• SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    The point wasn’t to just raise salaries, but to curtail deceptive practices. I’d rather know they’re lowballing me before starting the interview process.

  • Taleya@aussie.zone
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    8 months ago

    Lol ‘lower salaries’ they were never legitimately offering those salaries you boot gobbling fool

    • Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works
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      8 months ago

      Last place I interviewed, recruiter and I agreed with my qualifications etc I should ask for 90k. They hired someone for 67.5k with no qualifications. The person literally took a pay cut to take the job. I don’t get it.

      • winkerjadams@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        8 months ago

        Sounds like they hired someone unqualified cause it cost them less and the person with no qualifications took it because so would you if that was your best option.

        • gataloca@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          That’s why they hate things like welfare or full employment. They need a desperate army of reserve labor to keep wages low.

  • Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    “While they were being very competitive externally, they were threatening internal equity and internal incentives,” Pollak said. “There needs to be some [salary] growth year after year to keep people around and to keep them engaged.”

    Translation: “If we advertise at market rates, our employees might figure out they’re all being underpaid.”

    • Crystal_Shards64@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I’m currently being underpaid roughly 12 to 20k compared to my coworkers because my job title is slightly different. Yet I’m the one training all of them. I’m going to leave when I can but I’ve been stuck for a while. Might have to find a completely different job/career eventually.

    • hightrix@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Was looking at a job posting for a role in CA and the range was, I shit you not, 75k-395k.

      • cm0002@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I kinda want to give them the benefit of the doubt because that’s just odd it seems as if someone just fat fingered the 3, because 75-95 makes a lot more sense

        But then again corporate gonna corporate soooo

        • hightrix@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Unfortunately, this level of job regularly pays 200k plus or minus a bit. So I doubt it was a fat finger unless they meant 175-395.

          • DoomBot5@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Maybe they did fat finger it, but they didn’t care because they weren’t being paid enough?

              • uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                8 months ago

                We need to eliminate the expectation that underpaid workers will or should bust their butt for the potential of a raise.

                You treat me right and pay me well (a sustainable income) then I’ll move mountains for you. But treat me inhumanely or pay me a pittance and I’ll assume you wish I wasn’t here.

          • LordOfTheChia@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            I usually average out the two salaries and use that as their “intended” starting pay.

            So (75 + 395)/2 = 235k a year avg starting salary for an average applicant.

            The top end I consider the pay if the applicant meets all the requirements listed in the job ad.

            • hightrix@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Good call. That’s exactly what I do. I haven’t applied to a job like this m, but it seems like a good enough way to estimate.

        • Deconceptualist@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          It’s no accident. I was out of a job for half the year and saw this so many times. In states where the laws aren’t specific enough, posting an absurd salary range is how companies comply with the letter but not the spirit of it.

      • qarbone@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        What that says to me is they are not looking to fill a specific position. They are collecting resumes for whatever internal backlog and, should they have a need, they’ll fill any necessary positions at those salary brackets from their resume pile.

    • edric@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      Lmao I literally just got a linkedin email of a job posting in Netflix for a role similar to my current job. The salary range? 100k-700k.

      • radiohead37@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I thought I was already exaggerating a little with 35k to 270k. But now I feel it was realistic.

        On a side note, please don’t even consider taking a job at Netflix. Everybody who works there is always under threat of losing their job. They constantly reevaluate employees and managers are forced to churn through people even when their team is working well. The culture is absolutely savage.

        • Punkie@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          I’m not saying you’re wrong, never worked there, but if you’re not worried about job stability personally, it doesn’t matter. Do your best, learn everything you can, take no criticism personally, get fired for bullshit reasons, and learn from the experience. Just use them. They don’t care about you, you already know you could be fired, and ride the wave as far as it takes you. The lifestyle is not for everyone, but a lot of younger people know this these days. They see the companies like stepping stones. Any company probably won’t last ten years, anyway. Loyalty is bullshit on either side.

          • Redscare867@lemmy.ml
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            8 months ago

            For a 700k salary I would 100% take the risk. Don’t change your lifestyle after you get the job and just pocket the extra cash. If you get fired having Netflix on your resume should allow you to find a new position fast enough to come out on top of the deal provided that you are able to make it a few months at Netflix.

            If you are fortunate enough to have 3-6 months of expenses in an emergency fund then there is very little downside as long as you are able to maintain the correct headspace.

            • Punkie@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              I suspect a lot of younger software engineers are doing this. I was talking to one who made it a point to latch onto companies in their death throes, usually by word of mouth, so he got laid off with severance, and thus can explain short job hops with the “fast paced industry.” He lived frugally, being in a country where a $200k+ USD salary was ludicrously wealthy, and he said he did very little actual programming except personal projects that he did just to make his github account look active. He was just hopping from company to company without any real love or attachment to where he worked. I was both appalled and impressed how matter of fact he was, plus his perspective on the US job market was dead on. He had it all figured out.

  • orcrist@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    The article is written by people who don’t know history. Talking about salaries was never taboo, as the law clearly states, and of course unions always have done so, but companies tried to pretend the topic was off limits.

      • 1847953620@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        we’re like a family. The kind of family you move away from forever and drink to forget for the rest of your life.

        • unfreeradical@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          What matters most is understanding, even if we have our own doubts about the methods, that everything corporations do is done out of love.

    • Evotech@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Taboo and illegal are not the same though

      It’s definitely been taboo within us companies

    • SnausagesinaBlanket@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Talking about salaries was never taboo

      The employee handbook of Cobleskill Regional Hospital in Upstate NY in 2000 put talking about your pay with another employee as a fireable offense.

      • orcrist@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        Yes of course. Companies can put a lot of things in their company handbooks if they want to, and that comes with legal risk.

    • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      That would be some fun transparency. You could compare ratios and that ratio would be a number people talk about.

    • nandeEbisu@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      That’s pretty difficult for a lot of jobs. For someone in sales, easy, you can look at the value of the contracts they bring in. For someone who works in facilities maintenance or tech support? Good luck figuring that out.

      • Skates@feddit.nl
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        8 months ago

        For someone in sales, easy, you can look at the value of the contracts they bring in.

        I would argue against this. As someone whose sales guys overpromise just to get the contract signed, in order to see how much they actually bring in I would subtract the number of overtime hours/additional effort we need to invest compared to their initial sales pitch. Or, you promised feature X is delivered in the first 2 years? Well when the customer doesn’t get it and complains about it, that’s going to be subtracted from your next signing bonus.

        Listen, I know the job is made so that they bring in the most contracts possible and then the techs need to figure out the rest. But if the company constantly gets in trouble with the same few big-name customers in the industry (making them not want to sign with us in the future because of unrealistic promises), maybe it’s time to consider that Sales’ approach is sometimes detrimental?

        • Amoeba_of_death@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          I work in professional services, and this is so true. I feel like every new client I onboard and start implementing has promises in their contract we can’t fulfill due to product limitations. Oh, it’s supposed to do X out of the box? Nope, maybe we can customize it, but that’s a weird niche requirement that’s going to take a lot of discovery and architecting.

      • uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        8 months ago

        Businessmen, they drink my wine
        Plowmen dig my earth
        None of them along the line
        Know what any of it is worth

        • nandeEbisu@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          The issue there is not everyone is equally productive. In the most direct example someone who is more experienced with a piece of equipment or technology will often be more productive with it than someone who isn’t. That’s ignoring that different people have different competencies. If you ask me to design costumes for a TV show, I would fail miserably. If you asked a fashion designer to do my job without any training, they would likewise not be very successful at it.

          There are plenty of ills that come along with capitalism, but I do think some amount of incentive will promote productivity. I don’t think that people are lazy and won’t do any work unless they are threatened with homelessness and starvation, but I do believe if an innovative strong performer in a role is not given recognition in a real tangible way, they will either leave to a place where they can get that recognition or just stop being as innovative and productive.

          • unfreeradical@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Productivity is a form of activity, not a quantity.

            Systems of productivity that are organized by wage remuneration rely on processes of labor valorization, but no such process reflects any inherent or essential feature of the productive activities undertaken by any individual worker.

            Production in enterprise is by social processes.

            Processes of valorization have more cogency at the level of the entire enterprise, because products within the enterprise are created through the complex accumulation of many individual contributions, but are exchanged between easily separable entities, one enterprise with another, or an enterprise with a consumer, often through commodity markets.

            Ultimately, there is no law of nature for resolving a distinctively quantified value of each worker’s labor.

            Similarly, there is no law of nature proscribing the same rate of remuneration to each worker per unit of time contributed to the social processes of labor. A social choice for such practices would be possible to implement.

            • nandeEbisu@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Except productivity isn’t a factor purely of activity. You can spend hours trying to fix something if build something and fail, because sometimes things are hard.

              I think you should obviously be paid for your time as an employee, but if I hire a plumber, they spend 4 hours trying to fix a sink and it never gets fixed, I’m not hiring that plumber again.

              No one’s saying you should valorize people at the top, I was just pointing out that directly quantifying value of an individual contributor who is far removed from the actual thing being sold can be really hard, if not impossible so paying someone proportionate to the direct value they create is not practical.

              Of course there’s no law of nature preventing you from paying everyone exactly the same wage, companies are not some kind of fundamental unit of organization subject to physical laws. No one is arguing this, I’m just saying paying everyone the exact same thing means not just paying less productive people more, but also paying more productive people less.

              Excessively verbose prose obfuscates the intent behind a post and hinders clear communication between parties undergoing a discussion as opposed to economical use of floral vocabulary which engenders a clarity of thought and facilitates a clearer flow of information allow both parties to more easily converge to an amenable conclusion.

              Not sure if you’re quoting someone, but if you are it’s not actually very effective at communicating a point, especially when it’s only tangentially related to what we’re talking about. If you do find someone else has made a good point regarding a conversation you’re in, it’s more effective to paraphrase it and highlight key points that support your argument. Honestly, the quotes you picked out don’t really pertain to what we’re talking about. It’s ultimately not about what what is the best way to organize an economy, but whether or not you can directly quantify the productivity of an individual and what the effects of simply paying everyone the exact same amount regardless of productivity.

              • unfreeradical@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                Again, valorization of workers’ labor depends on a process being chosen for labor valorization, and any process chosen to valorize workers’ labor is simply a process chosen.

                No choice is objectivity more accurate than all others, respecting actual value of labor.

                Equal rate of remuneration, for each unit of time, for every worker, is not choosing a rate different from the value of each worker’s labor, but rather choosing that each worker’s labor has equal value.

                Your premise is that some worker’s labor is more valuable than others’, as an inherent or essential attribute of the activity representing the labor.

                The premise is false.

                Every activity of labor may be objectively described, but such a description encloses the entirety of its objective attributes.

                Value is not an objective attribute.

                Your objection about the plumber is a red herring.

                Activities that are not productive are not relevant to a discussion over how various activities of labor are valorized, because labor is simply productive activity.

                Further, the enterprise manages which task occupies each worker at each time. As long as each worker cooperates with such decisions, the worker is being productive within the enterprise, by cooperatively contributing to the social processes of production managed within the enterprise.

                Your conception of some workers being more or less removed from a product is simply a subjective feeling, irrelevant to the value of the worker’s labor provided to the social processes of production within the enterprise.

                • nandeEbisu@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  Bruh, the comment was about being paid commensurate to the value they created and my point was that’s a very hard number to quantify for people far removed from revenue, not that they don’t provide value.

    • r00ty@kbin.life
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      8 months ago

      They do hold that data of course, where possible. I’ve heard it called personal P&L.

      But tbh I reckon it would only be a new source of depression to know. :p

    • unfreeradical@lemmy.world
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      The full value of labor can be considered meaningfully only at the level of the whole enterprise.

      You and your coworkers collectively contribute labor worth the value of the products you create collectively, minus the costs of inputs and operation.

      How such value is distributed within the enterprise is simply a choice by those who control the enterprise. No objective solution is available. Owners pay each worker the minimum possible for the labor to be provided, which under current systems is different for each kind of labor, due to labor commodification over markets represented by the law of supply and demand,.

        • unfreeradical@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          I am not understanding the relevance or meaning of your objection in context, but if you are seeking to protect the interests of insurance companies, then perhaps you should not be participating in a space created for advancing the interests of workers.

            • unfreeradical@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Doctors are not in control of society, and no society has ever been controlled dominantly by doctors. Doctors also are not a completely uniform group who all share the same values and beliefs.

              What appears is that your attitude reflects a sense of hostility and superiority, which is not representative of how every doctor looks upon every janitor, and from my own experience, such animus is quite uncommon among doctors.

                • unfreeradical@lemmy.world
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                  I support doctors. I support janitors. I support all workers.

                  I perceive no meaningful conflict among workers, and I perceive confusion in anyone who locates the overarching antagonisms in our society as between various workers based on the kinds of labor they provide.

                  I still have no understanding of any objection you are giving that would seem relevant.

                  I also have no idea why you are fixated on signs in the hospital, but I hope you find a way to resolve your distress.

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      That’s actually rather easy if you work for a publicly traded corp, at least to ballpark it.

      Company profits / total workers. (<-this seems facile, what am I missing?)

      OTOH, beware comparisons of pay scales.

      “CEOs make too much!”

      Do the math. CEO pay is typically 1/100th of a penny earned, sometimes 1/1000th, not a drop in the bucket. Don’t matter. When I was a kid, sports star pay was the thing to rage about. LOL, haven’t seen a single lemming comment about that. Whatever.

      I don’t make enough!”

      And that’s very likely true, but you cost far more than you think. Good rule of thumb? Double your pay, that’s what you actually cost. You make $15/hr.? Company probably pays $30, or a bit more. Company has to pay worker’s comp insurance, taxes, benefits, unemployment insurance, payroll processing fees, all that and more.

      SOURCE: Worked IT for a payroll company, got the inside scoop.

  • Paddzr@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Expected based on what? We’re recruiting, we had to increase the advertised salary twice. This is public, everyone at the company notices these increases. If they don’t come across to the existing people? It will be a riot and mass exodus. Something the company cannot afford to do. Replacing People costs an absolute fortune in time and money.

    • morgan423@lemmy.world
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      Replacing People costs an absolute fortune in time and money.

      Something that corporate America seems to not care about for some reason these days.

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        8 months ago

        Corporate America is operating on the Car Dealership model: there are enough rubes to fleece it’s not worth the effort to get quality customers/employees.

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      If they don’t come across to the existing people? It will be a riot and a mass exodus.

      No shit. Maybe you should pay your staff market wages?

      • shalafi@lemmy.world
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        Companies are paying “market wages”. So what’s your complaint and/or solution?

        LOL, every shit job I ever had, “We’re proud to pay the going rate for this work!”

        Good jobs I’ve had, and have now? Yeah, no bullshit talk like that.

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          If you’re listing a job and no one’s applying at the price point, you’re advertising below market wages. If you’re paying your senior employees less than your new hires, you’re paying them below market wages. What a company wants to pay is not market wages: the laws of supply and demand dictate what market wages are. The wage that will interest new qualified workers and the wage that will retain experienced workers are the wages that the market are actually dictating.

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          8 months ago

          Nationalize your enterprise? Or better yet, convert it to a cooperative and give the profits directly to the employees?

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      This is public, everyone at the company notices these increases. If they don’t come across to the existing people? It will be a riot and mass exodus.

      That’s a feature, not a bug.

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    8 months ago

    This was never about raising salaries.

    Now that the data is public, the companies can implicitly collude to keep them low. No one will offer more than any other, which will drive them down.

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      They were already colluding. At least now workers can see it and form unions to fight back.

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      8 months ago

      Except if one chooses not to play ball and pay a little more, it can have the best of the pool. So others compete, I think that’s how this is supposed to work

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      They share it amongst themselves via third party consulting firms already. This just gives the public visibility.

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      We just gave “big data” more “big data”. They surely won’t use it against us!

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    8 months ago

    That’s exactly what I would expect. The goal was largely to end the bait and switch.