[naasking]

> But it seems like at least part of the problem in endemic in our view of organisations. People often want management positions because they are paid more, are more secure, or have more power. Maybe if we shifted our view of management as "just being a different skill set" and not always being higher paid then we'd find people without the required skills wouldn't try and obtain those positions and would focus on what they are good at.

This is exactly it. Hierarchies are good for efficiently organizing and distributing work. I mean, they're trees which are used everywhere for load balancing and distribution in computer science. We just have to break the association of a work hierarchy with social status which we're hard-wired to see, and part of that is the higher salaries given to people higher in the hierarchy.

Really, salary should probably be tied to hours and seniority.

[barrkel]

The organization that pays the market wage will usually out-compete the organization which pays based on hours and seniority. Seniority is a poor proxy for productivity (theer's definitely a correlation, but it's not strong and it ignores individual variation, which is large), while paying based on hours is rewarding poor productivity.

[naasking]

> The organization that pays the market wage will usually out-compete the organization which pays based on hours and seniority.

That's conjecture though isn't it? Because the organization that doesn't promote its star employees out of their range of competence will perform better and have less turnover because people won't be leaving for better opportunities elsewhere.

> Seniority is a poor proxy for productivity (theer's definitely a correlation, but it's not strong and it ignores individual variation, which is large),

Sure, obviously productivity is a consideration in whether to keep an employee, and possibly a consideration for raises. You don't want to keep any kind of non-productive employee. But while they're not productive in their current role, they might be productive in another role.

> while paying based on hours is rewarding poor productivity.

You're assuming a lot about what I meant by hours.