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Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

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Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#201

Post by benhurmarcel »

sdoering wrote: post #86
woodruffw wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm almost certain my pay is different from my colleagues, but I've bargained like hell to get it. When I was hired, every time we've been acquired. I'm no executive either, I'm just a developer with a proven history of give-a-damn. Whether or not pay discrepancies can be fair, this doesn't sound like a case of them being fair. What happens to your (hypothetical) colleague who gives just as much of a damn as you do…

I have fought for raises of colleagues who were more introverted or just didn't feel as comfortable going into the pit and haggling for an appropriate raise. I saw the wage gap increase because they sometimes just didn't know how far ahead others were in terms of wage. Keeping individual wages a secret ultimately benefits the employer as they can use the knowledge disparity to their advantage. I even know of argument…

> a new father doesn't need to receive a relevant raise as he is extremely unlikely to switch jobs due to the newborn.

Same thing with buying a home nearby.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#202

Post by imtringued »

tyrust wrote: post #163
gnicholas wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least tips are in cash, not funny money.

With this practice, your total pay is always equal to the minimum wage. You get minimum wage even if you earn no tips. In other words, the tips are worth zero to you, they just save your employer money.

This is correct if you were working for door dash. Door dash deducts the tip per order. Regular restaurants deduct it monthly so if you can gather enough tips in a month to exceed minimum wage you get paid more in that month. If you earn $1000 (minimum wage in this example) and $2000 in tips for $3000 total compensation your employer takes away $1000 and you end up with $2000. There is an opportunity to earn more with tips.

However, door dash does not follow this simple model. What happens is that door dash calculates how much an order is worth, if the customer tips then it deducts the tip from the order. If your order is worth $10 and the customer tips $5 the tip will always be deducted entirely. You get paid $5 for the order and $5 for the tip. Even if you somehow manage to complete 400 orders and all of them are tipped $5 you won't get a single cent from tips even though the tips alone are enough to pay minimum wage + some. The only scenario in which you can earn money from a tip is if the tip exceeds the order's value. Someone tips $50 on a $10 order. You get $0 for the order and $50 for the tip.

When you consider that in the restaurant arrangement it's actually intended for waiters to be primarily paid by tips (at least that's how I heard it works in the US??) they'll likely exceed minimum wage and only get the minimum wage during bad months.

With door dash you're the one who's being paid for every order you complete, not the cook + rest of the restaurant. Therefore getting a tip at all actually requires a heroic effort because people are not going to tip more than the order is worth. The tips might as well not exist at all and are a pure cash grab.

The reason I'm bringing up Door Dash is that it's an example of a truly evil company vs restaurants where it's just a very unusual but fair payment arrangement.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#203

Post by dorgo »

bo1024 wrote: post #75
jb775 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If person 1 doesn't tell the group if they're adding their salary at the beginning or at the end, it would provide a little more security between person 1 and 2. i.e. If the minimum rand # is known to be 100,000, and person 2 receives the number 150,000 and knows it includes the salary of person 1...they will know person 1 makes <= 50k

Yeah, you can make this a lot better by just making the random number in the range 1 billion - 1 trillion.

No. If the first person writes 1000050000 then the second person knows that the first earns <= 50k. Same problem at the other end of the interval.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#204

Post by imtringued »

rosywoozlechan wrote: post #43
axaxs wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why all the hoops? Companies have shamed us into thinking sharing salaries is bad. It's not. People should share freely, in my opinion it benefits all parties except the company.

It doesn't benefit top earners to share salary information. If I'm making more money than everyone else and the consequences of sharing salaries is equity than it is in my rational self-interest to keep my salary hidden because I'm unlikely to get any kind of raise until equity is achieved whereas I may continue to get raises otherwise. You know what those top earners are going to do then? Quit. And then you end up w…

What you said makes absolutely no sense. There is nothing preventing your employer from paying you more and nothing from preventing the "low earner" employees from being paid less other than the fact that the "low earner" can find a better paid job.

I like that you said "top earners" as if it implies that "top earner" equals talent. It's far more likely that there is underpaid talent in the company that is about to leave for a better job. This is what employers are scared of. They want to underpay people that deserve more and you're just playing right into that trap as if it somehow benefits you. What if you aren't actually a top earner? How do you know that there is no "overpaid mediocre talent" already in the company?

>A private company has every right to compensate its employees with its private capital anyway it wants, and they're going to want to do it in a way that achieves the goals of the business. They're not distributing welfare checks, they're a business.

As I said. Salary transparency does not change anything about that. The welfare argument can be made by both sides. Employees shouldn't distribute welfare checks to their company either, they're not volunteers.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#205

Post by imtringued »

irrational wrote: post #123
intended wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly your pay has little to do with merit, and more to do with perception, connections, face time and ability to handle office issues better than your cohort. It may well be, if not more likely to be, the other way round - you could be a GOOD performer, but since you can't or don't gork office politics, you are underpaid or even not at the level of challenge and seniority you should be.

Eh, anecdotal, but that hasn’t been true in my experience. I’m fairly certain I’m perceived negatively. I show up, do my work, but do not seek any sort of human communication beyond the bare minimum required. I certainly don’t create connections, seek face time, etc. I’ve been with my company for nearly 2 decades and only know about 10 people, and only 2 of those well. I worked with one person for five years on a dai…

That 16% raise is quite the signal that they value you more than the money though. Maybe it's time to leave after the pandemic is over?

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#206

Post by sokoloff »

danShumway wrote: post #185
sokoloff wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see any reason to think that all engineers contribute the same amount of value (and therefore paying different amounts is entirely reasonable). Thought experiment: if you were going to form a startup and needed two other engineers, would you know across your history which ones to pick from and which ones to avoid?

> and therefore paying different amounts is entirely reasonable Then the engineers sharing their salaries with each other should also be reasonable. If anyone complains about the discrepancy, you can point out that the engineers being paid more are more talented. Extending off of your thought experiment. If you were going to form a startup, and you believed that pay discrepancies corresponded to value, wouldn't you w…

It is perfectly reasonable for coworkers to be discussing their salaries. I agree that money topics in general should be less taboo than they are currently.

If I found out I made less than someone else, I’d first see if I agreed with that call and, if not, use that signal to figure out what change I should make (in performance/level of effort, in communication/publicity, or in company).

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#207

Post by shim__ »

shandor wrote: post #131
gibba999 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the other thing though. Law suits are expensive. Law suits burn bridges (you'll never get a recommendation from an employer you've sued). Law suits prevent future jobs (would you hire someone who sued a previous employer?). And wrongful termination isn't the end. And things are rarely black-and-white. If your boss thinks you're a douche, it will hurt your career. If your next performance review is a 7 instead…

> Law suits are expensive Don't know about the US, but in countries with strong (or existing) worker unions the unions would jump at that kind of case to help the employee with expenses, legal counsel, and what have you. Unions definitely have their problems, but keeping the employers on their toes about actually breaking the law is one of their big benefits. Of course all that doesn't help with all the other things…

A unionized workforce isn't likely to have this problem, since they would all be working under the same union contract being paid the same.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#208

Post by imtringued »

egypturnash wrote: post #136
spaetzleesser wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It doesn't benefit top earners to share salary information. If I'm making more money than everyone else and the consequences of sharing salaries is equity " And we all are top earners, right? Statistics tell me most of us aren't. The consequence of sharing salaries is not equity but people being able to negotiate better so most likely average salaries will go up. CEO salaries have been public for a while now and I h…

90% of the comments I see on HN about salary negotiation leave me convinced that most of the people here think they are top earners.

Well, how would you know?

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#209

Post by imtringued »

stoops wrote: post #40
virtuous_signal wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was teaching college math classes, there were people who tried to argue for more partial credit after exams. Not to get into specifics but most of the requests came from the same demographic. If I as an instructor hadn't watched out for this and set a universal, and uniformly applied policy (and if I had an agreeable enough personality), then I would have consistently made the scores of this group higher. Woul…

It's your class. You can decide what a grade is worth. I had many teachers who would give better grades to better people. Who do you think is "better" or more deserving?

You're just stating the obvious. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#210

Post by sokoloff »

je42 wrote: post #175
zdragnar wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your job isn't to bargain for salary This is a bit nonsensical. Nobody knows better than you what your time is worth because it is your time . You don't owe companies anything, including working for less than you are willing to take in payment.

You shouldnt discount that a lot of people cannot just walk away from a job because the only got a 3% increase while they wanted 10%. You need to be confident that you can find another job that pays equally or better in order to be truely using the leverage. A lot of people don't have that security and cannot take that risk.

Key to any negotiation is understanding what your next best alternative is. If your current employer is far and away your best alternative, you have limited leverage. Likewise, if you’re far and away the company’s best alternative, you have increased leverage.
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