[wootland]

I'd add d) when all of the gains are captured by execs and investors, if you don't do everything you can to maximize your return and minimize your input, you're being exploited.

It's strange to me that anyone would care about people cheating at job interviews and not say CEO pay that's 1,000X the average employee. More power to those who can balance things in their favor against those who have everything to gain and nothing to lose.

[selcuka]

It's interesting that you think the promotion of an engineer would have any effect on the CEOs pay. Someone was going to be promoted anyway, the CEO couldn't care less about who. The problem here is that it should have been supposedly someone else who actually earned it.

[AaronM]

Is there any evidence, other than these people using unethical methods to get hired on initiall at companies, that they didn't earn the raises they received?

[selcuka]

I don't have any evidence, but that's the premise of the article. Whether it is evidence based or not was not the topic of my comment.

But to answer your question subjectively, yes, in my experience cheaters will cheat. If they used unethical methods to get hired that's a strong indicator that they will also cheat their way to raises and promotions.

[wootland]

I’m saying that it’s pointless to get upset at someone getting a raise when the person in charge makes orders of magnitude the amount of money you do. That is the problem, not labor doing what it can to eke out a microscopic amount of leverage.

[selcuka]

That's whataboutism, though. Why should I focus on some other problem when we are talking about this problem now.

[wootland]

This isn’t a problem. That’s the point.

[CydeWeys]

Cheaters getting ahead of honest people is of course a problem and I don't understand how you could possibly say it isn't. Those cheaters are taking away jobs and promotions from people who deserve it more.

[wootland]

If by the cheaters you mean the executives and investors who personally capture all of the profit, then I couldn't agree more. The reason that we're suffering from "inflation" and see record high wealth inequality is because the people at the top are hoarding all of the capital and profit leaving little for the vast majority of people.

[antihero]

It’s not about impacting the CEO’s pay, it’s about exceeding maximum value from a job that is exploiting you in order for them to get that pay and benefit shareholders. Other than a few SMEs run by genuinely good people, capitalism puts us in adversarial position because if we don’t take one we’ll be hugely taken advantage of.

[mattgreenrocks]

I think more people are waking up to the fact that the corporate ladder is a joke. Hence all the whining about WFH, quiet quitting, and GenZ not being subservient enough.

[welshwelsh]

It's not true that all of the gains are captured by investors.

Alphabet's CEO makes about 1000x the average googler, but that's only about 1% of salaries. What I mean is that for every $100 a Googler makes, about $1 goes to the CEO. It's not like top executives are claiming ing most of the value for themselves, the majority of the value a worker generates is returned to them in their compensation.

[wootland]

There are reasons beyond direct redistribution of the CEO's salary to take issue with the vast inequality represented by that 1,000X. The board and CEO will place all of their network in the executive ranks, cutting off access to rank and file employees. These people also use their out-sized reward to have a huge impact on society at large outside of the company. The negative externalities created by exec compensation are borne by the public.

[tristor]

> It's strange to me that anyone would care about people cheating at job interviews and not say CEO pay that's 1,000X the average employee.

When people cheat at the job interview and end up on my team or interacting with me but are not competent at the job, that directly and negatively impacts me and my work life, as well as my productivity. The fact the CEO makes more money than me does not directly impact me (although it does indirectly through larger society).

I like being part of a team that is high performance and competent and linked to other high performance and competent teams. Cheating makes this less likely and damages the quality of the work life and creates the need for more process that slows does the productivity and performance of the team in order to account for and hedge against incompetence.

[wootland]

I've never seen "productivity" tied to compensation. Those with connections and the ability to self-promote receive the most pay. Those who don't understand this focus on being "productive" to help improve their boss' bottom line at their own expense.

If you like to excel, the best choice is to preserve your energy as much as possible while working for your employer and build something amazing that you own with the energy that otherwise would have been given to them.