4 ms·

I guess you have not worked at a company where these types of things can and do happen? It's a plausible story in my book since I had something similar happen e

by kenrikm 14y ago

I guess you have not worked at a company where these types of things can and do happen? It's a plausible story in my book since I had something similar happen early in my career. My boss hated me and another new hire (fear) and kept telling the VP that were were "not working and slow" well without letting my manager know the VP started logging all of the work and found that in a given week I produced 40% of the work, the other new hire produced 30% and the other three people on the team produced 10% each (including my manager) She was fired and I was given her position after being with the company for only a few months.

ceol 14y ago
That isn't the same at all.
- kenrikm 14y ago
  Boss, wanted to fire, Boss got fired, got Boss position. Similar plot line IMO.
  - kd0amg 14y ago
    Similar to "entry-level data entry job that pays more than the management job above it"?
    - rprasad 14y ago
      According to reddit commenters, the reddit poster was making 6 figures (in Euros) for a data entry job (another HN commenter put this number at 250,000, but I couldn't find anything on reddit to support that). The manager was apparently only making 5 figures. I'm willing to believe that managers can make less than their underlings (for example, project managers can make less than programmers depending on experience, sales managers can make less than salesmen once commissions are factored in) but I am not willing to believe that an entry-level data entry position pays 6 figures. Especially not in the Netherlands.
      - ehutch79 14y ago
        that wasn't his base pay, it's his base pay + 90% of the bonus pool for the department.
        bowyakka 14y ago
        I still find that odd, perhaps I should quit my current job and do exactly what he does? after all automating data entry has to be a lot simpler than most programming jobs. Lets play with the maths of this, lets say that he is generously making 40 euros, which is a lot for data entry (think like double what specialist data entry people are normally paid) That leaves us with a bonus pool of 2100000, the claim is that he was taking 90% of the bonus, that would make the bonus pool 233333, lets round up to 250000 Ok so lets split this evenly across several employees 5 clerks = 50,000 bonus each on a base salary of 40,000 = 90,000 each ! 10 clerks = 25,000 bonus each on a base salary of 40,000 = 65,000 each ! 20 clerks = 12,500 bonus each on a base salary of 40,000 = 52,500 each ! Thats a stunning salary ! really, I would be motivated myself to get my bonus, even if I was only taking my _equal_ share of the magic pot. Ok lets assume that his department is huge say .... 50 clerks = 5,000 bonus each on a base salary of 40,000 = 45,000 each Sounds reasonable right? but the 50 clerks would be costing the company 2000000 Euros ! At that cost even the most stupid of organisations would be looking at automation (human via india or say the meat-cloud), or computers) Now you might say that 40K is generous for the type of work, that he would really be earning something like 25K, still a lot for data entry which is a low skilled job that is typically hourly paid; a fine argument but if that is the case then the bonus pool becomes larger which still makes all the numbers look suspect. Maybe he got a raise (and didn't really declare it, for some reason), even then that is somewhat higher than a basic internet search gives me for someone in Holland as a programmer (http://www.payscale.com/research/NL/Country=Netherlands/Salary http://www.payscale.com/research/NL/Country=Netherlands/Sala...). Now the company he works for might be clueless, but I would be surprised if they did not do a wage equivalence as most companies are low that way. So colour me extremely skeptical, the _only_ way it makes sense is if he misplaced a zero
      - radicalbyte 14y ago
        250k is more than the entire department cost. If data entry was that expensive then they'd have outsourced it to Poland pretty quickly. Or have invested in one of the many document scanning and OCR companies. I've worked in The Netherlands for 6 years now (5 as consultant in this area), and am pretty sure that this story is bullshit. I've seen nothing like it.
    - sangaya 14y ago
      We're making wild guesses about the pay scales there. I've worked at places where employees make 30,000 and the boss makes 35,000. Also, the bonus system sounds like it was based heavily on quantity, where it is believable that one automated system could substantially out-perform the sum of the other employees. In a system designed to split a bonus more normally (say 10% for 10 employees) it's not hard to imagine that in the scenario described it could have gone 90% for 1, and 10% split among 9.

by kenrikm 14y ago

ceol 14y ago

That isn't the same at all.

kenrikm 14y ago
Boss, wanted to fire, Boss got fired, got Boss position. Similar plot line IMO.
- kd0amg 14y ago
  Similar to "entry-level data entry job that pays more than the management job above it"?
  - rprasad 14y ago
    According to reddit commenters, the reddit poster was making 6 figures (in Euros) for a data entry job (another HN commenter put this number at 250,000, but I couldn't find anything on reddit to support that). The manager was apparently only making 5 figures. I'm willing to believe that managers can make less than their underlings (for example, project managers can make less than programmers depending on experience, sales managers can make less than salesmen once commissions are factored in) but I am not willing to believe that an entry-level data entry position pays 6 figures. Especially not in the Netherlands.
    - ehutch79 14y ago
      that wasn't his base pay, it's his base pay + 90% of the bonus pool for the department.
      - bowyakka 14y ago
        I still find that odd, perhaps I should quit my current job and do exactly what he does? after all automating data entry has to be a lot simpler than most programming jobs. Lets play with the maths of this, lets say that he is generously making 40 euros, which is a lot for data entry (think like double what specialist data entry people are normally paid) That leaves us with a bonus pool of 2100000, the claim is that he was taking 90% of the bonus, that would make the bonus pool 233333, lets round up to 250000 Ok so lets split this evenly across several employees 5 clerks = 50,000 bonus each on a base salary of 40,000 = 90,000 each ! 10 clerks = 25,000 bonus each on a base salary of 40,000 = 65,000 each ! 20 clerks = 12,500 bonus each on a base salary of 40,000 = 52,500 each ! Thats a stunning salary ! really, I would be motivated myself to get my bonus, even if I was only taking my _equal_ share of the magic pot. Ok lets assume that his department is huge say .... 50 clerks = 5,000 bonus each on a base salary of 40,000 = 45,000 each Sounds reasonable right? but the 50 clerks would be costing the company 2000000 Euros ! At that cost even the most stupid of organisations would be looking at automation (human via india or say the meat-cloud), or computers) Now you might say that 40K is generous for the type of work, that he would really be earning something like 25K, still a lot for data entry which is a low skilled job that is typically hourly paid; a fine argument but if that is the case then the bonus pool becomes larger which still makes all the numbers look suspect. Maybe he got a raise (and didn't really declare it, for some reason), even then that is somewhat higher than a basic internet search gives me for someone in Holland as a programmer (http://www.payscale.com/research/NL/Country=Netherlands/Salary http://www.payscale.com/research/NL/Country=Netherlands/Sala...). Now the company he works for might be clueless, but I would be surprised if they did not do a wage equivalence as most companies are low that way. So colour me extremely skeptical, the _only_ way it makes sense is if he misplaced a zero
    - radicalbyte 14y ago
      250k is more than the entire department cost. If data entry was that expensive then they'd have outsourced it to Poland pretty quickly. Or have invested in one of the many document scanning and OCR companies. I've worked in The Netherlands for 6 years now (5 as consultant in this area), and am pretty sure that this story is bullshit. I've seen nothing like it.
  - sangaya 14y ago
    We're making wild guesses about the pay scales there. I've worked at places where employees make 30,000 and the boss makes 35,000. Also, the bonus system sounds like it was based heavily on quantity, where it is believable that one automated system could substantially out-perform the sum of the other employees. In a system designed to split a bonus more normally (say 10% for 10 employees) it's not hard to imagine that in the scenario described it could have gone 90% for 1, and 10% split among 9.