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Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

bloomberg.com

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Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#81

Post by Thorrez »

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…

>but I think pay discrepancies can be entirely fair.

There are multiple definitions of fair. One definition is people are paid proportional to how well they do their job. With that definition, bargaining for something else is actually unfair.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#82

Post by darth_avocado »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #18

> “ The anonymous document, reviewed by Bloomberg News, contains dozens of purported Blizzard salaries and pay bumps. Most of the raises are below 10%, significantly less than Blizzard employees said they expected following the study.” When oh when are midrange tech companies going to get their shit together with raises and bonuses. 10% should be mostly seen as a (shock) _normal_ raise when the company is doing well,…

^This.

I've always had the philosophy that if you want to retain good employees, pay them more before they ask for more. If they have reached a point where they had to ask for more, they're probably going to leave soon.

I don't understand how do companies fail to realize this. Say an engineer leaves because you didn't get him that 20% pay bump. Even in the highest ranks of engineering, that's like what a 100k? 30k-40k on an average. Now imagine you go through the whole recruitment cycle. You have anywhere between 8-12 weeks of productivity loss of an engineer. Then you waste time from the productivity of recruiter, hiring manager, hiring engineers on the team, etc., all of whom are highly paid. You cycle through 8-10 candidates. Then you finally get the person you need. In my experience, it takes at least a month to get onboarded, usually more. And it takes at least 6 months to get to productivity levels of the engineer that just left if your new candidate is good. All in all you wasted almost 6 months of engineering time worth of productivity, which easily exceeds the money you saved not giving that 20% raise. All of this, assuming the new guy didn't negotiate more than the previous one. Seriously, get your shit together.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#83

Post by xpe »

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…

> You know what those top earners are going to do then? Quit.

Maybe, maybe not.

The opposite could be true: employees might more likely to quit a company that generally pays other employees poorly. There are lots of reasons why this might be the case.

Here is one type of scenario where that may be true. Many people recognize that company performance is not a simple linear combination of individual employee performance metrics. Having a well-functioning team is a substantial component of overall company success. With this in mind, it makes sense to work for a company that recognizes value more broadly, and understands that even "top" individual performers exist in a context of "non-top" individual performers. Therefore, if those "top" performers think it through, they will want the "non-top" people to be paid fairly.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#84

Post by Thorrez »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #24
aaomidi wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be great if they make it public

I'd like to see it, but the optics would be challenging, since Blizzard workers probably make a substantial bit more than most game industry people.

Why? The article mentions people making minimum wage.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#85

Post by scottLobster »

woodruffw wrote: post #50
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'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. Whether or not pay discrepancies can be fair, this doesn't sound like a case of them being fair. What happens to your (hypothetical) colleague who gives just as much of a damn as you do…

I'd argue your first example is actually fair. Someone who has trouble negotiating in professional circles is going to have issues far beyond the workplace, if nothing else they're going to get repeatably screwed buying a car, and they should work on that. Why shouldn't the more aggressive, more strategic people earn more on average? I'd argue they give more of a damn by definition. The ability to project social force is a positive trait if used well, and can directly benefit the work if turned in that direction.

By contrast I agree with your second example as systemic discrimination is something sharing salaries can directly help with. I had a female co-worker who was the same level of engineer I was at our company, had more experience and a Master's degree (to my Bachelor's), and was making 10k less a year than I was. Now I'm not sure if that was due to her being a woman or being rather conflict-avoidant (or both), but seeing the difference certainly made her push for a promotion that she eventually got.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#86

Post by sdoering »

woodruffw wrote: post #50
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'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. Whether or not pay discrepancies can be fair, this doesn't sound like a case of them being fair. What happens to your (hypothetical) colleague who gives just as much of a damn as you do…

I have fought for raises of colleagues who were more introverted or just didn't feel as comfortable going into the pit and haggling for an appropriate raise. I saw the wage gap increase because they sometimes just didn't know how far ahead others were in terms of wage.

Keeping individual wages a secret ultimately benefits the employer as they can use the knowledge disparity to their advantage.

I even know of arguments that a new father doesn't need to receive a relevant raise as he is extremely unlikely to switch jobs due to the newborn.

Employers, even most of the ones claiming to be fair, will do everything to keep employees in the dark regarding fair pay.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#87

Post by cleong »

CarbyAu wrote: post #67

I have previously mentioned that employees should be seen as significant investors in the business and should be treated as such. Apart from "The job" work is not a mental and emotional void. You invest yourself. And it hurts when your investment is ignored or treated as lesser than another human. Employee pay should be two parts: - salary as per usual - significant stock in the business. NB: significant. 50% of stoc…

Although this sounds like heaven and from your perspective as an employee it makes sense.

But the system you built doesn't necessarily achieve the goals you want. If everyone gets the same dividend it becomes a tragedy of the commons since an individual player can do the minimum while profiting off other players actions. Even if its varied in dividend for example one person gets 10% while another gets 40%, this still applies as a player with the strategy of being mediocre will still get benefits of the hard work of all other players while minimizing the amount of work he has to do.

Not only that, businesses are meant to make money if the people who start the business is giving out half their money away this system better make 2x the revenue every single quarter or why would they do it.

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#88

Post by tonitosou »

Pxtl wrote: post #78
tonitosou wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

im not sure. in a perfect society if the junior dev is better and works harder and bring more value to the company he should be better paid than his senior. it is capitalism and if a company is judget by its output an employee should too

If he's better and brings in more value, he'll become a SR dev quickly.

so 1 senior dev = 1 senior dev? you're surely thinking same for a doctor right? and you will trust with your life a guy who studied less and got 10/20 at all his exams all his life and went party while the other one was practising surgeries?

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#89

Post by xpe »

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 more we celebrate victimhood as some kind of hero status...

What is motivating this interpretation? Do you interpret something in the original article as suggesting this?

What about the article (which contrasts multi-million dollar executive pay against minimum-wage workers) suggests to you that someone is "celebrating victimhood"? If so, who is this someone?

> ... the more we shame and punish those who achieve and create success the worse off we're all going to be.

Can you unpack your assumptions and logic in coming to this conclusion?

Re: Blizzard workers share salaries in revolt over wage disparities

#90

Post by verma7 »

jhanschoo wrote: post #79
im3w1l wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone writes their salary on a piece of paper and puts it into a hat. Then you can get a the full distribution.

If the salaries are still too easily identifiable here's how it can be anonymized. Allow breaking down the salary into a sum of numbers, and putting them as separate slips into the hat.

How would you get the distribution from the sum of numbers individually?
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