Why should it be tied to other employees’ compensation? Fairness and capitalism-based business generally don’t go together. That kind of thinking leads to all kinds of problems. For example, is it fair for an employee to jump ship for a higher salary offer elsewhere and leave their coworkers to pick up the pieces? Is it fair for some employees to make more than others just because they're better at negotiating? Is it fair that software engineers make several times as much as teachers just because the thing they're good at happens to be in high demand right now? I would say no.
Isn’t that the mantra? Yoi are assuming that once you leave, the company doesn’t hire your replacement. You are supposed to leave your first few employments if you want to make big gains in your salary and not be stuck with the annual set amount of raise? Hell, I did that and doubled my income. The last work hired someone else and paid them what I got paid.
Tying the CEO salary to employee compensation wouldn’t change that. CEOs get raises because the company is doing better. Isn’t the company doing better because the employees are doing better work? So why does just the CEO get paid more? Who not the employees with him?
The argument here is that the value of a company is actually in the imaginations of the Important People who make Big Deals with it. This value may be related to the stuff done by workers but the CEO's personal relationship with other CEOs carries as much weight as "observed reality". This is one of the major reasons that so much totally shitty "enterprise" software is made
> Why should it be tied to other employees’ compensation?
Because the employer cannot exist without his employees, and if the employer is getting billions while the employees are only getting thousands, then those employees are certainly getting undercharged.
It's a way to force wages to scale to productivity and value, something that (if you have not remained ignorant of the current political dialogue), has been shown again and again to not be happening anymore.
Not just that but, why should the employer make more? What added value does the CEO bring that other people cannot already do? Most CEOs can be replaced without employees, consumers, and shareholders noticing. The 'personnel value' that a CEO brings is clearly very marginal in most businesses, as opposed to bringing in more engineers or HR workers or temps. And the CEO's salary can pay for a lot more of those.
> Is it fair that software engineers make several times as much as teachers just because the thing they're good at happens to be in high demand right now? I would say no.
I disagree. Nobody forced anyone to be a teacher: people have chosen that job knowing full well they’d make less money than an engineer. People aren’t assigned careers like they were in a the Soviet Union: they pick what they want to do. I used to be a photojournalist. The pay sucked so I ended up doing software. Nothing is stopping a teacher from making similar choices. People complain about the pay, but they keep joining lower paid professions. It’s supply and demand.
yeah maybe it would be better if everyone were just paid the same regardless of job, as long as they put in a 30 or 40 hour week. Why is one person more valuable because they went to school isn't all life valuable? how mad would you be if you went to starbucks and had to make your own coffee?
Shouldn't everyone at least have enough for the basic necessities in life if they're willing to work (at anything not just professional jobs).
So while nobody is forcing people to work x job for shitty pay, I don't see how just because someone is famous or a CEO that warrants being paid 500x anyone else. There's a lot of shitty CEO's who definitely aren't worth 500x a software a developer, yet there they are making it regardless because the rich lookout for the rich.
Do you think it's actually okay for the person teaching your kids algebra to be making barely more money than the cashier ringing up your groceries at the store, while having to pay for supplies for their class out of their own pocket?
> Why should it be tied to other employees’ compensation?
If a company is doing exceeding well, why should only the CEO see the benefit, and not the people doing the grunt work of actually building the products that lead to the company's success?
> Fairness and capitalism-based business generally don’t go together.
They don't, but they can.
> That kind of thinking leads to all kinds of problems. For example, is it fair for an employee to jump ship for a higher salary offer elsewhere and leave their coworkers to pick up the pieces? I would say no.
I would say yes. People jump to new jobs for a higher salary all the time.
I agree with this but have to add, not everyone CAN jump ship, because we don't have single-payer or universal healthcare, some people HAVE to keep working their shitty job no matter what or risk losing healthcare, so in that essence they're slaves.
Ideas of gbi, employee-pegged ceo pay, and universal healthcare all benefit worker mobility which will also keep corporations in check even more and 'temper' capitalism, it's not socialism --it's tempered capitalism instead of runaway crony capitalism that we'd like to see implemented.
Well just like that whole paul graham vs the founder of cloudflare last week, where PG said that the founders of airbnb were broke and that's why they started, and the cloudflare guy called him out on it mentioning they didn't have totally no support and most founders have some support backup in case things get super hard that it's really hard to be 1 paycheck from the curb and start anything, or live on the street and start a software business. A lot of people went to backup PG, but then there were a lot to side w/ Matthew Prince as well.
I think it's both ways, I mean there's both sides of the political spectrum on HN, you've got your progressives and Trump supporters, and everything in between. A lot of people aspire to be CEO here, and would like to know they can set their own rates and feel that someday they'll be the next Elon Musk though for 90% reading this that's highly unlikely they might make it to 1% of his success if they're super lucky.
Equality of outcome is a dark place to go. Every single time it has been attempted it has resulted in mass death. Is capitalism fair? Maybe not, but you'll see less body bags than the alternatives.
Absolute equality of outcome is definitely not a good idea.
But workers should have some sort of compensation for success of the company. If the company releases a new product and it triples the value of the company, the workers should see some sort of bonus for the value they created. Leadership is a tough job, and CEOs take on risk, but without the grunt workers the company has nothing.
To be clear, I'm not expecting equality, but the wealth gap shouldn't be as gaping as it is.
Can you articulate why it’s not a good idea? There’s a few workers coops that pay equal salaries without occurrences of mass death.
To me at least the vast majority of pay structure in traditional companies seems to be hierarchical rather than actually being structured around ‘merit’. And for many businesses I’d wager it’s really hard to actually determine individual merit over the lifetime of a business. As such a flat pay structure might be better. Particularly if there is a profit sharing scheme?
I totally agree, some cashiers at Winco are millionaires and STILL working as Cashiers...and who wouldn't when the company treats you right and you are part owner?
Some jobs are harder than others, with the definition of "hard" varying from job to job (ie, physically, mentally, or emotionally draining, dangerous, or requiring a rare skill). Harder jobs should be paid more, otherwise, what incentive is there to take on hard jobs?
The "mass death" thing the other commenter brought up is just plain silly, IMO. Communism failed (and will always fail) due to corruption and greed, and in the past has always been implemented by malicious dictators.
The hierarchical pay structure makes some sense because the higher you go, the more risk you bring to the company. A low-level manager may make a bad hiring choice that costs the company tens of thousands in wasted wages after hiring someone unproductive. Middle management may mismanage their teams and create working environments that lower morale. Upper management and CEOs may make bad decisions on what new products to green light and can cost the company millions or tank it completely.
So, it makes sense IMO to pay the higher ups more, but there should be a profit sharing scheme of some sort to reward people of all levels for their contribution to the success of the company.
I don’t think we do a good job of paying well for hard jobs at all so I don’t really see the idea that people won’t do them if we don’t pay well as being very well supported.
Further I can definitely see the argument that having more responsibility could be incentivised with higher pay if the risk to the individual actually increased. But I also see no compelling evidence that is actually the case. But usually in structures with flatter pay like coops individuals have more say anyway.
Corruption and greed also seem like good explanations for the status quo TBH.
If you are the type of worker who can enable a company to triple it's value you likely are well compensated already, if you aren't paid well I'd suggest checking with your employers competitors to see if they too would like to triple their value and just how much it's worth to them.
If after that search you find no one willing to pay you more perhaps consider if you really are so pivotal to the companies success.
No single person will triple the value of a company. Not even the CEO. The CEO may make a major decision, but it's still the people at the very bottom doing the grunt work that implement it, and they should see some of the fruit of their labor.
In my circle of friends the tradesmen are doing much better financially than the college educated. Even though my friends who chose the trades are from poorer backgrounds. I myself am a high school drop out who is able to single handedly support a family and own my own home. (The great thing about compliers is they don't care how educated you are) As far as I can tell meritocracy is working. It would seem to me having the state try and make things "more fair" will very likely result in the opposite.
