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Comment by plesner | Hacker News Reader

He's right, this post isn't about gloating. It's a story a manager tells himself to justify screwing over his employees. He says that's what he's doing: "I have an engineer working for me who makes $75k, who is absolutely critical to our company". But it's okay because the employee should just swindle him right back, that's what he did right? And if he doesn't then it's kind of his own fault that I'm underpaying him right? Right?

You're not the underdog. You're the guy screwing over the underdogs. If that makes you feel bad then that's good, it should. Maybe that's a voice you should listen to?

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Yeah, OP is reading the wrong lesson into this. If his employees aren't bold enough to lie/negotiate a raise, that doesn't mean he gets to pay them less. It means some day they will just walk out and take a higher offer elsewhere rather than experience the pain of playing hardball.

Guess what? Finding new people and training them is expensive. Pay good people what they're worth, work for companies that know what you're worth, and stop playing games for stupid short-term gain.

I want to offer another point of view: What if the guy simply doesn't want money. There are people who refuse a raise. Especially in IT I know many people who want recognition more than money. $75k is also a decent income in most places of this planet, even in most first world countries. You can pay for a house and send your children to university with that. But being appreciated by your boss for the work you do, or simply spending more time with your family at home instead of overtime in the office, that's worth a lot as well. I think with $75k, 32h/week and a boss that appreciates me being there, that would be an awesome life. And I already have more drive for money than most of my software developing peers.

Agreed. This is more about seeing the perspective of the employer than the employee. Managers who claw their way up expect employees to do the same.

Also, it'd be interesting to see his manager's perspective in this all as he claws his way up. I'm betting there were points where, just as he thinks he's getting what he wants all along by lying (why are his lies always in parentheses?), management is thinking they had this planned all along as well.

If the engineer doesn't want to play the negotiating game, they won't ever ask for a raise they'll just up and leave when somebody else in their network offers them 50k increase salary. Should proactively compensate them instead of swindling and expecting them to haggle.

Exactly this, it's a shame most managers don't know how to do this. It's also a shame that CS schools don't have a required course on negotiation and economics.

A thing that I always wondered: What gains a manager by being cheap about his subordinates' salaries? Do they like to feel power over the hopeless guys? is there another thing?

> A thing that I always wondered: What gains a manager by being cheap about his subordinates' salaries?

A manager's job is to manage resources to provide the firm with the maximum benefit for the least cost, and salary is one of the more obvious non-fuzzy components on either the cost or benefit side of that equation.

Only if you completely ignore the direct and indirect effects of salary on the employee.

Which an alarming majority does, but still.

I understand that, but how the company organize itself to reward managers with that kind of goals ? What kind of mechanisms sets in place to force managers to minimize expenses happily?

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