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

A Company Copes With Backlash Against the Raise That Roared

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 280 posts

Re: A Company Copes With Backlash Against the Raise That Roared

#181

Post by mistermann »

api_or_ipa wrote: post #179
littletimmy wrote: post #169

The most repulsive thing to read here is the reaction of some of the customers. “What’s their incentive to hustle if you pay them so much?” Really? Do you ask that same question when a CEO gets millions of dollar in bonus? Nah, the CEOs simply "deserve" it. The employees though, they must hustle. Roughly transposed to the 17th century, that statement reads "What's the incentive for this n * to pick more cotton if he…

> How about observing how well they perform before bringing in your Ayn Rand propaganda. While I agree with the rest of your post, your portrayal of Ms. Rand's work is woefully inaccurate. No where do I recall she wrote of demeaning blacks, suppressing wages and preventing the equal participation of all capable people in a common market. Rand was very clear that racism and discrimination hindered the free market by p…

> most people would be far more humbled by what she wrote compared to what people think she wrote about

That's a good way to put it. Most people it seems have extremely negative opinions of her, but I'd wager that most of these people have read only opinions of others about her rather than anything actually written by her.

Although, I can definitely agree with the sentiment that her fiction is...weird, especially reading it today with the significant cultural changes that have occurred since it was written. But her non-fiction I think is pretty well written - whether you agree with it or not, it's far from a joke as most people who've never read any of it make it out to be.

Re: A Company Copes With Backlash Against the Raise That Roared

#182

Post by mistermann »

jkestner wrote: post #150
guan wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are being overpaid (in some sense), you might work harder than before because you have more to lose if you get fired. Any alternative job would most likely come with lower pay.

Right. From the article: Several employees who stayed, while exhilarated by the raises, say they now feel a lot of pressure. “Am I doing my job well enough to deserve this?” said Stephanie Brooks, 23, who joined Gravity as an administrative assistant two months before the wage increase. “I didn’t earn it.” (edit) I understand the gut feeling of unfairness from the people who were already earning more than $70K, but s…

I think they assume correctly. I know all sorts of people who are extremely well paid who spend at least 30% of their time just waltzing around the office and chatting with people. Some people are just entitled &/or clueless.

Re: A Company Copes With Backlash Against the Raise That Roared

#183

Post by [deleted] »

ManFromUranus wrote: post #54
austenallred wrote: post #27

While I have no idea whether this will work (or if it's a good idea), the most interesting part of all of this, to me, is the backlash from people calling it "unbridled Socialism." I'm still not sure how a CEO of a profitable company electing to pay his employees more becomes a political debate. If it fails, perhaps it's a failed experiment in Capitalism? It's not like anyone is forcing the business owner to do this.…

> the backlash from people calling this "unbridled Socialism." It depends on the CEO's reasoning for paying the employees more. If he paid them more for economic reasons, reducing turnover, or incentive pay for increased performance, or a retention bonus or something like that then it's capitalism. If he paid them more because he's moralising about society, or out of pity, or fear of some kind of social backlash, the…

[deleted]

Re: A Company Copes With Backlash Against the Raise That Roared

#184

Post by hueving »

EliRivers wrote: post #108
hueving wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing follows the laws of supply and demand like everything else. Cities with lots of jobs draw in migrant workers. Cities that raise minimum wage bring in more workers from neighboring areas with lower wages. Those people need a place to live.

Housing follows the laws of supply and demand like everything else. Certainly not like everything else. The demand for housing is a function of (amongst other things) how easily people can borrow the money to pay for one, how much the interest on that debt is, and what they guess is going to happen to prices in the future. Under simple primary school "supply and demand" economic theory, increasing price leads to a re…

Sorry, you are confusing cause and effect. It's a common mistake.

The housing prices increasing means demand had already gone up. An increase doesn't leaf to more demand. If people were paying increased prices, it means the demand has increased enough for the seller to make the sale at the inflated price.

Re: A Company Copes With Backlash Against the Raise That Roared

#185

Post by hueving »

throwaway1979 wrote: post #100
hueving wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing follows the laws of supply and demand like everything else. Cities with lots of jobs draw in migrant workers. Cities that raise minimum wage bring in more workers from neighboring areas with lower wages. Those people need a place to live.

Housing should follow the normal economic laws but it doesn't seem to. Part of it is regulation, and part of it is an odd kind of scarcity. If there were no housing regulations, I'm sure you' get a lot of new housing in the Bay area and people would live in there (despite it being potentially unsafe). Heck .. I was actually entertaining the live-in-a-container option :-p I'm still struggling to understand the scarcit…

You seem to be fundamentally ignoring the simplicity of supply and demand. If people could offer container housing legally, they would. However, they can't so the supply of legal housing is constrained. This drives the price up.

The same applies to any protectionist laws the greater fuckwad property owners in the area introduce. Nobody wants to see their property value diluted so they vote against every single housing measure as long as the demand is there.

Re: A Company Copes With Backlash Against the Raise That Roared

#186

Post by mistermann »

rrss1122 wrote: post #58
jameshush wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know what you're saying, but I've never understood this logic personally. How does someone else earning more money hurt you? It's not like a person doing better than you is taking your money.

The arguments presented by the employees quoted in the article make it seem that it is exactly about someone else earning more money taking your money, not actual money but potential money. One of the high profile employees that left talked to Mr. Price about the fairness of newer employees with less responsibilities getting a dramatic pay raise while she and her co-workers, who have been at the company longer and ha…

> I would guess she got something close to "how does someone else earning more money hurt you?"

I think that was in the article. If you work your ass off sacrificing your personal life for years helping build a company, at most companies there is a financial payout at some point for that hard work, but in this case, the money resulting from that hard work it seems is largely going to top up the incomes of the nine to fivers. I don't see how it's hard to understand that some people would be upset about these, it's pretty simple math (actual hourly pay based on hours worked).

Re: A Company Copes With Backlash Against the Raise That Roared

#187

Post by mistermann »

Spooky23 wrote: post #161
run4yourlives2 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How does someone else earning more money hurt you? It's not that simple. The employees were already working under conditions that job/person a was worth 2x and job/person b was worth 3x. That was established and everyone was content (or reasonably so). All of a sudden, someone declared that job/person a is worth 3x too, with no corresponding change to the output or expectations of either job. Job/Person b, having be…

How do you know how valuable you are? Or how much more valuable you are than the receptionist. My assistant is ridiculously valuable. She's a multiplier for the team. Her presence means invoices get paid, visitor logistics are taken care of, contracts get renewed, the office is in order. I don't control her pay, but every hour she is present easily saves me a quarter hour, and probably saves my direct reports a simil…

Because in most cases he could learn to do her job in a few weeks, whereas it would take her years to learn his, if at all. Look what website you're on - people here write software to literally eliminate jobs in many cases, and to do so you have to understand that job even better than the person who does it, and then some. And this doesn't just apply to "menial" jobs - by the time a software developer is done implementing in a highly specialized field, they often fully understand the domain better than the experts.

Look, I understand the value of a really good personal assistant, at times they can be like magic, but let's be serious, all jobs are not equally difficult.

Re: A Company Copes With Backlash Against the Raise That Roared

#188

Post by mistermann »

GVIrish wrote: post #111
fokov wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means all of the previous sacrifices the good employees made were for nothing in the eyes of management. Therefore, there is no reason to work hard at all. It is better to go leave for a competitor that knows how to treat their hard working employees.

But if you were getting compensated fairly before, why are you no longer getting compensated fairly because other people got a raise? The most rational action would be simply to match your work output to your peers. I mean if the market rate for the job you were doing is $70k, and all of a sudden fresh college grads are getting paid that at your company, it doesn't mean that you'll now get $100k elsewhere if you leav…

> If that is the case, you should have already left.

It's interesting how disingenuous conversations can become on HN. Where in one thread everyone will happily acknowledge that lots of developers work extremely long hours at startups for peanuts (in hopes of a possible big future payday) compared to what they could make guaranteed going to work at a larger established company, in another thread the mentality is that everyone is always optimizing for short term earnings.

Re: A Company Copes With Backlash Against the Raise That Roared

#189

Post by mistermann »

ori_b wrote: post #162
morgante wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you'd switch to a more balanced lifestyle? Don't force your value system on others. I personally am happiest when I'm working 70-80 hours a week and appreciate being compensated for my hard work. Just because that doesn't describe you doesn't mean I should be forced to attain an artificial "balance."

So, other people make more, and you'd make yourself unhappy in retaliation?

His value system is consistent with the cultural norm (higher pay for longer harder work). In my opinion you shouldn't act like he is the one acting strange.

Re: A Company Copes With Backlash Against the Raise That Roared

#190

Post by mistermann »

azernik wrote: post #82
dopamean wrote: post #2

Am I crazy for thinking it seems naive to not anticipate that current employees may not take kindly to people who earn half as much as them getting bumped up to their salaries?

You are not crazy. My thoughts were that this reaction is totally predictable, no matter how morally absurd.

It may be morally absurd, but it's certainly not economically absurd.
Post reply on HN