4 ms·

Some aspects are adversarial, some aspects aren't. How much compensation I get is adversarial. How much documentation I write or how many internal tools I dev

by qsort 4y ago

Some aspects are adversarial, some aspects aren't. How much compensation I get is adversarial. How much documentation I write or how many internal tools I develop isn't adversarial, not even if you put la liberté guidant le peuple above the fold.

zozbot234 4y ago
> How much compensation I get is adversarial. It's not adversarial, it's set by market conditions. Only collusion can turn it into an adversarial matter, as seen e.g. when Big Tech CEO's were shown to have entered into a secret agreement not to poach each other's employees.
- qsort 4y ago
  A specific instance of a salary negotiation can be reasonably modeled as a zero-sum game. My broader point is that zero-sum sub-games don't make the entire game zero-sum.
AnimalMuppet 4y ago
Exactly. The company (owners plus workers) getting a big pot of money is not adversarial, it's cooperative. Dividing the pot of money is where it gets adversarial. But spend all your time focusing on how to divide the pot always (at least in the long run) means the whole group loses out on the big pot of money.
- jgeada 4y ago
  Management decides what portion of the pot gets to be divided by the workers, and much of that pot you might get. You're not even a part of that discussion. You are an individual, management is not. They have negotiating power because they see what everyone else gets paid, you don't. Your only viable threat is walking away, and for most people that is not a credible threat. Your perception of your negotiation skills is likely very biased by the Dunning-Kruger effect: you rarely use negotiation skills in adversarial settings, so your perception of how good you are at it compared to professional negotiators is likely highly inflated.
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    Even accepting everything you say, you have still missed my point. Company A has employees who are working as a team, working for the good of the company. Company B has employees that are doing as the article says, sabotaging actual work. Which company is going to do better, A or B? Even if management decides that workers only get X%, and workers can't negotiate that, in which company is there a bigger pot available to pay workers?
    - jgeada 4y ago
      It’s a trick question. Neither company will want to pay employees anywhere near market rates if they can avoid it. The smaller the pot for employees the larger the profits & management pools

by qsort 4y ago

zozbot234 4y ago

> How much compensation I get is adversarial. It's not adversarial, it's set by market conditions. Only collusion can turn it into an adversarial matter, as seen e.g. when Big Tech CEO's were shown to have entered into a secret agreement not to poach each other's employees.

qsort 4y ago
A specific instance of a salary negotiation can be reasonably modeled as a zero-sum game. My broader point is that zero-sum sub-games don't make the entire game zero-sum.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago

Exactly. The company (owners plus workers) getting a big pot of money is not adversarial, it's cooperative. Dividing the pot of money is where it gets adversarial. But spend all your time focusing on how to divide the pot always (at least in the long run) means the whole group loses out on the big pot of money.

jgeada 4y ago
Management decides what portion of the pot gets to be divided by the workers, and much of that pot you might get. You're not even a part of that discussion. You are an individual, management is not. They have negotiating power because they see what everyone else gets paid, you don't. Your only viable threat is walking away, and for most people that is not a credible threat. Your perception of your negotiation skills is likely very biased by the Dunning-Kruger effect: you rarely use negotiation skills in adversarial settings, so your perception of how good you are at it compared to professional negotiators is likely highly inflated.
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  Even accepting everything you say, you have still missed my point. Company A has employees who are working as a team, working for the good of the company. Company B has employees that are doing as the article says, sabotaging actual work. Which company is going to do better, A or B? Even if management decides that workers only get X%, and workers can't negotiate that, in which company is there a bigger pot available to pay workers?
  - jgeada 4y ago
    It’s a trick question. Neither company will want to pay employees anywhere near market rates if they can avoid it. The smaller the pot for employees the larger the profits & management pools