Company Testing Standardized Salaries Is Struggling 480
jmcbain writes: In April 2015, Dan Price, the CEO of online payments company Gravity Payments based in Seattle, announced that all employees would have their salary bumped up to a minimum $70,000. Slashdot covered this news. Since that time, however, things have not gone well. Some employees quit because they felt it was unfair to double the pay of some new hires while the longest-serving staff members got small or no raises. Furthermore, after reducing his own salary from $1M to $70K, Mr. Price is now renting a house 'to make ends meet'. On an unrelated note, Mr. Price's brother, who is a co-founder of the company, is suing him.
Ha! (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine that.
Differences in pay exist for a reason: Because different people perform functions of different value to the company.
Re: Ha! (Score:3, Insightful)
Just don't let anybody from the occupy movement hear that, or else they'll give you an earful about how they deserve both:
1) A high paying job because dammit, they're human beings, and they deserve it!
2) Low price rent in a high cost, high demand, area. Because again, being human and having feelings means they deserve it.
Re: Ha! (Score:3, Insightful)
You seem to have lost track of the topic of the article, which was that a CEO himself raised the wages of his lowest-paid employees. Are you saying there's something entitled about his running a business according to his values? Or do you actually have a problem with his values but are too... something (insecure? incapable?) to actually mount a coherent moral argument against them?
The housing price stuff is a related but separate issue. Lots of NIMBYs causing that issue are otherwise quite conservative. And
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Re: Ha! (Score:5, Informative)
Yea, they were. I had deal w/ the Occupy smell on almost a daily basis in Oakland. The hammer and sickle was a very common sign then.
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That hammer & sickle pretty common in every protest/march/parade in SoCal. Funny enough Occupy was working fine until it was co-opted, and the progressive stack happened. The things you learn when you research, and I'm still against the idea of it much like I was when it started up.
Re: Ha! (Score:4, Interesting)
What "moral values" would that be? Destroying a company that a lot of people worked hard to build, just in order to feed his own ego? Of course, if he owns the company, it's his right to destroy it. That doesn't make it a moral thing to do.
You mean like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] With decades-long waiting lists for even getting one of those drafty, cramped, noisy apartments? Thanks, I'll take US-style capitalism over your "hard-nosed realism" any day.
Re: Ha! (Score:5, Insightful)
Socialism doesn't work because people are NOT equal in ability or utility to an organization. Equalizing the payoff for everyone just disenfranchises those who end up doing the majority of the work. The real question is how much more of society are we going to ruin in vain attempts to disprove that. Sure he can run his own company any way he likes (assuming no shareholders), but it sounds like his attempt at social 'justice' isn't going any better than others have. It just builds resentment and infighting.
Too much price fixing ends up damaging other companies providing prereq goods and services. Then the state has to step in to 'save' them as well. Eventually the whole 'market' is centralized and dictated by politics and feelings of a ruling class rather than the realities of cost and consumer demand. Then it rots away eg: the Soviet Union.
Re: Ha! (Score:3)
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This has everything to do with socialism/communism.
First, he makes way less, same as the lowest paid worker.
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He is struggling personally. Apparently he couldn't down size his life. Like his pay. Many rich people can't live as normal folk. See Hillary Clinton being dead broke.
Exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
Those who can contribute significant, above-and-beyond value naturally feel that people should be rewarded in proportion to their contributions.
Those who cannot contribute significant, above-and-beyond value naturally feel that everyone should receive equal rewards, regardless of their contributions.
By setting policies that pander to the second group, you wind up losing members of the first group, resulting in a company full of under-performing slackers. No surprise such a company doesn't do well.
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Those who can contribute significant, above-and-beyond value naturally feel that people should be rewarded in proportion to their contributions.
This is only natural. However, this ends up leading to promotions for people whose "above-and-beyond" contribution means working late frequently and getting the work/life balance out of whack. This can end up with a de facto situation that anyone who works damn hard during their allotted hours but never stays late is clocked as "underperforming". The CEO's point was to release that tension and expectation, freeing up employees to have proper downtime without stressing over perceptions.
The problem is that it
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Art History. I couldn't get into Women's Studies - 2 year waitlist!
Re: Ha! (Score:5, Interesting)
Well with regard to point 2, I don't see why these guys just move to a lower cost area. Every time I mention it to them, they babble something like they have the "right" to live there. For reference, $1094 a month's rent gets me:
1) 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom, living room, big kitchen, total 781 square feet, single floor unit and located on the first floor.
2) Two very large swimming pools (one of them has a beach style entry and sand pits) spa, gas powered grills that are free to use, cabanas, outdoor TVs.
3) Gated community, with a unique gate code per unit, and a remote for the gate so no reason to stop and reach for the number pad when you drive in
4) Trash butler who comes to my front porch and picks up my trash
5) Keyless entry to the pools (uses an NFC fob)
6) Same day service when I something breaks (for example, I called to complain that my AC was too loud, and somebody fixed it a few hours later. Dishwasher wasn't working, fixed the next morning.)
7) Fiber internet (max tier is gig)
8) Total cost for electricity and gas ends up being another $110 a month during the summer. Since this is in Arizona, heating costs are minimal during the winter.
9) Fitness center, with free gym classes.
10) Nice mountain view, and lots of nice places to eat and shop are within walking distance.
And yes, the figure I quoted above includes all of the amenities and taxes. At the start of the month, that's the exact amount I pay.
Tell me how much something like that costs in San Francisco or New York.
Re:Ha! (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really. In the military, for example, no matter what your speciality is, you are paid the same. Based upon rank, time in service and time in grade.
I think that he went about it in the wrong way. Not that the core concept is flawed.
Re:Ha! (Score:4, Informative)
Almost, there are some extra pay/bonuses for certain things [chron.com].
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Informative)
...except that's not actually true.
For example, there's been the long-running practice of reenlistment bonuses. Different jobs get much higher bonuses for reenlisting.
The base pay may be the same, but the difference between, say, a low-ranking cook and a low-ranking nuclear weapons technician is pretty startling when that bonus is calculated. As in "tens of thousands of dollars."
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...except that's not actually true.
For example, there's been the long-running practice of reenlistment bonuses. Different jobs get much higher bonuses for reenlisting.
The base pay may be the same, but the difference between, say, a low-ranking cook and a low-ranking nuclear weapons technician is pretty startling when that bonus is calculated. As in "tens of thousands of dollars."
It's not just re-enlistment bonuses. Some people get additional pay every month or year depending on their job. To cherrypick an extreme example, the military doctor who happens to hold O4 or O5 rank makes tens of thousands (if not $100K) more than the average line officer of similar rank.
Re:Ha! (Score:4, Interesting)
...except that's not actually true.
For example, there's been the long-running practice of reenlistment bonuses. Different jobs get much higher bonuses for reenlisting.
The base pay may be the same, but the difference between, say, a low-ranking cook and a low-ranking nuclear weapons technician is pretty startling when that bonus is calculated. As in "tens of thousands of dollars."
There is also extra pay for various specific skills. Some of them cut across job categories, for example you get more pay if you speak another language. Others are specific to the job; electronics techs get extra pay, medical personnel get extra pay, etc. People in high-skill jobs tend to get promoted faster and therefore be higher in rank than those in low skill jobs, which also boosts their pay.
Re:Ha! (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really. In the military, for example, no matter what your speciality is, you are paid the same. Based upon rank, time in service and time in grade.
And this company is doing the equivalent of paying a private on his first day the same as a Colonel who's been in the army for ten years.
Who could have guessed that would cause problems?
Re:Ha! (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't understand what he hoped to accomplish. I could see normalizing pay for each job so that all the secretaries got one amount, the entry level developers got another and the senior developers got another amount. Then you might change the distribution so that the difference between the secretary's pay and the CEO's is say 10-20 times instead of the 100 or more than we see in many big corporations. Any or all of those changes might have worked out but to put everyone regardless of their job on the same pay grade just doesn't make sense.
Its a mutation of the equal pay for equal work dream. Problem is, you simply do not get equal work out of people. You just don't.
I was one of two of the highest paid workers in my department. The reason was that we produced. We'd work extra as needed, and when the suits brought work to us, they knew it would be finished on time, and would be well done.
Not quite teh same with the others. Some would do meh work to meet the deadline, some just did enough to keep from getting fired. a rae few even less (which got them fired)
The problem with the concept of every person in Job A getting the same amount of money is simple. If my industrious coworker and I were to recieve the same pay as the person who barely produces, we would adjust our output accordingly - or more likely, since we were both self-driven, we'd go to another place, and they would eventually be left with the worst employees.
Its the old saying - if you want high quality hay, you have to be prepared to pay a good price. If you are content with hay that has already been through the horse - that comes cheaper.
This in no way addresses the weird world of CEO pay.
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Not really. In the military, for example, no matter what your speciality is, you are paid the same.
Except for the generous re-enlistment and retention bonuses that are paid based on specialty. As a grunt, I never qualified for any bonuses, despite being an expert at using my entrenching tool [wikipedia.org].
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Imagine that.
Differences in pay exist for a reason: Because different people perform functions of different value to the company.
I'm confused. Other than the very vague claim that they're struggling what is the actual problem? OK, some employees were butthurt. Yes, he had to adjust his lifestyle to match his reduced salary but other than being sued by his brother for paying himself too much prior to the 70k move how is the company struggling?
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Informative)
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If i just spent 100 grand on a 4 year degree and gave 2 years to this company i wouldnt be as happy about it
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Insightful)
These guys are actively unhappy because *someone else* got a fair shake for a change?
Here's a protip: when only some people get the "fair shake", then it's not a fair shake.
Re:Ha! (Score:4, Insightful)
If i just spent 100 grand on a 4 year degree and gave 2 years to this company i wouldnt be as happy about it
Why? Nobody except the CEO took a pay cut. In fact everyone got at least a small raise. These guys are actively unhappy because *someone else* got a fair shake for a change? Thats just retarded, mean and more than a little childish.
What it is, is telling the more experienced and productive people that there s no need for them to be any more productive than the newest or lest productive people.
You don't at all understand the drivers of productive people. Usually self driven, they are also perceptive. A situation where the biggest fuckoff who takes a dozen ciggy breaks a day, and takes off every sick day he earns and comes in late every day and leaves early, and for all that, is making the same as the guy who get's his work donnie, done well, and a high percentage of the time, picks up the slack for the slacker - well, we don't like that very much. We're driven, so we'll take up that slack. But if we're not compensated for our production, we'll likely go some other place.
Myself and one coworker made a lot more than every other person in the department. There was a reason for that. The suits thought we were worth it. They wanted to keep us.
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Another way to look at it is if you pay poorly and only reward people who aggressively compete with others at the expense of the team, you end up with a mix of loners and people who feel little loyalty or investment in the company.
If you only want to pay me 50k for a skilled job with lots of pressure then expect me to feel zero loyalty and be looking for something better. I'm not gonna work free overtime for you, what kind of a mug do you think I am?
The only mistake here was not giving the people who were a
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You describe a worst case scenario, where the quality of the work in a company doesn't affect your employment status. While companies like this exist, they are not companies that any person with a decent work ethic would want to be employed by, regardless of how much they might pay. In any reasonably-run company, a person who spends most of their work day around a water-cooler not actually getting their job done would be fired in short order, regardless of salary. While I realize that firing people fo
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That's a management/HR failure to me. If someone is significantly under performing like that they get the boot and quickly.
Completely non real world response. Mabe you shouold tell management how to do their stuff.
Everyone making the same pay just does not work. That you don't understand that means simply that you don't understand that.
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine that.
Differences in pay exist for a reason: Because different people perform functions of different value to the company.
No. This is a common mistake. It is wrong.
Differences in pay exist because of supply and demand. If there are many people willing to do your job, then pay for that job will be low, even if your job is valuable (see nursing, teaching, etc). Yes, many jobs we "value" are highly-paid (but not all). But that is because there is greater demand (or less supply) for people to fill those jobs.
In short, do not confuse correlation (high value jobs have high pay) with causation (we do NOT give high pay to people with high value jobs because we value the jobs).
We pay people what we need to pay in order to find someone to do the job. That is the "value" of the job - as an economic valuation. Do not confuse that with the moral worth of the job. Or its intrinsic value to the employer.
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine that.
Differences in pay exist for a reason: Because different people perform functions of different value to the company.
And some people feel they deserve more pay than others, regardless of whether that's actually true. Don't underestimate the power of "ego".
Why, actually, does it matter to one person what another gets paid? If *you* are getting paid a fair wage for your efforts and can live the life you want/need to live, why does anything else matter? It's not a contest of whoever has the most wins.
Personally, I make more than I need. I have deferred raises in favor of my teammates who need the extra money more. I have volunteered to take time off w/o pay, when the work load permits, to prevent teammates from being laid off. They have families and bills, my wife died in 2006 and I'm debt free. In the past 9.5 years, I've given about $100k to friends who were in trouble, through (almost) no fault of their own or who needed something extra to pursue bettering themselves. They didn't ask for help and were willing/trying to make it on their own -- I could help so I did.
I have also had a few comments about my behavior. A few years ago, when I volunteered to reduce my hours to reduce the impact of a budget shortfall on my teammates, because I could live on less money, one of my manager's managers remarked that I could keep working and give him the extra money I didn't need. I replied that would be happy to give him *all* my money, if he'd give me my wife back. (Haven't heard from him since.)
According to a NYT article, Dan Price bumped the salaries of his employees when he learned that many people were having trouble making ends meet on their salaries and decided to pay them a more livable salary. Some of his other employees got ticked off because of what they think people *deserve* to be paid.
Some CEOs make 100-300 times what their lowest-paid employee makes. Based on the CEOs you know or know about is that right? Perhaps we'd all be better off if people concerned themselves less on what they *can* earn and more on what they need to earn and about the benefit of their teammates and, if you're in management, the benefit of the company as a whole. Employees that feel valued -- really valued, not that "employees are our most valuable asset" bullshit -- and secure are often better employees as they have less to fear and worry about.
I will be writing Dan an actual snail-mail letter commending him on his actions and wishing him the best.
Remember Sue... [tumblr.com]
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Or to look at it another way, in a situation where the worst employee is making the same money as the best ones, it tells the eomployees that the worst one is just as valuable to teh company as the best one.
Perhaps, but in this case, Dan cut his salary and took that money to bump the salary floor to something actually livable. He wasn't comparing the worth of employees, just increasing the minimum - again, with his own money. He did this so those employees at the bottom could afford to live and work.
When I worked at the NY Times, our manager did a salary survey on the 4 senior admin staff (this included me with more experience than the other three - combined) -- 2 Unix admins (one was me) and 2 Oracle data
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Re:Ha! (Score:4, Insightful)
how cute. someone who still thinks that capitalism WORKS.
It's rather obvious that capitalism works.
hint: we're melting down in the US, the middle class is being attacked and destroyed, the upper classes accumulate more and more of the world's wealth and most of us will NEVER be able to retire.
I find it bizarre how people can intentionally break a capitalist system and then complain that capitalism isn't working for them. Don't break it, if you don't like the consequences.
Here, the problem is that the US has been aggressive interfering with business creation and employment while expending huge amounts of public resources on the largest businesses. Meanwhile, you and a lot of other people continue to ignore the elephant in the room - foreign labor competition that is a fraction of the US's labor cost. There needs to be something differentiating US labor as being more valuable than say, Chinese labor, or else businesses and economic power will shift elsewhere while US labor continues to decline in wages.
Further, the same can't be said of the rest of the world which has been doing just fine with massive middle class creation and collecting more and more of the world's wealth in the hands of the majority of its citizens.
so, telll me again how greed makes things all sunshine and rainbows?
So tell me again, what works better? Or even works at all?
GTFO! (Score:5, Funny)
Wait, so great employees don't like making the same as their mediocre colleagues?! Get the #*@! out of here!
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They evidently don't like it, but it's pretty dumb to quit because someone else got a raise, esp. when it means the CEO is now making less than you. I suppose the story was supposed to be "CEO sacrifices pay so engineers can upgrade Escalades to Ferraris," which of course would have been very heart touching.
Re:GTFO! (Score:4, Interesting)
There is an entire parable about this in the Bible, in Matthew 20.
The gist is: fuck you, you earn plenty, stop griping about others getting a slice of pie.
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Re:GTFO! (Score:4, Interesting)
Mediocre employees who mistakenly think they are great are upset that great employees who they think are mediocre are being paid the same.
$70K was also the minimum. What they complained about was that the person making a subsistence living at $20K to sweep the floors may have gotten a huge raise whereas someone make $100K got no raise at all. People can be petty that way.
Life imitating art? (Score:5, Insightful)
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You'll have to elaborate if you want anyone to see your point. There's very few people who are both literary and masochistic enough to have read Atlas Shrugged (or anything by Ayn Rand).
Admit it. You just didn't get the jokes.
Re:Life imitating art? (Score:5, Informative)
John Galt, the pivotal figure in Atlas Shrugged, once worked as an engineer with the fictional Twentieth Century Motor Company. After the original owner died, his heirs decided that employees would work according to their ability, but be paid according to their needs.
Needless to say, it did not work out well.
Re:Life imitating art? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course it didn't, because it was a pre-determined strawman in a novel as a snarky complaint about Rand not being paid what she thought she deserved by Twentieth Century Fox in her entry level job.
Rand was so fucked up that she was comparing Hollywood employment to Soviet Russia! Read a bit about Rand's life and you'll understand where she is coming from and that she knew almost nothing about the the west and did not wish to know much about the west. She hated Stalin, but if Stalin had wanted to plant the seeds of political discord in the USA with a political movement he couldn't have done better than Rand no matter who he paid to do it.
Her fantasies are Twilight for people in a democracy that wish they could be Royalty instead, and they fuck up anyone that takes them at more than face value. The message that you could be special if it wasn't for all of those Serfs having a say in how the country is run is utterly fucked. You should have to earn the right to rule instead of being born to it like Digby.
Re:Life imitating art? (Score:5, Informative)
I tried. I got the book and started reading. When I got page 100 I stopped and thought about what I had read, which was nothing. Whatever story she tried to tell in that book, she took her sweet time in getting the plot going. I threw the book away. Any author who can't start a story within 100 pages is a shit author who needs a better editor.
Maybe I'll try again someday. I'll start halfway through the book and see if maybe the story starts by then.
Re:Life imitating art? (Score:4, Insightful)
Either way, eventually you will make your way to the John Galt radio speech, which is where the book casts all pretenses of being a novel and spills its philosophical guts on the table, just in case you were functionally brain dead and couldn't deduce the message from the previous several hundred pages.
Just save yourself the trouble and read a summary. The book doesn't work as either a work of fiction or as an ideological treatise. Even if you're the type of person to agree with every word of the book, it's still not worth your time.
Re:Life imitating art? (Score:5, Informative)
WARNING, SPOILERS AHEAD
Halfway through the novel, the protagonist meets a hobo who used to be a worker at the Twentieth Century Motor Company, whose bankruptcy years before was a key event in the novel for several reasons. He tells what had actually happened there:
After the founder's death, the heirs decided to manage the company under the motto: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." The consequence was obvious: all workers pretty much turned into beggars, inventing more needs, while anyone who demonstrated competence was required to work harder. While the press praised the "enlightened" management, productivity collapsed, quality went to shit, and clients ran away.
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As the XKCD guy said, I find myself agreeing with most of her ideas, up to the point where it says: "and therefor, be a complete asshole to everyone".
The problem with that idea is that most of her ideas are what an asshole would do. It's no surprise; she got them from a serial killer. Only an asshole would say "I did more of the work, therefore fuck you." Of course, the word is populated primarily with assholes. If that weren't true, few of us would want for anything. I, too, am an asshole in this regard. I consider myself to be less of an asshole than most others, but that's not much of an epitaph.
Just Like Walmart (Score:5, Insightful)
Same thing happened at walmart when they bumped their lowest paid workers up to the minimum wage.
http://business.financialpost.com/news/retail-marketing/wal-marts-pay-raise-creates-thousands-of-unhappy-workers-its-pitting-people-against-each-other
Senior workers got no raise and feel disrespected.
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I don't get it. What the fuck does the "minimum" in "minimum wage" mean?
Has the US redefined the English language?
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Translation: Selfish assholes throw a temper tantrum that someone they feel is "beneath" them might actually have a chance at supporting themselves with hard work.
Heart's in the right place... (Score:3)
It's kind of weird the way this was implemented but I like the notion.
I think that if you are willing to work, you should be able to support yourself comfortably. I am not sure that absolutely equal pay for everyone is exactly right although I do think that people who quit over having someone else make as much as them is pretty petty and entitled.
I would personally not care one bit if a fast food worker got paid as much as me or more.... good for them, I wouldn't want to do that job so why would I complain?
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I would personally not care one bit if a fast food worker got paid as much as me or more.... good for them, I wouldn't want to do that job so why would I complain?
There were no fast food workers at that firm.
A better comparison would be someone at YOUR company, who's a newer hire than you, has less experience and can't code as well as you, and basically just clocks in and out without contributing much, and because of a SJW CEO's action now makes the same salary as you.
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Yes, you are right, bad analogy.
But anyway, as long as I don't take a pay cut... why would I care?
It is none of my business what other people make... as long as I have what I need to get by, I couldn't care less who makes what.
I am not better than anyone else. I learn new things from all kinds of different people every day no matter their age....
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Re:Heart's in the right place... (Score:4, Interesting)
send this guy back for more brainwashing.
you're supposed to resent people beneath you getting anything at all, despise them for being worthless losers. poverty is not a circumstance that people find themselves in, it's a moral failing caused by their own failure as human beings. they deserve to be fucked over.
you're also supposed to envy people above you, their success proves that they are sublime beings of great moral worth who also deserve what they get. and if you worked harder and longer and stuck your nose ever further up your boss's arse you too might one day deserve it.
didn't you watch TV at all? or are you just immune to the non-stop re-education programming?
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I am not sure that absolutely equal pay for everyone is exactly right although I do think that people who quit over having someone else make as much as them is pretty petty and entitled.
Say you are a college graduate who has worked for the company for 5 years, including the startup where you barely made a living wage, work ten hour days (often weekends) and have little time off. What if a high school dropout who just got hired in the mail room working 8 hour days 5 days a week makes the same as you? I know I would be pissed.
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You should stop worrying about other people: happiness comes from within. Are you earning enough with the correct balance to live a life you enjoy? If yes, then go and live that life and enjoy it! If no, then go get another job. If you're enjoying your life it does not detract from it if someone else too es enjoying theirs.
Re:Heart's in the right place... (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a saying in France that says:
"the heart is on the left, but the wallet is on the right."
While I partly agree with you, I would like to share my own experience.
20 years ago, I worked for a game company where the boss wanted full equality, so he paid everybody around the same salary.
While the approach is humanist, in the end it did more bad than good.
There was a huge trust between members, but beginners were terrible and were slowing down the experienced people.
I wholeheartedly loved working for this company, but it collapsed after finishing the first game.
The lessons are:
1) pay people as low as you can, but as much as they need to live a comfortable life (and won't want to quit your company). Everybody has different needs, and I don't count "home cinema" as a need !
2) pay well your better workers, don't count on their faithfulness especially if you fire people randomly
3) be frank. People (especially the awful workers) are obsessed why they don't earn as much as their colleagues. Tell them why they don't deserve a higher salary.
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I did a lot of game companies at the time, and people quit not because they were fired, but because they were burned out.
When you have death marches during 6 or 12 months, delivering the game becomes meaningless because you sacrificed so much. It's a matter of pride, but the company doesn't care about you in the end.
The best people quit to find a better company (such a company is quite rare, I must say), and only the incompetent ones remain.
In the end, all valuable experience is gone, and the company's only
wtf (Score:4, Insightful)
whenever CEO pay comes up on this site, people bitch about how much more the CEO makes vs rank and file. Okay, valid complaint.
Here a CEO bucks that trend, nukes his own salary and gives everyone a *minimum* 70k salary -- which is different from everyone getting 70k. He not only does a commendable thing: paying employees more than necessary; but walks the walk and takes a massive paycut himself.
The real story here is the crab-pot mentality. If I'm making 100k, and my cubicle neighbor goes from 35k to 70k, that doesn't have any impact on me whatsoever*. Why complain?
*small scale, intra-company comparison here, yes I know if the minimum wage was suddenly 70k, that's a different beast.
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The real story here is the crab-pot mentality. If I'm making 100k, and my cubicle neighbor goes from 35k to 70k, that doesn't have any impact on me whatsoever*.
Of course it does. Money for wages isn't spontaneously generated, it has to come from somewhere. Spending too much on employees who aren't worth the money (because you could get them, or someone just like them, for much less — obviously this was the case) means that the company's bottom line suffers. It's a waste of money which could be used for something useful. It also impacts the maximum wage that other employees can make, since it's got to come out of the budget. It absolutely does affect you.
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If I'm making 100k, and my cubicle neighbor goes from 35k to 70k, that doesn't have any impact on me whatsoever*. Why complain?
Of course it does.
If I'm working a stressful 60 hours a week to take home $100k, and the company suddenly starts paying the janitor $70k, I'm quitting and becoming a janitor.
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The real story here is the crab-pot mentality. If I'm making 100k, and my cubicle neighbour goes from 35k to 70k, that doesn't have any impact on me whatsoever*. Why complain?
Say you make $70K/yr in a job that required a university degree and ten years experience and have worked for the company for five years. Your work week is usually 60 hours and you often work weekends to get projects complete. Say a new guy is hired in the mail room. He is a high school dropout works 9-5 seven days a week and never works weekend. What would you think if he also made $70K/yr?
It does impact you financially as well. Every company has a budget for wages. When some wages go up others are held dow
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That NYT article in full (Score:5, Informative)
Having run a company, I can get this...it's a refreshing and seemingly decent approach to sharing the wealth.
Great contrast to all the money-grabbing, "screw the employee" bosses that are in the news all the time.
Maybe where he went wrong is not allowing an "upside".
Sure, not everybody who *thinks* they deserve extra really do.
But in my experience some sure as hell do...the trick is to identify them and give them fair value.
(My top staff regularly got 20% over market rates - they earned me far more, so I was happy to pay.)
Snip: "You can ignore economics, but economics won’t ignore you.
That’s the tough lesson Dan Price, CEO of Gravity Payments, a Seattle credit-card processing company, is learning.
Four months ago, Price announced he’d slash his own multimillion-dollar pay and set a company-wide $70,000 minimum wage.
He got the idea after a friend explained her difficulty paying back student loans and surviving on $40,000 a year — a salary many Gravity employees were making.
Price’s stand against income inequality made him an immediate darling of the left.
But key employees saw it differently.
Financial manager Maisey McMaster liked the idea at first — until she thought about it.
“He gave raises to people who have the least skills and are least equipped to do the job,” she told The New York Times. Meanwhile, “The ones who were taking on the most didn’t get much of a bump.”
She thought it would be fairer to give smaller raises, with the clear chance to earn more with experience. Price brushed off her doubts; she quit.
Also out the door: Web developer Grant Moran. He says, “Now the people who were just clocking in and out were making the same as me.” Plus, having your pay level a very public matter is a problem, with “friends now calling you for a loan.”
Moral of the story: Some people work harder than others; some have stronger skills — and they don’t think it’s fair that they’re paid the same as others.
Price will soon be left only with workers worth his chosen minimum wage — or less.
The company is already in chaos thanks to the policy — but the big problem is ahead, as it tries to keep growing and innovating with only mediocre talent"
Re:That NYT article in full (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't leave out that the business is booming, doing much more business than before, and getting tons of applications from high quality candidates attracted by the higher wages.
So yes, the transition might be bumpy. But nobody's salary went down, so they're all making at least what they agreed to for their job. It seems weird to me that people are angry that while they got a raise, but so did lower paid workers, so they aren't making as much more than the other guy as they used to.
A good writeup is at http://www.forbes.com/sites/mi... [forbes.com] .
Re:That NYT article in full (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. Gravity Payments isn't struggling. They've lost a few customers, but they've gained so many new customers that they had to hire new employees to handle them all. The CEO's salary reduction isn't enough to cover additional new hires forever - he went from a million dollars salary to $70k, and gave all that money to the employees. So the company has to pay for the new hires' minimum 70k salary, and pay it out of the millions they're making from the massive growth surge Price has created with his generosity.
Yes two employees have quit. Yes Price is being sued by his brother. Sour grapes, all of them, pissed off because others were getting goodies and they weren't.
The big story here is how economists somehow fail to report the hugely increased profitability of the company.
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Don't leave out that the business is booming,...
How is this not modded up?
There was a time when the discussion on Slashdot had an element of genuine curiosity - when people were actually interested in fact and reason. Now, it seem to be mostly just people trying to push their own simplistic ideology - even against basic observation and logic.
Re:That NYT article in full (Score:5, Insightful)
And in the meantime those two selfish assholes who quit solely because they couldn't stand to see other people not treated worse than them have made themselves radioactive. Why would I ever want to hire people who might throw a huge public tantrum and quit because I don't treat other people badly enough to soothe their ego?
The lesson for CEOs to learn here (Score:2, Interesting)
You should not expect any kind of loyalty from your employees, so you have no obligation to have any for them. Use them, work them down, toss them, replace them.
They do the same with you.
Talk about preaching to the choir! (Score:2)
LOL! All CEOs have known this at least as long as I have been alive.
It's many of the workers who still haven't figured it out the true nature of the interaction.
What this article is missing... (Score:3)
The 'trouble' this article talks about is some drama amongst the workers, part of that fueled by the public spectacle of what happened. A critical ingredient of what's missing from this story are the answers to questions like: "Did the increase in pay cause profit margins at the company to drop?" and "... by how much?"
All this article really says is extreme actions have consequences.
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Yup. Someone didn't learn his history lessons very well. (Or, more likely, was taught that, God Dammit, communism *works* if you only do it right!!!)
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"At least that guy is allrigh as he only wasted own money"
Not true. His brother (who is suing him) who co-founded and owns part of the company had his interest destroyed by this lame experiment.
Re:Those making more than new minimum salary (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen minimum wage go up by 40% since I entered the work force, but my own salary has only gone up by 25% in that same period.
You know that the minimum wage hasn't kept up with inflation in over two decades, right? So if your wages are doing even more poorly than the minimum wage, you're getting fucked and hard. But you're complaining about the people who are getting fucked way harder than you, because them getting fucked slightly less hard means you get fucked slightly harder. What about the people doing the fucking? Maybe you should stop attacking your natural allies.
Re:Those making more than new minimum salary (Score:4, Insightful)
But you don't understand! it's absolutely unfair that Timmy had 3 marbles and got 3 more, and he had 10 marbles and only got 2 more! ITS NOT FAIR!!1! He demands at least 4 marbles or he's going to flip his shit and go full on ballistic temper tantrum followed by pouting for the rest of the afternoon!
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Minimum wage backers also support printing unlimited money to pay for entitlements
[citation needed]
Personally, I favor an MGI, and I think the money should come from corporate taxes. But there are more loopholes than there are dollars.
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One thing that often is missing from discussions about raising minimum wage / minimum salary is what to do with those already making more than the new value. I (like most engineers) make more than minimum wage. I've seen minimum wage go up by 40% since I entered the work force, but my own salary has only gone up by 25% in that same period. Minimum wage goes up, but my buying power goes down.
Exactly. To take an extreme example, if a person makes $15 an hour, and they raise the minimum wage from $8 to $15, then the high school dropout just got almost a 100% raise, and the guy getting $15 an hour gets a 0% raise. That hardly seems fair. On top of that the companies who are now forced to pay a higher minimum wage must either raise prices, fire workers, or if neither of those options is viable, go out of business. Most likely what will happen, since everybody has to pay the new minimum wage, is th
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Ever looked at how many costs are based on unskilled labor costs? It's not many. Raising the minimum wage doesn't mean massive inflation.
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raise the minimum wage from $8 to $15, then the high school dropout just got almost a 100% raise
No. The high school dropout just got fired, and replaced with someone that is actually worth $15/hour.
This is why unions have a hard time organizing workers at Wal-Mart and McDonalds. Those workers are actually smart enough to know that if the wages are raised, the employees will be earning more money, but they will be different employees.
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more bullshit.
they don't unionize because they've been brainwashed by the 'extreme right' that soshalizm is baaaad! jesus would cry if we went socialist, even a little bit.
they are afraid of losing their jobs and big corp USA keeps putting fear into union folks by the same old tactics they used about 100 years ago. same shit, different day.
the workers are not smarter or dumber; they are manipulated and scared into working against their own best interests.
ie, the republicans continue to fuck us all. union
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Except we've already had a minimum wage over $10 an hour in today's money, and the rest of the world pays its mcdonalds workers quite a damn bit more than we do, and that hasn't happened here OR there. You're just talking out of your ass.
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I know, right? We should have high schoolers working those 24 hour drive throughs while they're supposed to be in school or late at night, earning a below-living wage. Real adults just wouldn't stand for that, and don't deserve any better if they do.
Re:Those making more than new minimum salary (Score:4, Insightful)
With the only problem that things ain't the way they were. What was supposedly a temporary job to make ends meet while you study for your "real" job more and more becomes the real job for many people.
Re:Those making more than new minimum salary (Score:5, Informative)
Emphasis mine. The NIR Act established the first minimum wage in America (this was struck down in 1935, ruled unconstitutional by the SC, but a subsequent Act establishing a minimum wage was upheld by the SC in 1941, under that magical Commerce Clause.)
Granted, he doesn't say the family size that decent living would support, but lacking statements to the contrary I assume at least a three-person household. But a temp wage? No, that does not appear to be the intention of it. Big business and our government has twisted and contorted it over the decades to be just a minimum wage paid to people... but if it can't cover life's basics, then what is the point of it at all?
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Hmm. I'm not sold, as that's an opinion piece that links to an opinion piece as the source, and it smells like someone trying to fight the $15/hr idea by linking it to racism.
Buuuut a lot of things around that time had links to racism (and not just black people), so it wouldn't surprise me if it's true. Even if it were, it's irrelevant to the push for a higher min wage being good or bad.
Re:Those making more than new minimum salary (Score:4, Interesting)
The minimum wage was rooted in racism. The argument was something like that blacks were so inferior that they were willing to live in squalor, and that whites needed to be protected from that.
What an even-more-racist-than-reality interpretation you've found yourself there. The argument was that Blacks had been fucked over so badly that squalor was an upgrade for many of them, and that whites needed to be protected from the influx of cheap labor that would result in permitting them to work for any amount of money. And you can see the same situation today with our open border (despite "efforts") with Mexico; we shit on Mexico, and then Mexicans come up here to get a piece of the better life that we've built partially on exploiting their country. Of course, there's less of them doing that now than there have been at other times, because there's less prosperity here than there has been at other times, but it's still a thing. Virtually all of the restaurant jobs that used to go to young white men are now going to Mexicans who are older than they are and have more life (and cooking) experience, for example. That used to be a great source of pitiful amounts of money for people who didn't know anything but flipping burgers.
The minimum wage was originally intended to be a living wage, because creating conditions where people are willing to work for less than that is just a form of slavery. Perhaps we could call it "Monetary Fractional Slavery".
To avoid it being slavery, you have to avoid it being mandatory. This is why I favor a MGI which would cover the basic costs of living. Of course, one commie plot just leads to the next; if the government is managing these costs then it's going to look for ways to reduce these costs, which usually means nationalizing the utilities. And we can't have the requirements for life provided at-cost, that'd be Un-'merican! Except, of course, there are actually many municipal utilities throughout the USA, even in the most conservative of bastions, and most of them are quite efficient and functional. People don't even know what they're railing against.
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Yep, only 4% of workforce even make the minimum to start with. And it was never designed to raise a family of 4 as some spout off. Its a temp wage essentially while you learn to pull up your pants and grow the fuck up, then shut up.
Yes, minimum wage versus living wage. Flipping burgers doesn't require specialized skills and should be seen as a job and not a career.
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Nah, rather CEOs paid by their real worth.
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...and as soon as job was out of the picture, it failed horribly right?
Oh, wait...
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Steve Jobs had two main feelings/opinions;
1. Steve Jobs always has the right answer.
2. Apple employees and customers exist for the sole purpose of making Steve Jobs lots of cash.
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Yeah, how dare he try to put his employees first - even ahead of himself. What an asshole!
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I think you must have made a typo there somewhere, I tried to understand what you were saying, but I'm unable to reconcile it with all of our economic models based on rational actors. Since clearly the economic models are correct, whatever you're proposing is just wrong.