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I froze the salaries of my executive team to benefit other workers

theguardian.com

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Re: I froze the salaries of my executive team to benefit other workers

#71

Post by harimau777 »

bigred100 wrote: post #33
locklock wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you're getting a $365k bonus you are likely already so rich that the money is only going for luxury things while for someone making $7.25 it's quite literally the difference between living in a car or not. I wonder if you could apply this to the rest of American society...

Yeah indeed. I wonder why more rich Americans don’t feel shame and embarrassment at such purchases.

I agree that a lot of luxury is irresponsible, but at the same time I tend to view it differently depending on the situation:

An executive making a luxury purchase is different if their company is successful versus laying off lots of employees.

Buying a yacht can be part of an understandable (although expensive) hobby/lifestyle as opposed to something simply wasteful like buying solid gold toilet seats.

Building beautiful architecture, commissioning art, or adventuring/exploring (e.g. being the first person to climb X or to cross Y) can contribute to the vibrancy of society even if it isn't super practical.

Re: I froze the salaries of my executive team to benefit other workers

#72

Post by onetimemanytime »

WrathOfJay wrote: post #65

I think it's great that this company did this, but this article is a puff piece. There's no real data here. He just states that the `business tripled`. What does that actually mean? Did it triple in revenue? How did increasing the entry-level pay result in that? And how did your non-entry level employees handle the lowest wrung earning far closer to their own pay? How many executives decided that the freeze wasn't in…

Puff piece or not I don't get what you want from him? Scans of their IRS taxes? It's an article to show what they did, not a step by step manual, will every single detail. Now if he lied, he'd be called on it

Re: I froze the salaries of my executive team to benefit other workers

#73

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

maxxxxx wrote: post #63
turk73 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not quite where you are wealth-wise but definitely I have had that moment several times recently where I am re-evaluating hiring out work I would have just done myself in the past. I didn't have some big windfall, but pretty much earned and saved my way to wealth. Now it is hard to not do things like fix my own cars as well as bring my own lunch. I do them out of habit now. That's the discipline. Anyways, you don…

“t makes no sense to me why the CEO and higher ups of the company I work at still work there. ” My theory is that they simply like their work and get satisfaction from it. They get paid a lot but they also work a lot and I can’t imagine anybody doing this to themselves if they didn’t genuinely like it.

There is a much higher rate of sociopathy among corporate executives [0]. It’s still a small rate probably, but it also likely means that some fraction of the people seeking these positions are doing so to derive sadistic pleasure from authority and power. Yes, they also want wealth, but they may persist even after money is no longer important because the position gives them power to soothe narcissistic & sociopathic tendencies.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy_in_the_workplace

Re: I froze the salaries of my executive team to benefit other workers

#74

Post by Kalium »

locklock wrote: post #8
petercooper wrote: post #6

I was thinking the math didn't work out, but it does. If you ignore taxes and say a raise of +7.50 an hour for a working week comes to around $14500 extra a year, over 500 employees that's about $7.3m. If that were split into 20 executive bonuses, that'd be $365K each.

And if you're getting a $365k bonus you are likely already so rich that the money is only going for luxury things while for someone making $7.25 it's quite literally the difference between living in a car or not. I wonder if you could apply this to the rest of American society...

> I wonder if you could apply this to the rest of American society...

At very large-scale companies, it doesn't always work as well as coud be hoped. A company ten times the size of this company may not have ten times as many extremely-highly-paid executives, but it probably has ten times as many people further down the pyramid.

For example, the CEO of United Airlines is compensated $18 million-ish. There are 88,000 employees of United. That's $200 dollars per employee per year. You'd have to find a lot more money than that before you started seeing benefits to average employees on the same scale as here. Even if you assume all the highly-compensated execs can account for 5x-10x that, you're still well short of $14k/yr.

Re: I froze the salaries of my executive team to benefit other workers

#75

Post by JetSpiegel »

systemtest wrote: post #60
bigred100 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah indeed. I wonder why more rich Americans don’t feel shame and embarrassment at such purchases.

Most Americans have smartphones worth about as much as a monthly salary in Europeans countries. Should people feel embarrassment about that?

Most? 50%? I don't think this is correct.

Re: I froze the salaries of my executive team to benefit other workers

#76

Post by mgbmtl »

WrathOfJay wrote: post #65

I think it's great that this company did this, but this article is a puff piece. There's no real data here. He just states that the `business tripled`. What does that actually mean? Did it triple in revenue? How did increasing the entry-level pay result in that? And how did your non-entry level employees handle the lowest wrung earning far closer to their own pay? How many executives decided that the freeze wasn't in…

It's a newspaper article, the aim is to raise awareness. People should read this and wonder if/how it applies to their company.

It's easy to forget how the lowest-paid in a company are often key people in having operations run smoothly. If they have trouble paying their bills, often on sick-leave, etc, it can have an impact on everyone else (causing delays, quality issues or security issues). Ideally, you invest in fixing both the technical and the underlying social issues.

Re: I froze the salaries of my executive team to benefit other workers

#77

Post by mcv »

Chris2048 wrote: post #53
mcv wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money for luxury things doesn't do nearly as much as money for necessities, because luxury things are optional. The person with the money can easily decide to postpone the purchase and save the money instead. Or spend the money abroad, which doesn't do much for the local economy. People who are short on necessities will immediately buy them when they get the money for them, because they are necessities. Money for the…

Maybe saving money is as important as "stimulating" the economy? Maybe the type of economy is important too, i.e. luxury items that push the envelope wrt novel manufacturing methods or R&D

Maybe, or maybe not. I think the first concern is that everybody should be able to eat, have a roof over their heads, and have the freedom to focus on other things. I think it's definitely healthy for a society if the poor are able to save some money so their life doesn't immediately collapse on a rainy day. Once that's sorted, I'm all for investigating all the maybes.

Re: I froze the salaries of my executive team to benefit other workers

#78

Post by BioMeditate »

dhx wrote: post #67

> My HR staff suggested that we re-think our recruiting and training – which made sense – but I thought that we could do more. I thought we needed to reconsider how we supported and paid our team. Sounds like a situation right out of Yes, Minister. HR staff not being forthcoming with the obvious answer of increasing pay to lower attrition rates from 30-40% due to the attitude of the board/CEO and anticipation of thei…

I've always wondered if companies even need a HR? Especially when they are huge separate departments.

Re: I froze the salaries of my executive team to benefit other workers

#79

Post by WrathOfJay »

onetimemanytime wrote: post #72
WrathOfJay wrote: post #65

I think it's great that this company did this, but this article is a puff piece. There's no real data here. He just states that the `business tripled`. What does that actually mean? Did it triple in revenue? How did increasing the entry-level pay result in that? And how did your non-entry level employees handle the lowest wrung earning far closer to their own pay? How many executives decided that the freeze wasn't in…

Puff piece or not I don't get what you want from him? Scans of their IRS taxes? It's an article to show what they did, not a step by step manual, will every single detail. Now if he lied, he'd be called on it

How about something a little bit more than "it worked" and "business tripled". An analysis of contributing factors, maybe. There's so much bullshit in the media with people claiming things that are half-truths, or outright lies. It'd be nice for something like this to have some actual justification to support it. Warts and all.

Re: I froze the salaries of my executive team to benefit other workers

#80

Post by WrathOfJay »

mgbmtl wrote: post #76
WrathOfJay wrote: post #65

I think it's great that this company did this, but this article is a puff piece. There's no real data here. He just states that the `business tripled`. What does that actually mean? Did it triple in revenue? How did increasing the entry-level pay result in that? And how did your non-entry level employees handle the lowest wrung earning far closer to their own pay? How many executives decided that the freeze wasn't in…

It's a newspaper article, the aim is to raise awareness. People should read this and wonder if/how it applies to their company. It's easy to forget how the lowest-paid in a company are often key people in having operations run smoothly. If they have trouble paying their bills, often on sick-leave, etc, it can have an impact on everyone else (causing delays, quality issues or security issues). Ideally, you invest in f…

With something this important, I'd expect something more substantial than the equivalent of "I stayed on this diet for a year and it worked! I shrunk by 1/3rd!"
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