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The boss who put everyone on 70K

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Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#191

Post by uk_programmer »

kqr wrote: post #137
uk_programmer wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think us developer overstate how important we think this is. Unless time to market is a consideration then they will probably just accept throwing people at it and then get some poor souls to clean up afterwards.

That probably costs more, though. Software engineering is mainly knowledge work. This means the majority of work consists not of building stuff, but acquiring and organising knowledge. I've read somewhere that about 50% of the job is gathering information. When a person leaves after having spent two years at a company, it might look like you get to keep everything they've been working on, but this is far from true. I…

This is exactly what I am talking about. You are overestimating how important it is.

The code is there and (presumably) in source control. It really isn't that difficult for someone to get the source, compile it and fire up the debugger and carry on where the previous person left off.

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#192

Post by jdsalaro »

busyant wrote: post #135
telesilla wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alfred Nobel started the prize because his obituary was accidentally published, putting him in a bad light and he wanted to be remembered differently - we benefit from this prize today, in spite of his destructive business activities. I think it's fair to mention the fact that it was due to Price being accused of overpaying himself that the situation got turned around to be something valuable for his company and staf…

This would be an interesting motivational tool. Have someone write your obituary and then see if you're happy about it. Modify your life accordingly.

With respect to preparing one's own obituary in advance the following quote came to mind:

"In journalism, we recognize a kind of hierarchy of fame among the famous. We measure it in two ways: by the length of an obituary and by how far in advance it is prepared. Presidents, former presidents, and certain heads of state are at the top of the chain."

- Walter Cronkite Quotes

American - Journalist November 4, 1916 - July 17, 2009

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#193

Post by ncko »

buzzkillington wrote: post #163
conjectures wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. (...) Women have had less intellectual freedom than the sons of Athenian slaves. Women, then, have not had a dog's chance of writing poetry. That is why I have laid so much stress on money and a room of one's own” ― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

What upper class tripe. The only freedom sons of Athenian slaves had was to die in the Athenian silver mines. >Shafts were driven down into the ground and galleries opened where slaves, chained, naked, and branded, worked the seams illuminated only by guttering oil lamps. An unrecorded number were children. It was a miserable, dangerous, and brief life. [0] It is always the most comfortable that consume the most vivi…

I don't think that part is meant to be taken literally.

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#194

Post by bufferoverflow »

benreesman wrote: post #22
bufferoverflow wrote: post #5

This is very nice of the owner, but extremely inefficient economically. Which means most companies can't afford to do something like that. Only if your profit margins are huge.

Can you elaborate a bit about what you mean by inefficient? People mean a lot of different things when they use the word “efficient” in a financial/economic context.

They are paying more than they have to for the low skilled workers. Which means that extra money is not going towards hiring better high skilled workers or just more workers in general.

Everything else being equal, an average business would be outcompeted if they did something like that.

If you still think what they are doing is efficient, take it further and further. Start increasing the salaries more and more. Very soon you will be able to afford one worker. A very expensive janitor maybe?

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#195

Post by zentiggr »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #149
angarg12 wrote: post #47

> "When money is not at the forefront of your mind when you're doing your job, it allows you to be more passionate about what motivates you," she says. I spent the first several years of my career working in academia for a poverty level wage. I can confirm from my own experience that when you worry about not being able to pay rent and all the bills, it's very difficult to be productive, much less in a job that requir…

I worked sub-minimum wage for a decade or so; I don't think poverty is an impediment to creativity. It is an impediment to using that creativity (particularly to generate value and/or income), however. Not disagreeing, just trying to add some complexion.

I see a distinction between a basic creativity, i.e. how do i finagle the best existence out of this set of circumstances, cleverness, I suppose, and a fundamental creativity, the more artistic, unfettered by everyday concerns.

Like Maslow's hierarchy of needs... generally people have to expend their creative thought on how to provide for themselves before they have the opportunity to use that thought in more expansive ways.

Do a Dan Price and you jump start people's ability to settle the lower levels of needs and be able to make more choices.

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#196

Post by wyager »

fsloth wrote: post #72
wyager wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“This is how investments are usually supposed to work” is absolutely cargo cult reasoning and doesn’t make any sense. Cool list of reasons to pay people more - I guarantee you that every HR department in the universe has thought of them, as well as a countervailing list of reasons not to. If you see that everyone with money on the line is doing something different from what you propose, your response should not be “w…

"If you see that everyone with money on the line is doing something different from what you propose," But that's precisely what I don't see. There are lots of examples of small high performing teams with way above 'market rate' salaries. I know several in my smallish home town (Helsinki area, 1.5M population). Some of these are in consulting, others in gaming. Sure, they are all in programming, but still their compen…

Once again, you've inverted the causal relationship. The people who get paid more tend to be able to command higher fees because their economic output is higher. You can't take a random person, pay them 10% more, and expect to get 10+% more productivity out of them, ceteris paribus.

It's not about "hard constraints"; it's about economic optimization, which involves getting the highest possible return on your capital. If paying everyone $70k were a reliable way to do that, everyone would be doing it.

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#198

Post by fallingfrog »

I’m very impressed by the generosity of this business owner- I don’t know if I would have that kind of moral compass in his position.

However- it still needs to be said that we really ought to fight to create an economic system in which everyone has the means to have a comfortable life, even if individuals that make it up are not virtuous. Because this kind of story is a rarity, and the market will certainly punish him for his generosity.

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#200

Post by jschwartzi »

earwetr wrote: post #190

"His company, Gravity Payments, which he set up in his teens"... I'd LOVE to see how a TEENAGER was able to go through the PCI-DSS certification process and PASS the D-level.

It’s possible PCI-DSS didn’t exist back then. DSS has only been around since 2004.
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