8 ms·

With the rate of inflation and interest rates going up, salaried workers need a cost of living adjustment at the very least, even if we forget about a bonus or

• whitemary 3y ago
  > This decision is unethical to full-time employees seeing the tidy profit they made. Profit itself is unethical.
  • beebmam 3y ago
    Based on what ideology? It's polite to at least state your premises
    • latency-guy2 3y ago
      I can't say I did not fall for the bait, but I believe its a leftist troll attention seeking. Other comments left both immediately recently and over the past few days at least are all roughly the same on topics where the concern is at best minutely related
  • brutusborn 3y ago
    Alright, I’ll bite. How is profit unethical? If I sell my neighbour something and make a profit, are we not both better off?
    • mertd 3y ago
      If you are puzzled by weird economic positions of people don't read the threads about SVB's collapse.
      • brutusborn 3y ago
        I’d prefer someone help me solve my current conundrum than add to the confusion.
  • areoform 3y ago
    > Profit itself is unethical. This statement is unethical. It's a very strange thing to claim that profit is unethical. In tech companies, profit is an indication that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts — i.e. so much wealth has been created that there's an excess of it.
    • atq2119 3y ago
      The question is more about who gets to capture the created wealth: - people who gave money to enable the activity leading to profit (aka capital) - people who organize the activity leading to profit (aka management) - people who actually do the work Obviously, each of these groups has some legitimate claim to the added value, but it's also pretty obvious that over the last 50 years or so, the balance in the economy as a whole has tilted towards capital and upper management in a way that can't really be justified on an ethical basis. (Just look at how the correlation between wages and productivity disappeared in the 1970s.)
      • shrimp_emoji 3y ago
        Well said. But: > Just look at how the correlation between wages and productivity disappeared in the 1970s. Isn't this explained by computerization? The '70s? That's when Stallman was mucking around at MIT, right? Computers were happening! Say 30 workers' productivity can now be reached by 1 worker at a computer. The company lays off 25, leaving only 5 workers. Those 5 workers are generating 150 workers' productivity for the company. But they're only getting 5 workers' salary (there has been no salary increase). Boom -- wages:productivity used to be 1:1, and now it's 1:30. Consider how it also makes no sense FOR those 5 workers' salary TO increase significantly. Why should you pay them 30 times more than their pre-computerized peers? Their jobs may actually be easier than before, hours of indexing and searching replaced by filesystems and `grep`. Is that unethical? This also attacks the "we thought computers would mean we would get 2 hour workdays" meme. Equivalently to inflating their wages, why would you decrease their work hours? These are things that, in the name of "ethics", can only be forced by unions or the government, depending on your level of adventurousness toward economic policy. (And your level of confidence in being able to arbitrate ethics. The communists were very hubristic about that one.)
  • danielmarkbruce 3y ago
    Losses are unethical
  • npteljes 3y ago
    Good luck motivating people with anything else.
• throwawaysleep 3y ago
  > It's a clear signal to the employees not to expect any practical reward for hard work, what a great way to motivate people. Do companies care? This signal has been the same for about a decade now. It seemingly does not matter if employees are motivated or not. There is profit anyway. Winning strategy as an employee is to be a mediocre employee at multiple full time remote jobs.
• housemusicfan 3y ago
  [dead]
• MauroIksem 3y ago
  This is happening everywhere. The place where I work a very large, rich University gave out two 3% raises since COVID started and at one point temporarily cut everyone's salary by 5%. The only way to make more was to get a promotion or apply for a role on another team.
• costcofries 3y ago
  This hurts junior employees the most. Tenured employees have equity as a large part of their comp, they are invested in the stock price, not the few % annual bump.
  • bruce511 3y ago
    This is a very "techy" viewpoint. There are only a very small number of companies globally, (a percentage that can be rounded to 0), that give equity as part of the employee compensation.
    • heleninboodler 3y ago
      I feel like tech is the implied context here. In tech, the number is a lot closer to 100% than 0%.
      • pjmlp 3y ago
        Maybe in US, I never got anything like that in any European company.
      • maeil 3y ago
        It's magnitudes closer to 0% than to 100%. Like 0.1% compared to 99.9%.
  • verst 3y ago
    Not really true for Microsoft. At Microsoft we generally do not get significant new stock grants or refresh grants, even on promotion no new stock is granted often. This may be different for principal engineers or certainly partner level folks - but senior engineers with more than 4 years of tenure will have essentially no significant stock to vest.
    • shuckles 3y ago
      Are you describing American compensation? If so, how do they retain engineers after the cliff?
• achates 3y ago
  Wages are a function of the supply and demand for labor. If the business loses money the employees don't have to chip in money to make up the loss, but on the flip side they don't share in profits.
  • Arainach 3y ago
    >if business loses money the employees don't have to chip in money to make up the loss They absolutely do (either in slashed jobs or benefits), they just don't get a say in it
  • forgetfreeman 3y ago
    When did layoffs stop being a thing?
• heywhatupboys 3y ago
  > salaried workers need a cost of living adjustment at the very least Software engineers are some of the most priviledged workers in the west when it comes to compensation and perks. We need to stop talking about them like they are road construction workers here on HN. it is really out of touch
  • dv_dt 3y ago
    Let’s say all workers should get a cost of living adjustment…
  • makeitdouble 3y ago
    Does it help road construction workers if we accept lower conditions ? It's not a zero sum game, and I totally side with other professions to fight for decent working compensations.
    • ChrisHyung 3y ago
      Doesn't it actually help with inflationary spending? The Fed making a play at depressing wages and increasing unemployment is what's keeping inflation in check. God knows the rich won't ever pay their fair share.
      • lynx23 3y ago
        Fairness is an illusion in thsi universe, as is God.
      • makeitdouble 3y ago
        That reminds me of this hilarious interview of a British economist: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65308769 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65308769 > Somehow in the UK, someone needs to accept that they're worse off and stop trying to maintain their real spending power [...] You're both totally right that giving people enough money to live might increase the inflation. But that's not an option people are (rightly so) going to be happy with. "Just be miserable" is not a plan.
• bruce511 3y ago
  >> This decision is unethical to full-time employees It's easy to mark any decision as "unethical" depending on your viewpoint. Indeed ethics are, to a large degree, highly subjective. I might suggest that eating meat is unethical, or I might think whaling is unethical but beef farming is ok, or I might be completely ok consuming any meat since we're omnivores and meat is part of our diet. None of this is material though, and all points are equally valid, since ethics are subjective and personal. So I've no problem with you considering this unethical, or even mentioning that you consider this to be unethical. An employee, who didn't negotiate an appropriate contract, would likely feel bad about this, and would thus maybe fall back on "unethical". However from a business point of view it's completely ethical. The contract between an employer and employee is a simple business relationship. Their responsibilities and powers are clearly laid out. Setting increases and bonus's is clearly (for most of us) a mandate given to employers. In some cases (where unions are involved) the mandate falls over both the employer and the union. Of course employers care about employees (in most companies anyway.) If only because a mass departure would be bad. They also have other considerations though, customers, shareholders, sustainability, future profitability and so on. They are constantly balancing many levers to try and keep "everyone happy". Usually this means the love has to be spread around a bit, not everyone is going to get everything they want. Does this mean it's always in balance? no of course not. Currently (in the US) there's probably too much of a lean towards shareholders - both in artificially increasing stock prices, and also in prioritizing returns. In other places labor is stronger and the balance is away from shareholders. In another time, and another place, there's reasonable balance for a while. For me personally, it's hard to feel sorry for FAANG employees, who've been living large for years and now (shock, horror) aren't going to get increases. Oh no, that 100K you're getting isn't enough? My heart bleeds for you. Said no Uber-driver ever...
• throw123123123 3y ago
  Wages are not downstream of profits - they are a price in a market for labor. If companies could pay 0 they would pay 0, and if employees could charge infinite they would charge infinite. It's better this way - otherwise employees at companies that make no money would have to take no salary.
  • NeverFade 3y ago
    > Wages are not downstream of profits - they are a price in a market for labor. That is correct, and a point many in this discussion miss. > It's better this way - otherwise employees at companies that make no money would have to take no salary. Not so fast. For one, companies that "make no money" eventually go bankrupt and pay nothing to nobody. It's not "better" or "worse", paying what the market requires is simply the way things are in a free market.
  • somenameforme 3y ago
    Many small businesses seek to treat their employees well. It's not out of some ulterior 5D chess profit seeking scheme, nor is it out of naivete of the fact that they could earn more. But simply out of having some degree of social values and ethics. Wanting to make a profit or to become rich, isn't the same as being willing to screw everybody (or anybody) over in pursuit of such. In America today only 57% [1] of people have a positive view of capitalism. And that percent is only that "high" thanks to much older individuals who are probably envisioning our capitalism as it was in the past, before MBAology became the default corporate worldview. Take only 18-29 year olds, and 40% have a positive view. What do you think's going to happen as the older generation dies off? Capitalism is not sustainable without more of society pushing back against sociopathy. Normalizing it because 'this is how big companies act' isn't going to normalize it, but simply turn people against capitalism - and ultimately bring us closer to swapping over to ["this time it'll be different"]ism iteration #73 or whatever. [1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/09/19/modest-declines-in-positive-views-of-socialism-and-capitalism-in-u-s/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/09/19/modest-decli...
    • throw123123123 3y ago