Because explicit hierarchy is almost always better than implicit hierarchy, which is what happens at a "self-organizing" company. A company may start off with good intentions but without some hierarchy past a certain size or tribal connections (e.g. friends and co-founders), then either:
a) Progress slows to a crawl with everyone trying to reach consensus on everything. This also leads to less accountability.
b) Everyone doing their own thing leading to an operational mess and constantly repeated work.
c) An implicit power structure forming and working behind the scenes which then breeds an atmosphere of paranoia and stress.
The upper end of the biglaw salaries was capped because of an unspoken "cartel pricing cap". Big law firms don't want to compete for the upper-echelon talent.
Not sure if tech companies will be able to informally collude in such a manner to cap the upper end of the bimodal curve.
They have before[1]. I think one reason salaries started to climb so much recently in silicon valley was because this collusion to suppress salaries ended.
BigLaw is getting squeezed by its clients. There are increasing numbers of companies that don’t want to pay hundreds of dollars an hour for fresh grads no matter how bright. That leaves law firms with the choice of either subsidizing young associates, which is dangerous given the competition for top partners, or finding some way to cut pay. While few have wanted to break away from marquee associate pay, the quiet rise of staff attorneys at BigLaw represents the breakdown of the bimodal system.
I know a relatively new lawyer that moved from a top law firm in NYC to a tech firm on the west coast and got a huge increase in pay, especially per hour worked.
Getting a rise per hour worked in law by leaving the big law firms is often "easy". My ex worked for one of the top lawfirms in London, and quickly realised their very high headline pay (straight out of uni into ~2x median UK pay, and increasing at far above average rates for 10+ years) gave the new graduates lower per-hour pay than their secretaries.
It was basically a death-march to see who'd stick it out long enough. Only a few would make partner anyway, so they needed to shed a lot of people to make their cost structure work, and so they'd work them into the ground and use who stays as the selection method at the lower end.
What's missing from these debates is optionality. A company pays you not only what it takes for you to do the job, but also their perceptions of your options. Two people working the same job on-site at the same company can have a substantial pay difference even without negotiation because one is self-taught and has only high school while another has a master's degree from Stanford. Yes, the former's competent and shows drive and ambition and that's nice. The company just scored a dark horse. But the company also knows the former employee (likely) isn't as aggressively courted by other companies which can pay well, so they feel they can pay that person less.
If you're the only person in the world who can do what Facebook really needs done, they'll pay you $1M+ to do it from anywhere in the world.
If you're that one person who can do that one Facebook thing I'm sure you can get way more that $1M and I think that's good.
But I don't think that's about optionality. That's about the actual value of your skill, and its scarcity.
Optionality is more like: Google would probably hire you do CRUD apps because you went to Stanford and passed our Google-like interview when we hired you to do CRUD apps, so we will pay you what we think it costs for you to not go do that at Google. Dave over here went to SF State and was hired before the algo-interview craze; no chance Google will hire him, so we can and will pay him less even if he makes better CRUD apps than you do.
If I, your hiring manager, also went to Stanford I will pay you even more because I sure think I have high optionality! And if my manager went to Stanford then all the better because he will immediately understand why you need more than Dave. Which, in the end, is true: Dave's still here, right?
I agree with you. It will take a while for the adjustment of remote to re-settle to a new norm.
There is one other thing that is a small factor in all of this. I'm not saying it is unsurmountable or anything but local/state/country taxes are a factor. We hired someone remote recently who was in Canada. We had to create a new company in CA just so we could pay this individual. For salaried/W2 style employment, there can be a non-trivial amount of extra legal/finance work for the company. Hiring local-ish avoids this. Obviously, having everyone on a 1099/Contractor style employment would avoid this too but most people want salary plus provided benefits. Again, a larger company may easily be able to absorb these costs but they aren't zero.
There are SaaS services now that handle this problem, but honestly I am glad you did that. Most US company just hire as contractor in Canada even if it is not legal per Canadian law and it will get workers in trouble pretty soon I think. The CRA will crack down on that loophole and employees will be in trouble.
A worker sells their labor and a company purchases it.
When everyone lived in SF, a worker wouldn't accept a job paying below $100k because they wouldn't be able to afford to live. That same person in a cheaper state could negotiate a lower price, but most of the talent was saturated in SF. Now that everyone has left SF, there's no point in paying those prices if they can still retain you for a lower wage.
> But the company also knows the former employee (likely) isn't as aggressively courted by other companies which can pay well, so they feel they can pay that person less.
The corollary is that if you can reliably find and hire such people you’ll have a massive competitive advantage.
Someone else alluded to it as well, you could just as easily view pay as a measure of how much it will take to get you to work for them, rather than a measurement of how much value you will provide the company. From that lens, location based pay almost makes sense.
But it's still a stupid and arbitrary mechanism, and if you're negotiating you should treat it that way. It sounds very systematic and regulatory, but it's not. Just ask them for what you think they're willing to pay you, just like any other negotiation.
Not yet. I just completed the script, slides, and code demo for part 1 today. It's three parts. If you're interested, drop me an email. It's my handle + gmail. When I start uploading, I'll give you early access.
Dairy cows exist because we actively breed them. We inject dairy cows with sperm to keep them pregnant so they keep producing milk, then take their calf away and repeat the process. They're not multiplying on their own.
That’s exactly my point. With no utility, these animals would not exist. Are their lives so miserable that we can morally assert that they should not be living?
It’s like saying: these are my children, without me they wouldn’t exist, I can subject them to anything and they should be happy that they have existence.
I would argue that no existence is better than existence filled with endless misery, agony and pain.
Factory farms are a disgrace to humanity. It is my opinion that until we develop enough compassion to see this and stop, humans have no hope of creating lasting peace amongst each other. Our morality has a deadly wound at its core, and it’s rotting away at our souls.
I mean you could extend this argument to anything, should we all be procreating all day every day to ensure every possible life is lived? Should dogs be forced to have 10s of litters? Should we encourage insects?
The answer to all of these is obviously no. So why do you make the case for cows?
a) Progress slows to a crawl with everyone trying to reach consensus on everything. This also leads to less accountability.
b) Everyone doing their own thing leading to an operational mess and constantly repeated work.
c) An implicit power structure forming and working behind the scenes which then breeds an atmosphere of paranoia and stress.
I'm reminded of these tweets about Valve from Richard Geldreich: https://www.reddit.com/r/valve/comments/8zmp07/former_valve_...