[peteforde]

If you have people on your team that are valuable enough to demand a 40% compensation increase, then you should have been paying them 40% more without them having to demand it.

It never ceases to amaze me that the owner class is so continually shocked that the people who build the value that the owners leverage into growing their fortune might suddenly realize their value.

The entitlement is baked deep into the mindset that there are people who work and people who profit.

[mettamage]

Often enough they don't care or realize it. I've seen all the data analysts that were eiter (1) senior or (2) also had data engineering skills leave.

They all got 25% more after leaving. And this is in the Netherlands, where pay is already kind of low. What was even weirder was that this company is a F500 company and the people that left, they left for all kinds of organizations (small and large) and still got paid more.

That includes me by the way. I was doing 4 roles (data analyst, pentester, software engineer through web development, AI stuff + data engineering and project manager). It was a lot of fun though. But it paid decisively mediocre.

Currently going to a fun job that pays way better.

[lateforwork]

It gets worse. I've seen some managers hold back strong developers because they want everyone to be a replaceable cog. They push for average work across the team so no one becomes irreplaceable--even if it means the product ends up weaker than it could be.

[jmyeet]

The employer and the employee have different goals and metrics for "success". This mismatch comes up all the time whenever "interviewing is broken" threads come up. Many interviewees think the goal is to find the best person for the job. It isn't. It is to find someone suffciently good to do the job for the least money possible. This mean that if you filter out "better" candidates, it's not a failure if the position gets filled anyway.

So the mistakes being made here are:

1. You think you're irreplaceable. You're not. "But--". "--Nope";

2. You think it's more expensive to replace you. Possibly but irrelvant. You see, if they give you a 40% raise, there now might be 10 or 100 other people who will demand a 40% raise. It's cheaper overall not to give you that raise.

This comes up all the time when landlords lose good tenants by raising rents $100-200/month. Tenants will rightly point out that they'll lose more with the vacancy period than they'll get from $100-200/month. Also irrelevant. The landlord will often have 10 or 100 or 1000 or 10,000 units. They give a $200 increase to all of them and not all of them are moving. The increased income from those who don't will exceed the losses from those who move.

Plus, the $200/month extra increases the property value. Someone may lend against that increased value to buy even more units;

3. Ultimately any enterprise can only increase profits by raising prices or lowering costs, particularly wages. Suppressing wages becomes the entire business of the company. That's what permanent layoffs culture is for (to get more unpaid work on those that remain and to stop them asking for raises). That's what AI is for. Supressing wages is THE product for AI.

Remember there's a fundamental imbalance here. If a company loses a particular employee, most likely they either won't notice (at least for awhile) or they'll simply be temporarily inconvenienced.

What happens if you don't have a job? You might lose your house, your car, your health insurance, your childrens' school and so on.

The stakes for you are so much higher so in any difficult hiring market, you will be squeezed.

[peteforde]

Your assertions are confounded by the existence and necessity for key-person insurance.

https://www.legalandgeneral.com/insurance/business-protectio...

I don't know if you simply haven't worked with people who are unreplaceable or what, but I assure you with genuine confidence that there are people who cannot be replaced without massive disruption and undesirable risk.

[n4r9]

"Value" is not this objective measure that can be deduced from someone's output. It depends on many variables like cost of living, the job market, tech trends, and industry competition. Could very easily fluctuate 50% or more in a short period of time.

[xyzelement]

This is such a childish mindset. How much did you pay your plumber to fix your toilet last time? Why didn't you pay 40% more than that?

[Teever]

When you pay someone to do sensitive work like plumbing or electrical work in your house do you go for the cheapest guy? Why or why not?

[jeffalyanak]

If your plumber was doing regular work for you that brought you significant, expensive-to-replace value then you _should_ pay him more.

[SR2Z]

How is it childish? Not all plumbers cost the same or do the same work. If you wanna hire a good plumber, you'll have to pay them more.

Likewise, if people on your team get better at their jobs and you don't want them to leave, you also have to pay them more.

[xyzelement]

Correct but not the point. The reason you pay your plumber 1x and not 2x is because someone else can do the same job equally well for you for 1x.

You don't pay 2x untill you are forced to (eg plumber is the only game on town) not because you are so enlightened.

[SR2Z]

I don't sit down and decide "here's how much I'm going to pay the plumber." I call a plumber and get a quote. I can keep going until it feels worth it.

My enlightenment comes from talking to a bunch of plumbers and hearing what they're gonna charge. That's the market rate.

If I hire an employee and they get good at their job and someone else offers them a 40% raise, they'll probably leave. That's a lot of money.

Some companies care about retention, most don't really.

[carlosjobim]

You're making the wrong comparison. If your plumber increases his rate by 40%, will you "fire" him and get another plumber which will also be 40% more expensive, or a plumber which costs the old price but isn't good, or accept his price increase?

[mplanchard]

Do y’all not tip your plumbers?

[miyoji]

I did, because private equity took over the plumbing company and raised the prices.

[lateforwork]

Because there is no intellectual property in the toilet?