I'm interested in learning in how these excellent results work outside of Kiwi
The one-salary experiment, ten years in
281–290 of 309 posts
Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe grandparent was referring to proactive raises. Reactive counter offer raises typically don't work because the employee's mind has been made up to leave. Compensation is usually only part of why someone decided to leave.
If you pay everyone more that gets expensive quick. Seems like it could be cost effective to give almost rock bottom raises and just replace the people who aren't 100% into it.
People are not widgets, and this cost model doesnt cover the cost of acquisition.
Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
A work contract is a simple supplier-consumer relationship. You are the supplier, and you essentially set the rate at which you offer your work hours. When someone suddenly offers you the double rate, you should not feel insulted, but you should realize that need to work on rate negotiation skills. Then, if both offers are equally fine with respect to non-compensation aspects, simply take the higher offer. Suppose yo…
I don't view myself as coffee - if your employees are fungible resources, I don't want to work for you (99.9% of the cases, there may be exceptions, but they're just that - exceptions).
I never compared you or anyone else to coffee, and I'm not an employer.
My post was about viewing the employer-employee relationship as a business relationship _when you are the employee_.
Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
Valve is a well-known company that works like this. People who've left say that hierarchy and power structure still exist, but is informal and hidden.
Exactly. A power structure will always exist, and it's generally better (or at least fairer) when it is at least explicit and relatively transparent as opposed to implicit and hidden.
Does the power structure actually need to be reflected in the pay scale though?
Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in
#285Someone who makes pinwheel trinkets sold in a dollar store simply doesn't deserve the same compensation as, say, a skilled machinist. That's not my personal prejudice: the free market for the labor end products themselves decides that by pricing them differently. When some workers with different skills are paid the same under the umbrella of an organization, it's shielding them from these market effects. This concept…
If you're paying everyone the same, you're implicitly saying you will not produce anything as valueless as pinwheel trinkets (at least not via a dedicated employee.) If your company needs pinwheel trinkets that badly, then it's probably worth paying someone a comparable rate to provide such a necessary service.
Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in
#286I've always found it strange that companies don't give raises to current employees. A team I am on just lost a good engineer to another company offering him a $30k+ raise. He would have stayed if our company had even given him half of that. Instead, they let him go, and how will have to hire someone else, probably at that higher salary. So weird, and seems to happen a lot.
I'm guessing that on average the company saves money this way, since people aren't robots and tend to develop a sense of community with their coworkers. Companies possibly exploit this for savings.
Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s just smart business. When word gets out that the guy got a raise or he shows up in a new car, you’ll have a line of people with hat in hand. Comfort is valuable to people. About 30% of my people are making significantly less than their market value. Myself included. But, non-cash benefits are powerful as well.
It's not smart business. It's often much more damaging to a company's bottom line to lose a strong performer and have to replace them than it is to pay them what they're worth. It's also damaging to culture when people just start disappearing because they got market-rate offers. It is worth calling out that compensation is more than just salary however. But if strong performers are consistently leaving your company d…
If you provide regular raises and don’t treat people poorly, you’ll be fine.
The bigger point in that article is that you need to look at people holistically.
Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in
#288People have written books on this stuff. There's an entire field of research on this subject and I think tech people discount it for being "too MBA". One of the most important findings is that pay generally will never motivate employees, but it will reduce their incentive to leave. Generally most job factors affect one of two separate but related scales: motivation to stay and reluctance to leave. Entirely non-surpri…
I've been in the situation where I was able to build a team with salaries 20-30% over market. It was great while things were great, but after the commercial side of the business went to hell, the higher salaries kept a bunch of unmotivated people from seeking greener pastures. Double-edged sword to be sure.
Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know this problem well, but what can one employee do? If one company tries to poach me, should I simply keep it to myself that there is someone who is willing to pay me much more?
If money is more important to you than the culture/non-monetary things the current job offers, then leave. You can try bringing it up to your manager and get into a higher position, where a raise would be appropriate, but when people try to leverage other positions against our business for higher salary, I deny them 100% of the time unless we are talking about a promotion that makes sense.
"culture" doesn't put food on the table, or pay the rent. As the old saying goes: "fuck you, pay me."
Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in
#290I've always found it strange that companies don't give raises to current employees. A team I am on just lost a good engineer to another company offering him a $30k+ raise. He would have stayed if our company had even given him half of that. Instead, they let him go, and how will have to hire someone else, probably at that higher salary. So weird, and seems to happen a lot.
The company's thinking works like this. Your good engineer might have been worth a $15k raise. But once it gets out you can get a 15k raise by just getting a new offer then another 3-4 people will go get offers and asks for raises. This ends up costing the company an extra $60k-$70k to retain your good engineer, and he might not be worth that to the company.
I would say that an engineer leaving can cost a company much more than the $60-70k you think the company would spend to keep them. You have to:
1) Hire a new person (this comes with costs!)
2) Train the new person (this takes time to do AND takes time away from the team for other tasks)
3) Pay the new person the going rate salary anyway