Your biggest vulnerability is your shitty compensation • Hacker News Board

Re: Your biggest vulnerability is your shitty compensation

#31

Post by cermicelli » Fri, May 01, 2026, 12:15 PM UTC

tidewinner wrote: post #25

popcorncowboy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People will bear crazy stuff and still show up to work Because the "in the real world" alternative is so much worse. In theory: "Workers unite!", in practice: "Lose your home".

If we continue down this trajectory, where work pays less each consecutive year, soon the majority will not have a home to lose.

Yeah then it would be mouths to feed, there is always a greater crisis than the one you are facing. And this is the entire reason folks are willing to work for peanuts, I have worked for 1$ an hr, and 100$ an hr. Sure I was less skilled but I wasn't 100x less skilled.

The difference is my desperation for the job. I had to pay for my studies back when 1$ an hour seemed like more than nothing.

Now working for less than 50$ feels like being exploited. This is the matter of perspective and situation in life, you can never fix it for everyone in the world. There will always will be people like me who will work for 1$ an hour because they have needs to meet and scholarships or handouts don't make up for it all.

Re: Your biggest vulnerability is your shitty compensation

#32

Post by lesuorac » Fri, May 01, 2026, 12:15 PM UTC

cbondurant wrote: post #30

Another part of the issue, as I can see it, is that paying your workers better is a prisoners dilemma: If nobody pays their workers well: All companies suffer from a disaffected, burnt out workforce that is unable to consistently perform at the best of their ability. As well as many industries suffering from the fact that their products are non-essential . If you're paycheck to paycheck, barely scraping by rent, you'…

I think the larger issue is the delayed ROI.

You pay workers well and retain institutional knowledge it helps you 5+ years down the road. Who in 5+ years is going to run a study that shows retaining the people that created a system made it easier to maintain that system?

Like think about Jack Welch who ran GE into the ground but keep the stock afloat through financial craftsmanship. He spawns a ton of copy-cats because despite making poor decisions he was visibly successful for a long time.

It's not like the NFL where if you decide to fire all your receivers and play the running game you'll immediately start losing next week.

Re: Your biggest vulnerability is your shitty compensation

#33

Post by dgellow » Fri, May 01, 2026, 1:20 PM UTC

2b3a51 wrote: post #9

dgellow wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core theories aren’t necessarily wrong, I would say they are misapplied and misused to justify political stances. The science of economics does attempt to take in account as many factors as possible but that’s not the versions of the theories you will see discussed outside of the academic world because that becomes really complexe quickly and doesn’t paint a clear picture when we are looking for simple decisions.…

Find a review of Dan Davies' The Unaccountability Machine and see what you think. I think that short term shareholder value may not be a good control variable given the state of the systems we navigate.

I mean, sure, I do agree with that statement, shareholder value is a pretty terrible metric. Will check your recommendation when I have the time

Re: Your biggest vulnerability is your shitty compensation

#34

Post by em-bee » Fri, May 01, 2026, 1:41 PM UTC

mettamage wrote: post #23

xorcist wrote: post #8

This comes off as slightly on the entitled side. Yearly salaries at $100k+ is very high by Western European standards. I can only imagine what our Eastern European colleagues would feel about it. If you can live a comfortable life and send our children to school well fed perhaps broaden the horizons a bit before ranting off about how much better the world would be if you could be paid a bit more.

In the Netherlands many senior SWEs make €85K+ at the moment and that is what $100k+ is right now. I'm writing this because I don't consider NL to be the top country in Europe where you can make a lot of money being a SWE. And I'm not talkin about FAANG salaries either, they are higher here.

which would be the top country then? i can't think of any country in europe that offers even that much. perhaps scandinavia, but life is more expensive there too.

Re: Your biggest vulnerability is your shitty compensation

#35

Post by jfil » Fri, May 01, 2026, 1:50 PM UTC

I think the existance of the Soviet Union - some alternative system to compete with - kept Western governments more honest and mindful of consequences. With no alternative "exit" from the system, its easier to abuse workers now.

Re: Your biggest vulnerability is your shitty compensation

#36

Post by throwpoaster » Fri, May 01, 2026, 1:50 PM UTC

Interesting that Baumol's Cost Disease might have missed that non-productive wage increases might actually swamp productive wages.

If we assume that services jobs will be, primarily, the jobs that survive automation, the cost disease might also swamp the Coasean Singularity.

Re: Your biggest vulnerability is your shitty compensation

#37

Post by bluGill » Fri, May 01, 2026, 1:59 PM UTC

cbondurant wrote: post #30

Another part of the issue, as I can see it, is that paying your workers better is a prisoners dilemma: If nobody pays their workers well: All companies suffer from a disaffected, burnt out workforce that is unable to consistently perform at the best of their ability. As well as many industries suffering from the fact that their products are non-essential . If you're paycheck to paycheck, barely scraping by rent, you'…

Only if there are plenty of workers for all time. The economy isn't in great shape now (We sometimes call this recession but recession has a weird definition that we might not meet even though it looks like one when you wave hands), so there are plenty of workers and in turns you can get by with paying less because someone who needs money will accept something with a lower standard of living - at least they are living.

However the economy has always moved in cycles. When things are going well again there will be more jobs than workers and if you want to get employees to take advantage of the money coming in you will be forced to pay more - even just to retain the workers you have you will be forced to pay more.

Thus this is not prisoner's delemma. The situation over time is far too complex for that simple analysis.

Re: Your biggest vulnerability is your shitty compensation

#38

Post by munksbeer » Fri, May 01, 2026, 2:08 PM UTC

tidewinner wrote: post #21

card_zero wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of you mention creativity. The article too gives the impression that the world is made out of work (like turning a treadmill), and assets (inherently unfair). The point of it all is apparently to live, like a sessile sponge in the ocean, hence "living wage". > Now at some point, the humans involved in handing out currency decided that too many people were living too nicely. The origins of currency are mysteri…

The core foundation of society is built around work. We trade our time, skills and attention for a pay check that allows us to sustain ourselves, our families, and that we can use as a means to achieve our goals. The key problem is that society devalues this work year after year, as those with assets are rewarded simply for holding a legal deed. Creativity can get you far when you have nothing, but there is a limit a…

>In a healthy society, choosing to work to serve others 40 hours a week, should afford you the ability to acquire enough capital to buy a small house and start a family after 10 years. Unfortunately, this is now unachievable in many parts of the world

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but you seem to leap from "it is hard to buy a house these days" to "this is the fault of people accruing capital".

I'm trying to understand this leap. I think you mean that generational wealth means some people start with all the cards, and their buying power decides what house prices are?

Re: Your biggest vulnerability is your shitty compensation

#39

Post by AnimalMuppet » Fri, May 01, 2026, 2:46 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #13

The pressures he describes seem correct and mirror what I’ve seen. Think he’s wrong about this being close to blowing up. Think that’s coloured by his own personal situation. I suspect unfortunately the powers that be correctly read the situation as significantly more room to squeeze. It might read as bad to usa ears but keep in mind there are people breaking down ships with zero safety, zero job security, low pay, b…

The election of Trump could be regarded as "blowing up". I recall someone saying, "I can't throw a molotov cocktail through the window of the White House, but I can throw a Trump." That is, at least some people voted for Trump as a deliberate attack on the powers that be.

An effective attack? I would say, not really. (Has he improved the economic lot of the people who voted for him? No, he hasn't.) But the sentiment is there to "tear it all down", and it's resulting in action, at least at the voting booth.

Is it resulting in direct action in the streets? Not yet. But we may be closer than you think. (Or perhaps I should have said "not currently". BLM, for example, was kind of in that direction.)

Re: Your biggest vulnerability is your shitty compensation

#40

Post by AnimalMuppet » Fri, May 01, 2026, 3:39 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #26

> I'll just be blunt: wages are also protection money. They're not just compensation for doing your job, they're compensation for not burning down warehouses, not going on strike, not sabotaging workloads, and not unionizing in the first place. I'm interpreting this as venting, but the attitude on display here is madness. It is totally unreasonable to throw these sort of temper tantrums because an employer isn't addi…

For at least some people, envy and spite are very strong motivations. If you are making rivers of money, and they are making a little trickle, and they see no path for them to get to where you are, at least some people will decide that the game is rigged, and therefore that the appropriate move is to destroy the game board.

My personal take is that the 1950s were such a great time for blue-collar workers not just because the US was the dominant economic power, but also due to the threat of the ideology of communism. Capitalism faced a competing ideology, and business owners restrained their own greed out of fear that their workers would decide that a communist revolution was the answer.

On this reading, what went wrong for the American worker was the fall of the USSR plus the switch of China to a capitalist version of communism. After that, the owners felt free to get greedy, and to leave their workers with no real hope of things ever getting better for them.