I have a friend—let’s call her Michelle—who has been a manager at a tech company for more than a decade. She’s good at her job, well liked by her team and exactly the kind of employee a company should be desperately trying to keep. So you can imagine her feelings when, during a lunch conversation about applying for a mortgage, she discovered that a man who works for her—less experienced, less senior, with a title that literally ranked below hers on the org chart—was making more money than she was.
“I was simultaneously embarrassed and furious,” she says. “And then I realized I could be mad about it and get paid less or suck up my fear of confrontation and figure out why.”
What she did next changed her career. First, she talked to her employee to see if there was a reason he was getting paid more (there wasn’t, as far as she could tell) and to make sure she had the details straight. Then she walked into her boss’ office and made the case for a promotion and a raise. She got both. The whole thing was deeply uncomfortable, she says, and absolutely against the unspoken norms of her industry. But that one awkward conversation changed her life.
The conversation that made it possible? Asking a co-worker what they make.
I know. It feels wrong just reading that. When I told this story to my husband, who is also a manager in tech, his eyes widened and he said, “Yeah, I would never do that. I’d rather announce my credit score than my salary to my co-workers. It’s just not done.” A lot of people feel the same way. And yet, it’s actually a federally protected right—which, when you think about it, is a pretty significant hint that someone, somewhere, really does not want you to know this information.
But just because something is legal doesn’t make it polite. And this has the potential to make a lot of people very uncomfortable. But should you do it anyway? And is it a breach of proper etiquette? Let’s walk through this together.
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The case for asking
Start by asking yourself who benefits when employees don’t discuss money. It’s certainly not the employees. Which is why the federal law exists. Under the National Labor Relations Act, passed in 1935, most private-sector employees have the legal right to discuss their wages with co-workers. Employers cannot punish them for doing it. The fact that we needed a law to make companies stop forbidding this conversation is almost reason enough to do it.
Yet most of us still don’t. A full 70% of workers say salary is not openly discussed at their job, according to a 2025 Kickresume survey of nearly 2,000 employees, and 37% work somewhere that outright bans the conversation, which, again, is illegal. Somehow we’ve collectively decided that the polite thing to do is stay quiet—which is a strange definition of polite, given that it isn’t helping anyone (except, perhaps, the corporations) and may actually be hurting people we care about.
Too many of us, like my husband, have internalized the idea that talking about salaries makes people uncomfortable—ergo, it’s rude. But good etiquette isn’t about keeping everyone comfortable at all costs. It’s about treating people with fairness and respect. And there’s something radically caring about being the person who’s willing to say, “Hey, can we talk about money?” Because that conversation, as awkward as it is, is one of the only tools employees have to find out if they’re being treated fairly.
In workplaces where no one discusses pay, it’s shockingly easy for disparities to quietly compound over years—by gender, by race, by who negotiated harder in their first interview and then coasted on that number forever. As Michelle discovered, that silence can be worth tens of thousands of dollars. It’s hard to call that polite.
The case against asking (OK, fine)
Just because something is legal (and arguably virtuous) doesn’t mean it’s automatically comfortable, and it’s generally good practice not to make your co-workers uncomfortable.
Asking a co-worker what they earn can feel like asking their weight or their age: not technically off the table, but deeply dependent on how well you know them and how you go about it. Like the office group gift request, a salary question aimed at the wrong person or in the wrong context can be a legitimate overstep. It can come across as presumptuous at best and nosy at worst. There may also be real cultural norms against it in your industry—not because the law doesn’t apply, but because culture has never cared much about the law.
There’s also the reaction problem: If the person you’ve asked makes less than you, they might feel embarrassed. If they make more, they might feel guilty. And if the difference is significant enough, someone’s going home to stare at the ceiling tonight at 2 a.m.
Who to ask, and how to not make it weird
Still, I’d argue that this is the rare etiquette case where it’s acceptable to make the other person a wee bit uncomfy. The good news is that this doesn’t have to be a cold plunge into ice water. There’s an art to it.
- Go first. The single best way to make this conversation less weird is to share your own number first. Don’t corner someone and ask them to be vulnerable while you hold your cards to your chest—that’s an interrogation, not an exchange. Offering yours upfront signals good faith and takes the pressure off.
- Start with someone in your corner. The ideal salary conversation partner is either a close colleague who’s already your friend, a former co-worker who has since moved on, or a peer in your industry at a different company. Former co-workers are the gold standard here—they have relevant, accurate data and absolutely nothing to lose by sharing it. Industry peers are great too; they know the landscape and have no reason to be cagey. If you happen to work with a lot of Gen Z colleagues, you may find this easier than you’d expect—the same Kickresume survey found that nearly 40% of Gen Z workers openly discuss salary at work, almost double the rate of Gen X. Turns out the generation that grew up posting everything online has fewer hang-ups about this particular secret.
- Do your homework first. Before you ask anyone anything, spend some time on Glassdoor, LinkedIn Salary or the Bureau of Labor Statistics to get a general sense of the range for your role and market. This makes you sound like a person doing research rather than someone who just needs to know. “I’ve been looking at salary data for roles like ours, and the range seems really wide. Would you mind if we compared notes?” is a much easier opening than just dropping that question on them out of the blue.
- Pick your moment. There are times when the conversation comes up organically—after a tone-deaf company announcement, during a mutual venting session, when someone is weighing a job offer. These moments are gifts, so use them. What you should not do is bring it up when someone is already upset about money. That’s not information-sharing; that’s poking a bear.
- Be matter-of-fact about it. The more you treat it like a normal, reasonable thing to discuss—because it is—the more likely they are to respond in kind. Don’t treat it like a dirty secret.
- And if they say no? Let them. A cheerful “no worries at all” and a subject change are all you need. If someone doesn’t want to share their salary, that’s entirely their right, and making it weird or confrontational is an actual etiquette violation.
What you do with the answer matters more than the question
Getting the number is only the beginning. If you learn a colleague is making more than you, you have options, but “confronting your colleague about it” and “yelling at your boss” are not among them. What you absolutely can do is use it as a data point to make your own case to management based on your own merits—without throwing that co-worker under the bus. Michelle didn’t walk in and say, “So-and-so makes X, and I want to know why.” She walked in with a calm, prepared argument for her own value.
Be very wary about sharing what your co-worker told you in confidence. Why? Because the moment you name your source, you’ve put that person in an uncomfortable position they didn’t sign up for. They shared something vulnerable with you in confidence, and burning them as a data point isn’t just bad etiquette—it’s the kind of thing that damages trust and professional relationships in lasting ways. Basically, the information powers the negotiation; it doesn’t become the negotiation. There’s a big difference.
“As a manager, I’m much more concerned about why someone feels they deserve more money rather than how their salary compares to someone else’s,” says my friend Cynthia, who owned an international company and is now a business professor who previously shared her advice with us on how to negotiate your salary. “It can’t sound like jealousy. You need to be prepared to show how you’re worth it.”
If you’re the one making more, the stakes are a little different. More than half of employees have learned that a co-worker earns more for the same role, and most were upset about it, according to the same survey. And while that makes a lot of sense, it can also change the dynamic in your work environment. Your co-worker now knows something that may make them frustrated—and a frustrated colleague can be harder to work with if they feel resentful. It can also strain a relationship if it’s fragile to begin with.
The trickiest situation, however, is when the answer makes you really upset. Maybe the gap is bigger than you thought. Maybe it’s the kind of number that makes your eye twitch. That’s valid! But let the feeling settle before you do anything about it because decisions made in the white-hot heat of financial injustice tend not to go great. Give it a day, then decide.
The verdict
Asking a co-worker what they make is not rude. It can be awkward, it requires some relationship calibration, and what you do with the answer demands real tact. But the question itself? Federally protected, entirely legitimate and in many cases—as Michelle could tell you—worth asking.
The discomfort you feel around it isn’t natural. It’s been carefully cultivated by workplace cultures that benefit from keeping employees in the dark about their own relative worth. And the best etiquette rules, at their core, are about helping people feel comfortable and empowered, not about maintaining a company’s convenient fiction.
Have a social situation you can’t stop ruminating on? Email us at advice@tmbi.com, or message Charlotte on Instagram at @CharlotteHiltonAndersen.
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Reader’s Digest has published hundreds of etiquette stories that help readers navigate communication in a changing world. We regularly cover topics such as the best messages to send for any occasion, polite habits that aren’t as polite as they seem, email and texting etiquette, business etiquette, tipping etiquette, travel etiquette and more. We’re committed to producing high-quality content by writers with expertise and experience in their field in consultation with relevant, qualified experts. We rely on reputable primary sources, including government and professional organizations and academic institutions as well as our writers’ personal experiences where appropriate. We verify all facts and data, back them with credible sourcing and revisit them over time to ensure they remain accurate and up to date. Read more about our team, our contributors and our editorial policies.
Sources:
- National Labor Relations Board: “Your Right to Discuss Wages
- Kickresume: “Salary Talk Survey: 56% Find Out Coworkers Earn More for the Same Job”
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