8 ms·

No one is worth any intrinsic amount. The amount is relative to the work they do, the industry they're in, the state of the economy, how many other people can d

by swombat 10y ago

No one is worth any intrinsic amount. The amount is relative to the work they do, the industry they're in, the state of the economy, how many other people can do that job, how many have actually applied, etc. Any salary formula is entirely arbitrary. We have a pay scale simply because it is a useful tool for conversation, not because it represents any sort of intrinsic property of the person being placed on the pay scale. If your main concern is getting paid as much as possible then we're probably not the right place for you to work anyway. We try to pay well but we certainly can't afford to pay as much as, for example, banking, or Facebook. Importantly, we have no interest in trying to sucker someone into working with us if money is their primary motivation. They won't like it here. To answer a likely reflex-response to this: that doesn't mean we think people should be working for free, or that we judge people who want to earn more money. It's totally fine to want to make more money. Different people have different expectations and requirements at different stages of their life though.

brianwawok 10y ago
> Importantly, we have no interest in trying to sucker someone into working with us if money is their primary motivation. Are you a charity doing good work with orphans? Or are you a business trying to make as much money for the investors as possible? If the latter is true, why wouldn't someone work for you with "money as the primary motivator" ? (This is not Rhetorical, I actually know nothing about your business. But I do see this argument a lot from companies that are 100% for profit and do nothing to better the world)
- swombat 10y ago
  Neither. We're a purposeful, for-profit, founder-owned[1] company. Just because we are for-profit doesn't mean profit is our only motivation. It's a false dichotomy to suggest that because you want to make money that must be your only driver. Our view of business is that, much like humans, it can achieve and balance multiple objectives. You want to make money: does that mean you want only that to the exclusion of or above other objectives like finding love, raising children, being a good person, etc? I assume not. We want to make money: does that mean we want only that to the exclusion of or above other objectives like having fulfilling work, working in an open organisation, being respectful of others, etc? No. [1] Though opening up the shares to employees within the next couple of months... it's taken a while to put the right system in place. Options wouldn't work because we have no intention of ever selling the business. Edit: Given your clarified question, I will also add that what we do is to help other tech businesses to raise government funding so they can develop cool tech. Many of them have raised money from investors - I don't think that necessarily means that their only purpose is money (though it's certainly true of some). See argument above.
  - threatofrain 10y ago
    I don't see why paying people less would lead to an improvement in love, family, being a good person, respect, transparency, etc -- unless you're saying that due to pay difference vs market, you'll also expect less work out of them. And money is rarely the actual motivator. Often times, money is the mediator to the things that really motivate people, such as purchasing daycare and enrichment activities, splurging on medical care plans, financial security, etc.
    - swombat 10y ago
      > I don't see why paying people less would lead to an improvement in love, family, being a good person, respect, transparency, etc -- unless you're saying that due to pay difference vs market, you'll also expect less work out of them. There's definitely no necessary causal link here. We aim to pay enough that they won't leave because it's too little but not so much that they will stay just because of the salary is too high. It's a pretty hard balance to achieve... not sure if we have. We used to phrase it as "pay people fairly" but then "fairness" is so relative as a concept that it is essentially useless. Having transparent pay does have a clear link with creating a good working environment, in our experience, however - and transparent pay doesn't mix well with having salaries basically based on people's negotiation skills (rather than a more open system like I've described), in backroom deals. > And money is rarely the actual motivator. Often times, money is the mediator to the things that really motivate people, such as purchasing daycare and enrichment activities, splurging on medical care plans, financial security, etc. I wish that were always true... my observation is that some people are in fact motivated by the money, and the status that comes with being paid more than others, more than by the things they can actually do with the money. I find it puzzling, but so it is...
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - joshuahutt 10y ago
        > not so much that they will stay just because of the salary is too high. I can imagine a case in which a sufficiently high salary could lead to someone staying in a position for which they have no passion. Still, like you say, it's a delicate balance, and on either side you of not getting good work out of your people. On the low end, you just wouldn't be able to secure high-value candidates. On the high end, you might keep people who have no interest in their roles. I do think the latter case is less likely, though.
- ianstormtaylor 10y ago
  Because getting to the point of being a successful business is a really long road, and going down it with someone whose primary motivation is to make money for themselves is going to make that trip way less fulfilling.
  - vonmoltke 10y ago
    I assume everyone starting or working for a for-profit business is primarily (though not solely) motivated to make money for themselves. Otherwise, they wouldn't be starting or working at a for-profit business.
    - swombat 10y ago
      That assumption doesn't bear out in practice, in my experience. There are plenty of people who believe that for-profit businesses can also achieve great, positive purposes in the world, and want to be a part of it. Cases in point: Tesla and SpaceX. They aren't charities. They are very purposeful.
      - vonmoltke 10y ago
        Charity vs. for-profit is a false dichotomy. A charity is a specific form of non-profit. In addition, there is the (relatively new) benefit corporation which, while technically for-profit, has explicit non-financial goals. That said, nothing about being motivated by money means you can't have a purpose as well. That's why I was careful to draw a distinction between "solely" and "primarily". Making money while also improving the world is just enlightened self-interest.
      - Phlarp 10y ago
        Tesla and SpaceX are both massive exceptions to the rule, not examples of the norm. You are not Tesla or SpaceX.
        brianwawok 10y ago
        And in fact if you want to write code that goes to space, you have 4 or 5 options top in the US? Vs many other business models (webapps for music) there may be 50 or 100.
- GrinningFool 10y ago
  > Are you a charity doing good work with orphans? Or are you > a business trying to make as much money for the investors > as possible? If the latter is true, why > wouldn't someone work for you with "money as the primary motivator" ? It is possible to offer a fair return on investment without having to take every possible step (ethical or otherwise) to maximize profitability.
  - swombat 10y ago
    Some would argue that developing a purposeful organisation (whose purpose is not just to make money) actually also produces better returns, but I think the jury's still out on that. There are some striking examples but they might be cases of survivor bias.
android521 10y ago
Seriously, if you can't afford a great employee, that's fine. But don't try to belittle someone because of your company's incompetence to pay. And don't stand on a morale high ground. It is disgusting.
- swombat 10y ago
  > To answer a likely reflex-response to this: that doesn't mean we think people should be working for free, or that we judge people who want to earn more money. It's totally fine to want to make more money. Different people have different expectations and requirements at different stages of their life though. No belittling intended.
  - android521 10y ago
    Sounds reasonable.Was this added after I replied?
    - swombat 10y ago
      Nope. But don't beat yourself up over it! Missing a piece of a comment happens all the time. Hopefully you see there was no offence intended to people who have different views on this. I think it's totally fine that different people think differently about these topics, and I don't consider my view superior in a general sense. It just works better for me.
st3v3r 10y ago
"If your main concern is getting paid as much as possible then we're probably not the right place for you to work anyway" That kind of phrasing is generally code for, "We pay crap wages and expect you to live at work."
- swombat 10y ago
  Generally, perhaps - not in our case. We pay what we (meaning, the staff, who decide their own pay) believe to be a good wage, and we have excellent work-life balance - we have a number of new parents who have commented that GrantTree has been a very supportive culture for them in the first 6-12 months (which are pretty hard apparently). And we have remote work, flexible working hours, etc.
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    > we have a number of new parents who have commented that GrantTree has been a very supportive culture for them in the first 6-12 months "I was 20 minutes late because I had to take my newborn to the hospital and they only gave me a written warning!" >And we have remote work "On the fifth wednesday of every month I can work from home!" >flexible working hours "I worked from 9am to 10pm yesterday so I get to come in at 10am to 10pm today!" GrantTree might be one of the few outliers here and if so I congratulate you, but this is typically what employers mean when they say those sort of things.
    - swombat 10y ago
      > "I was 20 minutes late because I had to take my newborn to the hospital and they only gave me a written warning!" Or: since my child was born I've been able to be home by 5pm every day without any problems. > "On the fifth wednesday of every month I can work from home!" Or: one of our people is currently taking part in Remote Year. He's just spent the last few months in South America. http://remoteyear.com http://remoteyear.com > "I worked from 9am to 10pm yesterday so I get to come in at 10am to 10pm today!" Or: we don't track working hours at all, and people often choose to work from home or do whatever makes sense given their circumstances. They work because they want to get their work done, not because someone's hovering over them with a finger ready to point at them. > GrantTree might be one of the few outliers here and if so I congratulate you, but this is typically what employers mean when they say those sort of things. Yes, it is quite sad that every good thought gets copied and corrupted. I can't do much about that.
TrickedOut 10y ago
Nice. Spoken like either 1. A trust fund kiddie with privileges to work for pleasure 2. An older person who purchased their family home before they started costing 3M$
- swombat 10y ago
  Try again: 3. a couple of migrants from Romania and Poland with no starting wealth, living in a flat that we couldn't even afford to pay for (but my cofounder on the previous business, which bombed, basically let me stay in his flat on the promise that I'd pay when I had the cash) back when we started GrantTree. Add onto that that my parents fled Romania in 1980 with nothing and I was stateless until about age 12. There are many, many people starting from far worse conditions, though, I'm not complaining. I had a stable childhood, a good education and I have great friends and parents and an amazing wife and cofounder. That's worth way more than any trust fund or inflated property.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
runT1ME 10y ago
>we have no interest in trying to sucker someone into working with us if money is their primary motivation. If money is not your primary motivator, why can't you pay more?
- TrickzOnU 10y ago
  Nice! This comment is spot on!
- thomnottom 10y ago
  A company still has to have money in order to operate. I would assume that even without money being the primary focus, they have to be careful about paying out too much or they will be out of business.
  - swombat 10y ago
    Indeed. We are in a highly competitive market, and have a number of interesting projects going on to disrupt that market that won't pay off immediately. If we don't manage our costs reasonably well we won't stay in business. Money is like rocket fuel. If you're accumulating it for its own sake, rather than to get somewhere, I'd say you're doing it wrong - but that's just my opinion...
    - pnut 10y ago
      The individual employee can say that too. I'm in a highly competitive housing market, and my children are in a highly competitive educational market. A number of interesting projects that won't pay off immediately. Since when is an individual expected to just defer to a greater good in an employment arrangement? Which is most likely "at-will"? I'm certain the shareholders and executives aren't making such self-defeating sacrifices.
      - swombat 10y ago
        > Since when is an individual expected to just defer to a greater good in an employment arrangement? Which is most likely "at-will"? 1) You should never "defer to the greater good". I would not advise it. If this environment doesn't offer something of value to you definitely do not apply or join such an environment. 2) I completely agree that this approach is incompatible with the ultra-violent approaches to "at will employment" of the US and much of Europe. I find the process by which most people are fired in american companies abhorrent. I don't want to go into too much detail about what our current process is to deal with situations where there is a performance problem, but basically it involves engaging with the person and providing them with a lot of support to help them figure out what the problem is, and how they can fix it, and offering them a number of decision points about what they can do to fix it. Obviously, from a distrustful viewpoint this might seem even worse than a clean firing - and rightly so. This kind of stuff absolutely doesn't work in a distrustful, fear-driven environment. > I'm certain the shareholders and executives aren't making such self-defeating sacrifices. On what basis are you certain of this? Do you know something that I (cofounder) don't? I suspect that in the long term this approach will result in a more successful, longer lasting company that I feel even more proud of being a part of, so I don't think it's self-defeating in the long term - I disagree with doing anything self-defeating, I think no one appreciates it and it rarely results in anything good. But I don't know for sure that it will actually result in a better company. In the meantime, my cofounder and I could certainly have taken far more money out of the business and have not done so, so your assertion is incorrect in the short term (5 years) at least.
solotronics 10y ago
Money is the primary motivation to work. Would you be upset at an employee for working on their own project or for a different company during business hours? If you would not allow this then money is your primary motivation. You are giving money to the employee for ONE reason, you are buying their time to produce something of value for your company. Saying you aren't interested in people who are primarily motivated by money in a job comes across as disrespectful of the time of the employee.
- greggman 10y ago
  As someone who once took a 50% pay cut to do do something I wanted to do (work in Japan) and another 25% pay cut many years later to work on a project I really wanted to work on I don't know if I can agree that money is the primary motivation to work. Maybe for you? Maybe even for most people? Although I don't think I know a single person who is working for money. If that's all they wanted they'd be doing jobs that pay more.
- timv 10y ago
  > Money is the primary motivation to work For the overwhelming majority of people, the decisions about work are a balance of competing interests. I could go out and get a part time job working on weekends, and make more (overall) money, but I don't because the money I make in 5 days is enough, and I place some value on my free time. But the reverse it true, I could probably convince my employer to let me work 4 days a week for a 20% pay cut (or 0 days a week for a 100% pay cut), but that would drop my pay below the level I want/need in order to support my family and be able to do things on the weekends. I could quit my current job and go back to working in finance for more money than I make now. I don't want to. I've done that, and I prefer the work I'm doing now, even if I'm paid 20% less. I could quit my current job and go work for a charity and make 50% less than I do now. I don't want to take that sort of pay cut. It's because of these balances that we have some well educated, highly employable people making a (relative) pittance as school teachers. And why some people spend their evenings doing open source "work" instead of taking on a second job. Very few professionals in western countries have money as the single primary motivation to work. Once you can afford to pay your bills and maintain a comfortable lifestyle, you become quite willing to trade off the extra money to increase your overall enjoyment of life, whether that means more leisure time, or more interesting work, etc. It is quite reasonable for for-profit companies to aim to provide a compelling work environment through factors other than pure financial reward. It's also quite reasonable for workers to select job opportunities based entirely on the financial reward (though I think that's actually relatively rare). That company and that worker are probably not a good fit for each other.
cookiecaper 10y ago
What percentage of the revenue derived from an employee's labor would he receive, in an ideal world? The correct answer to this is probably something between 30 and 70 percent, depending on a variety of factors. The real-world answer to this is "however little we can possibly share, because we want to hoard it all for ourselves", and personally I find that to be a distasteful reality (I find most investors' justifications for their wealth very hollow, they usually all boil back down to "well, I started with more money than them"). Employees have way undersold themselves; I think objectively, most professional employees would probably still be quite profitable to the company if their salaries were quadrupled. And to answer a likely-reflex response to this, yes, I have run companies with employees before. Considering that founders are making themselves fabulously wealthy on the backs of their employees, I think we'd all appreciate a little bit more respect than you're showing when you poo-poo employees who want something more closely approximating 1/4 of the share they actually deserve.
- swombat 10y ago
  I'm not fabulously wealthy, nor do I expect to get so from GrantTree. Yes, I am fairly well off at this point, able to buy (jointly with my wife) a small 2-bed flat in an ex-council flat in London - that's after spending 5.5 years starting a business that has raised over £35m of government funding for 600 UK startups and employs 27 people. If you think that's fabulous wealth, you have a different definition of it than I have. Yes, the business is technically worth a pile of cash (we're about to do a valuation for the purpose of issuing shares to employees so I don't know yet exactly how much), but we're not planning to sell the business so that can only be realised through long-term survival and success of the company. The team has themselves set a target for wages to 40% of revenues, in line with your suggestion. I would have set it higher (and in fact right now our wage bill is closer to 60%) but that was not my decision to make. The 40-60% is of course not evenly distributed, though I would also quite like the thought of that, but the team themselves decide how to allocate it, so I guess they're doing the best they can. I find the reality you perceive distasteful too - and I agree that it is widespread and it is sad that that is so.

by swombat 10y ago

brianwawok 10y ago

> Importantly, we have no interest in trying to sucker someone into working with us if money is their primary motivation. Are you a charity doing good work with orphans? Or are you a business trying to make as much money for the investors as possible? If the latter is true, why wouldn't someone work for you with "money as the primary motivator" ? (This is not Rhetorical, I actually know nothing about your business. But I do see this argument a lot from companies that are 100% for profit and do nothing to better the world)

swombat 10y ago
Neither. We're a purposeful, for-profit, founder-owned[1] company. Just because we are for-profit doesn't mean profit is our only motivation. It's a false dichotomy to suggest that because you want to make money that must be your only driver. Our view of business is that, much like humans, it can achieve and balance multiple objectives. You want to make money: does that mean you want only that to the exclusion of or above other objectives like finding love, raising children, being a good person, etc? I assume not. We want to make money: does that mean we want only that to the exclusion of or above other objectives like having fulfilling work, working in an open organisation, being respectful of others, etc? No. [1] Though opening up the shares to employees within the next couple of months... it's taken a while to put the right system in place. Options wouldn't work because we have no intention of ever selling the business. Edit: Given your clarified question, I will also add that what we do is to help other tech businesses to raise government funding so they can develop cool tech. Many of them have raised money from investors - I don't think that necessarily means that their only purpose is money (though it's certainly true of some). See argument above.
- threatofrain 10y ago
  I don't see why paying people less would lead to an improvement in love, family, being a good person, respect, transparency, etc -- unless you're saying that due to pay difference vs market, you'll also expect less work out of them. And money is rarely the actual motivator. Often times, money is the mediator to the things that really motivate people, such as purchasing daycare and enrichment activities, splurging on medical care plans, financial security, etc.
  - swombat 10y ago
    > I don't see why paying people less would lead to an improvement in love, family, being a good person, respect, transparency, etc -- unless you're saying that due to pay difference vs market, you'll also expect less work out of them. There's definitely no necessary causal link here. We aim to pay enough that they won't leave because it's too little but not so much that they will stay just because of the salary is too high. It's a pretty hard balance to achieve... not sure if we have. We used to phrase it as "pay people fairly" but then "fairness" is so relative as a concept that it is essentially useless. Having transparent pay does have a clear link with creating a good working environment, in our experience, however - and transparent pay doesn't mix well with having salaries basically based on people's negotiation skills (rather than a more open system like I've described), in backroom deals. > And money is rarely the actual motivator. Often times, money is the mediator to the things that really motivate people, such as purchasing daycare and enrichment activities, splurging on medical care plans, financial security, etc. I wish that were always true... my observation is that some people are in fact motivated by the money, and the status that comes with being paid more than others, more than by the things they can actually do with the money. I find it puzzling, but so it is...
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - joshuahutt 10y ago
      > not so much that they will stay just because of the salary is too high. I can imagine a case in which a sufficiently high salary could lead to someone staying in a position for which they have no passion. Still, like you say, it's a delicate balance, and on either side you of not getting good work out of your people. On the low end, you just wouldn't be able to secure high-value candidates. On the high end, you might keep people who have no interest in their roles. I do think the latter case is less likely, though.
ianstormtaylor 10y ago
Because getting to the point of being a successful business is a really long road, and going down it with someone whose primary motivation is to make money for themselves is going to make that trip way less fulfilling.
- vonmoltke 10y ago
  I assume everyone starting or working for a for-profit business is primarily (though not solely) motivated to make money for themselves. Otherwise, they wouldn't be starting or working at a for-profit business.
  - swombat 10y ago
    That assumption doesn't bear out in practice, in my experience. There are plenty of people who believe that for-profit businesses can also achieve great, positive purposes in the world, and want to be a part of it. Cases in point: Tesla and SpaceX. They aren't charities. They are very purposeful.
    - vonmoltke 10y ago
      Charity vs. for-profit is a false dichotomy. A charity is a specific form of non-profit. In addition, there is the (relatively new) benefit corporation which, while technically for-profit, has explicit non-financial goals. That said, nothing about being motivated by money means you can't have a purpose as well. That's why I was careful to draw a distinction between "solely" and "primarily". Making money while also improving the world is just enlightened self-interest.
    - Phlarp 10y ago
      Tesla and SpaceX are both massive exceptions to the rule, not examples of the norm. You are not Tesla or SpaceX.
      - brianwawok 10y ago
        And in fact if you want to write code that goes to space, you have 4 or 5 options top in the US? Vs many other business models (webapps for music) there may be 50 or 100.
GrinningFool 10y ago
> Are you a charity doing good work with orphans? Or are you > a business trying to make as much money for the investors > as possible? If the latter is true, why > wouldn't someone work for you with "money as the primary motivator" ? It is possible to offer a fair return on investment without having to take every possible step (ethical or otherwise) to maximize profitability.
- swombat 10y ago
  Some would argue that developing a purposeful organisation (whose purpose is not just to make money) actually also produces better returns, but I think the jury's still out on that. There are some striking examples but they might be cases of survivor bias.

android521 10y ago

Seriously, if you can't afford a great employee, that's fine. But don't try to belittle someone because of your company's incompetence to pay. And don't stand on a morale high ground. It is disgusting.

swombat 10y ago
> To answer a likely reflex-response to this: that doesn't mean we think people should be working for free, or that we judge people who want to earn more money. It's totally fine to want to make more money. Different people have different expectations and requirements at different stages of their life though. No belittling intended.
- android521 10y ago
  Sounds reasonable.Was this added after I replied?
  - swombat 10y ago
    Nope. But don't beat yourself up over it! Missing a piece of a comment happens all the time. Hopefully you see there was no offence intended to people who have different views on this. I think it's totally fine that different people think differently about these topics, and I don't consider my view superior in a general sense. It just works better for me.

st3v3r 10y ago

"If your main concern is getting paid as much as possible then we're probably not the right place for you to work anyway" That kind of phrasing is generally code for, "We pay crap wages and expect you to live at work."

swombat 10y ago
Generally, perhaps - not in our case. We pay what we (meaning, the staff, who decide their own pay) believe to be a good wage, and we have excellent work-life balance - we have a number of new parents who have commented that GrantTree has been a very supportive culture for them in the first 6-12 months (which are pretty hard apparently). And we have remote work, flexible working hours, etc.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  > we have a number of new parents who have commented that GrantTree has been a very supportive culture for them in the first 6-12 months "I was 20 minutes late because I had to take my newborn to the hospital and they only gave me a written warning!" >And we have remote work "On the fifth wednesday of every month I can work from home!" >flexible working hours "I worked from 9am to 10pm yesterday so I get to come in at 10am to 10pm today!" GrantTree might be one of the few outliers here and if so I congratulate you, but this is typically what employers mean when they say those sort of things.
  - swombat 10y ago
    > "I was 20 minutes late because I had to take my newborn to the hospital and they only gave me a written warning!" Or: since my child was born I've been able to be home by 5pm every day without any problems. > "On the fifth wednesday of every month I can work from home!" Or: one of our people is currently taking part in Remote Year. He's just spent the last few months in South America. http://remoteyear.com http://remoteyear.com > "I worked from 9am to 10pm yesterday so I get to come in at 10am to 10pm today!" Or: we don't track working hours at all, and people often choose to work from home or do whatever makes sense given their circumstances. They work because they want to get their work done, not because someone's hovering over them with a finger ready to point at them. > GrantTree might be one of the few outliers here and if so I congratulate you, but this is typically what employers mean when they say those sort of things. Yes, it is quite sad that every good thought gets copied and corrupted. I can't do much about that.

TrickedOut 10y ago

Nice. Spoken like either 1. A trust fund kiddie with privileges to work for pleasure 2. An older person who purchased their family home before they started costing 3M$

swombat 10y ago
Try again: 3. a couple of migrants from Romania and Poland with no starting wealth, living in a flat that we couldn't even afford to pay for (but my cofounder on the previous business, which bombed, basically let me stay in his flat on the promise that I'd pay when I had the cash) back when we started GrantTree. Add onto that that my parents fled Romania in 1980 with nothing and I was stateless until about age 12. There are many, many people starting from far worse conditions, though, I'm not complaining. I had a stable childhood, a good education and I have great friends and parents and an amazing wife and cofounder. That's worth way more than any trust fund or inflated property.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

runT1ME 10y ago

>we have no interest in trying to sucker someone into working with us if money is their primary motivation. If money is not your primary motivator, why can't you pay more?

TrickzOnU 10y ago
Nice! This comment is spot on!
thomnottom 10y ago
A company still has to have money in order to operate. I would assume that even without money being the primary focus, they have to be careful about paying out too much or they will be out of business.
- swombat 10y ago
  Indeed. We are in a highly competitive market, and have a number of interesting projects going on to disrupt that market that won't pay off immediately. If we don't manage our costs reasonably well we won't stay in business. Money is like rocket fuel. If you're accumulating it for its own sake, rather than to get somewhere, I'd say you're doing it wrong - but that's just my opinion...
  - pnut 10y ago
    The individual employee can say that too. I'm in a highly competitive housing market, and my children are in a highly competitive educational market. A number of interesting projects that won't pay off immediately. Since when is an individual expected to just defer to a greater good in an employment arrangement? Which is most likely "at-will"? I'm certain the shareholders and executives aren't making such self-defeating sacrifices.
    - swombat 10y ago
      > Since when is an individual expected to just defer to a greater good in an employment arrangement? Which is most likely "at-will"? 1) You should never "defer to the greater good". I would not advise it. If this environment doesn't offer something of value to you definitely do not apply or join such an environment. 2) I completely agree that this approach is incompatible with the ultra-violent approaches to "at will employment" of the US and much of Europe. I find the process by which most people are fired in american companies abhorrent. I don't want to go into too much detail about what our current process is to deal with situations where there is a performance problem, but basically it involves engaging with the person and providing them with a lot of support to help them figure out what the problem is, and how they can fix it, and offering them a number of decision points about what they can do to fix it. Obviously, from a distrustful viewpoint this might seem even worse than a clean firing - and rightly so. This kind of stuff absolutely doesn't work in a distrustful, fear-driven environment. > I'm certain the shareholders and executives aren't making such self-defeating sacrifices. On what basis are you certain of this? Do you know something that I (cofounder) don't? I suspect that in the long term this approach will result in a more successful, longer lasting company that I feel even more proud of being a part of, so I don't think it's self-defeating in the long term - I disagree with doing anything self-defeating, I think no one appreciates it and it rarely results in anything good. But I don't know for sure that it will actually result in a better company. In the meantime, my cofounder and I could certainly have taken far more money out of the business and have not done so, so your assertion is incorrect in the short term (5 years) at least.

solotronics 10y ago

Money is the primary motivation to work. Would you be upset at an employee for working on their own project or for a different company during business hours? If you would not allow this then money is your primary motivation. You are giving money to the employee for ONE reason, you are buying their time to produce something of value for your company. Saying you aren't interested in people who are primarily motivated by money in a job comes across as disrespectful of the time of the employee.

greggman 10y ago
As someone who once took a 50% pay cut to do do something I wanted to do (work in Japan) and another 25% pay cut many years later to work on a project I really wanted to work on I don't know if I can agree that money is the primary motivation to work. Maybe for you? Maybe even for most people? Although I don't think I know a single person who is working for money. If that's all they wanted they'd be doing jobs that pay more.
timv 10y ago
> Money is the primary motivation to work For the overwhelming majority of people, the decisions about work are a balance of competing interests. I could go out and get a part time job working on weekends, and make more (overall) money, but I don't because the money I make in 5 days is enough, and I place some value on my free time. But the reverse it true, I could probably convince my employer to let me work 4 days a week for a 20% pay cut (or 0 days a week for a 100% pay cut), but that would drop my pay below the level I want/need in order to support my family and be able to do things on the weekends. I could quit my current job and go back to working in finance for more money than I make now. I don't want to. I've done that, and I prefer the work I'm doing now, even if I'm paid 20% less. I could quit my current job and go work for a charity and make 50% less than I do now. I don't want to take that sort of pay cut. It's because of these balances that we have some well educated, highly employable people making a (relative) pittance as school teachers. And why some people spend their evenings doing open source "work" instead of taking on a second job. Very few professionals in western countries have money as the single primary motivation to work. Once you can afford to pay your bills and maintain a comfortable lifestyle, you become quite willing to trade off the extra money to increase your overall enjoyment of life, whether that means more leisure time, or more interesting work, etc. It is quite reasonable for for-profit companies to aim to provide a compelling work environment through factors other than pure financial reward. It's also quite reasonable for workers to select job opportunities based entirely on the financial reward (though I think that's actually relatively rare). That company and that worker are probably not a good fit for each other.

cookiecaper 10y ago

What percentage of the revenue derived from an employee's labor would he receive, in an ideal world? The correct answer to this is probably something between 30 and 70 percent, depending on a variety of factors. The real-world answer to this is "however little we can possibly share, because we want to hoard it all for ourselves", and personally I find that to be a distasteful reality (I find most investors' justifications for their wealth very hollow, they usually all boil back down to "well, I started with more money than them"). Employees have way undersold themselves; I think objectively, most professional employees would probably still be quite profitable to the company if their salaries were quadrupled. And to answer a likely-reflex response to this, yes, I have run companies with employees before. Considering that founders are making themselves fabulously wealthy on the backs of their employees, I think we'd all appreciate a little bit more respect than you're showing when you poo-poo employees who want something more closely approximating 1/4 of the share they actually deserve.

swombat 10y ago
I'm not fabulously wealthy, nor do I expect to get so from GrantTree. Yes, I am fairly well off at this point, able to buy (jointly with my wife) a small 2-bed flat in an ex-council flat in London - that's after spending 5.5 years starting a business that has raised over £35m of government funding for 600 UK startups and employs 27 people. If you think that's fabulous wealth, you have a different definition of it than I have. Yes, the business is technically worth a pile of cash (we're about to do a valuation for the purpose of issuing shares to employees so I don't know yet exactly how much), but we're not planning to sell the business so that can only be realised through long-term survival and success of the company. The team has themselves set a target for wages to 40% of revenues, in line with your suggestion. I would have set it higher (and in fact right now our wage bill is closer to 60%) but that was not my decision to make. The 40-60% is of course not evenly distributed, though I would also quite like the thought of that, but the team themselves decide how to allocate it, so I guess they're doing the best they can. I find the reality you perceive distasteful too - and I agree that it is widespread and it is sad that that is so.