5 ms·

A counter point: Salary should be decent, but I’m not wholly convinced it needs to be at “market rate.” By having reasonable rates but below “market” value, yo

by bumby 2y ago

A counter point: Salary should be decent, but I’m not wholly convinced it needs to be at “market rate.” By having reasonable rates but below “market” value, you are likely creating a selection bias for people who are in it for the mission more than they are in it for the money. I think that’s a good thing. It’s like the idea that politicians should be allowed to trade stocks or else you won’t get the “best” talent. I’d argue I don’t want politicians whose primary motivation is financial gain.

whimsicalism 2y ago
we should also start cutting doctor pay to make sure we get people who are in it to help others.
- bumby 2y ago
  Do you think the best doctors are the ones who go into the most lucrative paths, like cosmetic surgery in Beverly Hills? You're deliberately strawmanning. The equivalent statement on the other side would be: We should 10x doctor pay so we only get those people who are in it for the money. That's a disingenuous stance as well. Let's not pretend that "slightly below market rate" for specialized fields leaves people in the poorhouse. My original point was about achieving a balance to avoid hiring mercenaries. I think that is important in domains where ethics matter and ultimately leads to better long-term outcomes. When people defend the pay aspects being the best motivation, they are quietly telling us about their own (anti-social) value system.
  - LunaSea 2y ago
    Doctor pay is already 10x.
    - bumby 2y ago
      Doctor pay is already 10x doctor pay?
- Cyph0n 2y ago
  Pediatric medicine in a nutshell.
zemvpferreira 2y ago
Inevitably, that way of setting up an organization leads to one of two end-games: 1-A wealthy ruling class who can afford and feels entitled to be the government. See: the British Empire. 2-A wealthy ruling class who can afford to postpone profits while they accumulate power, to eventually trade that power for profit through grift. See: western democracy. Pay people as well as possible for their work and ruthlessly go after theft, corruption and incompetence. That’s how you build a lastingly successful system. Shades of Singapore.
- evidencetamper 2y ago
  Singapore has been independent since 1959, while the USA got its own in 1776, and Britain has been around for more than a thousand years. I don't think we can, yet, call Singapore a lastingly successful system, considering most of the time since its independence has been under a father or his son.
  - zemvpferreira 2y ago
    Fair, I won't pretend to know much about Singapore. But feels like a better way to set things up than what came before.
- jaldhar 2y ago
  Re: 1. Cause and effect are backward. Imperial service was actually more meritocratic than the domestic British government of that time. Look how many names of colonialists are Scottish or Irish. The former were tossed out of their land during the Highland clearances or lost influence when the Union shifted power to London. The latter were barred from high office due to their Catholic religion. But if you had talent and ambition you could go to Africa or India (and then become wealthy and ultimately join the ruling class)
  - zemvpferreira 2y ago
    Fair, I won't pretend to know much about the British empire. But feels like a decent strawman for my argument.
ksec 2y ago
It shouldn't be market rate because you get job safety. Most have never worked in private sector before and has no idea. Salary should be dependent on Jobs nature and ability. Not by grade. Currently it is simply a power structure and hierarchy. People should be promoted on merit. Unfortunately most working in public sector lack the ability to judge. If you think power play, bureaucracy and failing up is a thing in large enterprise. You haven't seen civil servant yet. I cant remember which party it was but stopped the Pay Band usage and everyone is simply paid by the starting rate. UK civil servant has basically stopped most salary increase for a long time. Because of that, instead of pay raise a lot of people got promoted which is basically everyone in every department has inflated grades. These promotion are also problematic, again, not based on merit. There are now more SCS1 than ever. 40% of work are irrelevant and made up by seniors to improve their chance of promotion. Another 50% of the work are getting around bureaucracy, only 10% of the work are actually useful. And there is no way to fix it. Ministers dont want to fix it because they rely on cvil servant to get things done. Civil servant internally lack the interest to reform. And if anything the power of a department is measured by how many staff it has. But none of these are new. We are now close to 50 years since Yes Minister first aired. And the documentary remains relevant, and everyone should watch it if they want to understand more. And as far as I can tell, this is not UK specific.
- bumby 2y ago
  >Most have never worked in private sector before and has no idea. The average tenure in the U.S. government is 8.2 years. The average age is 47.2 years old. I don’t know how to reconcile the facts with your claim. Either most have been unemployed for a couple decades before coming to work for the government or it has some wonky distribution or something else is going on that you should elaborate on.
  - wiether 2y ago
    The tenure is for the job or overall in the government? Here in France it's quite common for government employees to jump through agencies during their career, so the average tenure at a job or even at an agency is not quite big. Also, keep in mind that the current comment thread is about the UK.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
wat10000 2y ago
You also create a selection bias for people who are bad at what they do and can’t get a better paying job.
- bumby 2y ago
  Again, this assumes the main motivation is money. Ie if they could get a better paying job, they would. You can select for highly skilled people who also aren’t putting money as the top priority. The point I’m getting at is that pay can be a noisy proxy for skill and we should probably not assume they are tightly correlated in all domains. One person once said the people at the NSA are much more like Marines than Silicon Valley types. They’re more interested in the mission than in getting rich. The fact that so many people look at a job as a money optimization problem says a lot about society.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    >this assumes the main motivation is money People evaluate pay to quality of life at work ratio, not just pay (although it is most commonly referred to as pay to avoid writing or saying all of that out). You cannot expect a person to come out of school at 30 to 35 years old with $300k+ of debt after working 80 hour weeks during their 20s and slaving away in residency and not expect a decent pay to quality of life at work ratio. If you do not increase quality of life to make up for lower pay, you will end up with less driven or less capable people. Note that quality of life also includes security of income, which can reduce that type of stress.
    - bumby 2y ago
      I agree and I think that supports the idea that salary alone is a bad metric for skills. Many people will take a lower pay to support a mission they are passionate about. To claim that makes them lower skilled or that they couldn’t get a higher paying job elsewhere is an overly simplified mental model. Sometimes the job itself is what leads to the higher quality of life.
      - 2y ago

by bumby 2y ago

whimsicalism 2y ago

we should also start cutting doctor pay to make sure we get people who are in it to help others.

bumby 2y ago
Do you think the best doctors are the ones who go into the most lucrative paths, like cosmetic surgery in Beverly Hills? You're deliberately strawmanning. The equivalent statement on the other side would be: We should 10x doctor pay so we only get those people who are in it for the money. That's a disingenuous stance as well. Let's not pretend that "slightly below market rate" for specialized fields leaves people in the poorhouse. My original point was about achieving a balance to avoid hiring mercenaries. I think that is important in domains where ethics matter and ultimately leads to better long-term outcomes. When people defend the pay aspects being the best motivation, they are quietly telling us about their own (anti-social) value system.
- LunaSea 2y ago
  Doctor pay is already 10x.
  - bumby 2y ago
    Doctor pay is already 10x doctor pay?
Cyph0n 2y ago
Pediatric medicine in a nutshell.

zemvpferreira 2y ago

Inevitably, that way of setting up an organization leads to one of two end-games: 1-A wealthy ruling class who can afford and feels entitled to be the government. See: the British Empire. 2-A wealthy ruling class who can afford to postpone profits while they accumulate power, to eventually trade that power for profit through grift. See: western democracy. Pay people as well as possible for their work and ruthlessly go after theft, corruption and incompetence. That’s how you build a lastingly successful system. Shades of Singapore.

evidencetamper 2y ago
Singapore has been independent since 1959, while the USA got its own in 1776, and Britain has been around for more than a thousand years. I don't think we can, yet, call Singapore a lastingly successful system, considering most of the time since its independence has been under a father or his son.
- zemvpferreira 2y ago
  Fair, I won't pretend to know much about Singapore. But feels like a better way to set things up than what came before.
jaldhar 2y ago
Re: 1. Cause and effect are backward. Imperial service was actually more meritocratic than the domestic British government of that time. Look how many names of colonialists are Scottish or Irish. The former were tossed out of their land during the Highland clearances or lost influence when the Union shifted power to London. The latter were barred from high office due to their Catholic religion. But if you had talent and ambition you could go to Africa or India (and then become wealthy and ultimately join the ruling class)
- zemvpferreira 2y ago
  Fair, I won't pretend to know much about the British empire. But feels like a decent strawman for my argument.

ksec 2y ago

It shouldn't be market rate because you get job safety. Most have never worked in private sector before and has no idea. Salary should be dependent on Jobs nature and ability. Not by grade. Currently it is simply a power structure and hierarchy. People should be promoted on merit. Unfortunately most working in public sector lack the ability to judge. If you think power play, bureaucracy and failing up is a thing in large enterprise. You haven't seen civil servant yet. I cant remember which party it was but stopped the Pay Band usage and everyone is simply paid by the starting rate. UK civil servant has basically stopped most salary increase for a long time. Because of that, instead of pay raise a lot of people got promoted which is basically everyone in every department has inflated grades. These promotion are also problematic, again, not based on merit. There are now more SCS1 than ever. 40% of work are irrelevant and made up by seniors to improve their chance of promotion. Another 50% of the work are getting around bureaucracy, only 10% of the work are actually useful. And there is no way to fix it. Ministers dont want to fix it because they rely on cvil servant to get things done. Civil servant internally lack the interest to reform. And if anything the power of a department is measured by how many staff it has. But none of these are new. We are now close to 50 years since Yes Minister first aired. And the documentary remains relevant, and everyone should watch it if they want to understand more. And as far as I can tell, this is not UK specific.

bumby 2y ago
>Most have never worked in private sector before and has no idea. The average tenure in the U.S. government is 8.2 years. The average age is 47.2 years old. I don’t know how to reconcile the facts with your claim. Either most have been unemployed for a couple decades before coming to work for the government or it has some wonky distribution or something else is going on that you should elaborate on.
- wiether 2y ago
  The tenure is for the job or overall in the government? Here in France it's quite common for government employees to jump through agencies during their career, so the average tenure at a job or even at an agency is not quite big. Also, keep in mind that the current comment thread is about the UK.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

wat10000 2y ago

You also create a selection bias for people who are bad at what they do and can’t get a better paying job.

bumby 2y ago
Again, this assumes the main motivation is money. Ie if they could get a better paying job, they would. You can select for highly skilled people who also aren’t putting money as the top priority. The point I’m getting at is that pay can be a noisy proxy for skill and we should probably not assume they are tightly correlated in all domains. One person once said the people at the NSA are much more like Marines than Silicon Valley types. They’re more interested in the mission than in getting rich. The fact that so many people look at a job as a money optimization problem says a lot about society.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  >this assumes the main motivation is money People evaluate pay to quality of life at work ratio, not just pay (although it is most commonly referred to as pay to avoid writing or saying all of that out). You cannot expect a person to come out of school at 30 to 35 years old with $300k+ of debt after working 80 hour weeks during their 20s and slaving away in residency and not expect a decent pay to quality of life at work ratio. If you do not increase quality of life to make up for lower pay, you will end up with less driven or less capable people. Note that quality of life also includes security of income, which can reduce that type of stress.
  - bumby 2y ago
    I agree and I think that supports the idea that salary alone is a bad metric for skills. Many people will take a lower pay to support a mission they are passionate about. To claim that makes them lower skilled or that they couldn’t get a higher paying job elsewhere is an overly simplified mental model. Sometimes the job itself is what leads to the higher quality of life.
    - 2y ago