[projectileboy]

Well... yes. But if the company suddenly becomes wildly more profitable because of work you’ve done will your salary grow in proportion? Of course not. I admire your work ethic, but you might want to consider just how asymmetric the employer/employee relationship is.

[nataz]

If you miss a deadline or delay the launch of a product does the company dock your base pay?

Look, I'm not saying you shouldn't optimize for your own goals. You do you, no judgement.

What I am saying is that running a successful company means optimizing for the company, not the individual. And the best run companies make sure that the incentives of their staff are closely aligned with the company.

If staff are functionally lying to their company about their output, something has gone wrong.

[SomeCallMeTim]

> If staff are functionally lying to their company about their output, something has gone wrong.

Problem is that productivity gains are extreme across most industries over the past fifty years, and except at the FAANG end of the income spectrum where people are making $300k+/year, those gains have been 100% absorbed by employers and not passed on to workers.

As such, employers are the ones to have broken the social contract. Yes, they're pushed to do this because they can, and there are no penalties to dissuade them from this behavior (specifically because employee organizations/unions have fallen out of favor, though that may seem to be reversing recently).

So it feels justified to provide a service to an employer for a fixed fee (a salary or weekly contract wage) in exchange for satisfactory work output, and to not work the hours the employer may assume you're working. It's a profoundly asymmetric relationship, and letting an employer believe you're working more hours for that work output--as long as they're happy with your work output!--is balanced by the fact that they're not paying you what you're worth to them.

The latter is clearly true if they're continuing to be happy with your work output and you're working half as many hours as they may believe you to be working. And yet they absolutely wouldn't double your salary if you doubled your work output.

[sidlls]

Even at the FAANG end the gains are tiny compared to the ownership class.

[sidlls]

> If you miss a deadline or delay the launch of a product does the company dock your base pay?

Inasmuch as it impacts the performance review, yes. Employees are held accountable to a much more extreme degree than gains are shared.