341–350 of 352 posts
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So, for example, in case of competitor offering your valuable worker +10-15% to their salary, will you have any means to match that offer?
No, and if all they care about is the salary, they should probably go and take the larger offer.
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Joel here. This is a really interesting point, I've thought about it a lot. From the linked article: "In Startupland, everybody should be working towards the same goal: that big juicy exit. That’s the only payday any CEO should be worried about (even though more than half of them will never get it)." I can't agree with that, and this is a key reason I spoke with others in the team and we decided that my salary as wel…
Hi Joel- thanks for being open to the feedback. Like you said, you are in growth mode. To me, growth mode means reinvesting as much of the profits as possible back into the company. Paying yourself a large salary during this time is the same as taking money off the table. There are some good reasons to take money off the table, like paying back personal debt or supporting family members. But paying yourself more beca…
Back when I was a really dumb undergrad, I did some work for a company & they asked me where to mail the cheque. I gave them the University address. So I was chatting with my professor & we walk by the mailboxes, and by pure reflex, I reach out into my mailbox & grab my mail & he does the same & we say our goodbyes & go home. Now, I open the mail at home & am staring at my professor's salary! You see, the secretary h…
Our reaction to academic salaries should really be the opposite. It's sad that we undervalue education so much in the US.
One job I asked for 2x what I made at my old job.
I'm convinced you're paid what you ask for, so long as you can get shit done.
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> Having employees not discuss salary is all about the employer having more power/control, and the employees having less. You seem to imply that just because the employees know all the salaries, they have more control. This is not accurate. They have more knowledge but certainly not more control. If anything, the fact that the salaries are the result of a simple equation means that the employees have close to no cont…
Though I think that's why this is a good solution: it still provides the company with wage control while creating transparency for the employees.
Presumably, the company believes that their computed salary (call it S_{f,i}) is such that S_{f,i} However, there are things that the formula doesn't take into account - for example, an employee might be bad at negotiating, and be willing to accept a salary below S_{f,i}, or they might have something in their history (e.g. a conviction) that means that it is hard for them to find alternative work and they are willing to work for less if told to take it or leave.
Similarly, a very good prospective employee might be currently paid S_{c,i} in (S_{f,i}, V_i), or an existing employee might have received a counter offer S_{c,i} in (S_{f,i}, V_i) - it is rational for the business to offer S_{c,i} (or another number between S_{c,i} and V_i) to gain / keep that employee, but it isn't in their interest to give every employee the same pay rise.
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I think the fear is that it will create animosity by making the information so accessible. On some level, the junior-level dev knows he's not making as much as the guy with the PhD in an esoteric mission critical topic, but he has a kind of plausible deniability that lets him avoid thinking about it. If everyone's making 80k and everyone knows that Jane The Expert is making 300k, there's going to be friction. "Hey Ja…
They'll already know that the expert is making more. If she deserves it and the company pay structure is fair, then no good employee will complain.
I've always felt the culture of hiding salaries was doing a significant disservice to employees. It creates a significant and largely artificial information disparity, giving a major market advantage to the employer. In turn, this makes the entire labor market less efficient for the employee. This also makes the employer less accountable to the employees. The employer can easily pay somebody significantly more or les…
The underlying problem is that our brains evolved in the Stone Age, and many of our instincts - particularly those to do with status-seeking, envy, thinking of life as a zero-sum game - are destructive and maladaptive in the present day.
This is a problem beyond our power to fix. We don't get to debug our DNA. All we can hope for is social band-aids, temporary solutions hiding the symptoms but not the underlying problem, so the fact that hiding salaries falls into this category is not a valid criticism thereof.
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I disagree completely. You should, as the potential employee, be well aware of the market pay and what you are willing to be paid to perform the job that you're applying for. Not to mention their job postings actually list a salary window ($88-110k for Backend/Frontend). What the person sitting next to you is paid should bear absolutely no impact on your life or your work ethic. If you're happy to make $88k and the g…
"I can't fathom what being aware of your coworkers salaries could possibly do for positive team building." Everyone knows what each other makes in the Army. When I was in, we never talked about relative pay at all. We didn't need to. Oh, and we had tons of positive team building. :)
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Though I think that's why this is a good solution: it still provides the company with wage control while creating transparency for the employees.
It is not beneficial to the company over individual wage negotiation. Suppose V_i is the amount of value the ith employee contributes to the business (V_i = revenue from employee i, minus non-salary costs). For the business, the hire makes sense if the salary is anything in (-inf, V_i) - but with the lower the better. Presumably, the company believes that their computed salary (call it S_{f,i}) is such that S_{f,i} H…
> An employer wants to pay their employee as little as they can get away with, as long as it is less then the value that employee provides. Presumably, this company set such salaries.
> However, there are things that the formula doesn't take into account - they lose the ability to screw bad negotiators and convicts out of money.
> Similarly, if people are offered higher salaries elsewhere, it might be worth it for the company to counter-offer with something still less then the employees value to them to keep that employee, but they don't want to do the same for everyone.
Let's say I'm a competitor, and I find that Niel (randomly picked) is someone I want to hire. All else being equal, I offer him $100k (website says he's making $88k). He comes to his boss to say "I like it here, can you match it?" What does his boss do? Especially, if he's valuable to the company... What if I have a very specialized skill that doesn't fit nicely into your matrix? Let's say market pay for my skill is…
>What if I have a very specialized skill that doesn't fit nicely into your matrix? Oooh, or what if there's a dragon[1], and I need to be paid extra money so I can spend it on dragon-slaying gear? If you really deserve extra money, the conversation goes like this: "Why do you make more than me?" "Because my job is harder." Fun fact: you're not that special. Wage secrecy is good for skilled negotiators and bad for eve…