[treis]

It doesn't really work because the incentives become misaligned. It becomes a good thing for workers to have things go wrong and for them to be inefficient with their time. Organizations end up much less flexible because they then don't trust their workers not to milk them.

Ultimately it changes from paying someone to get a job done to paying them for hours worked. Anyone that's hired a plumber knows that you get far faster and efficient work in the first situation.

[Hamuko]

I get full pay for a sick day and I don't have a cap on sick days. And yet, I have not called in sick in the last two years.

Just because people could do something, doesn't mean that they will do it. The people at our company do not spend all of their time making the system more unreliable so that they'd be paid more to be on call. Hell, if you asked the developers, most of them would probably love to spend more time making the system more reliable, but the bosses usually want developers to add more features.

[scarby2]

This! I hate the perverse incentive that many americans try to push about sick leave, overtime etc. The truth of the matter is that most people actually want to do their job. Do people abuse sick leave - yes, but it is certainly the minority of sick days taken.

In fact leave is undervalued as a concept by most US employers/employees, various studies have found that workers who take more vacation and work less hours are healthier and more productive. Some progressive companies are starting to learn from this (I spoke to a travel technology company a while ago who will fund you to take a 2 week trip out of the country every year).

[theshrike79]

This. It used to be normal to be pride of your craft. You do your best because that's what you do.

Now it seems that true craftsmen are the exception now, people are just hustlers in it for the money. Do it as cheap and fast as possible, bill fas much as you can and off to the next job.

[bonzini]

And instead in the US case it becomes a good thing for companies not to bother about employee well being and for them to be bad at allocating the employee time. Organizations end up much less efficient because, after milking their workers too much, they leave and the high turnover means higher onboarding costs.

Ultimately there's also a moral aspect of whether the employer owns the whole life of the employee or they are on a more balanced relationship. Anybody who's had to endure micromanagement knows that you get far more engaged and efficient work in the latter situation.

[Afton]

I don't think this comment deserves the downvotes it got even though I disagree.

Consider your example: If you pay a tradesperson to 'do a job' you should expect that they will cut every corner available to them that isn't in the contract. If you are paying for time, you might expect them to do a more thorough job. Which is better depends on a number of factors.

[jfk13]

The risk of paying for time is that the worker may deliberately (or even subconsciously) take longer than necessary to get things done.

[bonestormii_]

That's crazy, IMO. This view supposes that the workers simply extract wealth from the company, rather than exchanging wealth for their time, which also has innate value to the worker.

Per this view, if a worker worked 100% of their time, they would have achieved their optimum goal of extracting the most wealth possible. But nearly all people who have made that trade would tell you they are depressed, feel run down, and probably think about blowing their brains out on a regular basis.

At some point, the plumber wants to go home, too. Now, maybe it's true that they'll take 1 hour to complete a job at a comfortable rate rather than the fastest-possible rate of 45 minutes, and maybe 4 jobs get completed that day instead of 5 as a result. But it is also true that the 4 jobs may be done with a greater attention to detail. Ever have a maintenance worker track filth into your residence with reckless abandon? What is the value of a more rested, present, and thoughtful worker?

You may argue that for a plumber, there is no value added in that. But I would argue that the value is there, even though the business owner can't extract it as revenue. It is there in the quality of the work, the happiness of the worker, and the happiness of the customer. It makes for a better world, and if you value your employees and customers as people, you'll see that interests are aligned.

All of that said, the economy is a thing. If your business is in a highly competitive market, it's easy to wind up with thin margins in a race to the bottom. But if that's the case, is it not the responsibility of the business management/ownership to either find a way to be competitive short of exploiting workers, or otherwise exit the market and pursue another venture?

At the lowest level, workers will be trained for and work the jobs that are available to them, and the jobs available will be dictated as a function of the the local demand for that service or product. If a small, poorly run, exploitative plumbing company can't find the margins to operate because they are competing with better services, they should cease to exist. The demand will remain the same, and their exit from the market place will result in growth for their competitors, and the jobs will be recreated.

If you are a plumber by trade and run your own plumbing company and can't find a way to exist without exploiting your workers, you should exit the market as a business owner and work for another company. Otherwise, your business isn't plumbing, but exploitation itself.

[efdee]

If you pay someone to get a job done, that sounds like a contractor. If you pay someone for their hours worked, that's a salaried employee.

[jfk13]

Actually, I think there are three categories, not two.

If you pay someone to get a job done, that's a contractor.

If you pay someone for their hours worked, that's an hourly-waged employee.

If you pay someone a salary, you're paying them to spend their working time, which will typically be around 35-40 hours a week but is not strictly defined or measured, attending to your business needs in whatever ways are agreed between you. It's a quite different relationship, based on a different level of expectations and trust.

To give a specific example: I'm a (European-based) salaried employee of a (US-based) company. Most weeks I spend rather more than 40 hours, one way or another, working on things for my employer, as I (mostly) enjoy my work and want to make the best contribution I can. Sometimes personal stuff comes up, and I may end up spending significantly less, but no-one's keeping track at that level on a day-to-day basis. I don't expect extra money if I work into the evening to finish something I'm involved in, nor do I expect to lose money if I spend the afternoon taking care of a family emergency.

I have in the past had a time-card that I punched when arriving at work, and again when leaving, and my employer paid me for the hours I worked; no more, no less. I'd call that "wages". My current employer pays me an agreed annual sum; it does not depend on the total number of hours I work during the year, but it comes with an expectation of how I will spend my time and expertise. That's a "salary".

[GoblinSlayer]

Workers can destroy the system due to incompetence too, then they are just fired as incompetent, i.e. you need to deal with this anyway.