11 ms·

> enforced secrecy Not that the US government enforces labor law (for the workers creating the wealth any how), but it is illegal under the Fair Labor Standard

by obrero 11y ago

> enforced secrecy Not that the US government enforces labor law (for the workers creating the wealth any how), but it is illegal under the Fair Labor Standards Act for an employer to tell employees they can't share what their salary is.

prof_hobart 11y ago
One of the reasons that these kinds of things aren't often enforced is that they are very hard to prove. Companies are rarely stupid enough to openly say that you've been fired or given a low performance rating because of this specific act, but do something like this and you'll quickly find that you've got a non-specific "troublemaker/not a team player" reputation starting to be attached to you and once that happens, it's almost impossible to shake.
snarfy 11y ago
Instead of retaliating directly, here is what they do: 1. Create an alternate project 2. Move trouble makers to the alternate project 3. Cancel the project I've seen this happen on more than one occasion.
- fenomas 11y ago
  > I've seen this happen on more than one occasion. OTOH, just because it happens doesn't necessarily mean someone meant it to. That is, for most companies it's hard to imagine creating a project just to fire someone. But it's very, very easy to picture a natural progression like: "new project starts and needs internal transfers -> several managers see an opportunity to get rid of bad/disruptive team members -> project fails because half its team was bad/disruptive". Never attribute to, etc.
  - snarfy 11y ago
    I agree with the sentiment, but unfortunately, on one instance I was actually told by the project director why the new project was created (I was on the other project).
    - fenomas 11y ago
      Yecch. That sounds like some pretty high-school-yearbook-committee stuff to pull in a company.
  - gaius 11y ago
    The flaw in your theory is that you blindly agree with the managers assessment. What if they're the bad ones? It's very easy to stitch up a high-performing employee you think might take your job...
    - fenomas 11y ago
      As the man says: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/558442350326714370 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/558442350326714370
  - kyllo 11y ago
    That's why it works. Plausible deniability.
  - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
    >That is, for most companies it's hard to imagine creating a project just to fire someone. I beg your pardon, but I think that what you've expressed is a very naive viewpoint. Try a thought experiment. Imagine that you must reduce payroll. How do you do it without a layoff? Or, let me describe just one progression of events that I've seen play out a few times. BigCo acquires LittleCo after LittleCo starts killing BigCo with the new fancy LittleCo process/machine. The buyout terms required all LittleCo employees to be hired by BigCo. BigCo doesn't really care about these new folks, but BigCo promised, so BigCo tries to work them into the fold, and creates group "B" for them. BigCo also has its own internal group "A" of people who were doing the same thing as the folks from LittleCo, but who weren't killing it. BigCo starts shuffling people from "A" to "B" and "B" to "A" or vice-versa, whichever is more convenient; until they have the smart people and cool kids in one group, and the rest of the people in the other. Now, what do you propose will happen to now non-performing group filled with people most of whom may not be fired or laid-off? At BigCo, what happens is that the group of step-children gets a new chief and new "Project Managers". These new leaders are sticklers for the rules though, and have their own ideas about every detail of working at BigCo from breaks & start & stop time, to parking spaces, to TPS reports, and other policies and procedures; and through the power of micro-management they are going to get the group into ship-shape, and do great things at BigCo!!! The new Vogon leadership never seem to get much work for the group though, and for those reasons, morale takes a dive. Then, lo and behold within a short time most of the step-children start getting the hint and either flee to a competitor, form another LittleCo, find a new line of work, or some combination of those things. How many times would you need to see a similar gambit play out for you to question whether maybe it happens that way by design?
    - fenomas 11y ago
      I'm not sure I understand the complaint. In your example you say BigCo honestly tries to work them into the fold, ergo the project wasn't made just to fire people (even though a predictable chain of events might lead to the same result as if it had been). I think we might be saying more or less the same thing. Side question: how did you get a blank username?
      - 11y ago
  - justonepost 11y ago
    OK, I re-read what you said. You are right, projects are rarely created with that intention. But projects quickly develop an attribute of being a place to dump people. 1. Noisy executive wants to do something 2. Everyone else agrees, sure go ahead, but you have to staff it with the freaks 3. Noisy executive either shuts up or rolls the dice because her idea is so good 4. Project usually dies a slow death or by some crazy chance, project heats up and freaks are all seen as heros which get supplemented by steady pragmatists. Often freaks get sidelined (rewarded?) into managerial roles or wander off to do some other risky thing. Generally steady pragmatists avoid these projects like the plague. They are just not risk oriented. This is sort of how startups work, btw.
    - seanmcdirmid 11y ago
      The freak approach is often touted as an effective black ops approach to doing innovative things in a BigCorp.
  - freshhawk 11y ago
    Your example is certainly also a thing that happens. But I'm going to also call it naive to say it's hard to imagine. I have a good friend in HR, and she has all sorts of friends working in HR and legal departments. Let's just say some of their conversations are very eye opening. It's not hard to imagine at all, in general legal departments are conservative and executives want exactly what they want, no excuses. It can lead to all sorts of crazy machinations to get things done while covering the appropriate asses.
- ChuckMcM 11y ago
  snarfy here is correct, I saw some of the same shenanigans. Consider that there are a lot of really smart people in the company and coming up with a 'perfectly legal' way of accomplishing their goal (which is to have the best people working for them at the least cost[1]) is not a particularly hard problem. And while it can be hard sometimes to think of your company as a machine which is optimizing its economic output, sometimes at your personal expense, you always have a choice of whether or not you want to participate. And sometimes when things get close to going all pear shaped they respond in economically attractive ways (like giving everyone a 10% pay raise). [1] Cost is not simply dollars here, its impact on the organization.
- InclinedPlane 11y ago
  3 is irrelevant, google cancels projects often enough that it's sufficient to move someone to a troubled or questionable project and let statistics take care of the rest.
obrero 11y ago
I forgot to mention that the Fair Labor Standards Act was a follow-up to the National Labor Relations Act. That act gives rights to share wage information, prevents employers from interfering with that, and court rulings since then have affirmed it. As others replied, it is true when it is just the government and company and individual employee involved, companies usually break this law with impunity. If you are in a labor union or a union organizing campaign, like for the CWA, then you are on more equal footing, as all court rulings up to this point have enforced this right.
curiousjorge 11y ago
meanwhile in Canada...

by obrero 11y ago

prof_hobart 11y ago

One of the reasons that these kinds of things aren't often enforced is that they are very hard to prove. Companies are rarely stupid enough to openly say that you've been fired or given a low performance rating because of this specific act, but do something like this and you'll quickly find that you've got a non-specific "troublemaker/not a team player" reputation starting to be attached to you and once that happens, it's almost impossible to shake.

snarfy 11y ago

Instead of retaliating directly, here is what they do: 1. Create an alternate project 2. Move trouble makers to the alternate project 3. Cancel the project I've seen this happen on more than one occasion.

fenomas 11y ago
> I've seen this happen on more than one occasion. OTOH, just because it happens doesn't necessarily mean someone meant it to. That is, for most companies it's hard to imagine creating a project just to fire someone. But it's very, very easy to picture a natural progression like: "new project starts and needs internal transfers -> several managers see an opportunity to get rid of bad/disruptive team members -> project fails because half its team was bad/disruptive". Never attribute to, etc.
- snarfy 11y ago
  I agree with the sentiment, but unfortunately, on one instance I was actually told by the project director why the new project was created (I was on the other project).
  - fenomas 11y ago
    Yecch. That sounds like some pretty high-school-yearbook-committee stuff to pull in a company.
- gaius 11y ago
  The flaw in your theory is that you blindly agree with the managers assessment. What if they're the bad ones? It's very easy to stitch up a high-performing employee you think might take your job...
  - fenomas 11y ago
    As the man says: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/558442350326714370 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/558442350326714370
- kyllo 11y ago
  That's why it works. Plausible deniability.
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
  >That is, for most companies it's hard to imagine creating a project just to fire someone. I beg your pardon, but I think that what you've expressed is a very naive viewpoint. Try a thought experiment. Imagine that you must reduce payroll. How do you do it without a layoff? Or, let me describe just one progression of events that I've seen play out a few times. BigCo acquires LittleCo after LittleCo starts killing BigCo with the new fancy LittleCo process/machine. The buyout terms required all LittleCo employees to be hired by BigCo. BigCo doesn't really care about these new folks, but BigCo promised, so BigCo tries to work them into the fold, and creates group "B" for them. BigCo also has its own internal group "A" of people who were doing the same thing as the folks from LittleCo, but who weren't killing it. BigCo starts shuffling people from "A" to "B" and "B" to "A" or vice-versa, whichever is more convenient; until they have the smart people and cool kids in one group, and the rest of the people in the other. Now, what do you propose will happen to now non-performing group filled with people most of whom may not be fired or laid-off? At BigCo, what happens is that the group of step-children gets a new chief and new "Project Managers". These new leaders are sticklers for the rules though, and have their own ideas about every detail of working at BigCo from breaks & start & stop time, to parking spaces, to TPS reports, and other policies and procedures; and through the power of micro-management they are going to get the group into ship-shape, and do great things at BigCo!!! The new Vogon leadership never seem to get much work for the group though, and for those reasons, morale takes a dive. Then, lo and behold within a short time most of the step-children start getting the hint and either flee to a competitor, form another LittleCo, find a new line of work, or some combination of those things. How many times would you need to see a similar gambit play out for you to question whether maybe it happens that way by design?
  - fenomas 11y ago
    I'm not sure I understand the complaint. In your example you say BigCo honestly tries to work them into the fold, ergo the project wasn't made just to fire people (even though a predictable chain of events might lead to the same result as if it had been). I think we might be saying more or less the same thing. Side question: how did you get a blank username?
    - 11y ago
- justonepost 11y ago
  OK, I re-read what you said. You are right, projects are rarely created with that intention. But projects quickly develop an attribute of being a place to dump people. 1. Noisy executive wants to do something 2. Everyone else agrees, sure go ahead, but you have to staff it with the freaks 3. Noisy executive either shuts up or rolls the dice because her idea is so good 4. Project usually dies a slow death or by some crazy chance, project heats up and freaks are all seen as heros which get supplemented by steady pragmatists. Often freaks get sidelined (rewarded?) into managerial roles or wander off to do some other risky thing. Generally steady pragmatists avoid these projects like the plague. They are just not risk oriented. This is sort of how startups work, btw.
  - seanmcdirmid 11y ago
    The freak approach is often touted as an effective black ops approach to doing innovative things in a BigCorp.
- freshhawk 11y ago
  Your example is certainly also a thing that happens. But I'm going to also call it naive to say it's hard to imagine. I have a good friend in HR, and she has all sorts of friends working in HR and legal departments. Let's just say some of their conversations are very eye opening. It's not hard to imagine at all, in general legal departments are conservative and executives want exactly what they want, no excuses. It can lead to all sorts of crazy machinations to get things done while covering the appropriate asses.
ChuckMcM 11y ago
snarfy here is correct, I saw some of the same shenanigans. Consider that there are a lot of really smart people in the company and coming up with a 'perfectly legal' way of accomplishing their goal (which is to have the best people working for them at the least cost[1]) is not a particularly hard problem. And while it can be hard sometimes to think of your company as a machine which is optimizing its economic output, sometimes at your personal expense, you always have a choice of whether or not you want to participate. And sometimes when things get close to going all pear shaped they respond in economically attractive ways (like giving everyone a 10% pay raise). [1] Cost is not simply dollars here, its impact on the organization.
InclinedPlane 11y ago
3 is irrelevant, google cancels projects often enough that it's sufficient to move someone to a troubled or questionable project and let statistics take care of the rest.

obrero 11y ago

I forgot to mention that the Fair Labor Standards Act was a follow-up to the National Labor Relations Act. That act gives rights to share wage information, prevents employers from interfering with that, and court rulings since then have affirmed it. As others replied, it is true when it is just the government and company and individual employee involved, companies usually break this law with impunity. If you are in a labor union or a union organizing campaign, like for the CWA, then you are on more equal footing, as all court rulings up to this point have enforced this right.

curiousjorge 11y ago

meanwhile in Canada...