[mostlyghostly]

I'm keenly aware of the disparity. However...

- If we do not keep the highly paid senior sales rep, we're going to have no customers and thus... everyone gets canned. - They are objectively better off leaving for another firm, where they don't need to worry about impending doom. So we need to provide an appropriate incentive to prevent them from breaking ranks and screwing everyone else left behind. - The humble factory worker or customer service person doesn't have that same kind of impact on the whole....

Any moral conversation ultimately becomes a discussion about why someone with objectively better and safer options should continue to work for a company that is paying them less than market. Unless everyone else is willing to work for reduced salary / benefits and promise not to quit, that's not a morally tenable position....

Personally, I'd love it if people acted for the greater good. That's not going to happen here, unless you want to restrict people from changing employers and force them to show up to work...

[jolux]

I guess the real answer here is I'm not cut out to be an exec and I don't understand the mindset of people who are because I'm fine getting payed $100k a year (modulo inflation) for the rest of my life and I've lived most of my career at $30k, and I would never fire anyone to increase my own salary. I would sooner go broke at a company I ran than hang people out to dry who depended on me for a livelihood.

[kortilla]

> and I would never fire anyone to increase my own salary

How about this instead? Your company is overstaffed due to a massive drop in sales. You will run out of money and will have to fire everyone including yourself in one month. Your other choice is to cut 80% of the staff immediately and your business will make enough to pay everyone’s salary who remains.

The better choice for everyone is the surviving business, and that’s the one that puts more money in your pocket. Letting people go is a business decision and it’s very often the correct one. Good business decisions lead to making more money.

[kelnos]

That's not what we're talking about, though. If you suddenly don't have the market you used to, then it makes sense to cut down your workforce to be the appropriate size for the market you do have.

But that doesn't mean it's ethical to then throw money at your executives just to keep them around. If the business is viable with the smaller market and smaller workforce, then the executives should either stick around based on the company's future prospects, or leave. If they want to leave, then perhaps executives of their caliber aren't required to run the company given its new reality. Getting them to stick around by showering them with more money just increases wage inequality.

[kortilla]

“Showering them with more money” in these scenarios is “give them some more stock” to try to offset the 90% of their income they just lost due to the stock becoming near worthless.

[selimthegrim]

Never be a starting assistant professor then.

[jolux]

What does that have to do with any of this?