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Open Salaries: Outcomes

blog.lunarlogic.io

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Re: Open Salaries: Outcomes

#171

Post by Tsagadai »

morgante wrote: post #131
eyelidlessness wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While union workers often have less salary disparity, their salaries also tend to be higher overall. The only downside to this is if the "best performers" derive value from their "worse performer" peers being paid less than them.

Decreasing variance while increasing median pay is obviously a pretty big downside for everyone who is paid above median.

Your post reads like a very bleak argument against the minimum wage. Increasing the median should mean that those above the median also see an increase through economics. If the price something is $X then the price of a premium something is still going to be greater than $X.

Re: Open Salaries: Outcomes

#172

Post by user5994461 »

michaelt wrote: post #147
davidgrenier wrote: post #2

I'd like to get push-back to the idea of everyone earning the same salary. Why wouldn't it work from some people who seem to have some experience like you have?

If a company has removed its own ability to reward me for putting in extra effort, busting my ass to produce extra value would make me kind of a sucker, don't you think? Every scheme I've heard of to get around that has had had some major flaw or other. Usually by failing to capture some important area of endeavour; or by relying on some combination of easily gamed metrics (like tickets closed or evaluations by co-wo…

Busting your ass WHILE expecting a reward, is a sucker.

The reward usually never materializes. You shouldn't do overwork in the first place.

Re: Open Salaries: Outcomes

#173

Post by coldcode »

herge wrote: post #6
coldcode wrote: post #3

This might work for a company of 25, but what a disaster it would be for a company of 100,000+

Really? A lot of governments are one of the few employers with more than 100k+ employees, and have a lot of open salaries for civil servants.

Governments are not Fortune 50 companies.

Re: Open Salaries: Outcomes

#174

Post by sharemywin »

RHSeeger wrote: post #113
sharemywin wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think that if your writing code I can't maintain, but if you leave I have to maintain it or get fired, I have a strong incentive to pay you well. Remember all of these have a feedback component too. What I think it will help with is Bullshit. If person A takes a lot of credit has better access to higher ups and they're in the spotlight a lot, maybe that kind of opportunity should be spread around.

> I would think that if your writing code I can't maintain, but if you leave I have to maintain it or get fired, I have a strong incentive to pay you well. If you're writing code I can't maintain, my preference is to pay you less. Writing code that is easier to maintain is one sign of a good developer. I don't want to pay you more because its too painful to lose you. I want to pay you more because its wonderful to ha…

I assume the people making 2x everyone else are maintaining complex financial models no one else understands.

Re: Open Salaries: Outcomes

#175

Post by thedufer »

marme wrote: post #86
scarmig wrote: post #75

Hmm. My experience tells me that a lot of this depends on the details of the team, and that there isn't a right-for-everyone policy. My story: I worked for a company that paid a bit below market salaries, for the SF Bay Area. I was on a team with two more junior engineers. At one point one disclosed to me that they felt underpaid. That led to a salary discussion where I explained that the company habitually underpaid…

no two employees with the exact same job title should have more than 10% difference in pay. If someone is making 40% more than others with same title then they should be promoted to higher title and if they dont deserve that title then why is the company paying them so much. It is one thing to want to minimize salary costs but another to disrespect employees with absurdly low salary.

Are titles really that meaningful? I've never worked at a place that cared much about them.

Also, on a practical note, that would require 17 different titles for the same type of job if you have a 5x variation in compensation. That seems kinda crazy.

Re: Open Salaries: Outcomes

#176

Post by gcb0 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #161
scarmig wrote: post #75

Hmm. My experience tells me that a lot of this depends on the details of the team, and that there isn't a right-for-everyone policy. My story: I worked for a company that paid a bit below market salaries, for the SF Bay Area. I was on a team with two more junior engineers. At one point one disclosed to me that they felt underpaid. That led to a salary discussion where I explained that the company habitually underpaid…

I had a similar issue back in 2000. I was a new grad making the princely sum of $50k as a DBA. The woman who trained me and was incredibly capable made $27k -- literally less than she would make running a Gap. It got out, people got pissed, which they should have been.

didnt even know you could live in sf with 27k in 2000

Re: Open Salaries: Outcomes

#177

Post by thedufer »

Tsagadai wrote: post #171
morgante wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decreasing variance while increasing median pay is obviously a pretty big downside for everyone who is paid above median.

Your post reads like a very bleak argument against the minimum wage. Increasing the median should mean that those above the median also see an increase through economics. If the price something is $X then the price of a premium something is still going to be greater than $X.

> the price of a premium something is still going to be greater than $X

Yes, but how much greater than $X is the question. If median salary goes up, high performers have to come down a lot in order to not run out of money.

Re: Open Salaries: Outcomes

#178

Post by mathattack »

scarmig wrote: post #75

Hmm. My experience tells me that a lot of this depends on the details of the team, and that there isn't a right-for-everyone policy. My story: I worked for a company that paid a bit below market salaries, for the SF Bay Area. I was on a team with two more junior engineers. At one point one disclosed to me that they felt underpaid. That led to a salary discussion where I explained that the company habitually underpaid…

Anytime two people compare salaries, at least one person gets angry. Sometimes two.

Re: Open Salaries: Outcomes

#179

Post by dennisgorelik »

kasey_junk wrote: post #143
brianwawok wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This got downvoted, and the tone is a bit harsh.. but it does speak a bit of truth. What happens to the guy in open salary co who is legit 50% better than everyone else? Do his peers vote to give him 50% more money? Or does it settle on sort of a union style pay scale, where everyone with the same # of years of work makes the same money (which is great for the worst performances, and terrible for the best performers)

It's a false dichotomy. The reason is "legit 50% better" is not something we currently know how to measure. So yes, it trends towards more coarse grained measures (years of work doesn't have to be one) at the expense of the "best" performers. If you see lots of your best performers leaving for more money elsewhere you have 2 options, raise everyone up, or come up with better coarse grained measures. I'm of the opinio…

Good point: "objective measures for performance of software devs" is a hard problem that is in a high demand.

Re: Open Salaries: Outcomes

#180

Post by nickpsecurity »

willyt wrote: post #63

I read about this idea once as a case study. I think it was first tried at a manufacturing company[0] in Brazil where everyone from the CEO down to the packers in the dispatch shed has their salary decided by a consensus employees. It's a 3000 person company with a revenue of $160m now. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler http://www.freibergs.com/resources/articles/leadership/semco... https://hbr.org/198…

That's incredible. Thanks a million for those links as I try to collect these to get something close to significant data on them for analysis.
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