The main issue with any of it is format; because there isn’t a standardized format for wages, bonus, benefits, perqs, equity, etc., it’s easy to make claims and time consuming to compare, e.g. shop employers. This is mostly by design. It’s the same with hiring/job applications. Honestly I think that blockchain is the silver bullet for hiring; universally verifiable information, credentials, job requirements, etc.
Luckily, transparency in pay is inevitable, but it will of course be left up to private employees to get aboard so most won’t and we’ll be stuck decades behind outher countries in the US.
Advertise service for like $70 a month, when in REALITY it’s 140. I always askel for the real price and they continue to tell me the sale price…I don’t care about sales and deals until I know what shit costs.
This is the same bullshit, just in reverse. Hide the pay and only talk about the bullshit they can just take away in a moment’s notice. Deceptive.
I used to work for a big(ish) NGO in the Netherlands. They didn’t have the financial backing to offer me a salary on par with what other private companies were offering, but they did have a substantial perks package because of the many tax rebates available to such organisations.
My ISP was paid for
I got a free laptop every few years
€1k for home office upgrades every few years
€700 toward a bike every few years.
When you add it all up, it was still a pay cut, but at a certain income level that stops being relevant.
I also later worked for Big Evil Corporation in London where they paid below market rates plus:
15% bonus
7% "London is expensive allowance"
20% pension.
£6500 car allowance (I don’t have a car, so this was just cash)
This allowed me to stay under certain income levels for tax reasons while squirreling away a bunch of money for my pension.
They were evil assholes though, so I quit.
Anyway, it can make a lot of sense to tinker with the salary in the form of benefits. The important thing is for workers to share their compensation information openly to ensure fair dealing.
