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

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

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 325 posts

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

#221

Post by xamuel »

rocqua wrote: post #193
vonmoltke wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Effectively what is happening is that those without power are subsidising the business by supplying them labour below cost. How do you define "cost"?

The 'cost' of labour is the income required for such labor to maintain itself. I.e. living costs + healthcare costs + groceries & other expenses + a little saving. This is the base cost of a person, and thus the base cost of labour.

You're just pushing the bubble around under the wallpaper: who defines "living costs" etc? A person can technically stay alive in extremely spartan conditions.

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

#222

Post by pdimitar »

ThomPete wrote: post #220
pdimitar wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Generally having compassion and not being extremely self-centered is a very good start though.

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

#223

Post by mywittyname »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #88
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 was watching a sitcom called Superstore a little while ago, features the employees in a Wal-Mart like store, and the protagonist got a promotion to the head of the store. There was a whole plot line about how her wage was now in the 6 figures, and I was incredulous until I did a bit of research - Wal-Mart store managers can absolutely make that much money while their employees live in poverty. How you could make th…

How much would you expect a person to make who manages and is responsible for the entire operations of a store with revenues in the tens of millions of dollars?

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

#225

Post by faster »

Const-me wrote: post #161
lotsofpulp wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supposes employer A chooses to pay their employees more than other employers. Employer B chooses to pay their employees less. Both employers are selling products or services that the purchaser finds the same, i.e. they have no preference for who they buy it from. Employer B takes the money they save by paying employees less, and invests in newer, better facilities or R&D or whatever. Now employer B is selling a bette…

Labor market is a market, too. Who will lose business unable to hire enough employees? Unemployment rate in US is very low at the moment, well under 4%. Last time it was this way in 1970.

There are several metrics for unemployment. One of them is around 4%.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm

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

#226

Post by mywittyname »

Miner49er wrote: post #109

It's amazing this article even needs to be written. You'd think the executives pulling in these crazy salaries would be competent enough to know that paying their "team members" next to nothing is going to result in high turnover and be a bad business decision in the long run. This article frames his choice to actually pay his employees as some big discovery, but it's not. The fact is, execs already know, but they pu…

It's more that they are out of touch, IMHO. They have absolutely no concept of how far $7.50/hr goes so they just say their employees need to budget better.

Perhaps if senior executives received minimum wage paychecks for two months (and no bonuses), they might gain some empathy.

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

#227

Post by beat »

conanbatt wrote: post #196
beat wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economics is amoral. It doesn't know good from evil. The biggest mistake on the right is thinking that capitalism is Good. The biggest mistake on the left is thinking that capitalism is Evil. It just is . It's like thermodynamics. If you get burned by a hot stove, it doesn't mean physics is evil. And it doesn't mean getting burned is just your imagination, either. Without intelligence guiding them, such systems can e…

> Economics is amoral Such a thing does not exist. It is the study of exchange between individuals, any model that brings down morality to 0 will not be useful, practical or a applicable. There is a reason why the most iconic political economists were all philosophers!

When you buy something from Amazon, is it an exchange between individuals? When you get a paycheck from a corporate employer, is it an exchange between individuals? No, that makes no sense. It's an exchange between an individual and an abstract legal/financial entity that engages in economic activity, but is in no rational way a human being. And what about B2B exchange? Clearly, it's economics, but when Wal-Mart buys a wholesale lot of shampoo from Proctor & Gamble, it is absurd to think of that as "between individuals".

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

#228

Post by 5trokerac3 »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #133
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…

He took action and doubled the pay to 15/hr, then it further increased to 16.50/hr. I didn't think he was stumbling on a new lesson, your reading was a bit more cynical than mine. Simply put, he hadn't realized the plight of those on 7.25/hr until he heard what his employees were going through. How else can we improve things if we don't allow people to change their views? Mocking a CEO for changing his view is the op…

The problem isn't the $7.25 specifically, it's what he was expecting them to do for that rate.

Why would anyone deal with a minimum wage job being, I'm assuming, a call center operator when a) you can get paid the same to do far less stressful work or b) get paid more to do the same level of work?

Secondly, notice how he never gives updated turnover numbers - an omission of note, that probably means they didn't really improve much. This guy most likely hasn't solved any problem other than what bullet point he's going to put on his resume when he parachutes to another company.

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

#229

Post by C1sc0cat »

ForHackernews wrote: post #25
C1sc0cat wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hypothetically here you would invest the 500k which is putting money into the economy. Your right that socially its better for society for a lower paid person to have the $ how ever certainly in the UK some of that increase would get clawed back by reduction in benefits.

How does buying $500k worth of stock ("investing the money") stimulate the economy? Haven't I just purchased a paper asset from the seller? I guess you could argue that the seller who liquidated their position is now free to spend that cash on something productive.

Aside from the fact that companies need investors there is also the question of investing in IPO's etc.

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

#230

Post by ben509 »

BioMeditate wrote: post #78
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.

Most of HR is just meeting federal regulatory compliance requirements.
Post reply on HN