Found out my boss makes 10x what I do and almost choked on my coffee

I was digging through some old company files last Tuesday, just trying to find a shipping manifest from two years back for an audit. And I stumbled on a spreadsheet with salary data from 2021, totally by accident. My boss, who sits in an office 10 feet from my desk and asks me how to use Excel once a week, was pulling down $280,000 a year. I'm over here making $28 an hour hauling freight across the Midwest, and he's got a corner office and a company truck he never drives. It hit me that this is just how corporate structures work, but I still felt like an idiot for never asking for a raise. Has anyone else tripped over a salary list and had to sit there pretending you didn't see it?

2 comments

2 Comments

owens.anthony1d ago

Wow, that's rough. It's crazy how companies keep salary stuff locked up like it's state secrets, right? The real ugly truth nobody talks about is that those numbers are usually set by what they think they can get away with, not what the work is actually worth. Hope you're at least looking around for something better.

smith.parker1d ago

Actually salaries are usually set by market rates and what other companies in the area pay for the same role, not just what they think they can get away with. Most companies do salary surveys and look at data from competitors to figure out a range. But yeah, they do keep that info locked down to avoid having to pay people what they're worth. The real problem is that without transparency, people don't know when they're getting lowballed compared to coworkers or the going rate. So you can end up stuck at a number that's way below what someone new would get hired for today. That's why sharing salary info with coworkers is actually a good thing, it keeps employers honest.