Product Owner and Scrum Master should earn the same

I'm definitely not the expert with this but in my personal opinion, PO's should make more than SM's. The PO owns the product, the responsibilities are greater than those that fall under the SM's role. It's not about hierarchy, it's a simple fact. If the Product fails, it is on the PO; it doesn't fall on the SM. Now, before everyone starts yelling, I fully agree that the product is the result of a collaborative effort between the PO, SM, and Dev Team. Even with that, the PO decides when and if to release the increments, the PO is responsible for setting up the backlog correctly based off the stakeholder's feedback and requests, and the PO is responsible for making sure the product provides value to the stakeholders. The SM is only partially responsible for that because s/he is on the team but like it or not, the ultimate responsibility falls to the PO. The SM definitely has a hugely important job but the level of responsibility between the PO and SM is NOT equal.

What if the company was so far in its transformation that anyone with an idea for a product could be a Product Owner... from interns, associates, all the way to Directors and CEOs? 

While the SM is a very important role the PO has a more expansive role to play here based on the relative business acumen required to interact and maintain positive relationships with stakeholders and potentially vendors.  As noted the PO is responsible for release and client satisfaction 100%.  Having an idea doesn't constitute a PO.  

I'm in two minds about this.

As a Scrum Master, I am naturally inclined to endorse anything that boosts my own earnings potential.

But I think this isn't the heart of the issue.

Would an empirical, agile organization with self-organizing teams really benefit from pay scales that constrain what individuals can earn?

Could there ever be merit in the team collectively deciding what everyone earns?

So what what you're offering up here is for HR departments to empower individual, self-organizing teams, to determine individual pay scales (at scale) inclusive of bonus and stock? Of course HR would have to self-organize into teams before this could happen.  Sounds like a new opportunity for new Scrum certification (cha-ching!), Scrum ALL.

You manage an HR organization.  You attend a Sprint review for one of the Scrum ALL teams in your organization.  The HR Owner explains that the Scrum ALL team has come to an impasse regarding what an HR Scrum Master and an HR Owner should be paid.  There is no answer to be found based on the team bickering to date.  Based on this impasse what should be done?

(select the best answer)

Have all Scrum ALL members but their paychecks in a hat and draw them out at random so everyone has a fair chance at getting a bigger paycheck

Speak with the other HR managers and the division head to express your concerns hoping to get them to agree the HR Owner should be paid the most

Allow the HR Scrum Master to eliminate the impediment by paying himself the most

Have a Scrum ALL Planning meeting and play paycheck poker every two weeks

formulate your own answers (having a little fun here on a Friday afternoon)    

Having an idea doesn't constitute a PO.  

Maybe not, but providing the owner of an idea with the opportunity to be a PO certainly has its benefits.  So, the point is, if a PO may exist at any level in an organisation, is it fair to assign a set pay range to the PO role?

in the HR-pay grade, the top salary for Product Owner is higher than the top salary of the Scrum Master

Is the PO's salary directly linked to the value of the product to stakeholders?

These are some good discussions here.

I was purely focused on the hierarchical imbalance it might cause between the roles. Mainly because there is no hiërarchie in the 3 roles of Scrum, so why should there be any difference in the pay scales for the roles? If one can potentially earn more as a product owner than as a scum Master, then the next career move should be to become a product owner in order to earn more?

@Ian Mitchell, business impact is one of the 5 elements which determines the scale you are in. The more customer and business impact, the higher the scale. 

I would venture to guess, based on experience, the pay grade is based on industry norms/surveys which is not tied to product/stakeholder value.  More to the point of where the market rate is today for the position.

I think that it all depends on the amount of responsibility each may have within  the organization. Specially in scale scrum such as "Large SAFE" just to give an example where you could have many product owners and many scrum masters at different levels (Team, program, large solution, portfolio). 

I can provide a real example within a big telecom company (~100k employees and many products) that has implemented scale scrum, not specifically SAFE but it looks 95% similar... 

There are different levels of product ownership: 

1. Total product owner (This is the PO of the whole product covering different areas)

2. Area product owners (These are the ones responsible for the product backlog within an area)

3. Operative product owners ( This role is responsible for 1  to 3 teams and their respective team backlogs)

     You have many scrum masters working closely to the teams and operative product owners 

There are agile coaches focusing more on the entire system. 

In this scenario, operative product owners and scrum masters have the same salary range ( I know this by fact)

Agile coaches are within the same salary range as area product owners (I know this by fact)

Note: Agile coach is a mixed role with line management role but there is also 100% agile coaches 

Total product owners should be on a higher salary range than area product owners.   (This is just my guess)

In my opinion, this is quite a selfish topic.   Is anyone with an Agile mindset really concerned about how much they are earning in relation to others?   How would they even acquire such sensitive data?

I work as a Scrum Master, because that is a role that provides me great enjoyment and job satisfaction.   If I were to ever learn that Product owners in my company earn more than Scrum Masters, it would not sway me at all.

There is much more to life than how much you earn.

How would they even acquire such sensitive data?

There are companies where such information is easily available. Either because the company has moved to a system of transparent salaries or because the company is bound by contract to use a specified system of salaries. The latter can often be found at large corporations in Germany, because unions negotiate contracts either directly with those companies or with industry representatives. Those contracts are applicable for all employees, so guessing someone's salary range isn't all that hard when you know a little about them (how long have they been in the company, age, experience, role, ...).

That being said, I agree with you. Someone else's pay grade rarely bother me.

I have my role which I fulfill in Scrum. Same for the others of the team. It's pretty clear which role has which responsibilities and as long as everyone shows the needed respect to the role everybody else is fulfilling, salary should not play a role at all.

Salary information isn't all that sensitive any more, at least in the United States.  Recent decisions by the NLRB state that employers cannot enact policies that prohibit employees from discussing that information unless they have special access to that data, such as HR managers.