The one-salary experiment, ten years in • Hacker News Board

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#211

Post by dalbasal » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 9:46 AM UTC

ui-explorer12 wrote: post #118

issa wrote: post #84

I've always found it strange that companies don't give raises to current employees. A team I am on just lost a good engineer to another company offering him a $30k+ raise. He would have stayed if our company had even given him half of that. Instead, they let him go, and how will have to hire someone else, probably at that higher salary. So weird, and seems to happen a lot.

The same thing happens when you've been with a mobile/telecom/etc company for a long time. They milk you for every penny they can get and give all the promo pricing to new customers. The pay sales higher commissions for new sign-ups and treat existing loyal clients like garbage. It really bugs me to have to waste the time to change providers for everything every ~2 years, but I'd feel like an idiot if I left thousand…

solid comparison. There's a parallel here to the employee/consumer side too.

A telco wants new customers. The way to do it is price, but lose if they cut everyone's price by 20% to gain 10% more customers. So price selectively.

Companies want to hire the most when the market is best (that's why the market is good). That might require 20% higher salaries, but they don't want the whole salary bill to increase. So, they selectively "price" new hires (and usually also people who get competitive offers).

In both cases, this also increases tension. Employees/consumers realize that they can get more if they switch. But switching is effort, and not everyone will make the effort. Not everyone will get completing offers either, so from the company's perspective it will always be more expensive to price match the best offer and offer it to everyone.

Btw, it also works the other way, in bad markets. In bad labour markets, the salary you have is probably better than the salary you can get, and new hires earn less.

Here, the company management hears about low wages their competitors pay and fume that it's impossibly hard to lower salaries across the board.

Overall, I don't think it's that bad a thing. It seems stupid when you're caught in it. Why do I need to change jobs/bank/plans just to get "market rate?" Systemically though, it helps create dynamism.

You aren't supposed to in a job or Telco plan for life.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#212

Post by mszcz » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 9:48 AM UTC

davidbanham wrote: post #129

ui-explorer12 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same thing happens when you've been with a mobile/telecom/etc company for a long time. They milk you for every penny they can get and give all the promo pricing to new customers. The pay sales higher commissions for new sign-ups and treat existing loyal clients like garbage. It really bugs me to have to waste the time to change providers for everything every ~2 years, but I'd feel like an idiot if I left thousand…

Many companies have done the sums on this and have dedicated churn teams. If you call and tell them you're planning to leave because you can get a better deal elsewhere they'll often match or better it in order to retain you. It's a bit iffy since if everyone did this all the time the incentive to advertise low rates gets removed. As an individual bonus, though, it means you don't need to do all the paperwork it take…

I was able to get a better deal when I started the move process. After starting that the churn team seamed more receptive to my arguments ;)

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#213

Post by giancarlostoro » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 10:13 AM UTC

issa wrote: post #84

I've always found it strange that companies don't give raises to current employees. A team I am on just lost a good engineer to another company offering him a $30k+ raise. He would have stayed if our company had even given him half of that. Instead, they let him go, and how will have to hire someone else, probably at that higher salary. So weird, and seems to happen a lot.

One of my uncles used to work at a big defense contracting company. He told me sometimes they would give the advise of leaving the company and applying a few months later in order to get paid more money just to do the same work. It is stupid, but some have figured out stupid solutions to stupid problems.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#214

Post by pjbster » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 10:15 AM UTC

3. I’m not sure how the accounting would work, but if we kept the salary the same and tied it to a quarterly bonus structure based on company profits, it could create a more direct link between short-term productivity and income. (That’s not really a fundamental change though… more like a nudge.)

Don't do this. This is the first step towards stack ranking and your 2nd-best developer walking out the door. Followed by the new 2nd-best after that.

I've never seen it tried but I think profit sharing should be allocated along salary share lines. So if you pay 20 employees an equal salary they should all get an equal share of the dividend. If an employee is actually paid, say, 7% of the total salary pot then they should get 7% of the dividend and everyone else would get their %-age share correlating with their %-age of the salary share.

If any rock stars feel they're owed "their fare share" since they did more contributing, then they should negotiate a mutually agreeable salary or find another employer who values them more in line with their expectations.

I'm aware that successful pro athletes expect individual performance bonuses. As do successful Large Company" employees. Whether this is just survivorship bias in action or not, I'm not qualified to say.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#215

Post by balfirevic » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 10:16 AM UTC

cr1895 wrote: post #192

balfirevic wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the case, why do only 28% of working men opt-in for that benefit? Also, it's pretty wild that you are effectively entitled by law to a 25% increase in salary if you have a child under 9.

>Also, it's pretty wild that you are effectively entitled by law to a 25% increase in salary if you have a child under 9. That's incorrect. It's at a reduced salary. If you're on a permanent contract and if your full-time function isn't in some way demonstrably critical to the business, you're also entitled to work fewer hours if you want, unrelated to children.

> That's incorrect. It's at a reduced salary.

So I presumed, which is why I responded with disbelief to a commenter that sad (in response to a question whether salary is reduced):

> I would hope not. This article suggests that this is not the case

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#216

Post by giancarlostoro » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 10:16 AM UTC

k__ wrote: post #209

icelancer wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Negotiating raises via counteroffers is a very dangerous practice. The employee will tell everyone how they got their raise (and it will get out), and suddenly you have a much larger problem on your hands rather than a single engineer leaving. Set up a fair, proactive, and objective way to obtain more money, and never deviate.

I know this problem well, but what can one employee do? If one company tries to poach me, should I simply keep it to myself that there is someone who is willing to pay me much more?

It depends how confident / you are with the relationship with your boss. If they are someone you can tell that you are seeing way more money elsewhere, then you may want to tell them. If you are uncertain you could be taking a gamble, but if they are looking to replace you, you may not want to work there anyway.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#217

Post by giancarlostoro » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 10:19 AM UTC

mac01021 wrote: post #142

icelancer wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Searching any listserv or salary database will get you that information.

Not sure that's true. In most of the country/world local employer don't have salaries in a publicly available database. And there may not be enough of a tech scene in a city or region to bootstrap such a database easily.(assuming we're concerned specifically with tech/software salaries)

In Orlando we have a Slack group for all the devs in the city and at the end of the year they do a salary / tech survey everyone fills out. Gives anybody in the city a good idea of what compensation looks like. Other cities could build similar surveys if they want to. You dont need a million devs just enough to be willing to pseudo-anonymously answer. Then based on pay by years of experience you can gague how low your salary is.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#218

Post by lelima » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 10:24 AM UTC

war1025 wrote: post #83

steven2012 wrote: post #64

Right now I'm struggling with whether or not to leave. I'm currently at a well-known company, and I'm uncharacteristically happy because my WLB is the best it's been in my career. However, I'm getting a bit bored and I also know I could make at least $50,000 a year more if I leave. Hell, even the new engineers joining my company at the same level are making more than I am. But the culture and pay at my company is jus…

I was in a very similar situation at the end of last year. Young kids and a work life balance that couldn't be beat. Had a couple expenses pop up that aggravated my irritation at being underpaid to the point that I looked for a different job. Calculated out how much I thought I'd need to offset the work-life balance bit, and went out and got an offer for that amount. Actually accepted the offer but my employer said t…

Thanks for Sharing your story, now my question is, how to ask for a raise?

-just, I want a raise will do?

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#219

Post by lawn » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 10:25 AM UTC

What happens when a skilled and very hard worker gets the same raise as someone who's not as skilled and not working very hard?

For example if the skilled one solves the hard problems the less skilled one cannot solve. And if the lazy one spends a bunch of time on facebook.

It isn't about the salary in absolute terms. It's about recognition and to be appreciated for the good work he's doing. But instead he gets the lesson that it doesn't matter.

Now there are two options:

1. Get a new job

2. Stop working so hard and stop caring about the work you do

Both are very bad options for the employer. This can only work if everyone are of similar skill and motivation.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#220

Post by SuperGent » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 10:29 AM UTC

davidbanham wrote: post #129

ui-explorer12 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same thing happens when you've been with a mobile/telecom/etc company for a long time. They milk you for every penny they can get and give all the promo pricing to new customers. The pay sales higher commissions for new sign-ups and treat existing loyal clients like garbage. It really bugs me to have to waste the time to change providers for everything every ~2 years, but I'd feel like an idiot if I left thousand…

Many companies have done the sums on this and have dedicated churn teams. If you call and tell them you're planning to leave because you can get a better deal elsewhere they'll often match or better it in order to retain you. It's a bit iffy since if everyone did this all the time the incentive to advertise low rates gets removed. As an individual bonus, though, it means you don't need to do all the paperwork it take…

Some years ago, I accidentally ordered two new phones from different providers at the same time. AS I had a 14 day 'cool off' I phoned one company to cancel, as I didn't like that phone, and they offered me a much better deal. I then phoned the other to pretend to cancel and got a reduction in my bill there!