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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

#51

Post by intended »

rosywoozlechan wrote: post #43
axaxs wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why all the hoops? Companies have shamed us into thinking sharing salaries is bad. It's not. People should share freely, in my opinion it benefits all parties except the company.

It doesn't benefit top earners to share salary information. If I'm making more money than everyone else and the consequences of sharing salaries is equity than it is in my rational self-interest to keep my salary hidden because I'm unlikely to get any kind of raise until equity is achieved whereas I may continue to get raises otherwise. You know what those top earners are going to do then? Quit. And then you end up w…

Sadly your pay has little to do with merit, and more to do with perception, connections, face time and ability to handle office issues better than your cohort.

It may well be, if not more likely to be, the other way round - you could be a GOOD performer, but since you can't or don't gork office politics, you are underpaid or even not at the level of challenge and seniority you should be.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#52

Post by axaxs »

rosywoozlechan wrote: post #43
axaxs wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why all the hoops? Companies have shamed us into thinking sharing salaries is bad. It's not. People should share freely, in my opinion it benefits all parties except the company.

It doesn't benefit top earners to share salary information. If I'm making more money than everyone else and the consequences of sharing salaries is equity than it is in my rational self-interest to keep my salary hidden because I'm unlikely to get any kind of raise until equity is achieved whereas I may continue to get raises otherwise. You know what those top earners are going to do then? Quit. And then you end up w…

The benefit to you, though small, is realizing you're a top earner and valued. And you wouldn't have known that had others not shared, which is a bit selfish. I'm not advocating for equity in pay. I am advocating against people being taken advantage of, which they are. No company is going to reduce your pay because person X wants a raise. If they did, quit?

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#53

Post by zdragnar »

tyre wrote: post #32
donatj wrote: post #25

So possibly unpopular point of view here, maybe not on HN, but I think pay discrepancies can be entirely fair. I'm almost certain my pay is different from my colleagues, but I've bargained like hell to get it. When I was hired, every time we've been acquired. I'm no executive either, I'm just a developer with a proven history of give-a-damn. I think it's perfectly fair game in a job where it's hard to replace individ…

sure, you bargained. But your job isn't to bargain for salary. That's not the value you provide to a company. And so the dumb part, the unfair part, about salary discrepancies is that it is divorced from performance. It is divorced from value. Which doesn't mean that you, on an individual level, shouldn't negotiate. But it does imply that salary negotiation generally leads to results that (very) (incredibly) (if at a…

> your job isn't to bargain for salary

This is a bit nonsensical. Nobody knows better than you what your time is worth because it is your time.

You don't owe companies anything, including working for less than you are willing to take in payment.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#54

Post by vvanders »

davidgay wrote: post #49
vvanders wrote: post #33

The game industry as a whole was pretty fucked when I left. I remember doing the 40hr+1.5x overtime calculation and realizing that if I wasn't salaried I'd be making $4/hr with the mandatory hours we were working(70-90 hrs/week). I tossed 2 months of PTO to leave that industry(yay Washington laws) and made up the difference in the first 2.5 paychecks of the new gig. Be careful of industries that over-index on "passio…

80 hrs/week is ~4000 hr/year. Your salary was only ~$16000/year?

You have to factor in the 1.5x overtime that's standard on hourly.

I went back and did the numbers, it was closer to $6hr but well below minimum wage for a dev position. From the little bit of salaries I heard art, design and test had it even worse.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#56

Post by whatisthiseven »

rosywoozlechan wrote: post #43
axaxs wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why all the hoops? Companies have shamed us into thinking sharing salaries is bad. It's not. People should share freely, in my opinion it benefits all parties except the company.

It doesn't benefit top earners to share salary information. If I'm making more money than everyone else and the consequences of sharing salaries is equity than it is in my rational self-interest to keep my salary hidden because I'm unlikely to get any kind of raise until equity is achieved whereas I may continue to get raises otherwise. You know what those top earners are going to do then? Quit. And then you end up w…

> they're going to want to do it in a way that achieves the goals of the business.

No, a business will spend money in a way that optimizes the goals of the various middle-managers in between those with money and those who make the decisions with that money. Those middle-people aren't paper-clip optimizers and so their decision making does not approximate that of a profit-maximizing firm.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#57

Post by Pxtl »

tonitosou wrote: post #55

i dont understand why salaries should be same for a similar role. If I work twice as fast and with a better work quality than my collegue why shouldn't i get double his salary? are we in a communist country?

I work in healthcare where this is handled by job titles and it seems a lot healthier.

Job title makes it clear that it's about greater responsibilities.

"Why is Jeff paid more than me"

"Because Jeff is senior dev and you're junior dev" is a much easier conversation to have, and everybody's job title is very visible.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#58

Post by HarryHirsch »

donatj wrote: post #35
virtuous_signal wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was teaching college math classes, there were people who tried to argue for more partial credit after exams. Not to get into specifics but most of the requests came from the same demographic. If I as an instructor hadn't watched out for this and set a universal, and uniformly applied policy (and if I had an agreeable enough personality), then I would have consistently made the scores of this group higher. Woul…

Fortune favors the bold.

Therein lies the problem. Math is made by mathematicians, not by Karens whose mothers attend parties thrown by Ghislaine Maxwell. Sometimes you think that's what's behind the secular stagnation.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#59

Post by landryraccoon »

intended wrote: post #51
rosywoozlechan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't benefit top earners to share salary information. If I'm making more money than everyone else and the consequences of sharing salaries is equity than it is in my rational self-interest to keep my salary hidden because I'm unlikely to get any kind of raise until equity is achieved whereas I may continue to get raises otherwise. You know what those top earners are going to do then? Quit. And then you end up w…

Sadly your pay has little to do with merit, and more to do with perception, connections, face time and ability to handle office issues better than your cohort. It may well be, if not more likely to be, the other way round - you could be a GOOD performer, but since you can't or don't gork office politics, you are underpaid or even not at the level of challenge and seniority you should be.

This is definitely not true at a small company (say less than 10 developers).

If the CTO sits no more than 2 cubicles away from every engineer he better know who the top performers are. If employees are playing politics at a small company, that company is already doomed.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#60

Post by satyrnein »

sokoloff wrote: post #31
donatj wrote: post #25

So possibly unpopular point of view here, maybe not on HN, but I think pay discrepancies can be entirely fair. I'm almost certain my pay is different from my colleagues, but I've bargained like hell to get it. When I was hired, every time we've been acquired. I'm no executive either, I'm just a developer with a proven history of give-a-damn. I think it's perfectly fair game in a job where it's hard to replace individ…

I don’t see any reason to think that all engineers contribute the same amount of value (and therefore paying different amounts is entirely reasonable). Thought experiment: if you were going to form a startup and needed two other engineers, would you know across your history which ones to pick from and which ones to avoid?

I wholeheartedly agree with your first sentence. However, the thought experiment feels vulnerable to bias and other factors unrelated to performance, (just like the salary negotiation process you're comparing it to).
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