
Ask HN:  Why would a company with stellar employees pay salaries? - amichail
Why not pay employees for significant achievements only and in proportion to those achievements?  If they create nothing worthwhile, they would receive zero income.<p>Everyone at the company would be aware of who is getting how much and for what.  If they are not happy with the results, then could just leave.<p>Presumably stellar employees would have enough confidence in their abilities to consider such an arrangement.<p>If they need money in the short term, then they can work on something that they can finish in a month or two.
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RiderOfGiraffes
How do you measure the achievement of a groups of employees, some of whom have
worked on more than one project?

Why should they trust you to pay them appropriately from the profits?

How do you entice employees to work on less glamorous projects?

How do you entice programmers to work on risky projects that may not pay off
at all?

How do you get a better employee to work with rather than against a less
stellar employee?

Contractors offering fixed-price contractors do this, but they don't do the
grunt work that underpins much of the continuing work.

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stonemetal
If I am shouldering 100% of the Risk and getting 100% of the rewards then I am
not an employee I am a business owner.

If I am shouldering 100% of the Risk and getting less than 100% of the reward
then I am a business owner who has been conned out of my fair share.

Also what sort of portion does the receptionist get? They need to be paid
something and yet I don't believe anyone considers answering the phone a
"significant achievement".

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aristus
Risk has to be proportionate to authority and reward. Responsibility without
authority is a recipe for disaster -- any overworked assistant or salesperson
can tell you that.

So... the greater the risk you ask other people to take, the more reward and
authority you must give them. At the extreme you are talking about ("they
would receive zero income.") the "employees" would basically be cofounders.

~~~
amichail
But consider a company that works in the way I mentioned that employs 10,000
people. They would share IP and infrastructure. And employees can change teams
very easily.

~~~
barry-cotter
Maybe you've heard of Coase's theorem? It's relevant to this discusion.
Anyway, above a very small number you can't reliably value someone's true
contributions, because there are feedback effects and problems of assymetric
information. If you've heard of Dunbar's number that is probably teh absolute
maximum anything remotely close to this could work at, and I'd actually be
surprised at it working with more than 15 people. But that isn't a company
(stocks) it's a partnership.

BTW, good on you for doing an app, but the screen is too wide, there's no
reason for the scroll bar along the bottom. Also the discussion link is
pointless, no activity, no point. Add a highscore thing and ask people if they
want to phone home when they get their personal high score.

