Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The one-salary experiment, ten years in

iwantmyname.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 309 posts

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#241

Post by RHSeeger »

eesmith wrote: post #162
Cd00d wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this sentiment often, but I don't quite understand. Inflation has been at I'm in NYC and our trouble with the subway have highlighted that MTA workers get a standard 6% raise each year as cost of living. But, it's way more than that, and it's actually a salary doubling every 11 years or so, which is not at all in line with overall wage growth - it's huge. Sure, in tech you can jump jobs every 3 years for 20% ju…

If you want, the MTA is hiring. Or, you can start a union at push for pay raises for your industry. Putting that aside, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_New_York_City_transit_cri... points out that worker salaries are only one of many costs for the MTA, and not the predominate problem: > On November 18, 2017, The New York Times published its investigation into the crisis, with over 1,000 readers having submitted st…

I fail to see how any of that has any impact on the fact that the workers get a 6% raise per year as cost of living. That's higher than how much cost of living increases per year in NYC.

While what you said is interesting to read, none of it speaks to that point.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#242

Post by rcxdude »

dtech wrote: post #234
sjapkee wrote: post #233

>We don’t believe in a hierarchy or in more important people. You shouldn't believe in this. This is fact.

Valve is a well-known company that works like this. People who've left say that hierarchy and power structure still exist, but is informal and hidden.

Exactly. A power structure will always exist, and it's generally better (or at least fairer) when it is at least explicit and relatively transparent as opposed to implicit and hidden.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#243

Post by olau »

sjapkee wrote: post #233

>We don’t believe in a hierarchy or in more important people. You shouldn't believe in this. This is fact.

I think it is supposed to mean that they do not want to institutionalize that some people are more entitled than others.

It's about basic human values, not about the organization. Of course, some people will be coordinating and some people will be more important than others for the organizational well-being.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#244

Post by gray_-_wolf »

dtech wrote: post #234
sjapkee wrote: post #233

>We don’t believe in a hierarchy or in more important people. You shouldn't believe in this. This is fact.

Valve is a well-known company that works like this. People who've left say that hierarchy and power structure still exist, but is informal and hidden.

> but is informal and hidden.

Which I feel would somehow be even more annoying..

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#245

Post by semi-extrinsic »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #213
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.

I know some companies have solved this type of problem by computing some "seniority number" based e.g. on date of graduation / years of experience. So person A and B graduating at the same time -> A goes to work for FooCo, B works somewhere else for N years, then joins FooCo, both get the same salary for the same position. I.e. quitting and re-joining does nothing.

Then the mechanism for rewarding high performers is to give them a better position (e.g. Engineer -> Senior Engineer -> Chief Engineer) instead of just raising their salary with the same title.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#246

Post by eelboy »

precisioncoder wrote: post #239
SeanDav wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are lucky. Sadly, this is very much the exception, although we can only hope it becomes more common. Human nature being what it is, people hate change, so companies can gouge existing users and offer incentives to new users to get them to change.

Recently my telecom has starting sending me regular texts (~3-6 months) "We've improved our service, you now have X more mb/month" "We've strengthened our infrastructure, your bill has been reduced from x/month to y/month, if you'd prefer more data you can reply with MOAR DATA to this text and we'll keep you at the same price and give you X more data." Knowing that I'm continuing to upgrade while doing nothing increa…

Who are you with? This sounds really nice.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#247

Post by kevinconaway »

kazinator wrote: post #141

Someone who makes pinwheel trinkets sold in a dollar store simply doesn't deserve the same compensation as, say, a skilled machinist. That's not my personal prejudice: the free market for the labor end products themselves decides that by pricing them differently. When some workers with different skills are paid the same under the umbrella of an organization, it's shielding them from these market effects. This concept…

> This concept simply cannot scale to an entire economy.

Why does it need to?

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#248

Post by Spooky23 »

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.

It’s just smart business.

When word gets out that the guy got a raise or he shows up in a new car, you’ll have a line of people with hat in hand.

Comfort is valuable to people. About 30% of my people are making significantly less than their market value. Myself included. But, non-cash benefits are powerful as well.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#249

Post by Spooky23 »

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…

Are you price or convenience sensitive?

Take groceries as an example. My sister in law wants convenience. She rolls into Whole Foods on the way home from work and drops $50 on stuff for dinner. My wife is price sensitive... she does coupons and shops aggressively. Last year those savings yields almost $15k.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#250

Post by eitland »

varjag wrote: post #178
sdoering wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. I have never thought about it that way. But now I read it, I will never be able to not think about it that way. Thanks for that nugget of wisdom. Personal "fun" fact. I now get about 28% more then when I startet 4 years ago. That is quite a hefty increase and something to be very happy about. But on the other hand, due to a change in my role I now have insight into how much others in my company doing the same wo…

Your salary information in Norway is not public and never was. Your taxes paid were public until 2007. Tax paid on the same income can vary up to 2x depending on your personal situation so really it was very approximate. Since 2008 you can still request personal tax data on anyone, but not anonymously.

> Your salary information in Norway is not public and never was.

While technically true "taxable income" or something was public as well.

For most people in ordinary positions that would give you a reasonable idea. (It would however include everything reported in one lump sum so if you had multiple jobs and/or other taxable income that would show up as well.)

Post reply on HN