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The one-salary experiment, ten years in

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Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#51

Post by wickedsmile »

sa46 wrote: post #29
ng12 wrote: post #8

People 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…

> Entirely non-surprising that devs are the ones who left because by hard capping their pay you are reducing their reluctance to go work somewhere else with higher pay. The surprising part is that their dev retention (article notes small sample size) of ~3 years matches Google at 3.1 years and surpasses Uber, Dropbox, Tesla, Facebook and Airbnb. [1] That suggests that the culture created by the one-salary experiment…

You are not comparing same talent.

Hire people at the bottom and you'll notice huge reluctance to leave regardless of the salary offered, it doesn't prove the point you are trying to make.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#52

Post by zbentley »

willnz wrote: post #37
JohnGB wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Netherlands, if you have a child under 9 years old (it could be 8), your company is required, by law, to let you work 4 days a week if your want. It's actually really common with something like 28% of working men taking a "papadag" ("Daddy day" in English). I wouldn't even consider a job that didn't allow me time to spend with my kids. Money is definitely not the primary driver for a lot of people.

Do you accept a lower salary if you opt to work four days a week?

I would hope not. This article suggests that this is not the case (sorry about the adblocker modal): https://www.dutchnews.nl/features/2016/06/professor-aims-to-...

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#53

Post by zbentley »

sokoloff wrote: post #15
Consultant32452 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I want is the ability to get compensated for benefits I decline, particularly the company health plan. I've never been able to negotiate this successfully.

Do you really care if you get paid $190K + $10K because you didn't take the medical plan vs just getting paid $200K whether or not you take the plan?

That's a false dichotomy; outlays per employee depend on the benefits each employee draws.

That said, dudul's comment on this thread indicate why this often is not (financially speaking) an option.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#55

Post by [deleted] »

willnz wrote: post #37
JohnGB wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Netherlands, if you have a child under 9 years old (it could be 8), your company is required, by law, to let you work 4 days a week if your want. It's actually really common with something like 28% of working men taking a "papadag" ("Daddy day" in English). I wouldn't even consider a job that didn't allow me time to spend with my kids. Money is definitely not the primary driver for a lot of people.

Do you accept a lower salary if you opt to work four days a week?

[deleted]

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#56

Post by jpatokal »

scarface74 wrote: post #11

They can say all of the feel good stuff they want. I always have the same question - are there outside investors? If there are, by definition the entire purpose of the company is an exit strategy. Statistically, that exit strategy is to be acquired. As an employee without equity you should have no loyalty to the company above getting a check every two weeks and doing your best work during those two weeks. The owners…

The company in question is a domain registrar competing mostly on good service. I'm sure it's a profitable niche, but it's not the kind of thing that's aiming for a giant IPO or is likely to attract acquisition interest from a FAANG.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#57

Post by protomyth »

ng12 wrote: post #8

People 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…

One of the most important findings is that pay generally will never motivate employees

Grow up poor, and see how much pay motivates you. I think never is too strong a word.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#58

Post by gopalv »

ng12 wrote: post #8

People 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…

> One of the most important findings is that pay generally will never motivate employees, but it will reduce their incentive to leave.

Having talked to a crowd of senior people who were leaving their jobs recently, I think there's a lot to be said about money as a 3rd factor when switching jobs further down in your career.

Raising someone pay to match only works when the other factors for their departure are going to be addressed (and there, I've had people tell me "Deciding to leave was very hard and changing it back is even harder").

However, motivating people to perform at their best is entirely independent of that - most of the good people I worked with merely wanted to make an impact and receive the help they need in doing that.

Pay is one of those things, because money enables people - when someone is having a new baby & a salary bump helps her with daycare needs, can be a win-win.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#59

Post by sokoloff »

zbentley wrote: post #53
sokoloff wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really care if you get paid $190K + $10K because you didn't take the medical plan vs just getting paid $200K whether or not you take the plan?

That's a false dichotomy; outlays per employee depend on the benefits each employee draws. That said, dudul's comment on this thread indicate why this often is not (financially speaking) an option.

All the more reason to negotiate for the thing that you care about (that my W-2 box 5 says $200K at the end of a full year) and not whether you'd get more because you skip a given benefit or less because we notice that you really hit those Friday donuts pretty hard.

IMO, it's more productive to negotiate for what than for why.

Re: The one-salary experiment, ten years in

#60

Post by tfehring »

I wonder how much of the perfect retention for non-developers is because of "gold-plated handcuffs"? It would obviously be nice to make X% of the market rate for your position for X >> 100, but it would not be nice to have to take a (1 - 100/X)% pay cut if you want to leave the company for whatever reason. Lots of people can't afford to take a substantial pay cut because they align their recurring expenses, particularly housing, with their salary.

Also, it's interesting to consider how much this would force "bullshit jobs" to be automated, either internally or through SaaS offerings. Note that "bullshit" != "traditionally low-paying" - customer support roles, which are crucial but traditionally low-paying, are the obvious counterexample.

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