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by booleandilemma 1403 days ago
A gem from the post you linked:

Your compensation is on a second-by-second basis: at the end of the day you’ll see that your wallet has been topped up by the exact amount you’ve earned that day

No no no. I want a salary. I want to know how much money I'll be making over a week, a month, even , <gasp>, a year. How else am I supposed to plan expenses? Support a family?

Really, what a stupid idea.

7 comments

I mean it's not a particularly new idea, it's basically what the gig economy is all about and is very much the norm in low skilled labor with shitty payment.

It's not by-second, but that's a way too small unit of measurement anyway, so that was a non starter to begin with.

You have a surplus and don't live paycheck to paycheck.

To me the idea of having your life function like a JiT warehouse is stressful...

The Amazon warehouse worker experience.
I wouldn’t write it off that quickly. The reason we have a two week pay period is a matter of administrative costs. When these drop because they are automated with a computer you can now pay continuously. Why should you work two weeks on credit? On the flip side a payroll company could make decent money off the two week time arbitration.
The two week period is "typical" in US, in the EU countries usually payment for personnel is monthly, JFYI (though in some firms/fields there can be an "advance" around the 2nd week, usually less than half the pay).
I really enjoyed the second example of paying Netflix by the second. The blockchain has invented movie rentals.
Being paid for what you have actually done is not a "stupid idea."
If you have no control over the hours you have to work, could be called in at any time, or are not allowed to work for others at your discretion, a paid a base rate for being retained makes sense.

Not to mention, for many jobs, time at work is not a measure of ‘how much work’ you’ve done and such a measure creates an incentive to be inefficient.

It is a stupid idea in the sense that you can see everyone at the top of society financially, socially, influentially, does not have that apply to them or want it to apply to them. From landlords and business owners wanting to be paid for what other people have actually done, to singers and movie makers and authors wanting to be paid for every copy long after what they did, to personal branding wanting to be paid for putting "Michael Jordan" on clothing, to patent holders wanting to be paid for what they thought of, to license holders wanting to be paid for what they permit others to do, to conduits wanting to be paid for what travels through them, to governments wanting to tax what others do, to lobbied politicians wanting to be paid for not getting in someone's way. If the people 'above' you definitely don't want it for themselves, it's quite likely a stupid idea for you to accept them doing it to you.

On the other side, business owners want to pay employees for "what they have actually done" miss the forest for the trees; leading to stories like the developers committing unfinished code, QA finding lots of bugs (for all the basic functionality that was never written), developers fixing those bugs, and hooray the metrics look great for activity but meaningful progress is through the floor and quality is nowhere to be seen. And keys pressed, minutes spent in meetings, reports written, are on the up - easily padded filler and busywork - and difficult to measure things like customer satisfaction, employee morale, creativity, design, planning, are on the down.

Those two concepts aren't at odds really.
> I want a salary.

That's your opinion.

You want safety and don't like risk.

There are many folks that think like you.

But thankfully, not everyone functions this way.