Actually it's the other way around. Simple is the public facing interface that is beholden to all of the policies and inconveniences of Bancorp. Don't get me wrong I love the service but full disclosure it's Bancorp with makeup. Now I have had instances where they where Bancorp was closed for a holiday and my direct deposit didn't get processed and I had bills that were going to hit that I needed access to my funds and they were very helpful and happy to do a temporary credit to my account to make sure that I got what I needed.
Simple is great but it's a bit confusing when looking at your balances. If you are just using the mobile app it's fine because it hides your stashes but the web app spills the beans when it tells you how much money you really have.
Tried the transparency bit. In larger companies like Amazon it might work because there's still a bit of anonymity. But for most companies large and small here's what happens:
Bob gets hired as a developer in 2012. He's been with the company for 4 years. Bob is a decent developer who gets his work done but makes the occasional mistake. Bob's title is application developer. When Bob got hired he took the job because the pay was as good if not better than his last job and the market was tough back then and he was happy to have the opportunity. Bob makes 50k a year and lives in Florida where the home office of the company is. Bob's title is software developer.
Fast forward to today:
The company is really taken off and they need to hire some top talent and have opened the doors to remote workers. John joined the team back in 2014 at 55k per year. John lives in Florida and is a mediocre developer. Sure he gets work done but it's often late or buggy. He tries hard and has shown much improvement and continues to every day. His title is software developer. There's a new IT manager and his job is to hire in some top talent to work with the current talent to get things moving. Prior to the hiring push the new IT manager sees the salaries currently and decides to bring salaries more in sync with what the market currently is at. As a result of this Bob, between his cost of living increases and this new pay bump is at 65k and John is at 60k.
As he can now look at remote workers he has feelers out around the country. An ace developer applies for a position and has some skills the company desperately needs. She is based in New York and demands a higher salary than the company traditionally pays because the cost of living is higher. The company approves her demands at 90k per year and she starts with the company, also with the title of software developer. Her name is Sally.
A month later the company decides to have transparency across the board with salaries and publishes everyone's salary.
John is immediately offended because in his mind (and by his title) he's doing the same job as Bob and Sally yet is making considerably less. Bob is upset because Sally just got hired and is making an extremely high amount more.
Each of them are considering their titles / positions. None of them are considering the individual situations that have led to the people making what they make.
So how should salary negotiations go. If the company is open and transparent, they should explain to John that basically he's not as good as the other developers so therefore he hasn't gotten the same cost of living increases etc. What he has been getting is an education and the opportunity to improve his craft.
Bob would need to know that he started low and it's just the nature of salaries to creep up the way they have. They'd have to discuss Sally's situation which frankly is none of Bob's business.
While all of them are valued employees, if they all made the same exact amount either it wouldn't be enough or the company would go broke quick. So they can either suck it up and deal with it or find a job elsewhere. They'll be disgruntled either way.
Remember your salary is your salary. Negotiate for what you think is fair. If you want a raise, ask for one. if you feel you should be brought up to current market rates, say so. Ultimately if you are not being treated fairly after giving the company ample opportunity to make it right and communicating with them, then find a new position. Finding out someone has something that is worth more than what you have will always make you want what they have, that's just human nature. Not disclosing salaries is more to keep harmony amongst the workers and people happy in their jobs and focused on THEIR OWN needs as opposed to just trying to get the same thing as someone else for whatever reason.
Are there companies who leverage this for nefarious purposes? Sure but you really shouldn't be working for those companies now should you?
The key here is communicate with your company. If you are valued they will try to accommodate you or at least give you a good reason, if you are met with resistance or reprecussions then maybe reexamine your relationship with them.
Here's the rub (and the danger of SAAS). This falls into some heavy psychology so:
tl;dr you're a human being, you're going to choose what you think is a deal but you aren't going to jump through the hoops to get it, you're going to be screwed.
Here's the science:
So taking a simple example. Joe is a damned fine php/javascript developer. He is in a decent demand as a private contractor. Joe LOVES Jetbrains' tools. He uses youtrack to keep his work in line, he uses PHPStorm as his php ide and WebStorm for his javascript and has TeamCity handling CI.
He gets the news that this is coming in and sees the fanfare and the pricetag and is like "wow! way to go jetbrains! $19.90 a month for ALL of your tools or $199 a year?! I mean that's only slightly more than what I'm paying now for my renewals at the yearly rate and I'd get all of their tools...." but Joe doesn't have time to look into it Joe is a busy contractor, work is coming in fast and furious now and besides, his current license doesn't expire until March. Nothing to see here.
Well winter comes and work slows down as it does during the holidays, except this year it doesn't pick up in the spring. It's dead slow. It's the end of February and Joe's considering getting well...a "Joe Job" when the phone rings and it's a client with a fat contract to put him back on track. But the project needs PHP version 5.whatever-the-hell-the-new-hotness-is and PHPStorm only supports up to 5.old-and-busted. Time to download the updates! Oh crap, his license is expired. Wait didn't he see something a while back about nw licensing options. He certainly doesn't have the $178 dollars it's gonna cost him to upgrade PHPStorm and WebStorm right now and he REALLY needs it to do this project that's going to get him back on track. So he checks the pricing. Hrmmm $24.90.....wasn't it $19.90 when I looked before. Oh, it was a promotional. Damn. Joe doesn't have $24.90 either, maybe he can just buy the updates for the products he uses. Oh look it's only $9.90 for phpstorm and $9.90 for webstorm for the month...oh wow but together it's MORE than he used to pay for his renewals! What's going on JetBrains?! He used to only pay $178 a year to renew both products but now it's $198. Well that's a no go. So Joe decides to do the month to month thing and when the check clears from this job he'll just update to the full year! So 20 bucks and a couple downloads later Joe is in business. Wow this new version is great! The Jetbrains devs still have their stuff together even if their business people don't. He knocks the project out of the park. Well a month passes and Joe sees another ding on his credit card for jetbrains....oh yeah he should switch that subscription. He'll get to it later. Well a year goes buy. Another winter and another slow spring and another big project to bail Joe out. Only this time Joe doesn't have the 20 bucks to renew that month. Well no big deal Joe can just fire it up and use the old version he doesn't need the latest and greatest. Except, Joe can't. The subscription has expired and so has the tool. And so like a shallow friend when the money ran out so did Jetbrains and left Joe without the tools he needs. All told over the year, Joe spent $237 dollars on a product he used to spend only $178 and had nothing to show for it.
I realize there are some things Joe could have done better, bad business practice etc. but this could very well happen and does all to often. Sure there are alternatives but the goal of a good business isn't supposed to be to force you into the arms of an alternative...you might get comfortable there.
It's responses like Linus' that has kept me out of open source development. Seriously these guys aren't getting paid, they're contributing. Does that give them license to write shitty code? No, but also doesn't give anyone license to be a snotrod about it either. I've found it's much more constructive to help a team recover from an individual's