[TulliusCicero]

> my group (with no positions in Colorado) preemptively bumped up everyone’s salaries to the midpoint of their pay bands

Uhh, surely I'm not the only one seeing the obvious flaw here, right? Is the inevitable outcome here that pay bands will now cover a range where nobody is actually in the lower half, ever? That lower half of the range will just be there as a sort of psychological buffer?

[marricks]

So the pay bands go up. Everyone gets paid more, board salary go down a bit, and things hopefully become a bit more event. Sounds good? Things have been going the other direction far too long.

[throwaway09223]

Board retainers aren't significant expense anywhere as far as I'm aware. Often their stipends are less than an employee's pay.

For example, Google's board stipend is $100k, which is about half the median total comp of an average employee (less, counting benefits). Walmart I think pays their board $60k.

You may be thinking of executive comp, but even then it is generally not significant amount. You could completely eliminate and redistribute executive compensation at Wal-Mart and it wouldn't really make a measurable difference in employee hourly salaries.

[vlovich123]

That's not accurate. The board meets maybe 4 times a year. Let's be generous and say they work one full calendar month of the year. That means their pro-rated stipend is actually 1.2 M/year. Google employees who only choose to work one month of the year can do so, but the median salary would be 16k dollars. AFAIK board members don't put in a month's worth of work so that 1.2 M/year is an underestimate. They also can sit on multiple boards simultaneously whereas moonlighting in multiple companies is not generally possible in the same way.

[throwaway09223]

We're discussing whether redistributing the board stipends would change individual salaries and the clear answer is it will not, even in the most extreme situations.

But, to your point regarding prorated comp: I've been a salaried employee at a company like Google. I've also been a board member.

First, like many senior tech employees my total comp market rate is in the seven figures. A pro-rated 1.2M stipend would be appropriate to compensate me for my time. The average board retainer for less profitable companies is closer to $30k/yr. These are not entry level positions and the retainers are shockingly low in the vast majority of cases. (In my case, I'm on the board of a non-profit and I actually pay them)

Second, I think you are underestimating how little some salaried workers actually work. I think if you try you can find more than a few Google employees who only work one month a year ;) Conversely: I work far harder in my role as a board member than I used to in my salaried role. It's different for everyone of course, but I assure you no one is seeking out board seat retainers as a way to get rich. It's just not worth it.

[Thorrez]

>but I assure you no one is seeking out board seat retainers as a way to get rich.

Can they be leveraged for networking to get a CEO job in the future?

[TulliusCicero]

The pro-rated version is irrelevant, since the comment was talking about board salaries going down in order to fund higher salaries elsewhere.

[Epa095]

I did not read it as "in order", but rather "and". So both happen, but I did not see a causation in the post.

[showerst]

Walmart is a bad comparison there; they have an enormous headcount of low-paid staff. Many tech companies are far lower headcount, but with high executive pay.

Looking at some other companies, Activision-Blizzard's CEO alone makes enough to pay every employee a $15,000 bonus. Reed Hastings at Netflix makes enough to pay every employee $3800. And that's not counting any of the rest of the executive staff, or all the other ways money flows out of a company to non-employees, like dividends and stock buybacks.

https://www.equilar.com/reports/83-equilar-associated-press-...

I think there's certainly a lot of room for wages to go up, though i'm skeptical that it will come at the expense of things like executive pay or share buybacks.

[throwaway09223]

Activision-Blizzard's board get 350k. If they earned $0 instead, this would only give each employee an extra $35 per year. That's including their stock compensation.

As you say, most goes to investors. Which makes sense as they actually own the company.

[jeromegv]

OP was talking about executives (CEO, VPs), not board.

[throwaway09223]

I am OP's OP and I was talking about the board.

[TulliusCicero]

> board salary go down a bit

[TulliusCicero]

The comment referred to specifically said "board salaries", not executive pay more broadly.

[lmkg]

I read somewhere that this is exactly what happened when (publicly-traded?) companies were required to publicize executive compensation. And it's a major reason why exec salaries have increased while regular salaries have not over the past few decades.

So... seems fair to me. Maybe salaries will actually increase enough that people won't have to switch jobs every three years to get a raise.

[TulliusCicero]

> So the pay bands go up.

They can't, though; if you do that, now there are people in the bottom half, and they're upset that they're 'below average'.

You basically need a vanity range for pay.

[sangnoir]

It's not a vanity range if it's leading to real-life salary adjustments.

[TulliusCicero]

Vanity clothing sizing leads to real life changes in clothes measurements too.

[shmatt]

More like: Pay bands go up. Company cuts 15% of workforce "to achieve better numbers"

Every time you read that headline, the company could have just cut pay by 15% and gotten the same profitability. Higher pay will force medium-small companies to hire less people

Some SV companies make Billions in profits per quarter. Some don't. I've seen far too many employees try to justify why they should be making Meta compensation elsewhere. It doesn't and shouldn't work that way

[jeremyjh]

How does that follow? They will just lower the bottom of the pay bands, and now people who in the bottom third are at the midpoint without another dollar being spent.

[eropple]

And then, because law is not code and being technically correct is frequently not the best kind of correct, the question becomes "OK, are there actually any employees at that point in the pay band?" and folks start tugging their collars and going "well..." until that activity becomes disallowed, either via judicial interpretation or legislative amendment.

[bombcar]

That's very common in anything that has a range. The pay bands will shift to compensate for it.

[collegeburner]

We all now work at Lake Wobegon. Which means salaries will be set to average value of the position and lazy people will be subsidized by hard workers and better contributors. Not everybody contributes the same value.