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Has there ever been a time in which managers weren't making more money than everyone else? By your logic, society has always been falling apart. Every generatio

by dimal 10y ago

Has there ever been a time in which managers weren't making more money than everyone else? By your logic, society has always been falling apart. Every generation creates its own old boys club.

flukus 10y ago
Making more is expected, that there wages are growing faster than the people under them is the exceptional part.
- p4wnc6 10y ago
  I'm not sure making more is expected. In my other comment I mentioned e.g. sports teams or quant trading as examples where even average performing subordinates can make more than their managers. But yes, the decoupling of manager pay (fast growing) from subordinate pay (slow growing) is frightening. I don't see any evidence that the world gets more value from the activity of management now than previously, and in fact I see tons of evidence, say even just Moral Mazes to start, that managers actively destroy value for society in many cases.
  - flukus 10y ago
    I'm not worried about them making more than their subordinates so much, it's not a job I'd want to do. I've often wondered if we could improve the org charts though, so we don't have things like managers making technical decisions that should be left up to there subordinates. And so they can't push down work that is part of management, like filling out timesheets.
- lisivka 10y ago
  IMHO, they are managing more complex projects/workflows. Complexity arise -> professionals are in demand -> salary grows.
p4wnc6 10y ago
In efficient markets, like sports teams, even average team members often make more than the manager (or coach). This also happens in some financial organizations that reward profit and loss on individual levels (it's very rare, and not as efficient as sports teams). It's not particularly interesting to observe that outside of efficient businesses, managerial layers have a lot of room for rent seeking to ensure manager pay is higher than team contributor pay. It's more interesting to try to understand why it persists, and what can be done to make employment more efficient in general. Or at least help people see which employers / fields are relatively more or less efficient, so you can decide if being paid way less than someone demonstrably reducing productivity (it happens with a lot of managers) is an ok tradeoff for you. You can be sure it's a whole lot of Hansonian status signaling. For example, the well-documented resistance of project leaders to agree to be paid according to prediction markets about the expected project outcomes, delivery deadlines, etc. Even when experiments with such things led to better project outcomes, the managers then refused to agree to use the idea again or even to be part of, owing largely to the fact that their ability to manipulate things politically, and thus ensure higher pay regardless of the measured outcomes, was removed by the function of the prediction market. Without that angle to politically manipulate, they outright refused to work!
- sievebrain 10y ago
  For example, the well-documented resistance of project leaders to agree to be paid according to prediction markets about the expected project outcomes Is that a serious proposal? I've never heard of such an idea. Prediction markets failed spectacularly to predict the outcome of the recent UK referendum despite an abundance of polling data and the only major uncertainty being statistical (not many people were changing their minds at the last moment, I guess). Most obviously because prediction markets tend to be quite shallow, and the types of people who use them bring their own mental baggage to the table. Why would a project leader be willing to submit to such a flaky and moreover gameable scheme?
  - p4wnc6 10y ago
    You seem unfamiliar with the long and extremely formal research and experimental evidence supporting the use of prediction markets. It might be interesting to read a more detailed popular account [0] and then dive from there into some of the more specific discussions about what happened in the DARPA experiments. > Prediction markets failed spectacularly to predict the outcome of the recent UK referendum despite an abundance of polling data and the only major uncertainty being statistical (not many people were changing their minds at the last moment, I guess). Well, you are right that markets are not perfect and are susceptible to aggregated biases of the participants, for example just as how mispricing persists in the stock market. I don't see how this offers a reason to feel that markets aren't the best that can be done, however. If you can propose a better mechanism by which to get info ahead of time, I (and millions of people) would be very interested. > Most obviously because prediction markets tend to be quite shallow, and the types of people who use them bring their own mental baggage to the table. Why would a project leader be willing to submit to such a flaky and moreover gameable scheme? This is bizarre and unsubstantiated. What are you talking about "mental baggage" -- it sounds like you have a personal grudge against market thinking and prefer to attack it, but without basis. > Why would a project leader be willing to submit to such a flaky and moreover gameable scheme? Actually, much of the research on prediction markets has focused on showing the extent to which they, mathematically, are not gameable [1]. It's bizarre that you feel the existing management mechanism, overt office politics, is somehow "less gameable" than holding people accountable for direct, specific, quantitative predictions. Even if markets were "gameable" you surely can't seriously be suggesting that they are somehow more gameable than overt office politics? [0] < http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/innovations.pdf http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/innovations.pdf > [1] < http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/biashelp.pdf http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/biashelp.pdf >

by dimal 10y ago

Has there ever been a time in which managers weren't making more money than everyone else? By your logic, society has always been falling apart. Every generation creates its own old boys club.

flukus 10y ago

Making more is expected, that there wages are growing faster than the people under them is the exceptional part.

p4wnc6 10y ago
I'm not sure making more is expected. In my other comment I mentioned e.g. sports teams or quant trading as examples where even average performing subordinates can make more than their managers. But yes, the decoupling of manager pay (fast growing) from subordinate pay (slow growing) is frightening. I don't see any evidence that the world gets more value from the activity of management now than previously, and in fact I see tons of evidence, say even just Moral Mazes to start, that managers actively destroy value for society in many cases.
- flukus 10y ago
  I'm not worried about them making more than their subordinates so much, it's not a job I'd want to do. I've often wondered if we could improve the org charts though, so we don't have things like managers making technical decisions that should be left up to there subordinates. And so they can't push down work that is part of management, like filling out timesheets.
lisivka 10y ago
IMHO, they are managing more complex projects/workflows. Complexity arise -> professionals are in demand -> salary grows.

p4wnc6 10y ago

In efficient markets, like sports teams, even average team members often make more than the manager (or coach). This also happens in some financial organizations that reward profit and loss on individual levels (it's very rare, and not as efficient as sports teams). It's not particularly interesting to observe that outside of efficient businesses, managerial layers have a lot of room for rent seeking to ensure manager pay is higher than team contributor pay. It's more interesting to try to understand why it persists, and what can be done to make employment more efficient in general. Or at least help people see which employers / fields are relatively more or less efficient, so you can decide if being paid way less than someone demonstrably reducing productivity (it happens with a lot of managers) is an ok tradeoff for you. You can be sure it's a whole lot of Hansonian status signaling. For example, the well-documented resistance of project leaders to agree to be paid according to prediction markets about the expected project outcomes, delivery deadlines, etc. Even when experiments with such things led to better project outcomes, the managers then refused to agree to use the idea again or even to be part of, owing largely to the fact that their ability to manipulate things politically, and thus ensure higher pay regardless of the measured outcomes, was removed by the function of the prediction market. Without that angle to politically manipulate, they outright refused to work!

sievebrain 10y ago
For example, the well-documented resistance of project leaders to agree to be paid according to prediction markets about the expected project outcomes Is that a serious proposal? I've never heard of such an idea. Prediction markets failed spectacularly to predict the outcome of the recent UK referendum despite an abundance of polling data and the only major uncertainty being statistical (not many people were changing their minds at the last moment, I guess). Most obviously because prediction markets tend to be quite shallow, and the types of people who use them bring their own mental baggage to the table. Why would a project leader be willing to submit to such a flaky and moreover gameable scheme?
- p4wnc6 10y ago
  You seem unfamiliar with the long and extremely formal research and experimental evidence supporting the use of prediction markets. It might be interesting to read a more detailed popular account [0] and then dive from there into some of the more specific discussions about what happened in the DARPA experiments. > Prediction markets failed spectacularly to predict the outcome of the recent UK referendum despite an abundance of polling data and the only major uncertainty being statistical (not many people were changing their minds at the last moment, I guess). Well, you are right that markets are not perfect and are susceptible to aggregated biases of the participants, for example just as how mispricing persists in the stock market. I don't see how this offers a reason to feel that markets aren't the best that can be done, however. If you can propose a better mechanism by which to get info ahead of time, I (and millions of people) would be very interested. > Most obviously because prediction markets tend to be quite shallow, and the types of people who use them bring their own mental baggage to the table. Why would a project leader be willing to submit to such a flaky and moreover gameable scheme? This is bizarre and unsubstantiated. What are you talking about "mental baggage" -- it sounds like you have a personal grudge against market thinking and prefer to attack it, but without basis. > Why would a project leader be willing to submit to such a flaky and moreover gameable scheme? Actually, much of the research on prediction markets has focused on showing the extent to which they, mathematically, are not gameable [1]. It's bizarre that you feel the existing management mechanism, overt office politics, is somehow "less gameable" than holding people accountable for direct, specific, quantitative predictions. Even if markets were "gameable" you surely can't seriously be suggesting that they are somehow more gameable than overt office politics? [0] < http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/innovations.pdf http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/innovations.pdf > [1] < http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/biashelp.pdf http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/biashelp.pdf >