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The boss who put everyone on 70K

bbc.com

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Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#261

Post by astine »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #49
eru wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Btw, I think Google could already either pay 70k+ to every employee or is pretty close. They just need to make sure that all the janitors and baristas are employed by subcontractors.

what would a barista or janitor get paid at Google today? I always thought that they did use subcontractors for these roles? I must misunderstand, are you implying that employment via a subcontractor would increase their salary?

He's saying that if Google wanted another way to present themselves as a progressive company, they could fire everyone who works for them doing a marginal job and replace them with contractors. This would allow them to set a higher minimum salary and pretend that they are very generous. In reality, they would have fired a lot of people and the contractors would be worse off than they were as employees and this would all have been a cynical ploy to appear good while really being evil. In other words, OP is being cynical about whether this company policy is really as progressive as it's made out to be, or might represent a dirtier trend.

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#262

Post by zacharycohn »

Pfhreak wrote: post #161
eru wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Citation on this? Seattle has added tens of thousands of units and upzoned many neighborhoods. At one point I could look out my window and see 21 cranes building high rises, both mixed use and office buildings. The population influx has been massive.

These are typically luxury units, which are not affordable to most people outside the tech sector. Meanwhile, despite high salaries many people in the tech sector (rightly) don't want to pay luxury prices, and so they are also competing for lower priced housing.

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#263

Post by FrozenTuna »

cbsks wrote: post #248
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…

“I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematicks and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, musick, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelaine.” - John Adams Seems like we are regressing from artists…

This is an amazing quote that I'm glad I now know. Thanks for sharing!

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#264

Post by zacharycohn »

MetalGuru wrote: post #35
atlasunshrugged wrote: post #8

I think it's important to mention some other sides of this story, namely that the raise came right around the time his brother filed a lawsuit for him overpaying himself and domestic abuse allegations. I don't remember the articles exactly but there were some rumors that this change was a PR stunt and shield for him Some articles that talk about the other side: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-gravity-ceo-dan-…

Some of my favorites from the first article: “Gravity’s 2014 profit was $2.2 million, Price adds. At private companies with sales like Gravity’s total revenue, salary and bonus for the top quartile of CEOs is $710,000, according to Chief Executive magazine’s annual compensation survey. At companies with sales like Gravity’s net revenue, the top quartile pay falls to about $373,000. At companies with a similar number…

Even if he dropped his salary to $70k, he makes money elsewhere (like speaking fees, apparently), and has a huge equity stake in the company that has grown enormously.

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#266

Post by volkk »

zacharycohn wrote: post #260
bloblaw wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at Gravity and made much more than $70k. Nobody had their salaries cut. Only the CEO cut his salary from > $1MM to $70k.

I mean, sure. He cut his salary - but he still owns the company, and I'm sure his equity stake in the company is worth a loooooot more as a result of all this. Let's not paint this as some huge, noble sacrifice.

sure but don't you have to first sell it for it to be worth anything? if on a weekly basis he's making much much less, (if you had read the article), he would need to be doing other things to afford his life, which seems to be the case. he was airbnb'ing his apartment for side cash.

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#267

Post by Pfhreak »

zacharycohn wrote: post #262
Pfhreak wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation on this? Seattle has added tens of thousands of units and upzoned many neighborhoods. At one point I could look out my window and see 21 cranes building high rises, both mixed use and office buildings. The population influx has been massive.

These are typically luxury units, which are not affordable to most people outside the tech sector. Meanwhile, despite high salaries many people in the tech sector (rightly) don't want to pay luxury prices, and so they are also competing for lower priced housing.

Oh, 100%. We need to incentivize affordable housing. It should be in the developers interest to house as many as possible rather than as lushly as possible (until we're all comfortably housed.)

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#268

Post by Ligrev »

bloblaw wrote: post #241

I used to work at Gravity. Dan (owner of Gravity) is sincere and frankly the real deal. Dan Price really is like what is presented in this article. He actually cares about his employees and is being genuine here. He's a good person, making a private business decision to increase the pay of frankly his lowest paid workers. In a city where the average tech worker earns $275k a year, he believes its the right thing to d…

Genuinely curious, not judgemental here. How did the usually-much-better-paid people feel about this? Did they complain that their salaries were now closer to the lesser paid people?

Like, I could see somebody not feeling like that's fair so I'm wondering how the morale was impacted by that.

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#269

Post by wjp3 »

Ligrev wrote: post #268
bloblaw wrote: post #241

I used to work at Gravity. Dan (owner of Gravity) is sincere and frankly the real deal. Dan Price really is like what is presented in this article. He actually cares about his employees and is being genuine here. He's a good person, making a private business decision to increase the pay of frankly his lowest paid workers. In a city where the average tech worker earns $275k a year, he believes its the right thing to d…

Genuinely curious, not judgemental here. How did the usually-much-better-paid people feel about this? Did they complain that their salaries were now closer to the lesser paid people? Like, I could see somebody not feeling like that's fair so I'm wondering how the morale was impacted by that.

If you read the article it covers that.

Re: The boss who put everyone on 70K

#270

Post by [deleted] »

wjp3 wrote: post #269
Ligrev wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely curious, not judgemental here. How did the usually-much-better-paid people feel about this? Did they complain that their salaries were now closer to the lesser paid people? Like, I could see somebody not feeling like that's fair so I'm wondering how the morale was impacted by that.

If you read the article it covers that.

[deleted]
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