, this kind of discussion wouldn't bother me - but then I wish people were more open in general instead of tiptoeing about.

You wouldn’t necessarily know if anyone was struggling with any conversation topic – dating, marriage, fertility, illness of family member etc. Doesn’t mean we blanket remove any conversation topic because someone may or may not be.

I’m not saying I would ask someone – I’m not ignorant to current social etiquette. I am saying I don’t regard it as crass, that I think not talking about it perpetuates pay gaps and inequality and is out dated. You know if someone earns high – and if they are a friend or acquaintance they will talk about their holidays, their home renovations or anything else they are doing. Not having a number on it is just arbitrary, it’s not protecting anyone’s feelings and nor should it.

I am also saying I would not take offence if someone asked my salary and would freely discuss it.

I’ve been asked who I vote for many times. No issue.

Well, I personally approach all potentially sensitive topics with caution and awareness.

And I think you are wrong that you can tell what people earn from their lifestyle. See multiple threads on here with people asking how other people can afford certain things. I know that many of my friends would be disgusted to know what I earn (it's high) and I'm pretty sure that their best estimate would be miles from the truth. Transparency only really works if everyone is relatively equal and the same probably applies to voting.

If someone asked me who I voted for, I would tell them to mind their own business.

Thanks to the people in my social circle who revealed their salaries I have been able to direct one of my younger brothers and one of my nieces into a profession some of them are in, and in particular what types of companies to avoid.

There are ways people have these conversations without rubbing others noses in it.

Oh part of the reason conversation came up was because one person was being underpaid. She checked her degree and qualifications against others in the group to find this out.

Not wanting to divulge who you voted for is your prerogative, and not the issue of the person who asked, given that they aren’t being derogatory of your choice.

Niche or minority financial situations (such as what you describe) are not a reason to eradicate the conversation from society. Especially not when a great majority of people earn rough roughly the same as each other, and certainly mostly within 10-15k.

If someone asked me who I voted for, I would tell them to mind their own business.

There are times in which this would obviously be inappropriate to ask, such as in professional situations, and there's been plenty of times- such as when I've been in Northern Ireland or travelling through the states, where political/religious topics have come up and the best policy is very much to smile, nod and either steer the conversation or remove yourself from it.

But, among friends, surely, do you not talk politics at all? It's obviously your prerogative to disclose who you're voting for, but there's no one I'd consider a friend who I'd not feel comfortable telling who I voted for. Most of them could probably guess anyway (and vice versa) because we'd talk about politics, current affairs etc

Well, I personally approach all potentially sensitive topics with caution and awareness.

But surely all topics of conversation can potentially be sensitive?

We obviously move in very different social circles - the salary range amongst my friends is huge and so are the political opinions! We are friends despite these things and we'd rather keep it that way than stir up resentment or create questions around our financial situations.

Plus, we, like most people, do think it's rude and crass to talk money, religion or politics.

I imagine if I told my friends who are all on around £30K that our income was £400K (it’s not any more, but just as an example) they’d just think I was a complete show-off prick and wonder why on earth I was telling them.

If a Russian oligarch told you he’d earned £5B last year, you wouldn’t think “Oh in that case, I’ll leave nursing and buy myself a gas company”. The internet is great for sussing out what companies pay for particular roles. You don’t need to infer that your friends are failing by rubbing their noses in it.

The OP was talking specifically about people bragging about their salaries. Of course there are situations where it’s appropriate to have discussions about finances, but over drinks in a big group is always going to end up with someone feeling like shit.

The salary range and political opinions (and background, ages, levels of education, religious beliefs for that matter) are very varied among my own friends and acquaintances. Maybe less so among my family, but it's still nowhere near homogeneous.

Their uniting point isn't that they all believe the same thing or live in the same situations, but that they're mature enough to talk about these things without getting upset or- God forbid!- offended. It'd be very tedious if we had a laundry list of topics which were permanently off limits because people can't handle being reminded that others think differently.

Edit: As an aside, I'm not sure that "most people" have such complete hang ups about talking about money. Even posters on this thread who've said it's rude have acknowledged that this is UK specific. Though, having lived in the UK most of my life, I've not come across it very often at all.

This! It's especially important for women to discuss salaries. I work in a sector where you know everyone's salary at least within a bracket and I think it's so much better for transparency and equality.

OR perhaps you blithely discuss these issues without realising the impact on people.

I don't discuss my salary with my friends because it's high and it would be crass to do so. If you can't see the potential insensitivity of discussing a banking salary in a room of teachers/nurses, that's your problem. It's also totally unnecessary to friendship and there would be absolutely nothing to gain from it.

I also don't really want to discuss thorny issues like Gaza, private schools etc with my friends. Your utopia of these things not causing anger and division amongst people does not exist - have you been on the internet recently?!

Teachers and nurses aren't stupid, they're going to know a bankers salary is much higher than their own. I'm not suggesting there's no insensitive ways to talk about money (you'd look a bit of a twat if you were complaining about feeling poor on a salary of 400k to your friends on 30k, but I imagine they'd just tell you that), or that you should add your salary after your name upon meeting a person, but someone knowing what your salary is is unlikely to actually upset them unless they're unusually fragile or jealous.

I know that some of my friends in cyber security earn roughly 4x what I do. It doesn't upset me - why would it. In turn, I earn more than twice as much as my friend who works in a nursery, and a fair bit more than the friends I've kept in contact with from my previous jobs. When they've asked me what my new salary is, I've just told them. I'm not sure how me obfuscating is supposed to help them.

I don't know what relevance "have you been on the internet recently?!" has. I'm not talking about chatting to strangers online, these are specifically people I know, like, and choose to spend time with. It's hardly utopian to have a group of friends who broadly get on with each other and talk about a range of topics without things ending in tears.

Teachers and nurses aren't stupid, they're going to know a bankers salary is much higher than their own.

That sort of thing is expected, I think. I work in IT, and have a lot of friends who work in IT. At my last company, a single pay band covered a scale of about £20k, and there were lots of inequalities (to be fair, they were trying to even things out in the last couple of years or so before I left.) It might be reasonable for a Unix sys admin to be on a different salary from an Oracle DBA or an Exchange admin. I'd expect a senior sys admin to ve on more than a junior sysadmin. But if you never discuss salary, it's difficult to discover that you are on several thousand less than your direct peers. I might know from job ads that I could be earning more if I were prepared to work in the City, but i can't be arsed with the commute - I know there is quite a range of salaries for my role, and some I wouldn't consider because they are rather low. But I should be on roughly the same salary as my comparators, and if we never talk about it, how would I know?

Ok. But I don't think yours is the normal situation. Maybe it's generational - how old are you? Im in my late 30s and my friends do not discuss money. None of us work in the same field so it's a complete irrelevance to our friendship and there is an implicit acceptance that much discussion about it is more likely to feed resentment than anything positive. Peer, industry comparison is not the same as discussing money in a social context.

Re politics - I mean, there are a lot of hugely contentious issues at the moment. Have they passed you by? People get somewhat 'het' up about certain things to say the least (see protests in the streets re Gaza, see different opinions on the recent riots, see private school bans, gender, the whole of X.....). My friendship group again accepts that we probably have different opinions and we chose not to potentially muddy the waters of our friendship by debating incendiary issues. I maintain that this is the norm unless you live in an echo chamber where it's a none issue.

I'm 29, I have friends my own age from school and university, but most of those I've met since tend to be a fair bit older. My parents and grandparents (now early 60s and mid 80s) have always talked very frankly about money (we have a distinct lack of 400k salaries in the family, which may help) and it's never been something I'd consider taboo. My husband (37) and my in-laws aren't from the UK, and most of the colleagues I've ever had haven't been British, so there may just be an element of cultural differences.

There's obviously stuff people disagree on. I have English friends my own age who, on certain topics (transgender stuff, notably) seem to be so open minded that everything's fallen out, but we have mutual friends from school who were brought up in quite extreme evangelical Christian households who have retained a lot of the same beliefs . Naturally, there's some fairly substantial differences in opinion there but people get through it. I'm not going to pretend I believe that humans can change sex, or that we were made (10,000 years ago) in God's image, and I feel pretty comfortable defending my position on both (as an aside, meeting said evangelical Christians at school was probably the first time I'd encountered a world view and values system which was so fundamentally different to anything in my family. They're not Westboro baptist types hurling abuse at non believers, they were pleasant, respectful, intelligent, whilst also being fairly unapologetic about what they believe, and it was a very crucial lesson for me to learn to evaluate and articulate my own beliefs. 16 years on, I think they've given up on me coming to Jesus but we can still, amicably, argue the toss on pretty much anything).

There will be a natural point in conversations where it's obvious you aren't going to agree and you should probably move onto talking about something else, but I wouldn't be happy if we didn't feel we could talk about it at all. It's a fact of life that you're going to disagree with people, but emotionally intelligent adults should be able to deal with that.