Introducing ‘As We Work’

Summary

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Podcast Summary: WSJ Your Money Briefing — Introducing ‘As We Work’

Episode Date: March 19, 2022

Host: Tess Vigeland (Wall Street Journal)
Guests: Victoria Walker (Former Senior Travel Reporter, The Points Guy), Jake Rosenfeld (Professor of Sociology, Washington University in St. Louis), Catherine Dill (WSJ Work and Life Columnist)

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Episode Overview

This debut episode of 'As We Work,' a new Wall Street Journal podcast, explores the evolving conversation around pay transparency and its impact on workplace culture and self-worth. Host Tess Vigeland investigates why talking about salaries remains taboo, the role of new pay transparency laws, and how salary relates to our sense of value at work. The episode features an in-depth discussion with journalist Victoria Walker, who went viral for tweeting her salary, and an interview with sociologist Jake Rosenfeld on the myths and realities of how pay is determined. A practical segment on meeting culture caps off the episode.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Taboo of Talking About Pay

• Many workers still feel uncomfortable discussing their salaries, citing norms from upbringing and societal discomfort.
• Quotes from various workers on the streets of New York highlight how pay is seen as private, even though some feel transparency could benefit others (01:02–01:38).

Notable Quotes:

• Victoria Walker: “It’s seen as, like, the wrong thing to do or people are very protective of it for some reason…” (01:19)
• Tess Vigeland: “I don’t see anything wrong with being open about what you make.” (01:33)

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2. Pay Equity and Transparency Movement

• Discussion coincides with Pay Equity Week, emphasizing the persistent gender and racial pay gap, with women and especially women of color waiting longer to reach salary parity with white men (02:51–03:42).
• Growing legislative action: Several states and cities are enacting pay transparency laws, requiring the disclosure of salary ranges in job postings, aiming to disrupt secretive negotiation and close wage gaps.
• Increasing numbers of individuals, particularly in younger generations, are voluntarily sharing their salaries to promote equity.

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3. Victoria Walker’s Viral Salary Tweet

• Victoria Walker's decision to tweet her salary when leaving her job made headlines and catalyzed broad conversations about pay transparency (03:43–04:58).
• Her original tweet:
  “Oh, before I forget, if you apply for my old job as senior travel reporter, you should ask for no less than 115k… In full transparency, I was at 107k. I believe being transparent is one way to achieve equity in media.” (03:49)
• Walker’s intent: Empower the person taking her former position to negotiate better—a concrete act of transparency aimed at equity.
• The tweet went viral, drawing mixed reactions.

Notable Quotes & Moments:

• Walker on motivation: “For me, it was less about like the potential to go viral… I just wanted whoever applied for my old job to know exactly what I made…” (04:41)
• Reaction: “Someone said, I hope this, you know, makes no one ever want to hire you. And ouch…” (05:30)
• On support: “I saw your tweet. I’ve circulated it amongst my coworkers and we’re having more transparent conversations about what we make.” (06:31)

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4. Generational Shifts & Open Dialogue

• Walker affirms that for millennials, and increasingly Gen Z, talking about pay is becoming normalized. (09:09–10:14)
• Transparency is more common among close friends and coworkers—seen as a tool to help one another get ahead.
• She rejects the notion that self-worth is tied to pay: “I am not defined by my work. Work is something that I do... but ultimately, I’m a human being first.” (10:29)
• Walker says she would publicly share her salary again to help others, especially members of marginalized groups, negotiate better offers. (11:08–11:38)

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5. Interview with Sociologist Jake Rosenfeld: The Myth of “Paid What You’re Worth”

• Rosenfeld discusses his book "You’re Paid What You’re Worth and Other Myths of the Modern Economy". His main thesis: U.S. workers overestimate the degree to which pay reflects individual performance (13:14–14:40).
• Reality: Compensation is rarely a true reflection of merit, especially as it’s difficult to measure performance objectively in most jobs—especially for “knowledge workers.”
• The pay-for-performance philosophy has declined; most workers think they're above average, making strict merit-based pay divisive and impractical (15:02–15:51).

Notable Quotes:

• Rosenfeld: “When you survey US Workers and ask them what the core determinants of their pay are, the vast majority... point to their individual performance… But in the kind of messy real world of labor markets, that relationship… breaks down.” (13:38)
• “Most of us think we’re very good at our jobs.” (15:24)

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6. Salary, Self-Worth, and Societal Meaning

• Despite research showing people would trade pay for meaning, pay remains an emotionally charged marker of personal value for many (16:50–17:59).
• Rosenfeld: “Given the widespread belief that our pay is a reflection of our performance… pay is personal… you are more worthy as a person. I think that… that linkage should be broken.” (17:27)

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7. The Persistence and Erosion of Pay Secrecy

• Many private sector employers have formal or informal pay secrecy policies; about two-thirds of non-union private-sector workers are covered by such rules (18:34).
• Younger workers are increasingly breaking taboos and rules around pay discussion—driven partly by the instability from the Great Recession and different cultural expectations (19:42).

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8. Pay Transparency Laws: Lessons and Expectations

• Vigeland and Rosenfeld discuss countries with full transparency (e.g., Norway) and the impact of new U.S. laws in cities like New York. (20:23–21:38)
• Rosenfeld: “Once you have to establish pay bands… what you can expect is a narrowing of pay differentials…” (21:22)

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9. Advice for Workers: Determining Your Value

• Workers should recognize that individual performance is just one of several factors in compensation.
• Rosenfeld recommends researching what peers are paid and being proactive in conversations with colleagues and employers (22:02–23:28).

Notable Advice:

• “You shouldn’t take that wage or salary on offer as some act of God… in many cases it is negotiable.” (22:37)

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10. Pro Tip Segment: Managing Meetings (24:23–27:47)

• Catherine Dill discusses the frustration with excessive meetings, especially in remote work, and how some meetings could be replaced by emails.
• Tips for productive meetings:
  • Set clear norms for participation (e.g., using chat or hand-raise functions)
  • Ensure everyone has an opportunity to share—even without verbal participation
  • Use chat for quick feedback, which can be summarized by the leader
• The goal isn’t for everyone to talk, but for all to be able to contribute.

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Memorable Quotes and Moments

• Victoria Walker (re: viral tweet):
  “If it means that somebody who’s a member of a marginalized group… can get the salary that they absolutely deserve, I’d do it again in a heartbeat.” (11:33)

• Jake Rosenfeld:
  “Most of us think we’re very good at our jobs.” (15:24)
  “Pay is personal and increased pay means you’re doing something right and in some kind of deep way that you are more worthy as a person. I think… that linkage should be broken.” (17:27)

• Catherine Dill (meeting culture):
  “It’s not that everyone has to speak, it’s that everybody has to be able to share their viewpoint.” (26:46)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Opening and Theme Introduction: 00:16–01:38
• Pay Equity and Transparency Laws: 02:51–03:43
• Victoria Walker Interview: 03:43–11:47
• Jake Rosenfeld Interview: 12:49–23:31
• Pro Tip: Meetings Could Be Emails: 24:23–27:47

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Overall Takeaways

“As We Work” launches with a nuanced discussion on pay transparency, revealing it as both a policy issue (addressed with new legislation) and a deeply personal and cultural one. The episode stresses that while more people—especially younger workers—are pushing back against pay secrecy, the link between pay and self-worth is often exaggerated and should be questioned. Practical strategies for navigating meetings and transparent workplaces round out the episode, making it both introspective and actionable.

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Transcript

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[JR Whalen]

Money Briefing listeners, it's JR Whalen. In the past couple of years, our work lives have changed a lot. And it's not just because of the pandemic. That's why the Wall Street Journal has launched as We Work, a new podcast about how the workplace and our relationship to it is evolving. Every week, host Tess Viglund will speak with experts, journal reporters, and you about those shifts and how to navigate them. Today, we're sharing one of the first episodes with you about pay transparency and why it's hard to separate the number on the pay stub from your worth as a worker. If you like what you hear and want to keep listening, you can subscribe to as We Work wherever you listen to this podcast. All right, here's as We Work. Enjoy.

[Tess Vigeland]

Hi, I'm Tess Vigeland, and as We Work, people are talking more about whether to talk about how much money they make. We grew up, you know, in a small rural community, and you just didn't talk about money. You know, there's a lot of bigger issues than money. You know, it's seen as, like, the

[Victoria Walker]

wrong thing to do or people are very protective of it for some reason,

[Tess Vigeland]

whereas I think, like, being more transparent,

[Victoria Walker]

it allows people to sort of go into positions and know where they stand

[Tess Vigeland]

and how much they're valued.

[Victoria Walker]

With the company, I don't know, I'm a little private about that.

[Tess Vigeland]

I don't see anything wrong with being

[Victoria Walker]

open about what you make.

[Tess Vigeland]

This is, as We Work from the Wall Street Journal, a show about the changing workplace and everything you need to know to navigate it. You just heard from Amon Coleman, a caregiver from Alaska, Linda Cipriano, an executive assistant from New York Adrienne Richberg, a publicist, also from New York, and Eva Allen, a paramedic from Virginia. We talked to them on the streets of New York. As they told us, talking about pay is controversial. Coming up on the show, the role of the pay stub in our lives. Why we don't talk more about it with our friends and how we see ourselves in those numbers. Happy Pay Equity Week. It's that wonderful time of year when some women finally catch up with how much men made last year. For the average female worker, it's taken more than two months to equal what their male counterparts made in 2021. Are you celebrating? I'm not Because a, why does this even exist? And B, women of color have to wait even longer. This year, it's May 3rd for Asian American and Pacific island women, September 21st for Black women, November 30th for Native American women, and December 8th for Latinas. That's according to the American association of University Women. Pay, equality and equity, not just for women, are part of the reason there are growing calls to make it easier to see how much money people make. Several states and cities are passing pay transparency laws that are upending the negotiation game between employer and potential employee. And some workers aren't even waiting for corporations and governments to get on board. They're publicly posting their wages and salaries in an effort to bring equity to the compensation process. Victoria Walker is one of them. She shared her salary on Twitter as she was leaving her job as a senior reporter at the Points Guy, a travel website. Welcome.

[Victoria Walker]

Thank you for having me.

[Tess Vigeland]

So let's pull up the tweet and I'd like you to read it for us.

[Victoria Walker]

Absolutely. I tweeted. Oh, before I forget, if you apply for my old job as senior travel reporter, you should ask for no less than 115k, a signing bonus and a relocation bonus if you're moving to NYC in full transparency. I was at 107k. I believe being transparent is one way to achieve equity in media.

[Tess Vigeland]

Whoa Nelly. So that tweet got what, tens of thousands of likes within 24 hours? Definitely qualifying as viral. So let me ask you, first of all, it used to be taboo to talk about your salary, and in some companies it was expressly forbidden. And here you are putting it on Twitter for the world to see, essentially opening up this Pandora's box of paid transparency. Can you talk us through the thought process prior to hitting tweet?

[Victoria Walker]

For me, it was less about like the potential to go viral or anything like that. I just wanted whoever applied for my old job to, to know exactly what I made just in case they applied, they got an interview, they got an offer. Just so you know, the last person in this role made this amount.

[Tess Vigeland]

You clearly did not expect this to take off. In fact, one of your follow up tweets said, basically, hey folks, I have nothing to promote and here's a photo of my cute dog. But let's talk a little bit about the reaction and how it it kind of mirrors the arguments over paid transparency.

[Victoria Walker]

Oh, absolutely right.

[Tess Vigeland]

So Twitter threads can really run the gamut when it comes to support. You definitely got some very negative reactions really to the very idea of disclosing this Kind of information. Can you tell us about some of those?

[Victoria Walker]

Someone said, I hope this, you know, makes no one ever want to hire you. And ouch. Yeah, but I think the arguments in terms of them being negative are inspired in a lot of cases out of fear. But yeah, I saw some of those remarks. You know, the folks who said I was unemployable or some people said I was complaining about my salary, which was kind of odd because I was really just, you know, dropping my salary for the next person who wanted to apply for my job. And I really added no sort of like other context. But again, I think a lot of that is just kind of stuck stemmed on the fact that talking about money is such a no, no topic in American society. It's time to do away with that. It's money. It's something that we all want to make. We go to work to make money. And so talking about money should be something that is more acceptable and definitely seen as more polite in society.

[Tess Vigeland]

And there were certainly people who agreed with you on that. It wasn't all negative. You also did get a lot of support.

[Victoria Walker]

Oh, I got so much support between Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook. But folks were reaching out to me and saying, you know, I saw your tweet. I've circulated it amongst my co workers and we're having more transparent conversations about what we make. I had one journalist reach out to me and say, hey, I have never asked for a raise in my life. Over the past month, I've been writing this letter to my boss about asking for a raise, and I'd been so afraid to send it, and I saw your tweet and I just sent it. And so I got so many of these reactions. People were saying, a lot of women reaching out to me saying, you know, this inspired me to ask for a raise. And a lot of people of color reaching out to me saying, you know, I'm less afraid to ask, you know, what another coworker makes. And so I think it did, you know, do a lot in terms of inspiring people to be more transparent about salaries.

[Tess Vigeland]

Well, clearly this hit a nerve and it landed you smack in the middle of this ongoing debate over paid transparency. And in fact, since 2018, a bunch of cities and states have been, you know, designing and implementing these laws connected to, to pay scale transparency. I'm curious though, whether you've ever had this kind of conversation about money before. Like, did you talk about salary with your friends or coworkers prior to this tweet?

[Victoria Walker]

Absolutely. I have pretty transparent conversations with My friends with coworkers from all sorts of jobs that I've had in my previous and even before my last job, I typically have very transparent, very open conversations because ultimately I want people to get paid, you know, and so, however I can help, you know, somebody get to the next level of their salary goals, that's what I'm going to do. I will say I haven't necessarily done it publicly. And I've also, in every job that I've applied for and have gotten, I've typically reached out to somebody at the company to ask about, you know, how much should I ask for, aside from the base salary, which sort of benefits should I ask for? And people have also done that with me.

[Tess Vigeland]

So why now publicly, when I tweeted

[Victoria Walker]

that I was on vacation and my intention was to go dark for the month of February so I could, like, rest, relax, recuperate, which that didn't happen at all, right? And so the complete opposite happened. And so basically, I tweeted it publicly. So, you know, somebody who saw that I was leaving my previous job, maybe they couldn't get ahold of me while I was kind of going dark, they could see at least see publicly what I made. Like I said, you know, that the complete opposite happened. And suffice it to say, I have not gone dark during the month of February.

[Tess Vigeland]

We've reported that younger generations are more open about pay than previous generations have been. And from your story, it sounds like this is true for you. You're a millennial. You've been talking about money. Your friends have been talking about money. I wonder if this experience has prompted you to think at all about why we don't talk about these things more openly.

[Victoria Walker]

I've been thinking about it a lot. I think talking about money is something that's seen as rude. And ultimately, people, most people, don't want to be seen as rude. I think millennials are a lot more comfortable talking about money. For instance, I saw my parents, I saw my grandparents talking about money. And then when we got to college and we had a lot of conversations about what to ask for in our first jobs, when you have a really close group of friends, it's not uncommon to talk about money. And so I think for us, talking about money is kind of like talking about the weather at this point. And so I think that's something that is definitely more encouraged among millennials and will definitely be true among the Gen

[Tess Vigeland]

Z group later on. We're going to talk to a sociologist about self worth and pay. Americans really tend to define Themselves by their work and by extension the number on their paycheck. Is that a sentiment you can relate to at all?

[Victoria Walker]

And not at all. Not even gonna lie. Not at all. I am not defined by my work. Work is something that I do. You know, I enjoy being a journalist, I enjoy traveling. But ultimately, like, I'm a human being first. And my salary, my job title, none of these things are things I can take with me when I die. If there's one thing I've, I've learned during the pandemic is to really kind of like slow down and focus on what makes, you know, ultimately what makes me happy. And while working makes me happy, it's not the only thing that makes me happy. And truthfully, it's just one of the things that I do.

[Tess Vigeland]

I'm curious how you'd feel about tweeting out your salary or wage at whatever your next job is.

[Victoria Walker]

Honestly, I would do the same thing. Honestly, literally nothing has changed. Yeah, I would do it again.

[Tess Vigeland]

Would you do it on Twitter?

[Victoria Walker]

Yeah, I would do it on Twitter again. I want to help the next person get to whatever salary that it is that they want. If this is what it takes, then sure, you know, I can deal with my mentions being in shambles for a couple of weeks. If it means that somebody who's a member of a marginalized group, like a woman, like a person of color, like a younger journalist, can get the salary that they absolutely deserve, I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

[Tess Vigeland]

Well, Victoria Walker, I hope you can get a makeup vacation since all this interrupted the last one.

[Victoria Walker]

Me too.

[Tess Vigeland]

Thank you so much.

[Victoria Walker]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Tess Vigeland]

We reached out to the points guy after this interview. They didn't comment. Coming up after the break, we'll talk with a sociologist about why people believe their salaries are a reflection of their value at work and even a barometer for self worth and why that's a myth. Stay with us.

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[Tess Vigeland]

This is as we work from the Wall Street Journal. I'm Tess. Our next guest is Jake Rosenfeld. He's a professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis where he researches the Political and economic determinants of inequality, particularly in wages and salaries. He's written a book called you're paid what you're worth and other myths of the modern economy. Jake, glad to have you with us.

[Jake Rosenfeld]

It's my pleasure.

[Tess Vigeland]

Well, as we've reported, the labor market is seeing a lot of churn these days. A lot of people arguing that their work is worth more money. But you write that this whole idea that we're paid what we're worth is a myth. Our salaries are not based on a pay for performance model, as we're all led to believe. Tell us a little bit more about that myth.

[Jake Rosenfeld]

Sure, it's a kind of great question with a lengthy answer, but I'll try to keep it short. It is true. When you survey US Workers and ask them what the core determinants of their pay are, the vast majority of workers point to their individual performance, the belief that the number of their paychecks is a reflection of their performance on the job. But in the kind of messy real world of labor markets, that relationship between individual pay and performance really breaks down in fundamental ways for a number of reasons. One of them is measurement problems. For a lot of jobs out there, it's very difficult to measure one's individual performance. And so I often ask this to audiences in terms of their jobs. Is there a widely agreed upon metric that captures one's performance or productivity? You know, the difficulty measuring one's individual contribution to your workplace is especially acute, I would say, in the kind of knowledge worker jobs that have really expanded over the past decades.

[Tess Vigeland]

Yeah. You write that the pay for performance model has really declined since its peak in the early 2000s. So I'm curious how, even now, 20 years later, we still believe that we're compensated based on our awesomeness and our productivity. Can you give us a sense of why it went out of fashion and what the model is now?

[Jake Rosenfeld]

There's one kind of key reason why these models prove not as durable as I think many kind of management consultants, business school professors might have believed. And that has to do with a kind of deeply rooted psychological tendency to. Which I think probably has some evolutionary benefits. But it's the fact that most of us think we're very good at our jobs.

[Tess Vigeland]

I do.

[Jake Rosenfeld]

And so I also ask audiences, how would you rank yourself? How would you rank your performance vis a vis your peers, vis a vis the people in the cubicles next to you, or vis a vis the people on the zoom screen next to you?

[JR Whalen]

Now?

[Jake Rosenfeld]

And the vast majority of us tend to think we're well above average. And so once you start trying to kind of distill one's individual performance and peg pay and differentiate pay based on it, you get some upset workers.

[Tess Vigeland]

I mean, there are some fields where you can peg pay to performance. You know, if one truck driver makes more deliveries on time than another, when a broker dealer has specific KPIs key performance indicators to meet. But for a lot of knowledge work jobs metrics can start to feel pretty subjective, right?

[Jake Rosenfeld]

Yeah, I think so. And you know, not only do we have the issue with kind of measurement problems that presumes there's a widely agreed upon thing out there that we are trying to measure, but in many cases we don't have much agreement upon what it is our organization's service or product should be. Here again, I go back to my profession as a professor. Should it be teaching excellence? Should it be research based? So in many, many occupations, not only do we have definitional problems, we haven't even kind of settled on what it is we should be measuring in the first place. And that makes it very, very difficult to to pay workers based on their individual performance.

[Tess Vigeland]

Even before the pandemic, there was a study in 2018 from BetterUp Labs and they found that nine out of 10 workers would trade money for meaning. And the research actually said that on average, people would sacrifice 23% of their future earnings for work that is, quote, unquote, always meaningful. But your research finds that the number on your pay stub is also very meaningful to a lot of workers, both personally and societally. Talk to me a little bit about how pay intersects with our notions of self worth.

[Jake Rosenfeld]

Given the widespread belief that our pay is a reflection of our performance, and given many Americans, and I plead guilty here, emphasis on their work as a core part of their identity. Pay is personal and increased pay means you're doing something right and in some kind of deep way that you are more worthy as a person. I think that for a number of reasons that linkage should be broken, but that doesn't mean it's not deep seated in our culture.

[Tess Vigeland]

One factor in kind of determining your own monetary value at work is of course comparing yourself to what others are making in positions similar to yours. But historically it's been very difficult to find that out. Right? I mean, sometimes there are even company policies against sharing that information. There are also taboos. People don't necessarily talk about their salaries, even their hourly wages. Why is it so hard for us to talk about how much we're making and find out what other people are making.

[Jake Rosenfeld]

One key answer is that many of our employers not only don't want us talking about our pay, but actually prevent us from talking about our pay. So we know from some research and surveys that I've participated in that about two thirds of workers who do not belong to a labor union, who work in the private sector, as most of us do, are subject to what we term a pay secrecy policy of some sort. These are rules, informal or formal, that prevent workers from talking about their pay. There was a kind of narrative in the media out there for a while that that might be loosening among younger generations, among younger workers. I was skeptical, and it turns out I was wrong. The data are incredibly clear on this point. Younger workers, as they've kind of come of age in the labor market, are much more likely, much more willing to discuss pay and much more likely to violate rules against discussing pay in workplaces in which they have them.

[Tess Vigeland]

Why do you think that the younger generation is breaking some more of those taboos? Is there something special about them that they don't mind talking about? The salaries?

[Jake Rosenfeld]

Yeah, I think there's competing narratives here. On the one hand, it could simply be because they're young. You know, if you're just starting off at a job, that number on your paycheck might mean less for your identity as a worker than it does for those of us who've been toiling away for some time. On the other hand, there's the argument out there that given the disruptions in the economy, and especially here, the Great Recession looms large, that younger workers don't kind of abide by the same kind of cultural notions about what work is and what work will provide than many older workers who entered the labor market in more prosperous times.

[Tess Vigeland]

So when we're talking about pay transparency, I know that there are countries where that's the rule, right? I mean, Norway being one of them. And then now there is a new law in New York City requiring companies to post minimum and maximum salaries in job listings. What do you think pay transparency laws could yield here in the US I

[Jake Rosenfeld]

love bringing up the Norwegian example, because if you're a Norwegian citizen, you can look up any other Norwegian citizen's tax returns right on the Internet. Easy as that. And when you mention that to American audiences, there's usually.

[Tess Vigeland]

They're horrifying, right?

[Jake Rosenfeld]

Exactly. Disbelief, horror. But it's the case. It is the case and has been for some time, and somehow the society continues to function. But turning to the U.S. it's absolutely the case that. That at the municipal and state level, there's real movement towards more transparent direction when it comes to pay. New York City, the Colorado has a new law on its books. Once you have to establish pay bans to the extent that employers don't find workarounds, I think what you can expect is a narrowing of pay differentials both among workers who work similar types of jobs and I think overall.

[Tess Vigeland]

All right, well, let's delve briefly into how workers can go about measuring their own value where money fits into that personal equation, either for the job they have or the job they want. How would you go about counseling workers who are kind of coming up with that personal algorithm for themselves, especially given your knowledge about how we've traditionally thought about our worth at work?

[Jake Rosenfeld]

That's a great, great question. I do want to make clear I'm certainly not a compensation advice columnist and have not taken my whatever advice I have, I've not taken it myself. The first thing I would stress is that your individual performance is but one of many potential factors determining the amount of money your employer is giving you. And the other thing I would stress is that you shouldn't take that wage or salary on offer as some act of God, as some natural occurrence, as some fixed number that has some market based determination behind it that in many cases it is negotiable. I would urge all workers out there to find out what their co workers in similar positions, whether at their firm or at similar firms, are making to the extent that's possible, fully recognizing that for many of us it's not, and also again, to the extent possible to initiate conversations with coworkers and with employers with the pay setters at your firm about what goes into the determination because it varies dramatically. And I've talked to employers who are very open and say they're just flying blind and they really could use some advice. And to the extent workers can participate in those conversations and say, okay, here's how much we believe we deserve, I think that would be all the better and would get us to a fairer place.

[Tess Vigeland]

All right. Jake Rosenfeld, thank you so much for your time today.

[Jake Rosenfeld]

Thank you. I appreciate it.

[Tess Vigeland]

So do you want to tell us what you make? Also, what do you think of paid transparency? Good idea, good idea. Unless it's your salary, horrifying and nobody's business. Do share your thoughts with us. You can find us on Twitter sjpodcasts. You can also write to us via [e-mail].

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[Tess Vigeland]

And finally today, our pro tip, where one of our life and work columnists answers tactical questions about the workplace. Today we invited Catherine Dill of WSJ's Work and Life team to meet with us. She said she was already in a meeting. Then I realized I was also in a meeting. Does that sound familiar to anyone else out there? Well, we found a time and set up another meeting and here we are. Catherine, welcome.

[Catherine Dill]

Great to be here.

[Tess Vigeland]

So we're talking about whether instead of, I don't know, 50 meetings a day, maybe some of them could be an email. Is this, is this a universal problem?

[Catherine Dill]

Yes. You know, it's a joke that people like to make. Of course, this meeting could have been an email, but like a lot of great jokes, it's born from the truth. You know, people hated meetings before the pandemic. And then meetings zoom, just these back to back calendar invites that span the whole calendar, day to night sort of became the norm. But if you skip a meeting, it can seem like, you know, you're not checked into your remote workplace.

[Tess Vigeland]

You know, most workers who have had to kind of learn how to remote work because of the pandemic also had to learn some of the sort of niceties involved, even just in the technology. Right. What's the best way to set a tone in a meeting if you're trying to tamp down on people who are talking too long or people who are saying things that are irrelevant to the subject of the meeting?

[Catherine Dill]

Well, that's one of these things that's really funny about this because we talk a lot about the technology, but really technology just replicates whatever was going on when we were all in a conference room together. True. If you are the person convening the meeting, if you're a leader, laying out some norms really transparently can be a great idea. Here's how we do things. We use the raise hand function, or we use the chat function, or we don't use the chat function during this part of the meeting. It's going to really cut down on the potential for things to be awkward, to have people feeling like they have to jockey for attention. Because as soon as you have people feeling like I have to say something in this meeting, even though I don't necessarily have something material to say, you're again, getting into the arena of this meeting. Probably should have been an email.

[Tess Vigeland]

Right. And yet on the other side, you also do want to make sure that everyone involved feels empowered to speak up, right?

[Catherine Dill]

Yeah. You know, one of the sources we spoke with for this story said that it's not that everyone has to speak, it's that everybody has to be able to share their viewpoint. You know, everyone has to feel that they were able to participate even if they didn't at some point talk for an uninterrupted three minutes. And so there's a lot of different ways to do that. You know, one example is better use of the chat function, you know, which is often used for these kind of like side conversations or like a quick interjection when you have to, you know, if you have to duck out early or something, you can do things like say, like throw out a question, ask people to respond in the chat and then you, the leader of the meeting, can sort of summarize the responses. You can have people respond just to you directly. It saves you from this round robin of just everybody saying something till you've gone all the way around the room. And it also gives some cover to people who might be feeling anxious about speaking in front of a particular group.

[Tess Vigeland]

All right, Kathryn Dill, I hope you don't feel like this interview could have been an email.

[Catherine Dill]

Certainly not. My pleasure.

[Tess Vigeland]

Thanks so much.

[Victoria Walker]

Absolutely.

[Tess Vigeland]

And that's all for this episode of as We Work. Next Time, we explore how the role of ambition has changed for women over the last couple of years amid a world's worth of pandemic attack epiphanies. We'll hear about decisions to keep climbing the corporate ladder or step off down or around it. And a reminder that we really want to hear from you. You can reach out to [e-mail] let us know your comments, concerns, stories about work and careers. You can also find us on Twitter, SJ Podcasts and I'm Tessvig. As We Work is a production of the Wall Street Journal. Charlotte Gartenberg is our producer. Amanda Llewellyn is our development producer. Jessica Fenton is our sound engineer. Our music was composed by Honsdale Sue. Kateri Yoakum is a 6am dance party and the Wall Street Journal's executive producer of audio. I'm Tess Vigeland. See you next time.

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