5 ms·

So it' s basically a corporate boycott against labor laws favorable to employees?! I guess this will be first time a boycott won't be broken by a police charge

• commandlinefan 5y ago
  > favorable to employees Is it really though? Complete transparency in salary ranges also means that every other employer can see exactly what their competition is offering. I can't help but worry that this will lead to a sort of "price fixing" that will actually drive wages _down_.
  • falcolas 5y ago
    It worked for CEOs. Their salaries were disclosed due to a new law, and their salaries skyrocketed. Competition is good, not bad.
    • ethbr0 5y ago
      Competition is fairer, not so much good nor bad.
      • HPsquared 5y ago
        Fairness is an objective good to most people.
        • ethbr0 5y ago
          I would disagree with that, because the requirements for fairness typically disadvantage a majority in favor of leveling the field for a minority. Ergo, most people will gripe about the actual policies, even if they agree with the abstract end goal.
          • falcolas 5y ago
            The alternative also has a name: The "Tyranny of the Majority". Fairness is better than tyranny, don't you think?
            • ethbr0 5y ago
              I would in the abstract. But then in the specific I would also tend to support policies that are good for me, even to the detriment of others. And since I'm a member of many majority classes... well, there you have my point.
              • falcolas 5y ago
                That stance is also known as, "Fuck you, I've got mine." I personally, despite also being in a number of majority classes, prefer to avoid being an asshole because of an accident of birth.
                • ethbr0 5y ago
                  Be that as it may in your case, are you arguing that most people will act contrary to their own best interests? That seems a shaky foundation to build policy on.
          • deleted 5y ago
            [deleted]
          • HPsquared 5y ago
            That depends on how 'fairness' is defined. Your definition of fairness appears to exclude a set of concepts which you see as unfair. It's not a good rhetorical tactic to cede the concept of fairness; better to argue "that thing being done in the name of fairness, is actually unfair".
            • ethbr0 5y ago
              I would define fairness as equality of opportunity, for every person. Hence the previous comment's tautology that fairness will not be an objective good for most people, because (a) most people prefer their own self interest, (b) the status quo provides majorities advantages that minorities do not share, and (c) objective fairness will thus come at the expense of the majority (who are by definition more numerous than the minority). It's interesting most people are interpreting my comment as a preference, vs an observation.
      • chii 5y ago
        but fairer is considered better, all things being equal.
    • mywittyname 5y ago
      Can things that happen to CEOs be extrapolated and applied successfully to regular workers? Companies already buy salary information from brokers. So they already know what the competition is paying and generally try to keep in line with that. And that's pretty much a type of collusion. If everyone seeks to pay "market rates" based on these salary reports, then everyone will aim to pay about the same amount.
  • pmoriarty 5y ago
    If wages were going to be driven down by this then corporations would not only be all for it, but would probably lobby to make it a law everywhere.
  • grumple 5y ago
    Good luck in a competitive field like tech. Companies might not advertise salary ranges at a few big tech companies, but the vast majority of recruiters tell you the salary range as soon as you talk to them (or you name your price and they say "that will work"). I already totally ignore the bottom 75% of salaries. The problem tech companies have is that many of them can be disrupted by a few motivated individuals, and there are always new opportunities for them. If you pay enough, you benefit from them. If you don't, somebody else does, or worse, they become new competition.
    • Clubber 5y ago
      >The problem tech companies have is that many of them can be disrupted by a few motivated individuals I'm convinced a primary motivation for hiring in mega-tech companies is to keep people from making startups to dethrone them. You can't legally compete with Google, etc if you've signed a non-compete.
      • mywittyname 5y ago
        Non-competes are unenforceable in a lot of places. And even if they weren't, the time scales for a startup to evolve into a serious market mover is longer than most non-compete contracts last anyway. A founder of a now-popular startup worked for Google eight years ago, so what? Let's say Google remembers and decides to pursue action. They'd spend another 3-4 years suing a person who has a mountain of plausible deniability to hide behind. And for what? There's no real gain to Google for this.
        • pseudalopex 5y ago
          The point is they go to and stay at Google instead of starting their own company.
      • Mauricebranagh 5y ago
        You can once you leave - just don't take the piss like the self driving car idiot did.
      • 5y ago
  • tyrust 5y ago
    The existence of levels.fyi doesn't appear to have hurt Total Comp thus far.
  • Clubber 5y ago
    This already happens. If you look at most job postings, many will say "market value," for the salary. They are typically horrendously low.
  • Taylor_OD 5y ago
    Then said remote employees could go work for companies in other states. Or the companies that are actually willing to pay above the market because they need the talent. Which will cause more people to pay and that level and then eventually we are in the same situation we are in now where swe salaries are very strong in general.
  • ncallaway 5y ago
    Corporations (at least mid-size and large corporations) already have a pretty good idea of what their competition is offering. There are companies that survey employees for salary information, collect all that knowledge, and then sell it to corporations. Medium and large businesses already have a very good understanding of the job market and what a competitive salary range is.
    • eecc 5y ago
      Exactly, the problem is that they keep lowballing it because these ranges are somewhat not so much public knowledge
  • Mauricebranagh 5y ago
    Cartels are illegal ask the companies in SV that got caught.
• ahelwer 5y ago
  This is quite common. Corporations know the long game and are willing to pay in the short term to get it. Another example is those grocery stores that closed last year after hazard pay was mandated at the height of the pandemic, citing unprofitability. Unprofitability! Of a grocery store, one of like three places where people were spending money in 2020!
  • mdorazio 5y ago
    Volume doesn’t matter if your margins are negative. Grocery stores typically run on very slim margins (3% or less) so it’s pretty reasonable to think that raising employee pay significantly would make them lose money.
    • DangitBobby 5y ago
      Maybe I'm not thinking about this right, but if they are getting way more business because of the pandemic and their costs have more or less stayed put, it's practically impossible that their revenue hasn't gone up considerably. Despite thin margins on their product, if they sell more of it they should be making more money (eliding some growing pains which should be surmountable). In that light, I have to say I kind of doubt their margins would be negative if they offered more pay during the pandemic.
      • renewiltord 5y ago
        Surely, it’s easier to believe that than that some non-chain grocer is protesting paying more by shutting down entirely.
        • DangitBobby 5y ago
          Would it be fair to say that the ones shutting down are not the ones receiving more business during the pandemic? Or are you saying that their new found success has actually killed them? Because the claim by the original comment here is that volume doesn't matter.
• HPsquared 5y ago
  Not a boycott, it's perfectly explainable as just companies acting in self-interest. A boycott is a more planned, deliberate thing and usually punitive (i.e. boycotting usually has a cost to the boycotter, but greater cost to the one being boycotted)