[jamespollack]

From an HN admin this is pretty off-putting.

If I work for a company and I'm earning them millions of dollars, you're saying that I don't deserve to be compensated proportionally, I should just give them my time and effort because of "self-respect"?

This explains why you always silence my replies on the Who's Hiring posts. If you truly think that people should work for 'self-respect', no wonder you hate it when I ask that companies post about their hiring requirements: length of process, type of interviews, projects and whether they're paid, etc.

Obviously you think we should all do those things for free because of our "self-respect". You must be rich AF already to have that kind of attitude.

[dwaltrip]

> If I work for a company and I'm earning them millions of dollars, you're saying that I don't deserve to be compensated proportionally, I should just give them my time and effort because of "self-respect"?

Companies offer compensation based on a combination of the possible alternatives for that individual and cultural norms. If they know you can't get more elsewhere and the given amount is not vastly outside of the accepted norms (e.g. such that leadership feels morally satisfied and the company isn't at risk of harm due to a possible societal backlash), why would they offer you more?

Of course, some companies care about norms more than others. And I don't think it is ever the primary factor.

[jamespollack]

Companies literally collude to keep salaries down.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/24/apple-goo...

[dwaltrip]

Yes, many (not all) companies are morally and ethically compromised to varying degrees. The law should attempt to reduce these harms where possible.

I don't think this significantly affects what I wrote above.

[jamespollack]

The link addresses the "If they know you can't get more elsewhere" portion of what you posted, but I didn't respond substantially to the rest. Thanks for the chance to expand.

> "at risk of harm due to a possible societal backlash"

Fear of backlash over paying too little should not be a motivation for compensation. Trying to push it as low as you can without actually sparking dissent, internally or externally, is a cruel game.

I'm into the idea of worker co-ops, so I'm not starting from an assumption that the purpose of a business is to maximize profits for shareholders. Sure, the business might profit less if it pays its employees more, to me a business IS its employees, not a separate entity. If the employees create even more value for the company as a whole, paying them more is a cause for celebration.

If the amount of value you provide increases in a meaningful way, so should your compensation. Instead, on salary we provide unpaid overtime in times of need and enjoy a flat-line of compensation even if we create a new product, invention, or process that massively increases company value.

Bonuses, equity compensation, etc can and are gamed by companies to pay as little as possible without "fear of backlash," like you said. (Cliffs, golden handcuffs, dilution, preferred shares, etc).

Theoretically a salary should be desirable because it de-risks the downside: what if you're put on an under-performing team, or your product launch flops? NBD, because you're on salary, right?

Likely you'll just be fired anyway - you can be fired anytime without cause (in CA anyhow, since we're at-will).

So, salaried positions result in what the OP I was replying to said - "the logical thing to do is to scale back your effort to a point where the amount you get done matches the amount you get paid for".

That DOES seem logical to me. And undesirable. We want people to dial their effort up, right? How do we build compensation and hiring systems that reward people who can add value? As it stands we're leaving a lot of human potential untapped - by design!

[dang]

I don't think those things. If you're curious about what I meant, I'd of course be happy to share. But this comment and your others are making me feel like that might not be a good idea to try right now.

[quickthrower2]

Yes it’s a complex emotive topic with lots of overlapping discussion and with terms like “self respect” meaning different things to different people.

The deeper into the thread the harder it is to make a point as I don’t even know who I’m answering and what they meant and what points of their comment ancestors they are answering to!

[jamespollack]

edit: he did not delete my comment, it was below the fold. sorry. my question is still the same though.

yup, dang already deleted my comment on Who's Hiring. what's your issue with engineers being able to compare processes between companies?

[dang]

I did not delete your comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23045720).

I'll try to come back and reply to your posts in this thread later.

[jamespollack]

that's on me, looks like it was below the fold and is still there for now. but you're likely about to send it to the bottom for being off-topic, like you did last month. i've posted the same thing for 3 or so months in a row and there haven't been any changes. it's not even like you have to do anything other than say, "Please include some of this info".

[dang]

That's part of the problem. It's not ok to keep repeating the same comment on HN.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

My issue is not "with engineers being able to compare processes between companies", it's with you (or any user) hijacking the job board with meta opinions about how the job board should be organized. Meta discussion all too easily takes over a thread and is particularly off topic in Who Is Hiring, which is a specialized context and not the usual open discussion. There's plenty of opportunity for freewheeling discussion elsewhere on the site.

Lots of people have strong opinions about how the hiring threads should work, because people have strong feelings about hiring in general. The job board itself is not a good place to argue about those; it's off topic, adds noise and makes it less useful for its purpose. If one user is allowed to do it, many others will certainly follow, so this isn't just about one comment.

I explained to you last month under what circumstances we'd consider making the kind of changes you're asking for; I also explained why that sort of meta comment is off topic and not allowed in the thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22755576). To show up the next month and do the same thing again starts to not be cool; please don't do that any more.

[jamespollack]

so what's the way to do this that doesn't break the rules? just an Ask HN post about how to improve Who's Hiring posts?