"The company's management and General Works Council have jointly agreed to pay all eligible employees a special lump sum bonus of up to 7,300 euros, a figure that is even higher than the current maximum payment cap of 6,465 euros."
This General Works Council seems to be something like a separate "union within the company", in addition to whatever union represents various workers within the organization. On top of that, Mercedes Benz has a corporate Supervisory Board with 1/2 of the members representing the employees.
Interesting how this structure has a headline like this one, vs the ">10k workers laid off from giant corporation with record profits for the past two years" headlines that seem to be popping up here daily.
>On top of that, Mercedes Benz has a corporate Supervisory Board with 1/2 of the members representing the employees.
Absolutely love that, and stuff like that would never be allowed to form here in the US. Labor having an equal seat at the table should be seen as a good thing for the purposes of long-term sustainability, not a bad thing. Can it have drawbacks? Sure. However, the flipside is that currently in most places, such as the US, Capital has all the seats at the table, or sometimes Labor will given a symbolic place at the proverbial kid's table, with no real ability to enact change or make their voices heard. I applaud what Mercedes-Benz is doing here.
For well developed industries, I agree that employee representation is a good thing.
On the other hand, America's friendliness to capital has lead to funding companies that end up competing for software engineers. This is part of the reason why developer jobs in the US tend to pay twice as well as those in Europe.
I would like others' salaries to go up. I'd rather not have mine come down. I mean, the median is $115k or so in the US. I make under that.
Now this is a really unpopular opinion on here... I think the real issue is centralization of high capital tech work, and really the density of people in general. The cost of living in places like NYC, northern VA, and Silicon Valley are all hugely above the median. It's like a vicious cycle of groupthink instead of evenly distributing those jobs (companies) throughout cheaper, less populous areas. I'd love to see someone from a depressed area start a big name company in that area to help being jobs and prosperity to their neighbors. Perhaps that's just my deluded fantasy.
1. Inflation - Though I will not expound here because I’m not an expert.
2. Salaries in the US have been stagnant since the 70s which correlates to the start of the weakening of Big Labor by corporate and government interests.
Locality has natural efficiencies, which is why cities and caches are so powerful. That can't really be fought head-on in the short term. But over a longer period the increasing costs of a white-hot locale will cause other places to be more appealing. And new tech can find a new natural place to land with costs as part of that.
This is happening all the time. A hundred years ago the Santa Clara (Silicon) Valley was orchards. Detroit was getting rich on the latest tech wave.
A hundred years before that, the North of England was making fortunes in the Industrial Revolution.
In our lifetimes China has changed incredibly. Foxconn is now a big name company that employs over a million people and moved a lot of money into the places they operate.
HCOL cities is a policy choice that is somewhat independent of city density, that seem to be the worst in english speaking countries, pointing to a potential flaw in the culture or shared legal systems. There are many high density cities that are more livable than the USA and significantly more affordable. Cities managed efficiently are the most economically and environmentally sustainable places to have humanity live in by far.
A quick google search shows varying numbers between 74k and 120k for median software developer salaries in the US. 54k seems quite low, where'd you see this?
I believe $54k is for salaries in general across all industries. Mercedes is not a tech company so no reason to assume the discussion is about software salaries
Sure, but if you take those $200k people and make them $100k people, then I assume I'll lose my job to them all day long. Employers will pay me lower because I comparatively suck.
Even then... for many companies the past couple years have opened up competition nation-wide. I'm able to compete for higher salaries with companies used to paying that along with what was only local talent before, while living in an area with comparatively lower cost of living and would like to move with that in mind (locked in until interest rates improve).
The same works in the other direction, and it kind of sucks for companies in areas where income isn't as high having to compete for talent against others with much deeper pockets. It's been interesting to say the least.
Unfortunately, I've seen the govt operating against unions... looking at the railway and airlines and think they're really on the wrong side of this, as much as I don't want to be more inconvenienced from strikes, they should be able to do so. I feel the govt does more harm than good in the US and would prefer a little less picking winners and losers in the mix. On the same note, I don't think they're playing their hands well at all to establish domestic production and security fia application of tariffs and FDA requirements.
I don’t understand why more people don’t think like this. Even from a selfish point of view - you get to live in a place with less violent crime, you get to experience living in a “happier” community, etc etc
I feel like this is the opposite of what’s happened here in the UK and the timescales are not that long but the collective amnesia is staggering. Even just as far back at the mid 00’s seems to have fallen out of the memory of a large proportion of the population.
Violent crime & affordability issues in cities is a choice set by policy makers to make some politically connected people richer, it is not an attribute of cities. Poverty stricken rural places are just as bad, or even worse in many cases.
Why are the people saying this not donating half of their 200k salaries? Is the only way to re-distribute your personal wealth by being compelled by market conditions or by the state?
Because they don't want to selflessly give away $100k for nothing. Rather they selfishly want to live in a healthier society. You're proposing they trade something for nothing, and that's misguided in the best case, or disingenuous in the worst.
I think the point being made is that it's trivially easy to make armchair moral/ethical arguments about spending money in other peoples wallets. And that the arguments would be taken more seriously if the person arguing has actually demonstrated that they have skin in the game, staked their own wallet.
Isn't that what the complaints about NIMBYism are all about? Yeah, I'm all for having other people solving the problems of the poor workers. I don't have to do anything until they do. While we're at it, lets have the software developers clothe and house them as well. They can clearly afford it. It's only fair. Am I a good person now?
Talk is cheap. Do something first before complaining about what others aren't doing.
Again, the goal is not selflessness, it's selfishness. The selfish want to form a more perfect union. No one is saying they want to give away half their salary for nothing, no one is expecting anyone else to do so either.
It's effectively a bunch of people who want a crowd funding campaign for a product to exist, and everyone else saying "if you want to throw your money away, here's a trash can". That's entirely missing the point and completely unhelpful. The goal is to make a collective investment and get something in return.
If we're being real, this group, myself included, is only one step removed from a NIMBY, but it is what it is. If you want to suggest I abandon the little leverage I have to put towards creating a better society for myself and the people around me, I would say: you first. Oh, not interested? Welcome to the club. Now let's work together to make this place we live better.
I agree with the general idea but disagree strongly with the execution.
Highly paid tech workers are still workers, albeit ones that tend to lack class consciousness because they think they're on top (until they get fired en masse to save profits).
Management earning wildly disproportionate salaries should share first. Management is worthless without labor, yet is responsible for choking workers from their fair share.
It’s not “ridiculous.” The median American simply has more money under the American system. The OECD collects detailed data on this: https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-disposable-income.htm. Look at the dataset “gross incl. social transfers in kind” which looks at disposable income accounting for universal healthcare, etc. America is head and shoulders ahead of EU countries like Germany.
Americans might be selfish but they’re not irrational. Much of my family immigrated to Australia and Canada. My mom just got back from a long trip there, and was complaining about how small and close together the houses are, and how doctors can’t really get rich there. If you care more about the square footage of your house or the number of cars you have (and Americans do, and continually import immigrants who have similar values) than about health care for poor people, then the specific trade-offs made in America economic policy are totally rational.
I'm saying that governmental policies have allied the poor and the ultra wealthy to the detriment of the middle class. GP was saying American dev salaries are too high, when really they are not the issue compared to how many tax breaks 10MM+ individuals have gotten.
Investors have bought up 40% of the real estate in some counties in the US. That's ridiculous.
When the government allows for predatory behavior by companies and the ultra wealthy that lowers their responsibility to society that is not a burden for the middle class to bear.
In Europe, even in the wealthiest countries, average programmer salaries are about 10% higher than the national salary at best. This would mean probably cutting your salary in half, instead of talking about it. It would be interesting to see you face that reality. Words are cheap.
And besides if you think that's an economically feasible zero-sum calculus, I don't even know what to tell you.
But if you really think you earn too much, you can donate 40-50% of your salary and truly transform another person's life or make an astonishing impact in a charity of your choice. I hope you are being coherent with your words and are already doing this.
> I hope you are being coherent with your words and are already doing this.
How do you feel about people who say to protestors, "if you don't like it here, move"?
You're peddling the same logical fallacy that conservative billionaires have convinced the lower-middle class of for a century.
OP proposes a trade: their high salary for a society that prioritizes the wellbeing of everyone over the wellbeing of the luckiest few. In response, you suggest that OP should give away half their salary to another individual, and they've solved their problem.
The fallacy here is that you assume assume OP's goal is to be purely selfless; that is not the case. OP very selfishly wants to live in a healthier, more sustainable society than they currently do. In response, you disingenuously suggest that they take all of the negatives of their the trade with none of the positives.
Hopefully you see why that's not helpful to anyone.
This is very well put, you said it better than I ever have myself.
One thing I'd add is that, even if I were able to give away enough of my income to make a difference in my community, everyone in the community would benefit, but I would be the only one paying for it. I find this intensely unfair and distasteful.
This is similar to how I felt during the height of the bay area mask mandates when most people were masked and one or two families were not. Those folks were reaping all the benefits of widespread vaccinations and masking, yet bearing none of the burden. I despised those people probably more than was healthy.
> even in the wealthiest countries, average programmer salaries are about 10% higher than the national salary at best
I'm not sure 'even' is the right word here. The gap between developer and median salaries goes down the richer the country is. e.g. in many Eastern European countries the average salary for a software developer can be up to 2x or more higher than the national average.
I was on a wedding in NYC last summer. One of the guests I talked to was a junior dev. He was making 120k/y. He had to flat share. With 120k?
With 60k/y you do not have to flat share in Berlin.
And this goes the other way around too. When I worked for a multinational in Berlin a few years ago we had lots of Ukrainians that we hired at externals through a subcontracting company in that country.
Quite a few of the better developers applied directly and we happily took them on. The main reason was that they would make twice as much in Berlin.
But that was on paper. After paying taxes in Germany their net salary was less than what they had made net in Ukraine. Most of them went back.
>One of the guests I talked to was a junior dev. He was making 120k/y. He had to flat share. With 120k?
For one, every city with a lot of career options for young professionals is actively hostile towards housing development, except maybe Seattle.
$120k should be enough to live in apartment anywhere in the US though. However, with how high rents are, it makes much more sense to spend that somewhere else like an early retirement in a much cheaper city.
Seattle is pretty actively hostile to housing development (it seems to be swinging a bit more friendly but it's also a "I'll believe it when I see it.").
After paying taxes in Germany their net salary was less than what they had made net in Ukraine. Most of them went back.
This is insane. It overlooks quality of life: stable democracy, low perceived corruption (police, gov't, biz, etc.), economic stability, personal safety, food safety, social safety net (physical and mental healthcare, national pension, etc.), (industrial, economic, financial and environmental) regulation, quality of public education, quality of public transportation infrastructure, quality of publicly funded arts, income inequality gap, etc.
Income tax in Ukraine is about 20%. I used to live in Hongkong. Max tax rate was about 15%. Overall quality of life was terrible compared to advanced economies with 2x/3x tax rates. Sure, you might be "rich" on paper, but you pay a lot for privitised versions of these quality of life services. I always say: "If you pay little [in taxes], you get little [in gov't services]."
Another way to think about it: Look at countries that are not corrupt but it is very hard to get rich. Usually, those countries have excellent quality of life.
And maybe they went back for cultural reasons (food, family, education, etc.). I have observed that pattern many times.
I would suggest sticking it out for a year or two to get more experience, then get a job with a company working remote for similar/higher salary and moving to a city with a lower cost of living. The past couple years have really opened the job market for software development nationwide, and in most of this country (US) someone can live relatively comfortably at $120k/yr. Though the cost of food, and current interest rates make it harder.
Local CTO chat in Berlin has over 200 members and it's just fraction of all companies that work here. I'd say it is indeed a tech hub with very dynamic startup ecosystem, with its own Zalando etc mafias.
Well, I wouldn't know he had to or he preferred to. In my case I had that salary but I always lived shared house/apartment as long I was single. It wasn't like I had to spend more because I earned more. IMO living in shared accommodation at decent income level can be a lifestyle choice rather than a forced condition.
>I was on a wedding in NYC last summer. One of the guests I talked to was a junior dev. He was making 120k/y. He had to flat share. With 120k?
Ok well the problem there is he's living in the most expensive place he possibly could. Live in the suburbs and you won't have to share a flat on $120k.
That's bad for society because living in NYC uses less real resources (especially energy) and is much less carbon intensive than living in a suburb. The only reason it's more expensive is they're bad at governing themselves.
Much of the property in NYC is just parking money into fixed assets... doesn't even have to be income property. I'm not sure the govt is capable of fixing the issue, short of separating corporations from personal liberties legally (via national legislation) and legislating usage requirements for corporate owned land/property. Both of which would be VERY hard to do legislatively.
If there's no height limits, someone owning an empty condo shouldn't stop other people from living in the same building. They're paying property tax too.
On 120k you can get your own apartment in NYC outside of Manhattan and the expensive parts of Brooklyn easily. Plus that is for a new grad / jr engineer. They’ll be making north of $200k in 5 years most likely.
Yeah but outside of (Manhattan and the expensive parts of Brooklyn) leaves like... not much of NYC? Most new grads do not choose to live in Queens, the Bronx, or Bed-stuy.
Assuming you pay $200/month in healthcare, ~$1800 a month to max out your 401k, your take home pay is about $5,000 after taxes. In Manhattan and the expensive parts of Brooklyn, your own place is realistically a minimum of $2,500, possibly as much as $3,000. Outside of those places, still $2,000.
Source: I literally just went through this process, as a new grad, making slightly above $120k about 3 months ago.
$1,800 is a lot to save relative to your income. 50/30/20 rule says you should be saving <$1,300ish and spending around $3,200 on needs, so maybe like $2700 on housing and $500 on utilities, groceries, etc. $3k / mo for an apartment on $120k salary is completely reasonable.
I went through the same thing and had no problem getting a place of my own.
Plus with junior devs the salary increase is pretty steep in the first few years.
I think the argument “he has to live in a share flat otherwise would need to compromise on maxing out with 401k” isn’t as convincing an argument as the OP thinks.
They pay so much more because US is the largest english speaking country, which is why most companies that plan to go international start there first. Starting a company in Italy and expanding to other regions is a lot harder than going from US to Canada, UK, Australia and rest of the world with english only product.
Allowed? We can choose not to work for companies that ban workers from their boards. Which is pretty much all of the big companies in the US.
It's funny that we have a dozen different open source software licenses that are all some version of "how can we give this to you even freer" but we have no notion of what an equitable work contract looks like. Until that changes, things will never, ever, get better for workers.
I do not know of a single US company that does not allow workers (employees) on the board.
Technically, if a CEO is on the board, then a company’s employee is on the board. Shareholders will probably not vote to put a line level employee on the board, though.
The system in Germany specifically differentiates between employees and the so-called managerial class: once you reach a certain amount of leadership, you aren't eligible for the workers council anymore, even if you are an employee.
"workers aspiring to join the owning class" sounds more like effective capitalist propaganda to me. A socialist aspiration would be to remove the distinction between owner and worker. By transforming a business to worker-ownership, the owning vs working class distinction is eliminated.
The compliment to "workers aspiring to join the owning class" is that the biggest risk a capitalist faces is the possibility of being thrust back into the working-class, and having to actually work for a living, as opposed to living off of profits derived from the labor of others.
The obvious issue here is that workers don't want to own their company and probably shouldn't. A .001% stake in a company is less useful than a 50% stake, and it's well known that if you work at a company that pays you in shares you should immediately sell them and buy an index fund.
Excluding a handful of co-ops, I don't know of a single company that does. This isn't about having one board member who happens to be an employee, it's about having >=50% of the board democratically elected by the employees.
Yes, for companies with over 2000 employees, although the chairman of the board (who must not be an employee representative) gets the right to cast tie-breaking votes.
It is not semantics, because the statement that line level employees are banned from being on the board of directors is false. And that is important because the reason line level employees are not found on boards is that it rarely makes economic sense for a company's owners to put a line level employee on the board. And that is important because then the solution would have to be legislation.
So the conversation becomes, should the government(s) in the US force businesses to place line level employees on the board (if the line level employees want to be on the board), and under what parameters?
Your entire line of comments seems to miss the entire conversation.
In Germany, they do find it economically viable and important for line level employees to have direct representation on the company board. Talking about the CEO or other management classes being on the board is missing the conversation. Suggesting that because US companies don't believe in the economic value is missing the conversation. Suggesting that people are saying that this type of board composition is illegal is also missing the conversation. No one said it's illegal, but it's equally not a legal requirement either like it is in other places.
The conversation is that this composition doesn't exist, by and large, in the US, and people think it should. People seem to believe that it does have value to the business.
So yes, it does seem like you're creating semantic arguments because your points miss the conversation semantically.
Europe has sectoral bargaining (whole-industry unions) and codetermination (workers on boards) because they're running on newer legal systems than the US. It'd probably work here, but we have older corporate unions (per-company unions) which causes unions and management to fight each other more.
On the other hand, we do have higher productivity, but not having codetermination probably isn't the reason for that.
You can buy health insurance on the marketplaces yourself, it’s not hard, and it’s much cheaper than eg housing in most places that are MCOL and up. The challenge is saving up enough to pay for all your living expenses while you’re choosing not to work.
Last I checked there were two companies offering insurance to individuals in my state—yes, two, yes, I'm serious, no, not just on the marketplace, there were no other providers who will take individual customers period, yes, I checked a lot and was repeatedly told, explicitly, by people who ought to know, that those were the only two options and other insurers had pulled out entirely from offering individual plans in this state.
Both would only cover one of the four nearest major hospitals to me (though they did differ in which one it was) and only one of the two covered the huge local children's hospital that's also bought up nearly all the independent pediatrician's offices and pediatric urgent cares in the entire city, so if you have kids you actually only have one "option".
So much for the bounty of choice we preserved by not just going single-payer.
The plans in my state that you can buy on the open market are the same plans offered to local companies and the government for employer subsidized health care.
There might be some states where the marketplace has nothing good in it, often because that state's governor was so ideologically driven they refused free money from the feds to expand medicare style systems. American health care is HUGELY state to state, largely depending on how willing a governor is to actually help their constituents instead of virtue signalling.
I’ve never had that issue, or even heard of that issue, but I’ve only bought insurance from relatively large insurance companies, maybe it’s an issue if you try to save money by going with a small one with no network.
I've had good and bad experiences. One thing I learned the hard way is that even as a young person with low healthcare costs, it's a very bad idea to just choose the cheapest plan without doing any research.
Some of the low cost companies are essentially scams: most of the "providers" they list on their site will not actually accept the plan; if you do have any medical costs, they will do everything possible to avoid paying even when you are clearly covered; you'll wait for hours on hold to talk to support, then they will be rude and unhelpful; etc. etc.
It's well worth paying an extra hundred or so per month for a reputable provider so that you at least have actual functional health insurance.
Not in my experience. On east and west coasts, there are at least a couple widely accepted insurance plans available. A BCBS affiliate, a vertically integrated one like Kaiser or Providence, and other insurers offering PPO plans like UHC/Aetna/Cigna/Humana/etc.
It is definitely not "cheaper" in my experience but the marketplace is definitely easy to buy good insurance through. That said, you need income to support the massive monthly payments. Family plans in the most desirable places to live can easily be $40k/year for the insurance policy before you have to cover any out of pocket expenses.
Health insurance is the "golden handcuffs" for most people staying in a job.
GP was saying health insurance is cheaper than housing in MCOL areas. Implying if you can pay to live somewhere nice with no job, you can pay for health insurance too.
Regardless, there's subsidies if you don't have income, and it's just based on income; there's no requirement to seek income.
I'm near seattle, and my marketplace place for 2 adults around 40 and 1 child was around $1,200; unsubsidized.
> You can’t choose not to work in the US. You will be without health insurance.
Neither Medicaid nor Obamacare require you to work. My father in law did this in Oregon. “Retired” years before being eligible for Medicare, and is covered by the Oregon Health Plan. In Oregon you don’t even have to be legally in the country to qualify for fill OHP benefits.
> Allowed? We can choose not to work for companies that ban workers from their boards. Which is pretty much all of the big companies in the US.
No you can't. You're not thinking this through. As soon as enough people quit in order to start pressuring companies to allow this, it becomes more difficult for the growing pool of quitters to get new jobs and it becomes a buyers market, putting you in an even weaker position than you already were in. On top of that, capital always has more of an ability to hold out far longer. You need to eat and pay rent right now while they can scale down production until you come back with terms favorable to them. This is why unions save money ahead of time so that they can strike.
The most charitable reading of the OP is to believe that they want a union, since group labour negotiations are simplified when you have an official group representing you.
So long as the company acts as a group and labour acts as a individuals, all the bargaining power will be on the side of the company.
I think the union formed at Microsoft may be a good example to follow.
Ya that's what I'm wondering. The central problem seems to be wealth inequality (that capital has been separated from labor). So there's no money available for laid-off workers to start a business, maybe by design.
As far as I can tell, there is simply no place where a group of workers can borrow money. We have no concept of loans co-signed by a large number of people in the US.
For example, there should be a floor at which a loan is deemed risk-free because a typical person has that much money. Any of us can donate $5 to someone living on the street at any time. So 100 people should be able to borrow $500 together, no questions asked.
Now, how high can that go? Certainly $20 each. Maybe $100? $300? It's going to be an amount similar to what payday loan shops offer to strangers.
To me, this is like customer acquisition cost (CAC). In the 90s, CAC was under $1 before advertising got saturated. Today it's between $25 and $50, which has eliminated nearly all indie websites selling handmade goods for less than that. And driven the rise of influencers, and incentivized taking over making.
I know we have Kickstarter etc. But for something like this to work, it would need to be available everywhere immediately with no nonsense, no exorbitant interest or fees and no wait time. The government could offer group loans like this with a $100 per person limit today and bootstrap the economy to where it was 25 years ago and make a huge return.
Maybe this is what drove crypto and NFTs, just in a way that was obviously going to implode because workers were expected to pony up the cash. So I'd be curious to hear if investors know of any places to take out group loans like this.
>The central problem seems to be wealth inequality (that capital has been separated from labor).
The central problem will be inequality of all kinds, such as aptitude/motiviation/effort/etc. Eventually, in many businesses, you will get into a situation where some people will think they deserve more than others, and then politics will take over, and you have a similar problem to weaknesses in democracy.
>As far as I can tell, there is simply no place where a group of workers can borrow money. We have no concept of loans co-signed by a large number of people in the US.
There is. A family reunion, a bank, a credit union, a local business group meeting, etc. There is nothing stopping this happening other than the fact that it is not economic. Underwriting, agency risk, and pursuing unpaid debt is not a negligible problem.
>For example, there should be a floor at which a loan is deemed risk-free because a typical person has that much money. Any of us can donate $5 to someone living on the street at any time. So 100 people should be able to borrow $500 together, no questions asked.
Very few lenders exist who would accept that deal. As a lender, would you?
The central problem will be inequality of all kinds, such as aptitude/motiviation/effort/etc. Eventually, in many businesses, you will get into a situation where some people will think they deserve more than others, and then politics will take over, and you have a similar problem to weaknesses in democracy.
That's othering. You're separating the "us" that are hard workers and successful from the "them" that are slackers.
But wealth inequality is an injustice specifically because it doesn't discriminate.
For example: in software development the hardest workers are penalized because the 10:1 or 100:1 leverage in their solutions often isn't recognized or rewarded. They might get paid twice as much as another dev even though decades of experience and orders of magnitude differences in problem-solving capacity separate them. That could be where your perception comes from, if you feel undervalued for your work and see others around you as entitled.
The hardest workers I've met in my life were generally the lowest paid. When I was moving furniture from 2001-2003, women automatically were paid $9/hr to pack boxes while the men were paid $10/hr to load them. Never mind that packing is a much more difficult job psychologically. I could pack about 30 boxes/day if I went as fast as I could, while a woman I worked with averaged 80. Almost 3 times my productivity for less pay and opportunity. And she had kids. And she didn't have the money to go to the dentist. And she never complained. Not like me.
Today 20 years later, costs have at least doubled while pay has stayed the same. I worry for her and the literally 100 million Americans who work harder than we do and live hand to mouth. It's a travesty of such proportion that it's become unthinkable. We literally can't overcome our own biases to think about it rationally. Our inability to empathize is the root cause of suffering.
So yes, I would make that loan all day. And nothing against you, I don't know you, I don't mean to be critical. I just feel that your argument is rooted in bias which somewhat ironically causes you to not entertain the insights I've gained acquiring my bias.
Edit: I may have misread your point. Do you mean that some people will think they deserve more than others and hoard the profits of the business? Sorry if I got that backwards or projected my context onto what you said.
>That's othering. You're separating the "us" that are hard workers and successful from the "them" that are slackers.
Yes, and I posit "othering" is an innate part of humans (and other animals). Of course, it is worthwhile to work against excessive "othering" that causes a net loss in the functioning of society.
>Do you mean that some people will think they deserve more than others and hoard the profits of the business?
Yes, although I would not make a judgment call as to whether or not it is "hoarding".
IIRC, Richard Wolfe, advocate of worker-directed social enterprises, mentioned that old school unions like SEIU are now funding startups, small businesses, etc. Maybe like a Small Business Administration and credit union for union members.
Some people do that. The majority though can't afford to do that, obviously. It's amazing that people can be so disconnected from reality to not see that as obvious.
It was meant to provoke some thought as to why there aren’t more worker friendly companies out there given that everyone seems to want them. Obviously not everyone is in a good situation to start their own.
No, not if they are all quitting companies without these conditions to go to companies that do. You cannot create the pressure necessary to make the desired changes just by quitting.
If 1/2 of Microsoft’s workforce decided to quit tonight the company would go ballistic looking for workers.
The lag between people quitting and people finding their next job reduces the labor supply. That’s compounded by onboarding time required to conduct interviews and get people up to speed etc. It’s why companies so frequently fold in the face of strikes rather than just fire everyone, they have a great deal of individual leverage on any one employee but are completely dependent on having a workforce.
Yes, I did mention unions in my first post but that isn't what the person I was responding to was suggesting. They were suggesting individual action, not collective action.
Supervisory boards are super common in Germany. I am not sure if there is some legal requirement that makes this the case, but you see it at many large companies.
Then try a less capital-intensive industry? If you don’t have capital, and you want to use a lot of it from other people, then maybe you don’t get to dictate how that capital is used?
Because in that industry, you need a lot of capital, which usually means you need to convince people to lend you theirs. If you’re in an industry that doesn’t, and labor is the limiting factor (tech is more in this vein), then labor tends to get its way. This has been a bit mixed up by super loose monetary policy, but that’s not historically the norm.
I get your point: I was just making it clear that the opposite isn't true for labor-intensive industries where one has to gain the labor from a lot of people and still get to dictate how the labor is used. The obvious conclusion is that it's not about the quantity of capital/labor, but the current economic system where capital is king.
I wonder whether it isn’t more fundamental. I think the underlying principle is “leverage” and “scarcity”. The more leverage an input has and or the more scarce it is, the more it is prized, everything else being equal.
That’s why some labor is more highly paid or has more power than other kinds of labor. Capital, likewise has inherent leverage and scarcity power.
Yep, this. Most labor has much less leverage now that it’s more easily replaceable by equally talented people half a world away. It’s just in areas with shortages where it has strong negotiating leverage.
Property rights aren’t a law of nature, but we’ve all come together and decided that we want them. I’m sure there are ways for groups of people to try other models on their own.
> but we’ve all come together and decided that we want them
We have not, in fact “all come together and decided that we want” the capitalist model of property rights, and indeed the long term evolution since the early 20th century has been away from that model, which was largely imposed top-down jointly by the rising capitalist class and the fading pre-capitalist aristocracy.
This isn't true. All settled agrarian societies need property rights, and allow for the accumulation of capital. You need to be assured the grain you grow will be yours to eat. You also need to be assured that the grain you've stockpiled for the winter will not be redistributed to people who may be staving now, otherwise you'll starve in the winter. Everything else flows from here.
This is an ahistorical retelling of the development of property rights and capital. Agrarian societies existed for thousands of years[0], before the enclosure movement turned to commons into capital that could be privately owned.[1]
I'm aware of enclosure, but it doesn't conflict with the notion of accumulated capital. Aside from precious metals, wealth in the agrarian world was often measured in fixed quantities of organic outputs - mostly grain, but also raw textile, etc. This is capital. It can be exchanged for goods, services, and real property. A 10th century merchant was a capitalist. He accumulated wealth and used it to expand his enterprise. This had a compounding effect and made some people very wealthy. Owning a fleet of trading ships is a business.
I'm not going to discuss any of the tie-ins with capitalism, because frankly I don't care to, but I'm going to point out that as a historical note this is not an accurate representation of legal history. In fact it largely ignores it.
Our current system of real property ownership is a result of adopting feudal legal structures to the growing need of society to build durable capital investments on land during the advent of industrialization. The 'fee' in fee simple is etyomologically derived from 'fief', a system in which land titles were granted to people in exchange for fealty and servility.
Agrarian societies had significantly different needs and organized their affairs differently and they didn't starve during the winters. Except for those that did, like the settlers in iceland, who died from potentially too many property rights as landholdings became concentrated in the hands of a few small families which left their society brittle enough to be wiped out by inuit raids.
Anyways, the naturalistic fallacy isn't good support for current property rights, which are about as artificial as any law gets.
> adopting feudal legal structures to the growing need of society to build durable capital investments
I would agree with the former, and not the latter. As soon as dispute resolution and contract negotiation became sufficiently formalized, and our societies became sufficiently nonviolent, a class of people emerges who are able to accumulate capital legitimately (merchants, bankers, landowners). This all happens prior to any sort of industrialization, and can rather be seen as a prerequisite for it. Nowhere is this more clear than in Edo Japan, which was hardly industrialized, yet saw the emergence of a wealthy merchant class due to the legal structures which protected their assets from arbitrary seizure and redistribution. Wealthy non-ruling classes also existed all over Europe prior to industrialization.
> the naturalistic fallacy
The assertion that property rights ought to exist isn't a naturalistic one. I was simply pointing out that property rights are hardly a new development in civilization. Property rights can be asserted morally, without any naturalism, by equating the outputs of one's labour with an extension of one's self. If you have produced something for yourself, with your own time and labour, it should be yours do dispense with as you see fit, in the same way that your body is. A claim over one's property must therefore be justified as though it were a claim over one's own person, and this rather reduces the scope of legitimate claims.
> all settled agrarian societies need property rights
Perhaps, but the upthread discussion doesn’t hinge on merely the existence of property rights, but the very specific capitalist model of property rights, which obviously, not all settled agrarian societies have needed, since it is several millenia newer than settled agrarian societies are.
Defenders of capitalism love to argue about the need for “property rights” and then just leap from there to “and, therefore, capitalism”.
Property rights + individual liberty = capitalism.
The right to accumulate capital, and the freedom to voluntarily transact with others without outside interference is all that's needed to accumulate enormous wealth.
There is no dismantling of capitalism without compromising either property rights (ownership of land/stuff) or individual liberty (labour regulation).
> Property rights + individual liberty = capitalism.
No, one very specific model of property rights (plus no individual liberty not subsumed within that model) = capitalism.
But, again, the capitalist model of property rights isn’t the only one, and the developed West, where capitalism first became dominant, has been drifting away from the capitalist model of property rights for about 100 years now. (While at the same time rejecting alternatives that much more stridently oppose the capitalist model that grew up in places that attempted to avoid capitalism entirely.)
Can you describe the difference between the "capitalist" model of property rights and the common law model? I wouldn't classify ancient Roman property law as fundamentally different from ours today, would you?
Would you say that the ancient world practiced capitalism? Surely they had wealthy classes of merchants, landowners, bankers, etc. who accumulated capital and did stuff with it.
People will say capital, but there are successful businesses in America started in garages literally every day. Not every one becomes Apple, but many of them go on to support lots of families.
Both neoliberal and classical definitions of capital make it nearly tautologically required as an input for production. 'Wealth' and 'Capital' aren't the same thing.
Yes, but the assertion is that so much capital is required that it's a barrier to starting a business. And that's just not true. It is definitely possible to bootstrap a small business, and there are many government programs available to help. The bigger barrier, in my opinion, is an appetite for risk. In that capacity, America is definitely following in Europe's footsteps.
Capital isn’t the only thing that prevents workers from starting companies.
Vision, good ideas, the ability to inspire, bringing people together, luck, etc. all factor in. To single out capital is to say if anyone has money they will be able to start a successful business.
Basically, instead of having unions/employees explain in conspiratorial tones why management is evil, they see what's happening for real. It's a lot harder to say 'evil board' when you have a seat there and are (for example) facing massive losses - your job then becomes to build a collective, satisfactory solution rather than just stay in the opposition and complain. Because employees trust the board, they will also accept changes, sometimes hard ones.
The difference might be that workers have an interest in maintaining the business so they still have well paid jobs while CEOs do not necessarily have an interest in unions' well-being.
The big German companies invite the unions in because they are a source of innovation too. And managing the connection between the people who actually build the cars and the people who design/plan them is important.
This is interesting. I sat next to a German manager of DaimlerChrysler (which really dates me, I know) on a flight. He agreed with the idea of worker unions being inside the company and having a seat at the table. He also disliked the practice of building cars "offshore" because, he said "the knowledge of building the car leaves the country".
I actually see no problem with that. If the employees have a mechanism to keep management in check, there should be a way of management keeping employees in check. As long as there's a way to make sure everyone is on the same page, and there's harmony on and also between every level of the company, that's fine in my book.
Worker Councils are to be elected in German companies beyond a certain (small) size (at least five employees who can vote and three employees who can be elected). This doesn’t mean that all German companies have them. The workers have to organize the vote themselves and if they don’t do it then there‘s no Works Council. Tactics similar to union busting are also a thing in Germany to prevent Worker Councils from forming.
However, large (old) companies will nearly always have such a Council in Germany.
What can they do? Basically, they do have a voice concerning anything that touches the day to day working situation. Monitor whether the employees adheres to norms and rules. Employers also have to inform the Council members about anything relevant going on concerning the workers.
Especially when it comes to hiring, firing and restructuring the Council can also veto and force the employer to sue and get the court to override the veto. In general you don’t really want to have the Council on your bad side as an employer, even though the power isn’t limitless and how much power there is in practice depends on the specific Council and how it fulfills its duties.
Unions aren’t needed for any of this but they will always want to help install a Workers Council.
I recently started at a public health insurance and we had someone from the Council sit in during my interview. When I was on the other side and took part in an interview we also had someone from the Council there to look over our shoulders, also when we documented our evaluation of the candidate.
I am part of my company’s Betriebsrat and while sometimes it is a bit overwhelming, it really is a helpful provision. We don’t have infinite powers however the company management respects the Betriebsrat and is always mindful when it’s trying to enact policies.
This system of checks and balances is something that’s not much appreciated. You won’t believe what companies can get away with if there’s not Betriebsrat oversight.
Having a supervisory board w/ 1/2 of members representing (non-management) employees is mandatory by law for any corporation over 50 (?) employees in Germany.
The "General Works Council" is just that board, I believe. So this is quite a normal setup for a large German company.
General Works Council is the Betriebsrat (100% employees, not mandatory, but employees cannot be stopped from forming one), the board is the Aufsichtsrat (50% employees, mandatory for large corporations). It works really well most of the time.
It never mandatory to have a Betriebsrat in Germany even with 100k employees you could not have one. You can however start one already with 5 full-time employees. Companies tend to have one around 50+ employees because before that it rarely makes sense
So it's not mandatory if somehow all employees decided not to form one, but if any of them wanted to, it's mandatory to let them and presumably support them/listen to them in some way?
Basically it’s not mandatory in the sense that you will not be fined as a company if you do not have one. However, employees can make a motion to elect a Betriebsrat (works council) in a given location. Then, if 3 locations have a local Betriebsrat the Gesamtbetriebsrat can be formed which is regularly elected across the whole German staff. Grocery chains like Lidl and Aldi have prevented the formation of a Betriebsrat by employing union busting style measures (intimidating or firing staff, etc).
Iirc teslas giga fab does not have an elected Betriebsrat.
Since many American companies incorporate in Germany for their German branches, they can also face Betriebsrats elections.
Overall I do think a Betriebsrat is a net positive for a company. It’s not always as profit oriented as an executive but it has a long term interest in the company as opposed to executives who just think in quarter years and about keeping shareholders happy.
Interestingly, I'm currently reading a book on the history of austerity and the author shows how worker councils were a thing in the UK during and immediately after WW1; however, austerity was put in place to systematically prioritize capital and the minority capital class over working class people. Lest that sound slightly conspiratorial the author cites specific memos and comments from the Treasury at the time that make that point explicit. They simply insisted that working class would have to "sacrifice" so that the system of capital could be restored. The interests of capital was always prioritized; it was all that mattered. People were expected to be more productive, consume less, and earn less.
Depressingly, Brexit has just caused the same thing...
The old page [0] about EU-mandated law regarding Works Councils now says "The Brexit transition period has ended and new rules on participating in a European Works Council now apply. This page is currently out of date."
The new page [1] says: "Only people employed in EEA countries can ask their employer to set up an EWC.
If you are employed in the UK you cannot ask for one to be set up"
:(
(I'm not actually sure if this was an intentional change or just an accidental side-effect of the UK leaving the EEA [2], but the Tories hardly deserve the benefit of the doubt regarding intent when it comes to a pro-capital anti-workers change, and they could easily just extend the old bill to cover "EEA or UK" rather than "only EEA" if it wasn't wanted...)
It's very well written and the research into the actual memoranda from the period she is discussing is very eye-opening. It is also, unfortunately, quite depressing.
Those record profits are past looking and don't predict how future years will play out. Many tech companies over-hired and need to trim.
For comparison, Google just announced layoffs of 12k today. By Sept 2022, Google had 187k employees. This is up 68k from 119k in Sept 2019's or growth of 57% from pre-pandemic. The 12k layoffs today represent less than 17.6% of their growth in new employees since before the pandemic.
Contrast with Mercedes Benz which had 152k employees in 2019 and 173k employees today, a growth of only 13.8% since pre-pandemic.
> This General Works Council seems to be something like a separate "union within the company",
No, its work council or workers' council that is integrated to the company's top management per regulations. Germany and various countries have them, and its a Eu recommendation. It seems to work quite well judging from the last 2 decades.
A worket council is by no means a union, it is an elected council of employees representing employees interest all the way to the board. Usually so, members of the workers council are members of whatever union is representing the industry, in Mercedes case IGM (Industrial union of metal and electronic workers). Those members tend not to be union functionaries, but the head of Mercedes workers council for sure is an important figure within IGM.
I do have my issues with all rhe politics and self serving that can happen with those councils, the overall idea is pretty solid so.
For one situation gone wrong, google VWs Brazil scandals involving various private jet trips for high ranking worker councils members to visit their mistresses in Brazil.
The works council is a legally regulated means of participation of the staff in a company. Establishing a works council there are a few hurdles just like in ionizing. But different from unionizing there is no membership fee and the works council is regularly elected by all associates.
Works council has a say in hiring. And firing decisions. And also on other business decision in the company. At times this is good and progressive, sometimes not so much (usually huge fans of combustion engines).
Elected Works council members can be union members but also independent.
Iirc the mode worked so well that Daimler tried to export it to an American plant but it was shut down there because “this is not how we run things here”
Ah and then with VW there is the story how the works council let itself be bribed
>"Interesting how this structure has a headline like this one, vs the ">10k workers >laid off from giant corporation with record profits for the past two years" >headlines that seem to be popping up here daily."
i often see people going or want to go to giant IT companies, as you refer, forgetting the "safety" of working for big German or even European companies. In some German companies you get a job for life, a contract without end and the "working council" works very hard to find solutions for all workers and for the company. This is one of the reasons why i would hardly work for an American Company in US.
I guess I don't understand the pushback against layoffs. You layoff based on future projections, not past performance. It would be sinister to layoff someone to prevent some kind of timed bonus but I've seen no reports of that. As far as I can tell its just about reduced investments and reduced project scopes.
It sucks and people deserve severance and unemployment but at the same time why is a reduction in workforce supposed to be immoral? Have severance packages been surprisingly light or something?
I'm not sure the comparison between companies in different countries, in different industries/segments is really useful though. It sounds like you're implying the structure prevented layoffs. But in reality I feel it had little to do with profitability. Kind of like blaming a president for the overal stock market going up or down.
A works council is a requirement for every company over 50 employees in The Netherlands. It's pretty common that they're involved in deciding on bonuses like this. However, they often don't have that much power in the actual decision.
Mercedes Benz is an IG Metall company. So this is on top of the 13th-14th salary that is standard throughout the whole industry. This is basically their way of going above-and-beyond the industry Tarifvertrag (that is already considered to be quite generous for German standards).
I don't understand what you mean by this. I'm not sure what it is in Germany, but an auto plant employee in the US would max out there salary around $50 or $60k/year with overtime. Many make much less than that. This is probably a 10 to 20% bonus for many of their workers, which is extremely high for factory work.
> an auto plant employee in the US would max out there salary around $50 or $60k/year with overtime
That's definitely wrong.
GM has said its average hourly worker earns around $90,000 in wages, overtime and profit sharing. The only workers who can reach that level are skilled trades, about 15% of the workforce, the UAW said. In-progression and temp workers earn much less.
However, a GM spokesman countered that skilled trades workers earn up to $123,000 annually, including profit sharing and overtime but not benefits.
It that really the going rate for an auto worker in the US these days? I knew people making $100k+ per year at those jobs 30 years ago. They worked as much overtime as they could get but some of them saved a ton. Others bought boats and second homes.
> General Works Council seems to be something like a separate "union within the company"
It’s less adversarial. In America, industrial unions sprung from a time when unions fought capitalism and management were criminals. That stain persists.
Tech companies’ stock awards are close to the German model. Add a Board seat elected by the ESOP and you have a tight approximation.
> Interesting how this structure has a headline like this one, vs the ">10k workers laid off from giant corporation with record profits for the past two years" headlines that seem to be popping up here daily.
Aren't large bonuses common enough with FAANG that they don't even make the news?
They aren't common for many (most?) employees in FAANG. This is more like all of Facebook's content moderators or Amazon's warehouse workers getting a $7,000 bonus. Certainly that would hit the news?
I remember a few years ago when Elon Musk got a huge payout for hitting a production target with Tesla. It was basically a huge bet that paid off because they mandated tons of overtime.
I did the math and realized that if he took half of the bonus and distributed it evenly to every single Tesla employee, from VPs down to cafeteria staff, it would amount to around $40,000 for every person in the company. Of course Elon pocketed it all.
Later that year and for the following year Tesla would be embroiled in labor scandals.
yeah.. I'm happy for the regular workers, but as a code monkey, I'd rather make $400k a year and get randomly laid off for no reason than make $100k forever
The optics on this one have been fascinating to watch on social media.
I've seen a lot of people in my own network who work at U.S. tech companies share this as an example of what companies should be doing. A lot of contrasting takes about how U.S. companies are laying people off while MB is handing out higher than expected bonuses.
Meanwhile, I know for a fact that a lot of the people sharing this are getting paid significantly more than these employees and also have bonus plans that pay out several multiples higher than the highest MB payout (7300EUR) even in a bad year.
Maybe this is an example of managing expectations. Mercedes-Benz paying four-figure bonuses to employees is noteworthy largely because they're paying more than expected. Meanwhile, I see people who earn significantly more being unhappy because their compensation was less than some number they expected.
Interesting lesson in how expectations are relative, not absolute.
> Interesting lesson in how expectations are relative, not absolute.
Yup. I have a hard time taking any of the whining on HN seriously. People being paid $300K+ but all they can do is complain that they attend too many meetings. People that job hop once a year but the idea of layoffs is high treason.
I’ve been chastised before for suggesting “there is no humanitarian crisis” when engineers (like myself) are laid off. A strange “I deserve to be employed like this” vein, which is natural, but wrong.
It is, however, a fact that a relatively high amount of HNers earn way over 100k due to the prevalence of people form SV on here. Tech salaries in the rest of the world are nowhere near those in SV.
Mercedes-Benz's market cap is $106M, while Microsoft's market cap is $1.78T. Microsoft is 16.8K times larger than Mercedes-Benz. People are aware of the difference when criticizing how US tech behaves.
Edit: See comments below. Correct Mercedes-Benz market cap is $76.5B, in which case Microsoft is 23 times the size of Mercedes-Benz.
Mercedes-Benz's market cap is way higher (like, almost 100x higher) than $106M, and I don't think that market cap is the right metric to use when evaluating a company's ability to pay its workers.
Mercedes-Benz had roughly the same net income as Facebook last quarter, and in the same ballpark as all of the major US tech companies, and still has significantly lower average pay.
> Meanwhile, I know for a fact that a lot of the people sharing this are getting paid significantly more than these employees and also have bonus plans that pay out several multiples higher than the highest MB payout (7300EUR) even in a bad year.
Yeah I was surprised by the number. I have a relative that makes anywhere from 1.5x to 3x her annual salary on her annual bonus working for a US finance company.
> Maybe this is an example of managing expectations. Mercedes-Benz paying four-figure bonuses to employees is noteworthy largely because they're paying more than expected. Meanwhile, I see people who earn significantly more being unhappy because their compensation was less than some number they expected.
The tradeoffs are essentially this. In the US you can make orders of magnitude more money on salary, bonus and stock compensation. However, you get essentially zero employee protections. Meaning you can be fired without cause and without severance at anytime. You have no legal right to things like maternity or paternity leave, and you have no legal right to affordable health insurance coverage.
It's a bit tricky to discuss because there are legal rights associated with things, though they're not nearly as good. (For example, a right to 12 weeks unpaid leave, for some.)
Also, companies often provide benefits above the legal minimum, making the minimum less relevant for those employees, unless something changes.
I work for a small-mid sized German software engineering company (~200 employees). Last year the company raised all wages by 7,500.- EUR (additionally to the usual raises). This was not a one-time payment, but a permanent increase in pay and it was the same absolute amount for all employees (including office management and other non-engineering departments). The reasoning behind this decision was that the inflation was hitting employees with lower income harder than employees with higher income positions.
Whenever I'm seeing posts like this, I wonder if "up to x Euros" isn't the other way around and smaller incomes are on the lower end of the bonus range.
> The reasoning behind this decision was that the inflation was hitting employees with lower income harder than employees with higher income positions.
Isn't part of inflation that this doesn't work at scale? As in, if everyone gets higher wages, bigger bonuses, and more money is being poured into 401ks, inflation gets even worse? Or do wages become a rounding error when you add in stuff like real-estate and loans?
> Isn't part of inflation that this doesn't work at scale? As in, if everyone gets higher wages, bigger bonuses, and more money is being poured into 401ks, inflation gets even worse? Or do wages become a rounding error when you add in stuff like real-estate and loans?
Kind of, but wages are only part of the cost of goods.
Assuming wages represent 30% of the cost of goods (i.e. 30% labour, 20% property/fixed costs, 50% materials) and wages go up 10%, then they only impact the cost of goods by 3% (thus 3% inflation might be expected at a simplistic macro level).
Then there is a sort of loop where the 3% inflation could encourage another 3% wage inflation, but that only affects the cost of goods by 0.9% and so on. When you follow this theory, that 10% wage inflation only turns into an additional c4.5% increase in inflation (or 15% if you include the initial 10%).
This is overly simplistic and there are other levers at play, which is why lots of economics calculations often have continous simulations which can show the impact of these feedback loops (Inflation causes wage increases causes inflation causes wage increases).
Sure. But this is more of an argument against raising all wages relative to inflation. Inflation (at least in Germany) raised mostly prices for everyday goods - like food, fuel and rent. Raising the wages by an absolute amount meant helping those whose expenses are mostly basic goods, not trying to match inflation with pay raise.
> As in, if everyone gets higher wages, bigger bonuses, and more money is being poured into 401ks, inflation gets even worse?
This is the thinking companies would like you to have. Meanwhile, profits have been massive for many companies in spite of inflation. The in site of part is somewhat sarcastic, because a lot of it is driven purely by corporate greed next to macro economic factors.
Companies that move part of their profits into wages don't have to increase prices if... They accept a decrease in profits.
To me, this seems like one of the only ways to avert a real crisis right now. We're moving money toward the rich at a crazy rate, causing regular people to be able to afford less and less. Rich people tent to not spend their money in the real world. A rich person doesn't buy 10 iPhones or 10 F150s, they buy one yacht. The middle class is who cause economic growth and stripping them from purchasing power will slow everything down.
In the end, the rich will also feel this, when their assets implode. But they'll only feel it in the value of these assets. They won't feel it in their daily lives. Only the normals actually feel pain from all this.
> Meanwhile, profits have been massive for many companies in spite of inflation. The in site of part is somewhat sarcastic, because a lot of it is driven purely by corporate greed next to macro economic factors.
This is not a good explanation because you have to explain why it went up at time X rather than earlier, and of course why it goes down sometimes. Do they just stop being greedy?
> Or do wages become a rounding error when you add in stuff like real-estate and loans?
In the US - debt is >30% of the economy (government deficit, new corporate debt, new mortgages, and personal auto & student loans). But non-debt still makes up the majority - so I don't think everything becomes a rounding error compared to debt.
The interest rate has to be the single most important variable - but wages aren't a rounding error.
Something missing from this conversation is that Mercedes is one of the few 'legacy' carmakers that are managing the transition to EVs and automated driving well.
They have flagship EVs - EQE, EQB, EQS that are well reviewed.
Do they manufacture and sell these cars? I see ads and read editorials but I can't find these cars on the road.
I'm afraid they use this EVQ-T-B-D-R to impress, then get people to contact their dealers who dissuade them to go EV just yet, and finally sell the biggest ICE or hybrid possible. That's what happened with my dad who went to Lexus (for a heavy plugin hybrid, sigh).
Given their pricing (high end) they are definitely available in my area.
It's not like Hyundai a few years ago where you couldn't find their EVs anywhere outside of southern CA. Just looked even Hyundai/Kia are available near me as well.
Seems this story only applies in Germany, but their US tech workers also get a bonus at the same time that is partially based on company performance. My bonus last year was very nice because they've been doing so well (in the ballpark of $50k as a senior dev), and it looks like it'll be similarly nice this year too.
How does your salary compare to tech companies? I know levels.fyi isn’t very accurate, but it’s all I’ve got and it doesn’t look that stunning. On the other hand, maybe the culture, meaningful work, etc. is better so lower pay is fine: https://www.levels.fyi/companies/mercedes-benz/salaries
Salary is quite a bit higher than this shows (the "software engineer" salaries listed here are for Germany, not the US), but there are no stock options, so total comp is probably lower than FAANG. I started as a "engineer" (P2, between junior and senior) at 135k 5 years ago, and each level has come with a ~20k raise, plus annual raises in between. The bonus percent gets bigger too: as a P1-2, your bonus target is 10% of salary, at P3 it's 12%, and P4 is 14%. That's further modified by personal performance and company performance (0-1.5x for personal, and 0-2x for company; last year I was at 1.44x and 2x respectively, for a bonus of ~35% of my salary). They're also not stingy with promotions, I've been promoted twice in under 5 years, and my base salary is currently ~180k.
I worked at Amazon for 5 years before here, and have been here for another 5. The job is less stressful, the work is more meaningful (to me anyway, in that cars are more interesting than web ads were), the culture is more fun, and things are less cutthroat. I probably don't quite make FAANG money, but I don't put up with FAANG BS either.
Coming from Stuttgart, Germany, it is well-known that if you get any position within the local automotive industry, it counts as making it. Doesn‘t matter what level, even if you work on the assembly line.
So I interpret this post as follows: HN discovers that building German cars is a very good business.
True, my uncle stayed his entire life and now got an insane amount for early retirement.
Myself on the other side worked 2 years as a software engineer and that's as much as I could taake:
* politics
* too many artificial restrictions
* worst management I've ever experienced
* Work doesn't get valued at all, cancelling so many projects and ideas amounting to nothing
* lower reputation than "real" engineers, they still don't
understand the value of software, like so many German companies, and treat us as necessary evil, which is also resulting in not competive salary
If you shut up and just come to work every day, you certainly "made it", but for me that's impossible.
Even with bikes there's still a lot of use cases for cars. With EVs, autonomous driving and current trends in urban mobility chances are high that automotive companies will become fleet management companies in 20-30 years (Uber has no chance to survive in the long term).
Is there a good third-party URL for some independent reporting about this? A corporate press release is not usually a good source for this kind of thing. This is a bit of an exception to HN's "original source" guideline.
True. On the other hand, if the increase in revenue is at least partially caused by inflation and it's not to be expected that deflation will revert this effect any time soon, new hires might expect significantly higher wages then what is currently paid within the company. If the current workforce is keeping their pre-inflation wages and new hires are receiving higher wages, this causes an increase in turn-over rate which is exactly what can be seen in Germany throughout the last two years.
Admittedly, there might be other, additional causes to this. It should still be considered if higher turn over is a business risk for the company.
I think most companies and industries where bonuses make up a significant portion of total compensation still usually have annual inflation adjustments to base salaries, largely to avoid this problem.
In an ideal world, people would be a bit better about managing uncertainty and most people would be able to live comfortably within their means on their base salaries and would have the restraint to invest large percentages of their bonuses.
Fair, but then it's not a question of either one or the other. Im not arguing against bonuses. It just shouldn't be the only outcome of what's expected to be a permanent increase in revenue.
Not that Mercedes is a good example, but is there a name for company philosophy of being employee/team-centric versus investor centric? E.g. all profits shared among employees instead of shareholders for example. I'd like to work for a company like that.
"co-op" or "co-operative" is what I see them being called in Canada. A few small "craft" industry in my town is structured like that, where every employee is an owner with a stake based on their position, tenure, etc, and all profits are distributed back out each quarter/year. They're also common in agriculture, where a feed mill will be owned by all the farmers that use its services and/or store their grain there.
Crazy thing is that moves like this also benefit shareholders, albeit indirectly. A company that employees want to work for because they know they'll benefit first means that more and more of the top job seekers will try to work there, which means (indirectly) that the company will have the best of the best employees. As an investor, I would think that in the long term, that's the best use of the company's money and the best path to long-term growth.
I don't want a quarterly, biannual, or annual dividend if that means that that excess capital will be re-invested into better employees (or keeping current top employees) who produce better products which can better position the company in the long run.
For a long time I naively thought that was the whole point of investment: long term sustainability and allocation of capital that allowed companies to best compete.
What you say is true: investing in employees attracts top talent. However, that's only one side of the equation. The other side of the equation is that such policies cost money. So in order to say that this policy is a "benefit to shareholders", you'd need to demonstrate that the benefits outweigh the cost, which is of course impossible to quantify. Over the last 5 years, stock in Mercedes Benz Group is down almost 25%, so I wouldn't say that, generally, Mercedes has been good to shareholders.
Is that the best way to evaluate it? It looks like they also offered about $3-4 dividend each year. The stock is down $5 over the last 5 years, but has also produced almost $15 worth of dividends[0].
For comparison, Ford might be up by about 25% (+$2-3) last 5 years, but it has only yielded a dividend of around $3.
>A company that employees want to work for because they know they'll benefit first means that more and more of the top job seekers will try to work there, which means (indirectly) that the company will have the best of the best employees. As an investor, I would think that in the long term, that's the best use of the company's money and the best path to long-term growth.
This does not work for businesses selling commodified products/services. Walmart can pay top dollar, but it is going to be disastrous because everyone will switch to buying from target/Kroger/Costco/Aldi/Amazon for cheaper.
The most radical are Co-Ops. The workers own the company. They're called Worker-Owners. Where management is a skill, not a rank. The problem with this model is three-fold:
• Outside investment can undermine the Co-Op's autonomy (many don't allow it)
• Raising capital is hard; usually you're bootstrapping (worker-owners must divert some of their income)
• Sometimes worker-owners get caught up in the democratic process of collective decision-making and get frustrated
On the other hand:
• A real Co-Op is real community. They exist to support the humans through work. You're all in this together. You can be "kicked out" by vote, but when you do, you give up your share and all that share money accumulating is yours.
• You are "The Man" in the worst and best way you can imagine If something is wrong with the company, you can change it.
• No more perverse mgmt incentives.
The biggest Co-Op is the Mondragon. They are very successful, too.
Welcome to socialism. This is what actual socialists want. Everyone to have ownership in the company and participate in it's success. Where the decisions are made democratically by workers.
In the modern world, you will see this in co-ops today.
Buy the latest year of a body style you can, each redesign means new modules and reliability problems are fixed with each new yearly revision. Then buy one that has depreciated most of the way already. 7-10 yr old is a sweet spot. C classes are kinda rickety imo. An E or S class is ideal. Lastly, if you get one that actually was maintained well, it shouldn't have any issues waiting to bite you.
Currently rocking a 2010 S400, immaculate interior and exterior. I'm all in for about 12k after repairs, would be closer to 16-18k if I paid someone to do the repairs. This vehicle won't depreciate more than $500 a year at this point. It's MSRP in 2010 was 113k.
I drove a 2022 Volvo S60 t8 recharge for a little bit earlier this year, the 13 year old s-class drives better and has nicer features...
Of course this is all moot if you're trying to buy very new models, in that case, you gotta love blowing money. Hah
Family has been long-time Mercedes owners since the mid-80s. Our MB diesels have been phenomenally reliably over that time period and the last one I owned (a '98 W210 E300D owned from 2005 through 2016) was by far the lowest maintenance car of my life until I bought an electric. The only non-routine repairs in twelve years were three window regulators (absolutely a part that should ~ never fail) and one preheater ("glow plug") that failed, so I replaced all six.
Depreciation issues are great; it means that (in normal times) I can buy a 4-6 year old MB for a fraction of the new price and enjoy it for a decade or more, because of its good long-term reliability.
I don't know, but just tried to find some stats about which are the cars with the highest depreciation. Of course, the lists you find on various do not agree with each other, but what seems to be common across the board is that there is a pretty strong mix of all kinds of different car brands. It's not like Mercedes is standing out in any way on the lists I was able to google.
With reliability lists, it's slightly different, in that you see the name Toyota multiple times towards the top of the lists. Mercedes is nowhere to be found in that area, but at the same time, it's not like the bottom places are all taken by them either. It's a mix, again.
Historically they have been but most innovation at least from bmw comes from slapping extra turbos to chase ever increasing bhp. Interiors are mainly the same but with updated instrument clusters and redesigned exteriors. Not groundbreaking i think what is happening is too much attention to short term profits and forcing customers to refresh their cars every few years. Literally after they out of warranty bmws fall apart not to mention mercedeses that fall apparent even within warranty (the m and s class do).
BMW has never had great longevity. They're mostly fine for 100k miles, but people expect cars to last much longer than that now. Old BMWs have solid reputation as a money pit.
Meanwhile at Tesla employees have become millionaires off of stock options. Crappy place to work for other reasons, but pretty much everybody gets RSU's.
There's a big difference between stock options and RSUs. Nobody became millionaires off RSUs unless they started at Tesla <2018. I'm not convinced everyone at Tesla is offered options.
Take this as the heresay as it is, but pretty much everybody at Tesla gets at least $20K in RSU's. If you got that pre-IPO and kept it this long it's worth more than a million. But even if it doesn't appreciate at all, over 4 years that's a similar payout to the MB payout referenced in the article.
employees are working on cars that are competitive, whose price are becoming more affordable and that fit people's expectation (cheap to maintain, highly efficient, compatible with a sustainable future)?
I'd prefer to work at a company that will hire en masse in the coming years, than at one that's rich on paper but prefer to pay dividends and one-time bonus while having no reasonable roadmap for the future of mobility.
I hear the Qataris and Saudis are paying well, too.
It's funny in that the structure is inherently what Economic Fascism is, separating the economics from the nationalism/racism typically associated (from Nazi Germany). The economic bits seem to hold over though.
Nothing is really stopping similar organization from happening in the formation of Corporation in the US and elsewhere. But it has to be part of the foundation of said company, especially if it's publicly traded, as it's very hard to do after the fact. I'm not convinced it should be restructured via force from the Government, and not even as a bailout, as I'm not a fan of those govt actions either.
Record profits everywhere while inflation raged on. Only one explanation then for inflation: PRICE GOUGING.
Corporate greed during global pandemic. Capitalism at its finest. Now we all have to pay the price just like on 2009. Privatize profits. Socialize losses.
Looks like a month's pay for the top end, and several months for the lower end, depending on what the bonus rank cutoff is (interns aren't going to get it)
Nah, 7'300 is a good bonus. I've never heard of a five-figure bonus outside of FAANG or long-standing senior positions in old companies such as law firm or banking.
Well, I live in Germany and that's less than 1 month income for me. Which is pretty common for a senior+ engineer/data scientist. Not for a single person with a technical degree 7k would be 2-3 months income, lol.
This General Works Council seems to be something like a separate "union within the company", in addition to whatever union represents various workers within the organization. On top of that, Mercedes Benz has a corporate Supervisory Board with 1/2 of the members representing the employees.
Interesting how this structure has a headline like this one, vs the ">10k workers laid off from giant corporation with record profits for the past two years" headlines that seem to be popping up here daily.