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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

#291

Post by pandaman »

acituan wrote: post #290
pandaman wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The employer is buying labor and "price discrimination" is a seller 's strategy. Offering different salaries to different people is just regular shopping around . You are likely guilty of it yourself. Do you buy the first airline ticket to your destination you get in the search or do you choose among several alternatives with the pricing in mind? Do you ask businesses for quotes? Do you go to a particular store for s…

> The employer is buying labor and "price discrimination" is a seller's strategy This doesn't matter at all, information asymmetry based extraction is still there. The employer is buying labor in large quantities from many sellers, and because they don't appraise all units of labor individually (they can't), they are individually negotiating the least amount of money they can get away with. The fact that prices are c…

>The fact that prices are concealed between these individual sellers (candidates/employers) is the only way this can work (information asymmetry).

This would work if all sellers were selling the same goods. Such as in case of hourly labor. Incidentally, in these cases, the salary is known and is same for the laborers with the same skill set and responsibilities.

In case of salaried jobs, such as in Blizzard, the labor of each employee is unique and you cannot sensibly price it wholesale thus there are salary negotiations for both sides to come to an agreement. I personally do not see how knowing other people salaries is going to help you in a negotiation as this does not give you any additional leverage but if you think it will - go ahead and disclose your salary to your coworkers, see how it will go.

>"Shopping for the best offer" depends on knowing what offers were available to you and the others to begin with.

And who is preventing you from asking? I don't see how asking your coworker salary is going to help you to learn what offer you can get in another place without applying there.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#292

Post by pandaman »

sgerenser wrote: post #266
acituan wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't benefit top earners to share salary information Maybe one of the biggest myths is that we can appraise performance objectively and that pay is nothing but a function of that performance. In reality, this is nothing but price discrimination for the price of labor; just like it would be in an airline's best interest to squeeze the most individual dollar amounts out of every individual passenger for the sam…

But isn’t it true that that software developer salaries in many countries in Europe are much lower than the U.S.?

It's true for all countries and not just Europe from what I know. However, for people who espouse these ideas, being paid well is irrelevant. Their concern is that nobody else is being paid more than them. I think it's a type of personality: some people measure success in absolute terms ("I have a nice house, nice food and my children get bright future, I am happy") and others measure success only in relation to their "rivals" ("I live in trailer but my neighbors live in mud huts, I eat cat food but my neighbors eat actual cats, my children go to community college but my neighbor's go to prison, I am happy").

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#293

Post by acituan »

pandaman wrote: post #291
acituan wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The employer is buying labor and "price discrimination" is a seller's strategy This doesn't matter at all, information asymmetry based extraction is still there. The employer is buying labor in large quantities from many sellers, and because they don't appraise all units of labor individually (they can't), they are individually negotiating the least amount of money they can get away with. The fact that prices are c…

>The fact that prices are concealed between these individual sellers (candidates/employers) is the only way this can work (information asymmetry). This would work if all sellers were selling the same goods. Such as in case of hourly labor. Incidentally, in these cases, the salary is known and is same for the laborers with the same skill set and responsibilities. In case of salaried jobs, such as in Blizzard, the labo…

> the labor of each employee is unique and you cannot sensibly price it wholesale thus there are salary negotiations for both sides to come to an agreement

Yes, that is exactly what I am claiming to be a myth. That unique price point is not a result of appraising the worth of that unique labor. Anyone involved from interviewing to making the hiring offer so don’t give a crap about finding your unique value, let alone your expected value, nor they have the means necessarily. Which means price points are mainly a result of negotiation power of the each party, which is severely handicapped for the candidates, because they don’t know the offers made to others in comparable experience and education. So they don’t know the best counter offer they could make and still get hired. That unexploited margin goes to the employer which has tons of data on past rejections and acceptances so that they can better minimize the offer they make.

In some labor markets, the non-negotiable salary is advertised with the job ads. Not claiming that is an infallible solution, but it makes for a drastically different labor market.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#294

Post by pandaman »

acituan wrote: post #293
pandaman wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The fact that prices are concealed between these individual sellers (candidates/employers) is the only way this can work (information asymmetry). This would work if all sellers were selling the same goods. Such as in case of hourly labor. Incidentally, in these cases, the salary is known and is same for the laborers with the same skill set and responsibilities. In case of salaried jobs, such as in Blizzard, the labo…

> the labor of each employee is unique and you cannot sensibly price it wholesale thus there are salary negotiations for both sides to come to an agreement Yes, that is exactly what I am claiming to be a myth. That unique price point is not a result of appraising the worth of that unique labor. Anyone involved from interviewing to making the hiring offer so don’t give a crap about finding your unique value, let alone…

Indeed, nobody cares about the exact appraisal of your value. It's a market transaction - if both the seller and the buyer are satisfied with the price then the deal goes through at that price.

>which is severely handicapped for the candidates, because they don’t know the offers made to others in comparable experience and education

It does not matter. If you are not satisfied with the offer - ask for more or walk away. If you are - then it does not matter what others got especially to you, who have not evaluated them at all. What you think is "comparable" might be far from that in my view and vice versa.

>In some labor markets, the non-negotiable salary is advertised with the job ads. Not claiming that is an infallible solution, but it makes for a drastically different labor market.

Yeah, I gave an example in the post you replied to: the unskilled labor market. Amazon pays the same rate to every warehouse drone and it's known in advance. Same as many retail jobs, same as many trades.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#295

Post by acituan »

pandaman wrote: post #294
acituan wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the labor of each employee is unique and you cannot sensibly price it wholesale thus there are salary negotiations for both sides to come to an agreement Yes, that is exactly what I am claiming to be a myth. That unique price point is not a result of appraising the worth of that unique labor. Anyone involved from interviewing to making the hiring offer so don’t give a crap about finding your unique value, let alone…

Indeed, nobody cares about the exact appraisal of your value. It's a market transaction - if both the seller and the buyer are satisfied with the price then the deal goes through at that price. >which is severely handicapped for the candidates, because they don’t know the offers made to others in comparable experience and education It does not matter. If you are not satisfied with the offer - ask for more or walk awa…

> It's a market transaction - if both the seller and the buyer are satisfied with the price then the deal goes through at that price.

There is no magical essence to markets that justifies any agreed pricing point as the best price that ever could be. Especially under information asymmetry markets don't operate well i.e. they don't set prices as efficiently.

> It does not matter. If you are not satisfied with the offer - ask for more or walk away.

Sounds like it does matter in your argument because here you are constructing a satisfaction criteria that hinges on not knowing the other offers.

If knowing other offers changes your satisfaction level, was it really an objectively satisfying offer in the first place?

> Yeah, I gave an example in the post you replied to: the unskilled labor market

I was thinking more of labor markets in some European countries, which are not at all exclusive to unskilled positions, e.g even includes managerial positions. I think there might be some sort of confirmation bias here preventing the acceptance of the possibility that some labor markets do have transparent compensation for even highly skilled positions and they work OK.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#296

Post by pandaman »

acituan wrote: post #295
pandaman wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, nobody cares about the exact appraisal of your value. It's a market transaction - if both the seller and the buyer are satisfied with the price then the deal goes through at that price. >which is severely handicapped for the candidates, because they don’t know the offers made to others in comparable experience and education It does not matter. If you are not satisfied with the offer - ask for more or walk awa…

> It's a market transaction - if both the seller and the buyer are satisfied with the price then the deal goes through at that price. There is no magical essence to markets that justifies any agreed pricing point as the best price that ever could be. Especially under information asymmetry markets don't operate well i.e. they don't set prices as efficiently. > It does not matter. If you are not satisfied with the offe…

>There is no magical essence to markets that justifies any agreed pricing point as the best price that ever could be.

True. Has anybody claimed the opposite? The only thing market ensures is that both sides agree with transaction. Which is the best you can get.

>Sounds like it does matter in your argument because here you are constructing a satisfaction criteria that hinges on not knowing the other offers.

I do not do such thing. Even more, I specifically ask why would it matter if you knew about other offers? If you are okay to work for 30K then why you are suddenly not okay if you learn that somebody else gets paid 50K at the same company? This makes no sense to me. Even considering opposite, you know in advance that other people got 50K for the similar position and you are offered 30K, what would be different? It's not like you are going to get 50K just because of your knowledge of other salaries. And you can always ask for 50K with or without such knowledge.

>I was thinking more of labor markets in some European countries

I get spammed with a lot of European jobs on LinkedIn (I have no idea why they would shop for programmers in the US to be honest), none of them have fixed salaries. UK,Netherlands, France, Norway,Sweden,Finland even Iceland - they have a wide range at best, most are "DOE".

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#297

Post by waihtis »

tyrust wrote: post #243
waihtis wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not following. Don't tips go directly to the recipient without any reductions?

They do, but in many states it goes towards your minimum wage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage The most extreme example is in a state like Alabama where the minimum wage is $7.25 and the minimum tipped wage is $2.13 (these are the federal minimums): +------------+----------+----------+ |Tips |Wage |Final | | | |Wage | +------------+----------+----------+ |0 |7.25 |7.25 | +------------+----------+----------+…

Thanks! By the way, I don't think "tipped wage" is at all a known concept outside of the US (for instance, I didn't know it works this way.)

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#298

Post by acituan »

pandaman wrote: post #296
acituan wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a market transaction - if both the seller and the buyer are satisfied with the price then the deal goes through at that price. There is no magical essence to markets that justifies any agreed pricing point as the best price that ever could be. Especially under information asymmetry markets don't operate well i.e. they don't set prices as efficiently. > It does not matter. If you are not satisfied with the offe…

>There is no magical essence to markets that justifies any agreed pricing point as the best price that ever could be. True. Has anybody claimed the opposite? The only thing market ensures is that both sides agree with transaction. Which is the best you can get. >Sounds like it does matter in your argument because here you are constructing a satisfaction criteria that hinges on not knowing the other offers. I do not d…

> True. Has anybody claimed the opposite? The only thing market ensures is that both sides agree with transaction. Which is the best you can get.

I think you've just claimed it again?

> I specifically ask why would it matter if you knew about other offers? If you are okay to work for 30K then why you are suddenly not okay if you learn that somebody else gets paid 50K at the same company?

If you learned you were paid %30 less than everyone else at your level, wouldn't you go for a renegotiation with your manager or go back to the labor market? Would you internalize that difference as "I guess the company knows my worth exactly and I deserve it"? If you knew the average price for your level as a candidate, wouldn't you use that knowledge in your next negotiations? I mean, I thought this was common sense, self-explanatory game theory. You are claiming the knowledge of the competing price points to have zero value in price setting, and it is a strong claim that requires matching evidence.

> I get spammed with a lot of European jobs on LinkedIn (I have no idea why they would shop for programmers in the US to be honest), none of them have fixed salaries

Your personal sample is hardly representative because we are trying to establish existence of transparently priced positions that are not low-skilled. From the top of my head, if you have access to paper version of 'The Economist', you will see plenty of such ads. Granted, this might be my availability bias, but definitely there is no hard rule of concealed pricing for highly skilled jobs.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#299

Post by pandaman »

acituan wrote: post #298
pandaman wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is no magical essence to markets that justifies any agreed pricing point as the best price that ever could be. True. Has anybody claimed the opposite? The only thing market ensures is that both sides agree with transaction. Which is the best you can get. >Sounds like it does matter in your argument because here you are constructing a satisfaction criteria that hinges on not knowing the other offers. I do not d…

> True. Has anybody claimed the opposite? The only thing market ensures is that both sides agree with transaction. Which is the best you can get. I think you've just claimed it again? > I specifically ask why would it matter if you knew about other offers? If you are okay to work for 30K then why you are suddenly not okay if you learn that somebody else gets paid 50K at the same company? If you learned you were paid…

>I think you've just claimed it again?

I see. Not even trying to make an argument because you disrespect the conversation or because you are out of arguments? Either way it does not seem to be going anywhere.

>If you learned you were paid %30 less than everyone else at your level, wouldn't you go for a renegotiation with your manager or go back to the labor market?

I don't have "a level", my job is unique as well as other people in my org. Hence I get a salary and not a hourly rate because I do not produce a well measured labor at constant rate. But if I decide that my negotiated salary is not to my satisfaction anymore it's not going to be because I learned other people salary but because I feel that my value has increased. As I said above: your reasoning only applies to hourly laborers whose labor is already openly priced at "levels" and there is not much room for negotiation.

> You are claiming the knowledge of the competing price points to have zero value in price setting, and it is a strong claim that requires matching evidence.

Nope, you proposed that there is some strong relation between one's negotiated salary and other people's salary without any evidence and when I asked how this is supposed to work you claimed I made a strong claim. You are not even trying to defend your argument, are you?

>Your personal sample is hardly representative because we are trying to establish existence of transparently priced positions that are not low-skilled

I see where confusion is coming from: you think that positions that require some skills are not low-skilled. I used low-skilled in the sense that US DOL uses to distinguish between salaried and hourly workers.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#300

Post by bdowling »

JamesBarney wrote: post #288
bdowling wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So without any other evidence why should we assume that estimate is wrong? We shouldn't assume that the estimate was accurate either, for a couple of reasons: First, the defendant definitely has more information (e.g., manager's employment records). More information usually leads to a more accurate valuation. And the defendant seems to have valued the case higher because it hired the expensive defense attorney. Sec…

You're reading a lot into his comment and making a lot of assumptions. 1. Defendant had more information 2. The extra information was so important it would increase the value of the case 50x (there are not very many pieces of information in an employment suit that would increase a payout by 50x that an employee wouldn't know about) 3. They hired a very expensive attorney because of this reason.(as opposed to for inti…

You're right that we don't have a whole lot of information and shouldn't make assumptions. To that point, the number Gamemaster gave could have been an amount that he personally would have settled for and not a number that his attorney came up with.
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