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Why I Never Let Employees Negotiate a Raise

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Re: Why I Never Let Employees Negotiate a Raise

#11

Post by jerf »

helwr wrote: post #8

this whole Microsoft-style pay scale reminds me of government jobs, or worse - Soviet Union where my parents earned a standard doctor-engineer-truck driver-movie director-nurse salary of 100 rubles a month +/- the bureaucrat defined 'pay scale'. Come on, people, this is a free market! "is this the UDA? / Or is this the IRA? / I thought it was the USA / Or just another country" (c) Sex Pistols

Capitalism is a series of centralized entities embedded in a larger sea of freedom with no (theoretically) overarching order imposed.

Fog Creek is free to compensate people in this manner. You are free to seek employment elsewhere if this is a problem.

It would not be a free market if either A: the government mandated this approach (or worse, mandated the pay scale) or B: an oligarchy formed where everybody determined compensation the same way. So far, neither have happened.

(Ironically, many people's proposed solution to various problems caused by their not liking one particular centralized entity's choice is to centralize the entire market into one entity. You didn't say anything about that, I just can't resist pointing that out. Unionizing programmers could have this effect, though.)

Re: Why I Never Let Employees Negotiate a Raise

#13

Post by portman »

I'll make the same comment I made when this was posted last year:

Fog Creek has secret profit-sharing plans. All Joel has done is move a portion of employees' compensation from the "salary" column to the "profit-sharing" column.

If Joel were to begin posting the annual profit sharing of all employees, including Michael and Joel, then this article would make sense. But until then, it's just flair.

Re: Why I Never Let Employees Negotiate a Raise

#14

Post by [deleted] »

jerf wrote: post #11
helwr wrote: post #8

this whole Microsoft-style pay scale reminds me of government jobs, or worse - Soviet Union where my parents earned a standard doctor-engineer-truck driver-movie director-nurse salary of 100 rubles a month +/- the bureaucrat defined 'pay scale'. Come on, people, this is a free market! "is this the UDA? / Or is this the IRA? / I thought it was the USA / Or just another country" (c) Sex Pistols

Capitalism is a series of centralized entities embedded in a larger sea of freedom with no (theoretically) overarching order imposed. Fog Creek is free to compensate people in this manner. You are free to seek employment elsewhere if this is a problem. It would not be a free market if either A: the government mandated this approach (or worse, mandated the pay scale) or B: an oligarchy formed where everybody determine…

[deleted]

Re: Why I Never Let Employees Negotiate a Raise

#15

Post by gaius »

portman wrote: post #13

I'll make the same comment I made when this was posted last year: Fog Creek has secret profit-sharing plans. All Joel has done is move a portion of employees' compensation from the "salary" column to the "profit-sharing" column. If Joel were to begin posting the annual profit sharing of all employees, including Michael and Joel, then this article would make sense. But until then, it's just flair.

Profit in this context is whatever your accountant says it is. You can easily shuffle expenses backwards and forwards between quarters if you want to tweak the figures slightly (so, for example, your profit for this quarter is 99.9% of what it would need to be to pay bonuses). Cynical, moi?

Re: Why I Never Let Employees Negotiate a Raise

#16

Post by ratsbane »

portman wrote: post #13

I'll make the same comment I made when this was posted last year: Fog Creek has secret profit-sharing plans. All Joel has done is move a portion of employees' compensation from the "salary" column to the "profit-sharing" column. If Joel were to begin posting the annual profit sharing of all employees, including Michael and Joel, then this article would make sense. But until then, it's just flair.

I read Spolsky's essay again to see if he mentioned making public the employee ratings. For all his talk of openness in salaries, does he really publish salary information or just the salaries at each tier of the rating system? Are employees allowed to know their co-workers' scores in the tier system? As helwr mentioned below, a lot like Soviet Russia... or the US Government.

Re: Why I Never Let Employees Negotiate a Raise

#17

Post by markkoberlein »

ratsbane wrote: post #16
portman wrote: post #13

I'll make the same comment I made when this was posted last year: Fog Creek has secret profit-sharing plans. All Joel has done is move a portion of employees' compensation from the "salary" column to the "profit-sharing" column. If Joel were to begin posting the annual profit sharing of all employees, including Michael and Joel, then this article would make sense. But until then, it's just flair.

I read Spolsky's essay again to see if he mentioned making public the employee ratings. For all his talk of openness in salaries, does he really publish salary information or just the salaries at each tier of the rating system? Are employees allowed to know their co-workers' scores in the tier system? As helwr mentioned below, a lot like Soviet Russia... or the US Government.

Joel said in a stackoverflow podcast that he publishes the formula for the pay scales and profit sharing amounts so if an employee really wanted to know someone else's salary they could figure it out based on their position and how long they have been with the company.

I like the idea of transparency with salaries as long as the company pays well. If an employee decides he/she wants a higher salary than is afforded by a system like that they can look for another job or start their own company.

Re: Why I Never Let Employees Negotiate a Raise

#18

Post by robryan »

I find the experience idea their very arbitrary, so no experience from when your in school counted and 1 year no matter how many years in a "menial" position.

It kinda implies that while in school you couldn't have possibly picked up any experience that would define you above someone who has a year of industry experience.

Re: Why I Never Let Employees Negotiate a Raise

#19

Post by portman »

markkoberlein wrote: post #17
ratsbane wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read Spolsky's essay again to see if he mentioned making public the employee ratings. For all his talk of openness in salaries, does he really publish salary information or just the salaries at each tier of the rating system? Are employees allowed to know their co-workers' scores in the tier system? As helwr mentioned below, a lot like Soviet Russia... or the US Government.

Joel said in a stackoverflow podcast that he publishes the formula for the pay scales and profit sharing amounts so if an employee really wanted to know someone else's salary they could figure it out based on their position and how long they have been with the company. I like the idea of transparency with salaries as long as the company pays well. If an employee decides he/she wants a higher salary than is afforded b…

I just spent 36 minutes searching the transcripts, but I can't find the episode where he talked about this.

https://stackoverflow.fogbugz.com/?W4

However, I distinctly remember, and later confirmed, that Fog Creek only publishes the salaries at each scale, and not the profit sharing.

Re: Why I Never Let Employees Negotiate a Raise

#20

Post by oliveoil »

Say what you want about the article, but there's one really nice thing about his system: because there's a formula instead of negotiation, the good hackers who are often poor negotiators don't have to worry they have lower salary than the average or poor programmers who just happen to have better people skills or however you call it.
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