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

The boss who put everyone on 70K

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 381 posts

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#201

Post by nathanvanfleet »

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…

What about Christians? They seem to like persecution porn.

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#202

Post by jschwartzi »

eru wrote: post #41
WalterBright wrote: post #34

Since it's working for Dan and his company, great! > in Seattle that wasn't enough to afford a decent home. Because the population in Seattle has grown by leaps and bounds, if everyone could afford one of the supply of homes, the prices would go up until demand equals supply.

Well, they could also build more homes. But Seattle has somehow decided they don't want that.

I see tons of townhomes and apartments going up everywhere here. Most of them replacing single-family homes in the same plot.

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#203

Post by karatestomp »

alkonaut wrote: post #114
chrisseaton wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would you mind sharing a source where this is stated? It’s in the title. ‘Everyone on 70k’ is a pay cut if you were in more than 70k, as any professional would be. It’s clearly wrong as it doesn’t make any sense, but that’s the source they were referring to.

> as any professional would be Would call center staff, receptionists etc not be professionals (I.e. is there a use of the term I'm not aware of?). Is it people doing work requiring degrees?

"Professional" is sometimes used as a kind of class or sub-class division among labor in (at least) the US. Lawyers and doctors are definitely in it. Various other groups may be in depending on who's making the distinction, and others like to imagine they are in. They tend to be the sorts who have vacation homes somewhere nice, and have some specific skill usually requiring significant education, rather than broadly "business stuff" as a well-off manager with similar wealth might. So, well paid highly skilled labor.

Imagine the stereotypical Asian immigrant middle-class parents and if there's a profession they'd be absolutely thrilled for their kid to go into, that's likely professional class. The happier these imaginary people are, the more solidly professional class it is.

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#204

Post by sixothree »

ailideex wrote: post #172
rebelrexx858 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some ways, that mindset comes from a place of privilege. In true poverty-esque situations, you often couldn't get the time off of work to find another job, or even afford the transition between one job and another. It can be a pretty vicious cycle.

> In some ways, that mindset comes from a place of privilege. Would be hard pressed to do that as I don't come from a place of privilege. Check your assumptions.

It does sound like you're the one making an assumption. Many people in this country feel trapped by what they can do for work.

On top of that being broke and exhausted makes it difficult for people to change what they are doing. If you can't go two weeks without a paycheck, how are you going to switch jobs, etc..

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#205

Post by C12H22O11 »

jschwartzi wrote: post #200
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.

Here is v1.0 of PCI-DSS from December 2004, same year this company was founded. Doesn't seem very difficult to comply with, it is essentially 'Use a firewall and antivirus and don't use the default password' http://ftp.freenet.at/mar/PCI_data_security_standard.pdf

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#206

Post by ivankolev »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #189
marcus_holmes wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Berlin, which has a history of being both poor and having an extremely creative subculture. It's interesting but sad watching that creativity vanish as the rents rise. There's more money here now, but less creativity. I think this apparent contradiction is resolved by asking "who had the time to be creative?". When rents were low, artists could make ends meet and still have time to create. As rents are risi…

Replace Berlin with Toronto and you'd be just as correct. It's a concern that spans decades. https://www.cbc.ca/archives/the-last-days-of-toronto-s-low-r... — This article dates to the 80's and its tone is the very same. (Canada's lost sweetheart PM hopeful is interviewed in one of the videos when he was a Toronto city councilor. Such a loss. He really had his finger on the pulse)

I came in TO in the middle oughts and there were patches of the city still having that artsy, edgy and unkempt vibe, and even the commercial Yonge strip from Bloor down to Queen was atmospheric. All got lost to the glass condo towers, and the faux hipster hoods are souless and uninteresting. I feel Toronto became a victim of its own success, great economic progress does not equal vibrant and livable city!

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#208

Post by jschwartzi »

wyager wrote: post #196
fsloth wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.…

You’re ignoring how teams actually work in this analysis. You’re not giving one guy a raise, you’re giving everyone a raise. And they all know it. So your call center workers can quit their second jobs, and get to solutions much faster because they can think more clearly. Your admin people now want to do professional level work out of appreciation. Your sales team has enough money to live that they can focus on big clients rather than taking a bunch of tent accounts to get commissions every month. So the entire company starts to perform better, and because everyone is in a better mood they work together more too. This is all missed by a strictly Taylorist analysis treating each employee individually and assuming their output are independent. Humans are social and they need to sleep to operate well. Paying them more makes them more social and lets them rest more instead of working for someone else. By paying a living wage you’re effectively buying the highest productivity you can get from your team which happens to be a lot.

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#209

Post by earwetr »

C12H22O11 wrote: post #205
jschwartzi wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Here is v1.0 of PCI-DSS from December 2004, same year this company was founded. Doesn't seem very difficult to comply with, it is essentially 'Use a firewall and antivirus and don't use the default password' http://ftp.freenet.at/mar/PCI_data_security_standard.pdf

now compare with https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/documents/PCI-DSS-v3_2_...

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#210

Post by earwetr »

jschwartzi wrote: post #200
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.

most likely true. these days you have to be a well funded company that has enough cash to jump through the hoops. the cost of entry these days is astronomical. hence very few players on the market.
Post reply on HN