Three months ago, Dan Price, chief of Gravity Payments, raised the annual salary floor for his employees to $70,000. He knocked his own salary down to $70K as well.
This follow-up article takes a look at how this is working out for Price, for his employees, and for the company. A risky move, with some obvious (at least in retrospect) consequences. [Via Stu Mark]
[WARNING: Contains an autoplay video. Normally, autoplay is enough to disqualify a post, but thought this was interesting enough to make an exception]
This has worked out GREAT for him and his company! Do you know how many talented but underpaid people are applying for his company now!? A TON! Just because there were a few bad employees who cared more about what others were being paid instead of themselves doesn’t make it a failure! It’s been a complete success! Don’t let the right-wing media tell you otherwise!
Source: I live and work here.
Suppose there are people with a hypothetical $70,001/yr wage, which meant they could afford X amount of goods and services in the past.
After the wage hike, assuming they didn’t get a raise, that same $70,001/yr only pays a fraction of what they could get before, shouldn’t they be concerned?
I understand that what I said aboove is very hypothetical.. I guess what I wanted to say is, if there are people whose quality of life is negatively impacted by the wage hike, they are likely going to be upset.
It’s a lot like the government’s GS pay scale. One of my peers can be a complete slacker or just gets by by the skin of his teeth while I bust my butt. We get paid the same. I CAN’T get paid more. I get paid what the table says I’m to be paid. Thus, I feel I’m as valuable to my employer as the slacker, no matter how much I give to the job. It’s demoralizing.
Don’t you have performance reviews and other ways to report a slacker? My father did when he was in the FAA.
They get a performance improvement plan and no deduction in pay.
It’s kind of sad to read about the other lizard-brain CEOs who are giving Price a hard time about his salary policy, simply because it makes them look bad.
But then there’s the pizza-shop owner who passed along the cost-savings from Gravity’s services to his employees, and I feel I’m amongst humans again.
“Two of Mr. Price’s most valued employees quit, spurred in part by their
view that it was unfair to double the pay of some new hires while the
longest-serving staff members got small or no raises.”
Imagine. That.
Makes them look bad, as in “makes it harder to hire people”.
Nevermind that he’s overpaying the slacker or unproductive portion of his workforce (unless he magically had employees who were only worth exactly $70k a year before!).
Pay the janitors and the senior developers the same wage?
Yeah, great for the janitor … but the senior dev just took a pay cut (or will have done so in a few years, if he’s relatively new at the career).
Then what?
People make different incomes because different work has radically different value.
His stunt is, well, stupid. His concern with “inequality” is touching but incredibly misguided and fraught with utter economic ignorance.
Wow you are clueless