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United States41470 Posts
On July 20 2024 00:19 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2024 00:04 KwarK wrote:On July 20 2024 00:02 GreenHorizons wrote:
The general concept of reducing the concentration of wealth by distributing it to the workers that generated it is good. The mechanisms to do that get a little trickier, particularly when you want to preserve capitalism.
My $0.02 is that no business needs profit. They need revenues in excess of various costs, but profit can always just be turned into wages, assets, development, etc. Profit is compensation for risk. If you’re not going to be compensated for risk then it is better to liquidate the business entirely and take the known value of the assets than to run the business and risk those values declining. Sounds like the start of a case for a risk wage, not a reason profit is necessary to me. Show nested quote +On July 20 2024 00:08 Jockmcplop wrote:On July 20 2024 00:02 GreenHorizons wrote:
The general concept of reducing the concentration of wealth by distributing it to the workers that generated it is good. The mechanisms to do that get a little trickier, particularly when you want to preserve capitalism.
My $0.02 is that no business needs profit. They need revenues in excess of various costs, but profit can always just be turned into wages, assets, development, etc. Inevitably money ends up in the hands of the extremely wealthy. There's no way around it in the current system. Any redistribution of wealth immediately starts trickling up, and obviously when it gets in the hands of rich it all gets hidden in various worldwide low tax economies. Hence the bit about the mechanisms being a little trickier (I was being sardonic) when you're trying to preserve capitalism. 
And who would be in charge of setting the risk wage? And in charge of paying it?
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On July 20 2024 00:28 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2024 00:19 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 20 2024 00:04 KwarK wrote:On July 20 2024 00:02 GreenHorizons wrote:
The general concept of reducing the concentration of wealth by distributing it to the workers that generated it is good. The mechanisms to do that get a little trickier, particularly when you want to preserve capitalism.
My $0.02 is that no business needs profit. They need revenues in excess of various costs, but profit can always just be turned into wages, assets, development, etc. Profit is compensation for risk. If you’re not going to be compensated for risk then it is better to liquidate the business entirely and take the known value of the assets than to run the business and risk those values declining. Sounds like the start of a case for a risk wage, not a reason profit is necessary to me. On July 20 2024 00:08 Jockmcplop wrote:On July 20 2024 00:02 GreenHorizons wrote:
The general concept of reducing the concentration of wealth by distributing it to the workers that generated it is good. The mechanisms to do that get a little trickier, particularly when you want to preserve capitalism.
My $0.02 is that no business needs profit. They need revenues in excess of various costs, but profit can always just be turned into wages, assets, development, etc. Inevitably money ends up in the hands of the extremely wealthy. There's no way around it in the current system. Any redistribution of wealth immediately starts trickling up, and obviously when it gets in the hands of rich it all gets hidden in various worldwide low tax economies. Hence the bit about the mechanisms being a little trickier (I was being sardonic) when you're trying to preserve capitalism. And who would be in charge of setting the risk wage? And in charge of paying it?
The worker-owners.
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United States41470 Posts
On July 20 2024 00:31 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2024 00:28 KwarK wrote:On July 20 2024 00:19 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 20 2024 00:04 KwarK wrote:On July 20 2024 00:02 GreenHorizons wrote:
The general concept of reducing the concentration of wealth by distributing it to the workers that generated it is good. The mechanisms to do that get a little trickier, particularly when you want to preserve capitalism.
My $0.02 is that no business needs profit. They need revenues in excess of various costs, but profit can always just be turned into wages, assets, development, etc. Profit is compensation for risk. If you’re not going to be compensated for risk then it is better to liquidate the business entirely and take the known value of the assets than to run the business and risk those values declining. Sounds like the start of a case for a risk wage, not a reason profit is necessary to me. On July 20 2024 00:08 Jockmcplop wrote:On July 20 2024 00:02 GreenHorizons wrote:
The general concept of reducing the concentration of wealth by distributing it to the workers that generated it is good. The mechanisms to do that get a little trickier, particularly when you want to preserve capitalism.
My $0.02 is that no business needs profit. They need revenues in excess of various costs, but profit can always just be turned into wages, assets, development, etc. Inevitably money ends up in the hands of the extremely wealthy. There's no way around it in the current system. Any redistribution of wealth immediately starts trickling up, and obviously when it gets in the hands of rich it all gets hidden in various worldwide low tax economies. Hence the bit about the mechanisms being a little trickier (I was being sardonic) when you're trying to preserve capitalism. And who would be in charge of setting the risk wage? And in charge of paying it? The worker-owners.
Yeah. It really doesn’t seem like you’ve thought this through.
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On July 20 2024 00:36 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2024 00:31 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 20 2024 00:28 KwarK wrote:On July 20 2024 00:19 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 20 2024 00:04 KwarK wrote:On July 20 2024 00:02 GreenHorizons wrote:
The general concept of reducing the concentration of wealth by distributing it to the workers that generated it is good. The mechanisms to do that get a little trickier, particularly when you want to preserve capitalism.
My $0.02 is that no business needs profit. They need revenues in excess of various costs, but profit can always just be turned into wages, assets, development, etc. Profit is compensation for risk. If you’re not going to be compensated for risk then it is better to liquidate the business entirely and take the known value of the assets than to run the business and risk those values declining. Sounds like the start of a case for a risk wage, not a reason profit is necessary to me. On July 20 2024 00:08 Jockmcplop wrote:On July 20 2024 00:02 GreenHorizons wrote:
The general concept of reducing the concentration of wealth by distributing it to the workers that generated it is good. The mechanisms to do that get a little trickier, particularly when you want to preserve capitalism.
My $0.02 is that no business needs profit. They need revenues in excess of various costs, but profit can always just be turned into wages, assets, development, etc. Inevitably money ends up in the hands of the extremely wealthy. There's no way around it in the current system. Any redistribution of wealth immediately starts trickling up, and obviously when it gets in the hands of rich it all gets hidden in various worldwide low tax economies. Hence the bit about the mechanisms being a little trickier (I was being sardonic) when you're trying to preserve capitalism. And who would be in charge of setting the risk wage? And in charge of paying it? The worker-owners. Yeah. It really doesn’t seem like you’ve thought this through.
Funnily enough, I was thinking the same thing about your engagement on this.
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Worker wages in some countries can be problematic in the opposite way.
Where I work junior developers have maybe 30-40% lower salaries than seniors who are - without any doubt - 10x if not 20x more productive and important for the project.
You could fire all these juniors and development pace would probably increase.
I'm officially a senior developer but I feel more like somewhere in the middle between regular and senior, and my salary already almost matches those of the most senior members who are 2-3x more important to the project than I am.
I have almost no financial incentive to become as good as they are - it's time-consuming and brings a lot of responsibilities and for what, 5-10% salary increase?
So I see people around me settling for "good enough" or even mediocrity - because why bother if the rewards are so small relative to the effort required.
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On July 20 2024 00:48 ZeroByte13 wrote:
Worker wages in some countries can be problematic in the opposite way.
Where I work junior developers have maybe 30-40% lower salaries than seniors who are - without any doubt - 10x if not 20x more productive and important for the project.
You could fire all these juniors and development pace would probably increase.
I'm officially a senior developer but I feel more like somewhere in the middle between regular and senior, and my salary already almost matches those of the most senior members who are 2-3x more important to the project than I am.
I have almost no financial incentive to become as good as they are - it's time-consuming and brings a lot of responsibilities and for what, 5-10% salary increase?
So I see people around me settling for "good enough" or even mediocrity - because why bother if the rewards are so small relative to the effort required.
Sounds like you and your coworkers talk about your salaries more than is considered polite in the US. Presuming you have an accurate picture of wages at your place of employment based on those discussions, what do you think your employer's reasoning is for running their business that way?
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On July 20 2024 01:20 GreenHorizons wrote:
Presuming you have an accurate picture of wages at your place of employment based on those discussions, what do you think your employer's reasoning is for running their business that way? Because it's Sweden. Salary floors are high here and salary ceilings are pretty low. It's not just in my company or my industry.
Where I'm from - not Sweden - "green" junior developer's salary is ~70k, regular is ~150k and senior is ~250k.
So salaries are in 30-60-100% range while productivity/usefulness is about 10-40-100%.
Juniors really want to become regulars, most regulars want to become seniors.
In Sweden salaries are at 65-85-100% with the same productivity levels at 10-40-100%.
I'm already at 90% of my salary ceiling for my city - according to what I know about local salaries for developers - while my productivity is still at about 50% of my more senior colleagues.
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Basing salaries on productivity is, ahem, unproductive. There are tons of jobs that are absolutely essential where productivity is very difficult to measure, and lots of jobs that generate tons of revenue / profit that are straight up harmful for the society. Even within a single company people doing the same job can be incredibly difficult to measure up one against another; many a perfectly well functioning team was straight up ruined by excessive focus on metrics KPIs.
Every human should be given an opportunity to live a life of dignity, and our focus should be on making the entire society better off as a whole rather than trying to get ahead individually everything else be damned. We certainly have the resources and the capability to do so at this point, we just need to find the will to do it.
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On July 20 2024 02:10 ZeroByte13 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2024 01:20 GreenHorizons wrote:
Presuming you have an accurate picture of wages at your place of employment based on those discussions, what do you think your employer's reasoning is for running their business that way? Because it's Sweden. Salary floors are high here and salary ceilings are pretty low. It's not just in my company or my industry. Where I'm from - not Sweden - "green" junior developer's salary is ~70k, regular is ~150k and senior is ~250k. So salaries are in 30-60-100% range while productivity/usefulness is about 10-40-100%. Juniors really want to become regulars, most regulars want to become seniors. In Sweden salaries are at 65-85-100% with the same productivity levels at 10-40-100%. I'm already at 90% of my salary ceiling for my city - according to what I know about local salaries for developers - while my productivity is still at about 50% of my more senior colleagues.
Are you saying Sweden mandates this by democratic laws and businesses adhere to them, that it is culturally how Swedes universally do business, or something else?
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On July 20 2024 02:24 GreenHorizons wrote:
Are you saying Sweden mandates this by democratic laws and businesses adhere to them, that it is culturally how Swedes universally do business, or something else? I think it's a combination of factors like
- local taxes being more than 50% for income above a certain threshold
- local culture of "good enough is ok", there's no grind/hustle mentality (and maybe this is good? who knows)
- high cost of living means minimal salaries are still pretty high
People seem to be ok with low salary ceilings because, well, it's not just you, it's everyone.
They know it's very expensive for companies to increase their salary above a certain threshold and it probably won't happen, so they adjust their expectations accordingly.
Also you can live comfortably enough even with junior's salary, so there's less drive to put in a lot of effort to reach higher and people settle for what is "good enough" for them, IMO.
But for a foreigner born and raised in a different environment it feels quite unusual.
I feel like I should work less and take fewer responsibilities than I do now, because reward isn't high so why stress myself? I plan to discuss it with my boss after my vacation.
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On July 20 2024 02:30 ZeroByte13 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2024 02:24 GreenHorizons wrote:
Are you saying Sweden mandates this by democratic laws and businesses adhere to them, that it is culturally how Swedes universally do business, or something else? I think it's a combination of factors like - local taxes being more than 50% for income above a certain threshold - local culture of "good enough is ok" - high cost of living means minimal salaries are still pretty high People seem to be ok with low salary ceilings because, well, it's not just you, it's everyone. They know it's very expensive for companies to increase their salary above a certain threshold and it probably won't happen, so they adjust their expectations accordingly. But for a foreigner born and raised in a different environment it feels quite unusual.
Sounds like it's working for them, do you plan on chasing the money and leaving or do you prefer how they do things?
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On July 20 2024 02:35 GreenHorizons wrote:
Sounds like it's working for them, do you plan on chasing the money and leaving or do you prefer how they do things? I'm not a money chaser really, I earn enough for "good enough" life and I like my project and my team. My wife loves the city, this is something you can't always buy with money.
So for now I think I'll stick here and try to adjust to local culture.
In my specific case it's a "me" problem - I can adjust my expectations to what I can realistically have here.
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On July 20 2024 02:23 Salazarz wrote:
Basing salaries on productivity is, ahem, unproductive. There are tons of jobs that are absolutely essential where productivity is very difficult to measure, and lots of jobs that generate tons of revenue / profit that are straight up harmful for the society. Even within a single company people doing the same job can be incredibly difficult to measure up one against another; many a perfectly well functioning team was straight up ruined by excessive focus on metrics KPIs.
Every human should be given an opportunity to live a life of dignity, and our focus should be on making the entire society better off as a whole rather than trying to get ahead individually everything else be damned. We certainly have the resources and the capability to do so at this point, we just need to find the will to do it. I didn't mean to individual people, but the general trend over decades of increases in productivity far outpacing increases in worker wages.
All that extra productivity without extra compensation for workers instead gets fed into upper management salaries and an ever expanding wage gap.
'We' can afford to pay people more, or have them work less for the same money.
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On July 20 2024 02:46 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2024 02:23 Salazarz wrote:
Basing salaries on productivity is, ahem, unproductive. There are tons of jobs that are absolutely essential where productivity is very difficult to measure, and lots of jobs that generate tons of revenue / profit that are straight up harmful for the society. Even within a single company people doing the same job can be incredibly difficult to measure up one against another; many a perfectly well functioning team was straight up ruined by excessive focus on metrics KPIs.
Every human should be given an opportunity to live a life of dignity, and our focus should be on making the entire society better off as a whole rather than trying to get ahead individually everything else be damned. We certainly have the resources and the capability to do so at this point, we just need to find the will to do it. I didn't mean to individual people, but the general trend over decades of increases in productivity far outpacing increases in worker wages. All that extra productivity without extra compensation for workers instead gets fed into upper management salaries and an ever expanding wage gap. 'We' can afford to pay people more, or have them work less for the same money.
Exactly. Imagine if "AI taking your job" didn't mean "You get fired and the owner gets to make more money", and instead meant "You just work 10 hours using AI to produce the same amount of stuff you needed 40 hours for before".
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On July 20 2024 02:39 ZeroByte13 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2024 02:35 GreenHorizons wrote:
Sounds like it's working for them, do you plan on chasing the money and leaving or do you prefer how they do things? I'm not a money chaser really, I earn enough for "good enough" life and I like my project and my team. My wife loves the city, this is something you can't always buy with money. So for now I think I'll stick here and try to adjust to local culture. In my specific case it's a "me" problem - I can adjust my expectations to what I can realistically have here.
Does that sound problematic for them or you?
EDIT: Trying to think about how to reword this to avoid confusion, but basically I'm asking if any of that is actually a problem for you, them, neither or both. Because I'm not really seeing the problem at the moment. Sounds like it's working out well for everyone involved, all things considered.
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On July 20 2024 02:59 GreenHorizons wrote:
Does that sound problematic for them or you? For them, I'd say. I can try to adjust my expectations but Swedish IT industry suffers a bit because of it.
Talented developers who want more money have to leave Swedish IT market.
People who are ok with their salary ceiling here have less incentives to improve/grow.
As soon as the pandemic made remote jobs much more popular and available, the average competence in the company I work at dropped pretty significantly - many best devs got another job somewhere else, often abroad (they didn't move).
Where I'm from we used to joke about Swedish software developers - while good ones are as good as any, the average ones were far worse than our average. Sometimes we couldn't understand how this or that guy even got this job.
I might be wrong but now I think this is because there are not many incentives for them to put in a lot of effort to improve - they're ok with what they have and they don't think the reward for extra effort is worth it.
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On July 20 2024 02:54 Simberto wrote:
Exactly. Imagine if "AI taking your job" didn't mean "You get fired and the owner gets to make more money", and instead meant "You just work 10 hours using AI to produce the same amount of stuff you needed 40 hours for before". Even if your employer will let you and your colleagues work 10h for the same salary, producing the same amount of stuff - his competitor whose workers still work 40h will produce 4x more stuff and put your employer out of business.
If you make it a law that employers are forced to pay the same salaries for workers with 10h work weeks, so that competitor is forced to do the same - companies in another country without such a law will overtake companies in your country.
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On July 20 2024 03:19 ZeroByte13 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2024 02:54 Simberto wrote:
Exactly. Imagine if "AI taking your job" didn't mean "You get fired and the owner gets to make more money", and instead meant "You just work 10 hours using AI to produce the same amount of stuff you needed 40 hours for before". Even if your employer will let you and your colleagues work 10h for the same salary, producing the same amount of stuff - his competitor whose workers still work 40h will produce 4x more stuff and put your employer out of business.
Exactly. It is a systemic problem. We need to find a way to have everyone profit from technological advances, not just the owner class.
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On July 20 2024 03:07 ZeroByte13 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2024 02:59 GreenHorizons wrote:
Does that sound problematic for them or you? For them, I'd say. I can try to adjust my expectations but Swedish IT industry suffers a bit because of it. Talented developers who want more money have to leave Swedish IT market. People who are ok with their salary ceiling here have less incentives to improve/grow. As soon as the pandemic made remote jobs much more popular and available, the average competence in the company I work at dropped pretty significantly - many best devs got another job somewhere else, often abroad (they didn't move). Where I'm from we used to joke about Swedish software developers - while good ones are as good as any, the average ones were far worse than our average. Sometimes we couldn't understand how this or that guy even got this job. I might be wrong but now I think this is because there are not many incentives for them to put in a lot of effort to improve - they're ok with what they have and they don't think the reward for extra effort is worth it.
Seems the "suffering" is worth it and their society is better off, else you'd be making plans to go back to where they made fun of people like you/your coworkers.
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On July 20 2024 03:28 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2024 03:07 ZeroByte13 wrote:On July 20 2024 02:59 GreenHorizons wrote:
Does that sound problematic for them or you? For them, I'd say. I can try to adjust my expectations but Swedish IT industry suffers a bit because of it. Talented developers who want more money have to leave Swedish IT market. People who are ok with their salary ceiling here have less incentives to improve/grow. As soon as the pandemic made remote jobs much more popular and available, the average competence in the company I work at dropped pretty significantly - many best devs got another job somewhere else, often abroad (they didn't move). Where I'm from we used to joke about Swedish software developers - while good ones are as good as any, the average ones were far worse than our average. Sometimes we couldn't understand how this or that guy even got this job. I might be wrong but now I think this is because there are not many incentives for them to put in a lot of effort to improve - they're ok with what they have and they don't think the reward for extra effort is worth it. Seems the "suffering" is worth it and their society is better off, else you'd be making plans to go back to where they made fun of people like you/your coworkers.
How is it better for society when the best and brightest move elsewhere because of it? Based on his feedback alone in the last 2 posts, that scheme is an incentive to be mediocre or at least to half ass the job.
Moreover, zero said they arent going back because their wife likes the city. That is a very important piece of it that is completely detached of that payment structure. So im not really following your conclusion.
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EPT
