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So the pay bands go up. Everyone gets paid more, board salary go down a bit, and things hopefully become a bit more event. Sounds good? Things have been going t

So the pay bands go up. Everyone gets paid more, board salary go down a bit, and things hopefully become a bit more event. Sounds good? Things have been going the other direction far too long.

jeremyjh 4y ago
How does that follow? They will just lower the bottom of the pay bands, and now people who in the bottom third are at the midpoint without another dollar being spent.
- eropple 4y ago
  And then, because law is not code and being technically correct is frequently not the best kind of correct, the question becomes "OK, are there actually any employees at that point in the pay band?" and folks start tugging their collars and going "well..." until that activity becomes disallowed, either via judicial interpretation or legislative amendment.
TulliusCicero 4y ago
> So the pay bands go up. They can't, though; if you do that, now there are people in the bottom half, and they're upset that they're 'below average'. You basically need a vanity range for pay.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  It's not a vanity range if it's leading to real-life salary adjustments.
  - TulliusCicero 4y ago
    Vanity clothing sizing leads to real life changes in clothes measurements too.
throwaway09223 4y ago
Board retainers aren't significant expense anywhere as far as I'm aware. Often their stipends are less than an employee's pay. For example, Google's board stipend is $100k, which is about half the median total comp of an average employee (less, counting benefits). Walmart I think pays their board $60k. You may be thinking of executive comp, but even then it is generally not significant amount. You could completely eliminate and redistribute executive compensation at Wal-Mart and it wouldn't really make a measurable difference in employee hourly salaries.
- showerst 4y ago
  Walmart is a bad comparison there; they have an enormous headcount of low-paid staff. Many tech companies are far lower headcount, but with high executive pay. Looking at some other companies, Activision-Blizzard's CEO alone makes enough to pay every employee a $15,000 bonus. Reed Hastings at Netflix makes enough to pay every employee $3800. And that's not counting any of the rest of the executive staff, or all the other ways money flows out of a company to non-employees, like dividends and stock buybacks. https://www.equilar.com/reports/83-equilar-associated-press-ceo-pay-study-2021 https://www.equilar.com/reports/83-equilar-associated-press-... I think there's certainly a lot of room for wages to go up, though i'm skeptical that it will come at the expense of things like executive pay or share buybacks.
  - TulliusCicero 4y ago
    The comment referred to specifically said "board salaries", not executive pay more broadly.
  - throwaway09223 4y ago
    Activision-Blizzard's board get 350k. If they earned $0 instead, this would only give each employee an extra $35 per year. That's including their stock compensation. As you say, most goes to investors. Which makes sense as they actually own the company.
    - jeromegv 4y ago
shmatt 4y ago
More like: Pay bands go up. Company cuts 15% of workforce "to achieve better numbers" Every time you read that headline, the company could have just cut pay by 15% and gotten the same profitability. Higher pay will force medium-small companies to hire less people Some SV companies make Billions in profits per quarter. Some don't. I've seen far too many employees try to justify why they should be making Meta compensation elsewhere. It doesn't and shouldn't work that way
lmkg 4y ago
I read somewhere that this is exactly what happened when (publicly-traded?) companies were required to publicize executive compensation. And it's a major reason why exec salaries have increased while regular salaries have not over the past few decades. So... seems fair to me. Maybe salaries will actually increase enough that people won't have to switch jobs every three years to get a raise.

So the pay bands go up. Everyone gets paid more, board salary go down a bit, and things hopefully become a bit more event. Sounds good? Things have been going the other direction far too long.

jeremyjh 4y ago

How does that follow? They will just lower the bottom of the pay bands, and now people who in the bottom third are at the midpoint without another dollar being spent.

eropple 4y ago
And then, because law is not code and being technically correct is frequently not the best kind of correct, the question becomes "OK, are there actually any employees at that point in the pay band?" and folks start tugging their collars and going "well..." until that activity becomes disallowed, either via judicial interpretation or legislative amendment.

TulliusCicero 4y ago

> So the pay bands go up. They can't, though; if you do that, now there are people in the bottom half, and they're upset that they're 'below average'. You basically need a vanity range for pay.

sangnoir 4y ago
It's not a vanity range if it's leading to real-life salary adjustments.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  Vanity clothing sizing leads to real life changes in clothes measurements too.

throwaway09223 4y ago

Board retainers aren't significant expense anywhere as far as I'm aware. Often their stipends are less than an employee's pay. For example, Google's board stipend is $100k, which is about half the median total comp of an average employee (less, counting benefits). Walmart I think pays their board $60k. You may be thinking of executive comp, but even then it is generally not significant amount. You could completely eliminate and redistribute executive compensation at Wal-Mart and it wouldn't really make a measurable difference in employee hourly salaries.

showerst 4y ago
Walmart is a bad comparison there; they have an enormous headcount of low-paid staff. Many tech companies are far lower headcount, but with high executive pay. Looking at some other companies, Activision-Blizzard's CEO alone makes enough to pay every employee a $15,000 bonus. Reed Hastings at Netflix makes enough to pay every employee $3800. And that's not counting any of the rest of the executive staff, or all the other ways money flows out of a company to non-employees, like dividends and stock buybacks. https://www.equilar.com/reports/83-equilar-associated-press-ceo-pay-study-2021 https://www.equilar.com/reports/83-equilar-associated-press-... I think there's certainly a lot of room for wages to go up, though i'm skeptical that it will come at the expense of things like executive pay or share buybacks.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  The comment referred to specifically said "board salaries", not executive pay more broadly.
- throwaway09223 4y ago
  Activision-Blizzard's board get 350k. If they earned $0 instead, this would only give each employee an extra $35 per year. That's including their stock compensation. As you say, most goes to investors. Which makes sense as they actually own the company.
  - jeromegv 4y ago

shmatt 4y ago

More like: Pay bands go up. Company cuts 15% of workforce "to achieve better numbers" Every time you read that headline, the company could have just cut pay by 15% and gotten the same profitability. Higher pay will force medium-small companies to hire less people Some SV companies make Billions in profits per quarter. Some don't. I've seen far too many employees try to justify why they should be making Meta compensation elsewhere. It doesn't and shouldn't work that way

lmkg 4y ago

I read somewhere that this is exactly what happened when (publicly-traded?) companies were required to publicize executive compensation. And it's a major reason why exec salaries have increased while regular salaries have not over the past few decades. So... seems fair to me. Maybe salaries will actually increase enough that people won't have to switch jobs every three years to get a raise.