Hacker News Reader

Comment by wsy | Hacker News Reader

A work contract is a simple supplier-consumer relationship. You are the supplier, and you essentially set the rate at which you offer your work hours.

When someone suddenly offers you the double rate, you should not feel insulted, but you should realize that need to work on rate negotiation skills. Then, if both offers are equally fine with respect to non-compensation aspects, simply take the higher offer.

Suppose you are willing to pay $4 for a coffee, and the café around the corner sells it for $2. Would you voluntarily pay $4?

View on HN

I don't view myself as coffee - if your employees are fungible resources, I don't want to work for you (99.9% of the cases, there may be exceptions, but they're just that - exceptions).

I never compared you or anyone else to coffee, and I'm not an employer.

My post was about viewing the employer-employee relationship as a business relationship _when you are the employee_.

It was a generic "you" - and yes, you did make an analogy that does not apply since employees are not fungible.

You also present now a distorted view about business relationships - they're about trust far more often than they are about squeezing the best price. That's it really - once I learn that I can't trust my employer to compensate me fairly, that business relationship is broken, and short-term money can't fix it.

My example is about supply and demand, in particular if you are willing to pay a higher price than the supplier asks. Fungible or not doesn't matter at all, the only relevant factor for the discussion is the difference in price you are willing to pay and the supplier is asking.

Indeed, all business relationships are about trust. But they also are about business. I know of no other business relationship where the supplier expects that the consumer will pay him fairly. So what is so special about an employment contract, compared to all other businesses?

> So what is so special about an employment contract, compared to all other businesses?

Oh, this is really easy to answer. For example, the fact that purchaser dictates the price, not supplier - to such an extent, that purchaser voluntarily and periodically decides to start paying more, without explicit intervention from supplier. Oh, and also decides to reward supplier with bonus payments when receiving good-quality merchandise.

But it's not about that - if you think about it, it's probably related to the expectation of exclusivity. Is there any business that is expected to exclusively supply to only one customer? If so, I'd suspect they'd be very concerned about that consumer paying them fairly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com