Tiktoker Hannah Williams joins Cheddar News to discuss her 'Salary Transparent Street' series where she asks complete strangers how much money they make in an effort to promote equal pay through transparent conversations.

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TikToker Hannah Williams Asks Strangers How Much Money They Make

Welcome back guys between battles like baker for china and new york. If there's one thing people don't really discuss among friends and family and certainly not strangers, it's how much money they make in their respective careers. However, to one Tiktoker surprise taking to the streets of D. C. And doing just that proved to be pretty easy taking with her just a cellphone and a simple microphone. People began to open up pretty quickly, take a look at this. I'm a teacher. And how much do you make, 83,000? Do you like what you do? I love it. I'm a contractor for the navy. I do software development and how much do you all make? I make $75,000.90. Do you guys like what you do? No. What's your dream job? If you weren't doing this uh teacher, I do software but for like a startup or something, I'm an editor and how much do you make? 60,000? So interesting. So joining us now is Tiktoker Hannah, Williams, Hannah, welcome to cheddar news. Thanks for having me. Okay, so first off tell us why you decided to start asking random complete strangers how much money they make and do you think that these people are being honest with you? Absolutely. I think these people are being honest. I think I asked them to quickly to think on their feet for something fake. But um really I just kind of realized that in my past job I was underpaid. I, when I graduated college like three years ago, I did not know how to negotiate my pay or how to do market research and I was basically underpaid in every single job that I had. And so I learned a lot from it. I started posting on my Tiktok, like my personal tiktok account about my career experiences and realized that a lot of people benefited from conversations like this. And so I figured something needs to change. That's such an interesting point to what you just said, you really believe here that being transparent and people talking about this, this sort of opens things up for people realizing, wow, I didn't realize how much less I was making a lot of other people. Absolutely. And I think that's one of the goals of the entire series is that people can watch this, find the series or find the fields that they're working in and kind of compare themselves. Obviously there's gonna be discrepancies with where you live and your years of experience, but it can inspire people, it can help people, it can educate people. There's no, there's no loss here. But do you also think maybe because of the great resignation, you have people competing for jobs against each other. Do you almost think knowing now this salary component maybe edges and changes sort of that competitive competitiveness now because of that? Absolutely. And I think the great resignation teaches us a major lesson that there's power in numbers and you know, I can't go to Jeff Bezos or Elon musk and ask them to start implementing salary transparency across the nation and corporations, but if all workers get onboard that salary transparency benefits everybody, this is something we can demand and make change on. Was there a certain answer or maybe an answer you've heard repeatedly that maybe has surprised you over doing these interviews? Um you know, I haven't seen anything that surprised me, but I have heard some salaries that surprised me. Like usually we most of us know that teachers are largely underpaid in the country. And it was shocking to me to see what teachers are paid in Washington D. C. Just because of the change in high cost of living versus low cost of living cities. And so I just think it makes no sense that in one city just because it's more expensive, a teacher makes six figures but doing the same value of work in the same effort. Same hours in Idaho, you make 20. Yeah, I was going to ask you about that because most of your interviews you're doing where you live in D. C. Do you feel like this? The responses you would see similar to other cities. Like if you do this here in New York City, you get similar responses here. You know, I think what the series is going to show is that it's gonna be all over the board because people are not negotiating their salaries or going back on companies to ask for more. And so once we start showing that and we show that, you know, even in the same city, teachers are making huge differences in their pay. We're going to show that you need salary transparency because you're probably being underpaid there. When I go on Tiktok, I see this trend all over the place. You're obviously doing a really good job of this. But I've also seen videos where Tiktoker guesses people's rents here in new york city. There's another one asking people with really nice cars, what they do for a living. Why do you think these men on the streets or or or a person on the street interviews are so compelling on Tiktok? I think it's a little bit of nosiness. People really want to like get an eye into what people do and what they make. There's definitely a little bit of that. But really, I think it's just something that it's especially in our case where the first series to do this where we asked people what they do and how much they make on such a large scale and it's something that people have never seen before. So you're kind of like pulling back the veil and taking a peek into something that has never been on like a huge, huge platform like this before. So I think it's compelling and people are really excited about it. Why do you think they're so honest with you? What do you think? Is it about the question or whatever, that they are basically giving you responses that you really believe in here? Um, I think that they're, they have good intentions, you know, and they know that we have good intentions to, I'm not going up to anyone and asking them how much they make to embarrass them or make them look bad. I have very good intentions and the goal is to spread that transparency and stop the gatekeeping. And really our overarching goal is to make sure that women and people of color are not being discriminated against on the huge scale that they currently are. So I think that they feel that good energy and they give it back. Amen. So well said I continue making these videos, I love them so much, Tiktoker Hannah Williams, thank you so much for joining us.