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Comment by phamilton | Hacker News Reader

Salaries are a reflection of your supply and demand. Two people with equal demand but unequal supply (one has financial obligations that make them unavailable below a certain salary level) will result in unequal pay.

The notion that salary is meant to be directly tied to productivity does not and has not ever reflected reality.

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Current hires are not a fixed supply to be taken for granted.

Hire someone else for a ton extra, refuse me a raise, and I'll leave.

That is, if that information was available. Kinda convenient that it isn't, huh?

> Hire someone else for a ton extra, refuse me a raise, and I'll leave.

Hmm.... Wouldn't this inflate the economy? (Edit: seems that it doesn't, at least in Norway.)

I assume there always will be the cases where someone is needed urgently, so such hires are unavoidable.

It is absolutely convenient to be able to retain talent for as cheap as possible. Just like it is convenient to pit two suppliers against each other to drive costs down.

Quitting because you don't get a raise doesn't change anything unless you have an alternative that will pay you more. In which case, that alternative is a negotiating piece independent of a coworkers salary.

Long story short, have alternatives.

If you leave, even if you are leaving to a worse salary, you are hurting the former company. If that company considers you to be worth whatever they're paying you (read: they can't find someone better for less) than they will give you the raise rather than let you go. All you need to know is the maximum amount they are willing to pay you, which you can then negotiate for.

Salaries are a proxy for value, but how we measure that value in a capitalist society, is most certainly driven by supply and demand. We should be careful not to project the inadequacies of the measuring device onto what's being measured.

Salary cannot exceed the value provided, but otherwise it often does not reflect value. Take for example cleaners, without whom no company could exist (i.e. they provide a lot of value), and yet, because of s&d, they're paid minimum wage.

> Salary cannot exceed the value provided

CEO's of fortune 500, investment bankers, etc...

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