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Comment by frandroid | Hacker News Reader

That's not "tied", which would imply a contractual relationship...

'Tied' in relational contexts is generally used to describe a correlation, relation, connection, or a consistency between events in the English language. It can—but does not have to—describe a contractual relationship, and it does not generally describe one except in very specific and obvious cases, e.g. what one would expect to be true: "bonuses are tied to performance milestones."

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/tied?s=ts

https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/correlated?s=t

But in this context:

> Baker's compensation has been inversely tied with performance

No reasonable person would assume that a person's comp structure from Company would be contractually bound to increase as Company's performance decreases. At which point, the interpretation of "tied" would swing towards generally accepted usage, i.e. "there's a potential relationship between these two things."

ameister14 suggested "associated with" would've worked better, and that's true. But "tied" isn't technically wrong.

That's malarkey. Tied is not exclusively used to imply a "contractual relationship," and that's (if anything) a minority-usage of the idiom of tied to/with.

I think you probably should have used 'associated with' instead of 'tied to' as when discussing remuneration contractual ties is not a minority usage of the idiom.

I'm not Kick, but while you're correct that "associated with" would've been better for clarity, no reasonable person would assume that "inversely tied" describes a contractually mandated drop in performance for an increase in pay (my other comment here links to dictionary.com and thesaurus.com, both good references for this discussion). Couple that with the generally accepted usage of 'tied' and the usage by Kick was correct, if perhaps ambiguous to a narrow population.

Kick's usage is correct except within the business world and especially financial and executive populations, which, while admittedly narrow, are what we were discussing. When you say that an executive's pay is tied to the company's performance, within these communities it's generally understood that this is a contractual relationship.

ex. "John's salary is tied to performance - if the company is valued at over 100 billion, he'll get another 5% stock" etc.

or "bonuses are tied to performance milestones"

If you are simply observing that an executives pay rises while performance falls, associated is a clearer term.

inverse correlation between executive pay and browser market share, if semantics are necessary.

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