8 ms·

I have a friend living in Argentina. His father-in-law is a businessman with a factory. Like many successful people in Argentina, he is a master at exploiting c

I have a friend living in Argentina. His father-in-law is a businessman with a factory. Like many successful people in Argentina, he is a master at exploiting chaos for personal benefit. The father-in-law praised inflation, explaining it was a useful tool for people like him, and offered the following story: I was walking down the street and found my wares being sold in a shop that doesn't retail for me. Doing some digging, I found incontrovertible proof that my foreman of ten years---ten years!!!---had been stealing from me. Did I fire him? No. It is impossible to fire your employees, even for provable malfeasance. Did I sue him? No. You lose 95% of these kinds of cases. Did I tell the police? No. You can't get the police involved with anything important, like my business, they are too corrupt. So what did I do? I simply told him I would never give him a raise again. And he understood that---due to radical inflation---his salaried buying power would keep dropping and dropping, until it was chiseled away to nothing. So he quit. [edit: I am in no way suggesting that FIL was the moral actor in this story, I don't know if he was or wasn't screwing his foreman into poverty before the theft. What I found fascinating about this story was how things were systematically fucked in across so many possible dimensions, that individual instances of corruption and inefficiency and lack of faith are intertwined. i.e. there's a whole rat's nest of problems to untangle and a point intervention is unlikely to prompt broader change. Also see interesting discussion below about root causes of the inflation, which connect to some of the anecdote above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30101931 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30101931]

dominotw 5y ago
Is your friend's FIL ceo of my company? This is my employers current strategy to increase profits.
- nate_meurer 5y ago
  Is this likely to result in employees leaving the company?
  - dominotw 5y ago
    i put in my 3 week notice last week. I don't understand ceo's logic here, just counting on inertia?
    - nate_meurer 5y ago
      Ha! Well there you go. I worked for a large company that was perpetually being (and being prepared to be) sold. Three acquisitions in three years, each preceded by a company-wide dictate to increase the company's cash value by lowering costs. My director told me their most powerful cost-cutting lever by far was to lower headcount. So that's what they did. Then after the sale they'd be desperate to hire and train new engineers. The churn killed productivity for years afterward, due to the technical nature of the work. After a year there I still wasn't up to speed. Sometimes the folks in charge are just shortsighted and incompetent.
    - gen220 5y ago
      You've stumbled upon the perceived-lowest-risk way to fire tech people. It looks better on the books when people churn "organically" over the course of a year. Is it better or worse for morale than a lay-off? Hard to say. Depends on how transparent with salaries your company is. One "advantage" is that it's somewhat-reversible. If 2 quarters into this plan, the board finds that they don't need to cut back on spending as much as they originally believed, they can hand out raises to whatever fraction of employees remain, and give themselves a pat on the back. Bottom line, it's a symptom of a poorly-planned hiring system, IMO, and a painful situation with no painless way out. Employee X may prefer to be told directly that the company wants them gone next month, Employee Y prefers to save face. Your CEO is, in all likelihood, very upset about the situation, too, for what it's worth.
l30n4da5 5y ago
> Doing some digging, I found incontrovertible proof that my foreman of ten years---ten years!!!---had been stealing from me. > I simply told him I would never give him a raise again. And he understood that---due to radical inflation---his salaried buying power would keep dropping and dropping, until it was chiseled away to nothing. So he quit. Just to play devil's advocate here, and I'm not saying that stealing is wrong by any means, but this just makes me feel like the reason he was stealing to begin with was that his income was too low to live off of.
- DoctorDabadedoo 5y ago
  Difficult to say without having background for such situations. As a latin american myself I think it's not far fetched to say that in LA there is an ominous sensation that there is always someone taking advantage of you: your boss, your employer, your government, your politicians, the police, etc., so taking advantage yourself, although immoral, is "par for the course". Theory of broken windows and a way to carry on.
- danlugo92 5y ago
  My family ate beef/chicken leftovers (from butchers and such) when they moved to my city. They never stole. Stealing is never OK.
  - loceng 5y ago
    You can't imagine any circumstance where it's okay?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - monsieurbanana 5y ago
    We should all be clamoring that stealing is never OK. But NOT with examples of poor people scraping for food. Stealing is a deep problem in our society, and poor people have nothing to do with that.
    - 5y ago
edko 5y ago
That seems unlikely. That foreman most probably belongs to a union. Unions in Argentina are very powerful and they negotiate at the National level. Whatever increase they negotiate, your friend's father-in-law will have to pay.
- jsiaajdsdaa 5y ago
  Time to sell the business and move to a better country.
  - PestoDiRucola 5y ago
    Easier said than done though.
jfroma 5y ago
> So what did I do? I simply told him I would never give him a raise again. It is true that salary have been always losing purchasing power but don't forget also that employees have compulsory raises. This comes from two sources: 1. minimum wage raises 2. believe it or not, unions negotiate with the gov the raises, those are called here "paritarias". Everything is broken here, laws favor the employees always and that's why no one wants to start a business. When you talk with small businesses this is their number one fear. Half of the population is convinced that business and owners are the devil, and that they need to die in fire. And as for inflation, there is nothing to praise.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  > Half of the population is convinced that business and owners are the devil, and that they need to die in fire. That sounds like more than half of Venezuela's population.
- FredPret 5y ago
  I moved from a broken society to a first-world one. I’m supremely lucky in this. There are many interlinked systems that have to work for a society to progress. It’s nearly impossible to line up all the required factors at the same time. Makes it rather frustrating when first-worlders shit on their own cultures.
  - nmz 5y ago
    I think self destruction is human nature. more so when you don't have things to constantly worry about. like dictators or a horrible economy.
berns 5y ago
This is obviously false. First, employers can't just stop giving raises. Raises are governed by law and by collective agreements (although they are often below inflation). Second, no one just quits, especially a crook. Why? Because you can always force the employer to fire you. How? In general, nothing too obvious, you just stop working too hard. Until your employer offers you to leave and is forced to make an arrangement and pay you compensation. > Did I fire him? No. It is impossible to fire your employees, even for proven misconduct. > Did I sue him? No. You lose 95% of these types of cases.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tester756 5y ago
  >This is obviously false. First, employers can't just stop giving raises. Raises are governed by law and by collective agreements (although they are often below inflation). You mean minimal wage?
  - distances 5y ago
    I don't know about Argentina specifically, but in many countries unions negotiate salary raise percentages for the whole sector. If the country follows universal collective bargaining, this may also be a binding minimum raise for non-unionized employees in the same sector, even in companies that aren't members of the trade union that bargained the deal.
    - jfroma 5y ago
      Argentinian here, I confirm that it works exactly was you described, even the non-unionized part.
- wslh 5y ago
  No, for example in IT they are connected to the "commerce union" but it doesn't include an agreement to adjust by inflation. Obviously IT has strong market forces in favor of the employee but this is an example. Also many unions lost against inflation.

dominotw 5y ago

Is your friend's FIL ceo of my company? This is my employers current strategy to increase profits.

nate_meurer 5y ago
Is this likely to result in employees leaving the company?
- dominotw 5y ago
  i put in my 3 week notice last week. I don't understand ceo's logic here, just counting on inertia?
  - nate_meurer 5y ago
    Ha! Well there you go. I worked for a large company that was perpetually being (and being prepared to be) sold. Three acquisitions in three years, each preceded by a company-wide dictate to increase the company's cash value by lowering costs. My director told me their most powerful cost-cutting lever by far was to lower headcount. So that's what they did. Then after the sale they'd be desperate to hire and train new engineers. The churn killed productivity for years afterward, due to the technical nature of the work. After a year there I still wasn't up to speed. Sometimes the folks in charge are just shortsighted and incompetent.
  - gen220 5y ago
    You've stumbled upon the perceived-lowest-risk way to fire tech people. It looks better on the books when people churn "organically" over the course of a year. Is it better or worse for morale than a lay-off? Hard to say. Depends on how transparent with salaries your company is. One "advantage" is that it's somewhat-reversible. If 2 quarters into this plan, the board finds that they don't need to cut back on spending as much as they originally believed, they can hand out raises to whatever fraction of employees remain, and give themselves a pat on the back. Bottom line, it's a symptom of a poorly-planned hiring system, IMO, and a painful situation with no painless way out. Employee X may prefer to be told directly that the company wants them gone next month, Employee Y prefers to save face. Your CEO is, in all likelihood, very upset about the situation, too, for what it's worth.

l30n4da5 5y ago

> Doing some digging, I found incontrovertible proof that my foreman of ten years---ten years!!!---had been stealing from me. > I simply told him I would never give him a raise again. And he understood that---due to radical inflation---his salaried buying power would keep dropping and dropping, until it was chiseled away to nothing. So he quit. Just to play devil's advocate here, and I'm not saying that stealing is wrong by any means, but this just makes me feel like the reason he was stealing to begin with was that his income was too low to live off of.

DoctorDabadedoo 5y ago
Difficult to say without having background for such situations. As a latin american myself I think it's not far fetched to say that in LA there is an ominous sensation that there is always someone taking advantage of you: your boss, your employer, your government, your politicians, the police, etc., so taking advantage yourself, although immoral, is "par for the course". Theory of broken windows and a way to carry on.
danlugo92 5y ago
My family ate beef/chicken leftovers (from butchers and such) when they moved to my city. They never stole. Stealing is never OK.
- loceng 5y ago
  You can't imagine any circumstance where it's okay?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- monsieurbanana 5y ago
  We should all be clamoring that stealing is never OK. But NOT with examples of poor people scraping for food. Stealing is a deep problem in our society, and poor people have nothing to do with that.
  - 5y ago

edko 5y ago

That seems unlikely. That foreman most probably belongs to a union. Unions in Argentina are very powerful and they negotiate at the National level. Whatever increase they negotiate, your friend's father-in-law will have to pay.

jsiaajdsdaa 5y ago
Time to sell the business and move to a better country.
- PestoDiRucola 5y ago
  Easier said than done though.

jfroma 5y ago

> So what did I do? I simply told him I would never give him a raise again. It is true that salary have been always losing purchasing power but don't forget also that employees have compulsory raises. This comes from two sources: 1. minimum wage raises 2. believe it or not, unions negotiate with the gov the raises, those are called here "paritarias". Everything is broken here, laws favor the employees always and that's why no one wants to start a business. When you talk with small businesses this is their number one fear. Half of the population is convinced that business and owners are the devil, and that they need to die in fire. And as for inflation, there is nothing to praise.

ethbr0 5y ago
> Half of the population is convinced that business and owners are the devil, and that they need to die in fire. That sounds like more than half of Venezuela's population.
FredPret 5y ago
I moved from a broken society to a first-world one. I’m supremely lucky in this. There are many interlinked systems that have to work for a society to progress. It’s nearly impossible to line up all the required factors at the same time. Makes it rather frustrating when first-worlders shit on their own cultures.
- nmz 5y ago
  I think self destruction is human nature. more so when you don't have things to constantly worry about. like dictators or a horrible economy.

berns 5y ago

This is obviously false. First, employers can't just stop giving raises. Raises are governed by law and by collective agreements (although they are often below inflation). Second, no one just quits, especially a crook. Why? Because you can always force the employer to fire you. How? In general, nothing too obvious, you just stop working too hard. Until your employer offers you to leave and is forced to make an arrangement and pay you compensation. > Did I fire him? No. It is impossible to fire your employees, even for proven misconduct. > Did I sue him? No. You lose 95% of these types of cases.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tester756 5y ago
>This is obviously false. First, employers can't just stop giving raises. Raises are governed by law and by collective agreements (although they are often below inflation). You mean minimal wage?
- distances 5y ago
  I don't know about Argentina specifically, but in many countries unions negotiate salary raise percentages for the whole sector. If the country follows universal collective bargaining, this may also be a binding minimum raise for non-unionized employees in the same sector, even in companies that aren't members of the trade union that bargained the deal.
  - jfroma 5y ago
    Argentinian here, I confirm that it works exactly was you described, even the non-unionized part.
wslh 5y ago
No, for example in IT they are connected to the "commerce union" but it doesn't include an agreement to adjust by inflation. Obviously IT has strong market forces in favor of the employee but this is an example. Also many unions lost against inflation.