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> Baker's compensation has been inversely tied with performance

You've mentioned this twice in the thread now. "Inversely tied" is quite a strong and unusual claim for compensation. Care to prove it?



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>> Top performers often see compensation fall.

Absolutely not true. I have only anecdotal evidence: I live and work in a nation where unions are everywhere and I see rockstars and specialists getting paid way more than their team mates, everywhere I look.

Can you supply any evidence to support your claim that top performers often see compensation fall?


> But this is not what happened. The plaintiffs were awarded different pay grades for measurably comparable ability.

The article doesn't say that. It says they were awarded different pay grades given an equal time spent in the worforce, not that their abilities were comparable.


> Whether he did a good job is irrelevant

LOL! Well, at least you're not trying to hide the fact that the ridiculous compensation isn't commensurate with performance.


>> It's hard to say who did more

no it is not really, but to use your car analogy, should a wheel on the car that is flat, and slowing the car down be paid the same as the 2 wheels that are operating to spec?

Because non-performance based pay tends to flat tires....


> There's a quote from the CEO saying that they looked at the market and felt like they were being underpaid.

> And they can't reduce their salary now because it'd be unfair on their families.

To give context, Baker's annual salary is $2.5 million.


>I couldn't prove it completely but based on the compensation rates of a few I knew

anecdata...


> I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market.

And your performance is actually much worse than 80% discount in other companies. Any CEO with such results would be fired in 2 years anywhere else.

> Baker blamed this on the Coronavirus pandemic.

Sure, always blame external factors for your own incompetence. That's what politicians do every morning during breakfast.


> Your compensation is not absolute dollars

Well, actually it is.


> it's misleading to call equity compensation "getting paid"

I would say that compensating an employee with a financial instrument of known value is in fact the exact same thing as getting paid.


> Exploit you with industry leading pay and perks?

It seems like you're implying that this is absurd or impossible, but...it's not, right? Surely whether my employer is exploiting my labor has very little to do with my compensation relative to similar jobs.


>but I think pay discrepancies can be entirely fair.

There are multiple definitions of fair. One definition is people are paid proportional to how well they do their job. With that definition, bargaining for something else is actually unfair.


> It could just as well be that 80% of the company was profoundly undercompensated whereas you are already compensated in line with market rates.

As a manager, I cannot emphasize this enough. It happens all the time.


> but I don't think this is good evidence for ohstopitu being underpaid

That's a fair enough point. My original post was just to point out that the answer to ohstopitu's original question is not some great mystery, and all they need to do is answer the question I posed back, because it's exactly the same answer to both questions.


> Even if it was actually leading to better outcomes for companies, this kind of income inequality is definitely leading to worse outcomes for society.

No disagreement here. I think CEOs should be paid no more than 10 times their lowest paid employee, and that should be made enforceable by law.

Using 150k as a random number[1], Baker is overpaid by roughly a factor of two based on my "ideal" scheme. But I have the sneaking suspicion that HN would gripe even if she took a 50% pay cut.

[1]: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Mozilla-Salaries-E19129.htm


> a high salary seems fine to me...collective bargaining...

Is that what you see in this story? To me, it just seems like overtime abuse.


> I should be compensated for my value and work,

No, you are compensated for how much someone doing the same work would demand.


> Why should two people adding the same amount of value to a company be compensated differently?

You're not paid based on the value you create. You're paid as little as a company can get away with paying you.


> such things are beyond our ability to measure, we can only speculate.

Ok then. But that doesn't support the argument that compensation is too high. Maybe it isn't high enough, and should be even higher!

I can use your unknown argument to support even higher compensation, just as much.


> If you have the same skills, you should be paid the same.

That would be highly unfair.

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