5 ms·

Those 10% wouldn't deliver anything without work and skills of the other 90%, so it's very hard to say who delivers the real value to the economy, it's a produc

Those 10% wouldn't deliver anything without work and skills of the other 90%, so it's very hard to say who delivers the real value to the economy, it's a product of a group effort usually.

malvosenior 7y ago
That's definitely not true. Anyone who's ever worked in an office can tell you that most employees don't actually add much value and there are always a few superstars carrying the whole company. When you look at skill and talent distribution this shouldn't be shocking at all.
- munk-a 7y ago
  Skill levels in offices definitely vary, but unless the person is utterly incompetent (and those people are few and far between) it's likely that people aren't more than 4-5x as productive as others in extreme cases and most people would likely fall within something like a 70% range. If someone feels like they do 99.999% of the work in an office of 50 people, they're probably just self-centered and lack any awareness of what the other 49 people are doing.
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    It's not that they're incompetent, it's just that they follow the rules designed by the really competent people. Such that nearly anyone could do their job. One of the scaling factors of excellent people is the ability to design systems others can leverage.
    - munk-a 7y ago
      Yea, people who can inspire competence are quite valuable to a company - but, while there certainly is a natural aptitude, people management is a trained profession now, and someone that is being people managed and gaining that benefit could likely have followed a different career path and become a people manager themselves - so there is cause for some pay disparity but that position isn't something that is unique to the individual.
      - malvosenior 7y ago
        I'm not sure that's true. Managing people is really difficult and few are suited to it. Not many people have the will to fire someone for instance. I'm also talking about top end developers building the systems critical to the business, sales people with the valuable roladexes, the designer crafting the company's brand...
- ivanhoe 7y ago
  Only in creative fields, but most of the office work is not that. And nothing of that creative work could be done without someone taking care of infrastructure, electricity, food, cleaning the offices, taking out garbage, etc. Don't underestimate how much us "intellectuals" in the modern civilization are dependent on everyone else doing their job...
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    Value is based on supply and demand. Literally anyone can clean the office. Very few can optimize your high volume ecommerce system to save you millions of dollars a year. It makes no sense to pay the janitor the same as the chief architect.
    - ivanhoe 7y ago
      But you still need that "anyone" doing their job in order for superstars to function. So, you need a team in place in order to produce some value. Admittedly some members of the team are easier to replace and paid accordingly, but saying that just a few specialists produce "all the value" while others are just sitting there and using up the oxygen is just plain wrong.
- eloff 7y ago
  That's a feel good cop out. Value produced follows a pareto distribution. A small number of people produce disproportionately more of the value. This is proportional to the amount of leverage a person utilizes.

Those 10% wouldn't deliver anything without work and skills of the other 90%, so it's very hard to say who delivers the real value to the economy, it's a product of a group effort usually.

malvosenior 7y ago

That's definitely not true. Anyone who's ever worked in an office can tell you that most employees don't actually add much value and there are always a few superstars carrying the whole company. When you look at skill and talent distribution this shouldn't be shocking at all.

munk-a 7y ago
Skill levels in offices definitely vary, but unless the person is utterly incompetent (and those people are few and far between) it's likely that people aren't more than 4-5x as productive as others in extreme cases and most people would likely fall within something like a 70% range. If someone feels like they do 99.999% of the work in an office of 50 people, they're probably just self-centered and lack any awareness of what the other 49 people are doing.
- malvosenior 7y ago
  It's not that they're incompetent, it's just that they follow the rules designed by the really competent people. Such that nearly anyone could do their job. One of the scaling factors of excellent people is the ability to design systems others can leverage.
  - munk-a 7y ago
    Yea, people who can inspire competence are quite valuable to a company - but, while there certainly is a natural aptitude, people management is a trained profession now, and someone that is being people managed and gaining that benefit could likely have followed a different career path and become a people manager themselves - so there is cause for some pay disparity but that position isn't something that is unique to the individual.
    - malvosenior 7y ago
      I'm not sure that's true. Managing people is really difficult and few are suited to it. Not many people have the will to fire someone for instance. I'm also talking about top end developers building the systems critical to the business, sales people with the valuable roladexes, the designer crafting the company's brand...
ivanhoe 7y ago
Only in creative fields, but most of the office work is not that. And nothing of that creative work could be done without someone taking care of infrastructure, electricity, food, cleaning the offices, taking out garbage, etc. Don't underestimate how much us "intellectuals" in the modern civilization are dependent on everyone else doing their job...
- malvosenior 7y ago
  Value is based on supply and demand. Literally anyone can clean the office. Very few can optimize your high volume ecommerce system to save you millions of dollars a year. It makes no sense to pay the janitor the same as the chief architect.
  - ivanhoe 7y ago
    But you still need that "anyone" doing their job in order for superstars to function. So, you need a team in place in order to produce some value. Admittedly some members of the team are easier to replace and paid accordingly, but saying that just a few specialists produce "all the value" while others are just sitting there and using up the oxygen is just plain wrong.
eloff 7y ago
That's a feel good cop out. Value produced follows a pareto distribution. A small number of people produce disproportionately more of the value. This is proportional to the amount of leverage a person utilizes.