I froze the salaries of my executive team to benefit other workers • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by flush » Thu, May 16, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

pdimitar wrote: post #192

vishnugupta wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 This is a great insight which unfortunately doesn't get much attention in the inequality debate. I'm now rich enough to be in the top 0.5% of the world. The marginal utility/value of money is so low for me that I've begun valuing my time and…

I may eat some downvotes for this but I really need to say it. It's a bit off-topic, too. Please, do not start believing you will be making a difference through charity. I observed rich people in the past that out of some half-conscious guilt started thinking they need to give back in some way. But they don't want to be inconvenienced by doing it personally or by evaluating which people deserve a donation or have an…

I strongly disagree. Financially supporting a charity is an extremely good way for someone with a lot of money to give back. The charitable person may not have expertise to distribute the money effectively, whereas a group who are familiar with the needs and thus where the money should go and how it should be used will use it well.

IMO, what you're saying is akin to saying: Criminals on the streets? Why pay to hire more cops when you can physically go out on the streets and BE the cop?

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

#212

Post by pdimitar » Thu, May 16, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

gbersac wrote: post #206

pdimitar wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he hadn't realized the plight of those on 7.25/hr until he heard what his employees were going through. That's the crux of the problem right there. If you need somebody to start living with their kid in a car to get this grand epiphany then you are hilariously mis-prepared to be any kind of a leader. To be a leader, you need a much better [emotional] education than this.

No one is prepared to be a leader. You have to learn on the spot. Admitting he made one and acting to solve it made him better than most of the leaders.

Nobody is born into it. But there is a ton of education that can prepare you. And always aiming for minimum expense and maximum revenue is NOT that education.

You need to sympathise with people and honestly, I very rarely see that in any executive. So the selection process right now is definitely broken.

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

#213

Post by dantheman » Thu, May 16, 2019, 4:14 PM UTC

curyous wrote: post #154

coredog64 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In economic theory, this is what’s known as an efficiency wage. If you pay more, there’s more competition for your openings and you attract a better class of employee. As other comments have pointed out, simply raising the minimum wage doesn’t accomplish the same thing. Instead, all those people who were marginal at $7-8/hour simply don’t get hired, and employers use automation or forego the opportunities that additi…

If your business is only viable when paying people below what they need to live, then your business shouldn't exist. The fact that you can do that now is simply people in power exploiting the weak. Effectively what is happening is that those without power are subsidising the business by supplying them labour below cost. Generally in economics, making a business only viable through subsidies is a bad thing. It is much…

To provide a slight counter example: 1. Employee A produces 20 widgets an hour 2. Employee B produces 100 widgets an hour

There is a wage where employee A costs more than the value they create. By mandating a wage that is higher than their productivity they are simply not hired, they do not get a chance to gain experience/knowledge, they loose the chance to be as productive as Employee B.

The result is they are now on welfare/unemployed/etc. They lose the chance to get on the employment ladder.

In general people improve so we you shouldn't be making the low wages for long. But what do we do about people who don't improve - either we push them out of the workforce or we subsidize their lifestyle to meet a minimum threshold.

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

#214

Post by donarb » Thu, May 16, 2019, 4:14 PM UTC

username444 wrote: post #112

res0nat0r wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a great argument to increase the federal minimum wage so everyone is forced to pay their employees more.

Great idea. Until you realize that no level on minimum wage is adequate in SF, while $10/hr is livable in rural Arkansas. It's not a silver bullet even with COL factored in. Higher staff costs? Replace them with automation. You can see the largest employers of minimum wage employees (eg. Mcdonalds) hedging against a rising minimum wage with kiosks to replace cashiers. At $15/hr for labor, those capital investments st…

Cashiers helping one customer at a time are a bottleneck in a fast food restaurant. It's not that those jobs are eliminated, food still needs to be cooked and served. Kiosks allow up to 2, 3, 4 times the number of customers to order food at the same time (this also includes food delivery services who can order remotely). Kiosks are just the last part of efficiency that fast food restaurants have been developing over the last 50 years.

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

#215

Post by pdimitar » Thu, May 16, 2019, 4:14 PM UTC

flush wrote: post #211

pdimitar wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may eat some downvotes for this but I really need to say it. It's a bit off-topic, too. Please, do not start believing you will be making a difference through charity. I observed rich people in the past that out of some half-conscious guilt started thinking they need to give back in some way. But they don't want to be inconvenienced by doing it personally or by evaluating which people deserve a donation or have an…

I strongly disagree. Financially supporting a charity is an extremely good way for someone with a lot of money to give back. The charitable person may not have expertise to distribute the money effectively, whereas a group who are familiar with the needs and thus where the money should go and how it should be used will use it well. IMO, what you're saying is akin to saying: Criminals on the streets? Why pay to hire m…

Very wrong analogy, sorry. You are misrepresenting what I said.

You are also very generously assuming that charities actually do what they are supposed to. Here in Eastern Europe where I live this has been proven to be false, many times. Are you convinced it's better where you live?

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

#216

Post by jimmaswell » Thu, May 16, 2019, 4:14 PM UTC

setr wrote: post #116

res0nat0r wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a great argument to increase the federal minimum wage so everyone is forced to pay their employees more.

One interesting result of that is it becomes more viable to look for strategies that eliminate the employees altogether, eg the food-ordering terminals that are going up everywhere, as the relative cost diminishes with wage increase. In such situations, it becomes an irreversible effect, as the cost to transition was mainly up front.

Those terminals were going to happen anyway.

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

#217

Post by markbnj » Thu, May 16, 2019, 4:15 PM UTC

allworknoplay wrote: post #85

This is insane -- paying a $7.25/hr minimum wage to people you call "teammates" and expecting them to stick around is preposterous. In anything but a terrible economic downturn, minimum wage says to employees that you just want a body doing a job right at this moment, but aren't willing to invest any further in them. Why would anyone stick around, or care to do more than the most basic job requirements? These jobs ar…

I worked at a pharma sales company for a bit that was losing money. This was shortly after a startup I cofounded back in the 90's was sold, and was my first (and only) "senior exec" position after that transaction (afterward I went back to engineering). I remember attending a nearly four hour meeting where the senior executive team and CEO spent the entire time strategizing ways to increase the executive bonuses. I noted that perhaps we should address that after we solved the "losing money" problem, and you would have thought I had suggested kidnapping the CEO's mother. The lesson I took from that is that senior management can be _amazingly_ out of touch, and one hundred percent convinced of their own merit and entitlement, regardless of what's going on with the business.

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

#218

Post by lixtra » Thu, May 16, 2019, 4:15 PM UTC

oldjokes wrote: post #29

pdimitar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the hell is even "Chief Growth Officer"? Asking for real. Growth is either achieved organically or you are just forcing your way to a lucrative exit without bringing any value. Artificial and forced growth is toxic for the economy at large. The rest of the roles mostly make sense although I believe some of them can be merged so further savings can be accomplished.

Yes, but investors don't care about profit or sustainability anymore, always just this perpetual, artificial growth. A million years ago when I was young the IPO market used to be the end of the bullshit, you actually had to make money and have a long term plan. That is no longer true, the fictional growth narrative is demanded over actual money now.

As a counter example to your good old times consider the financing of the Suez Canal.

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

#219

Post by throwaway55554 » Thu, May 16, 2019, 4:16 PM UTC

pdimitar wrote: post #177

geodel wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it absolutely needs to be written. Consider the incessant whine here that people ( mainly software engineers) need to be paid in proportion to "value" they deliver. According to them the lower paid employees like office staff or janitors would not deliver much value so they might as well work for nothing.

Never in my life have I seen this. Not once. Where are you from?

Look at just about any resume writing service. They make you come up with ways you have "added value" at your current employer.

So, yeah, it's out there.

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

#220

Post by ThomPete » Thu, May 16, 2019, 4:19 PM UTC

pdimitar wrote: post #212

gbersac wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is prepared to be a leader. You have to learn on the spot. Admitting he made one and acting to solve it made him better than most of the leaders.

Nobody is born into it. But there is a ton of education that can prepare you. And always aiming for minimum expense and maximum revenue is NOT that education. You need to sympathise with people and honestly, I very rarely see that in any executive. So the selection process right now is definitely broken.

Nothing can teach you to be a leader other than leading.