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There is something buried deeply in our minds that recoils at being treated unfairly. I have a good job, the pay is decent, the work is interesting - but I'm in the process of looking for a different job because I didn't get a promotion. Some junior members on my team did get them though, and it feels unfair (I absolutely have no idea if they don't deserve it, and I like them as team mates). However, I had previously talked to my about the promotion, set the targets, and went above and beyond to meet those ambitious targets.

I've introspected a bit, and I admit it's weird reaction - nothing changed about my job, except knowing my colleagues were being recognized and getting something I am not. The perverse thing is, if no one got a promotion, I wouldn't be this pissed.

Wow. I had a similar experience last Monday. A coworker I like personally, but who I consider myself more senior than, was given an important role on the team that I had been working towards and discussing with my manager. I felt this incredible, irrational anger as soon as it was announced and it stuck with me for days. I went to bed angry and woke up angry. It really surprised me how visceral and uncontrollable my reaction felt. It consumed my thoughts. I’m halfway through a four day weekend to disconnect and try to reset myself mentally because while I still think it was unfair, I can’t actively feel this way and still function well at work. Time will tell if this weekend was long enough...

I experienced the same thing more than ten years ago. My coworker and I we were even of the same CS class, and my grades were better than his and I worked two years longer than him in the company but yet he turned out to become my boss.

In my case it seems to be simple to explain why. Have a look at my profile and perhaps you discover the probable cause.

Now I stopped working as an employee and I look forward to never return at slaving away.

One of the companies I worked at previously made a big deal about employee -driven performance review / promo packets every year. Everyone's title had a level like a role playing game. There was also a culture of compensation transparency among coworkers. I thought it was all quite toxic, leading to a lot of very well compensated people stressing out and complaining. At its worst, it lead to instances of passive aggression and depression across many teams.

My current company encourages regular direct feedback, mostly lacks titles internally, and there's a culture of compensation opacity among coworkers. Folk don't talk about money outside topics of general interest, and managers and HR are responsible for periodically reviewing and adjusting compensation for fairness. I haven't had to worry about or discuss money professionally in years, other than to get called into a short meeting to be pleasantly surprised by an adjustment. There's no bonuses other than the occasional verbal praise I receive from appreciative coworkers and management, and I think that's worth more than incrementally more money.

One time I did offer to pay out cash to any coworkers that reduced network traffic on a particularly over-utilized CAN bus, at a bounty of $0.10/Kbps. One sucker, er, respected coworker fell for it. Best $20 I ever spent!

There's a famous psychological experiment where people are split into pairs and given a pot of cash to share. One person decides how it should be apportioned, and the other decides whether to accept that share. If they reject it, neither person receives any money. The logical decision is to always accept the money, because a small amount is still better than nothing. However people don't do that. At a certain point, the desire to punish unfairness outweighs the desire for the money, and people will reject money in order to prevent the unfair person getting anything either.

On repeated version of game, it pays off to reject unequal deal. So that the other person is incentivized to offer more. So apparently, the desire to punish feeling is optimizing our behavior for repeated game.

Pls, if we are competing in some sense, say socially, then it is better for you to prevent advancement of person you are competing with.

> The logical decision is to always accept the money, because a small amount is still better than nothing

This is a moral decision for me, not a logical one. Someone trying to make you accept an unequal portion is 100% trying to take advantage of you.

The only situation I would accept an unequal share is if the portion was significant enough for the fact that it's unequal to not matter.

Morally you are entitled to zero, so it's still a good deal to take whatever you are offered.

It's not like you both did an equal amount of work. You're not being taken advantage of.

Which is exactly why I'm comfortable turning it down if it's not equal. I didn't lose anything.

Neither person did any work so I don't understand your point. Why would you offer someone less than half the money when you are no more entitled to it than them?

The only reasons I can think of is to take advantage of them settling for less, or because you think you are entitled to more money. Both of which are morally wrong to me.

You write as if "equal" is the objective correct way to distribute.

It is a really fun experiment which they replicated in different cultures and got vastly different results. Even both extremes of the spectrum are good ways to describe expected behaviour in some cultures.

In some places, the first person would take all the money, and the second would happily accept that split. He could have been first after all and would have done the same thing. In other places, the first person would give everything to the second, who would still reject this split. Neither wants to receive money 'undeserved' by being lucky in getting first or second.

All participants would describe their local approach as fair, despite the split definitely not being equal.

I'm explicitly writing from my own moral perspective, which is obviously highly subjective.

I also purposefully didn't use the word "fair" because it's very subjective.

It would definitely be interesting to see the result of this experiment in different cultures. Any sources?

Is there a task beforehand where participants could potentially do more/less perceived work than their pairs?

There's literally a biblical parable about this (though sort of in reverse). I'll paraphrase it (it's from Matthew Ch 20):

A man goes out in the morning to find workers for his vineyard, promising them each denarius for the day. Around lunch he goes to find more workers. During the afternoon, he goes to find even more workers. At the end of the day the man pays everyone, starting with those who arrived during the afternoon. To these folks he gives a denarius. The workers who had arrived earlier see this and think they're about to get a bonus, only to then also receive a denarius apiece.

The main purpose of the parable is to describe that everybody who makes it to Heaven is there on equal terms. But there's another truth to it that the article also describes--if you agreed to work for a wage and then receive that wage, can it really be called unfair?

> The main purpose of the parable is to describe that everybody who makes it to Heaven is there on equal terms.

I believe a closer reading of that passage suggests that the purpose of the parable is to show that Jesus is upending the social order that currently exists* to show favor to the those who are currently the downtrodden and outcast. See the end of chapter 19 where Jesus says the rich will not enter the kingdom of heaven and the first will be last.

Then chapter 20, the parable in question, and the parable ends with:

"Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity? So the last will be first, and the first last."

Jesus would die for sinners, both Jews and gentiles. The gentiles would be grafted in, as Paul says in Romans 11. An incredibly offensive idea to the Jews of the day but demonstrative of a God who is rich in mercy.

> But there's another truth to it that the article also describes--if you agreed to work for a wage and then receive that wage, can it really be called unfair?

FWIW, I think you are exactly right on that part.

* I don't think this meaning parallels or supports current cultural efforts to "upend social order." Completely different culture and circumstances being discussed and Jesus' desired outcome is very different IMO from what I see many in our current culture fighting for. He was concerned primarily for people's souls, not their economic or political standing. In fact, that was one of the reasons he died the death he did...to show that his kingdom was not of this world, his concerns were not primarily those of this world, and his disciples should do likewise.

> But there's another truth to it that the article also describes--if you agreed to work for a wage and then receive that wage, can it really be called unfair?

You define what's fair based on what information you have. If new information reveals that trade was not only unfair but a blatant rip off you are within your rights to feel something about it.

Still, I think one should accept the past trade. But there's no reason for that, combined to the new information to guarantee a continuous relation.

In other words, renegotiation based on new information that substantially change the deal is moral.

You have the right to feel anything about anything for any reason.

Whether you can renegotiate or not is not based on your feelings or morals, but how good you are at power games.

This a very one linear way of looking at the world.

Sure, it might be about "power games" but feelings do matter and morals too and how one feels about it does give you the extra energy and drive to succeed at a (re)negotiation. So... how can one ignore all that?

The original debate was if it's unfair.

I think taking advantage too much during an initial negotiation is unfair but since the other side did agree it is a "fair" trade for the other party (based on the partial info they had).

Once extra information is revealed, the trade is not fair in retrospect. But new information should only apply to future trades: as such, negotiating or quitting is moral.

You might be sub-estimating how good people are at power games. Quitting out of spite is know to happen so people are willing to take a loss due to unfairness.

Assuming rationality and ignore feelings and morals while focusing only on the technicality of "power games" is super simplistic.

This isn’t really the situation GP was talking about. The company offered early employees stock. At some point obviously they have to draw the line and stop doing this. GP felt they were ripped off only after learning not that they missed the boat, but how close they were to being on it. The company wasn’t unfair to them, especially since GP agreed to a certain wage and the company was willing to pay that wage.

the parable leverages our feelings of injustice tickled by the very relatable narrative to carry one point home, the Heavens part.

the other, secular reading, has a heavy taste of prosperity gospel, putting employers into God's boots to justify blatant injustice and better margins, fka profits. it is and remains unfair to offer different employees different wages for the same work.

please don't use the gospel to justify injustice.

btw,bI'm amazed there are employee owned companies.

For example whenever there is another round of Huawei bashing I remind myself that Huawei is fully employee owned with no majority shareholders.

https://www.huawei.com/en/facts/question-answer/who-owns-hua....

The exact situation is (intentionally or not) very obscure to outsiders. There’s a research paper[0] dedicated to the question of who actually owns Huawei. Its authors found that:

> The Huawei operating company is 100% owned by a holding company, which is in turn approximately 1% owned by Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei and 99% owned by an entity called a “trade union committee” for the holding company.

> We know nothing about the internal governance procedures of the trade union committee. We do not know who the committee members or other trade union leaders are, or how they are selected.

> Trade union members have no right to assets held by a trade union.

> What have been called “employee shares” in “Huawei” are in fact at most contractual interests in a profit-sharing scheme.

> Given the public nature of trade unions in China, if the ownership stake of the trade union committee is genuine, and if the trade union and its committee function as trade unions generally function in China, then Huawei may be deemed effectively state-owned.

> Regardless of who, in a practical sense, owns and controls Huawei, it is clear that the employees do not.

For what it’s worth, Huawei’s own legal chief described[1] it as a private company back in 2019.

[0] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3372669

[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/huawei-asks-court-to-rule-us-ban-u...

The idea that a software engineer being bitter about his still probably high compensation being an injustice is laughable bordering on insane.

We live in an age where you don’t even have to get out of your house in order to make a very good living and we have the audacity to call it an injustice when somebody else receives something that we didn’t instead of just being happy for them. As if the key to modern happiness is found in personal financial gain.

That’s very surprising, I didn’t know that about Huawei and didn’t expect it at all!

100% with you on the parable.

> remind myself that Huawei is fully employee owned with no majority shareholders

You know it’s a Chinese company right? That employees have as much control over it as they do companies that are formally state owned enterprises, none? That it’s run by the internal CCP committee?

My view is: everything is comparative but if you make everything a comparison, boy you are in for a world of hurt. Life is mostly unfair so better treat the good times like the bonus that they are.

And my view is: if you're not paying attention to what is going on around you, you will be taken advantage of.

There is a balance here.

Indeed - thats why I used the word "everything".

> Anyway, the point is that he has a great job at a booming

> company, with nothing but bright days ahead, and he can’t

> enjoy it because he knows other people are getting a lot

> more.

That's only partially true. You might have just realized that you're worth more, and that you could do about the same job at a different company and get better remuneration.

I can offer an anecdotal example: back in my first job I had reached quite a happy point. I was able to do my job without much problems, I was competent for my tasks, and my compensation was okay-ish. Not great, but I could sustain myself and get me something nice every now and then.

Then I started seeing people as competent as me leave and get waaaay better remuneration, doing jobs maybe different but still interesting/engaging, still rewarding.

Anyway, I stayed there for about two more years, then I left. My next job was a ton of fun, got competent at it again after some initial ramp-up, and was making waaay more than my first job.

That's Mike Daisey, he did a tour called "Doing Time At Amazon.com"

Thank you for scratching that mental itch. I see his book(s) are available... on Amazon.

Mike Daisey, the guy who got caught lying about conditions at Apple factories, so not sure how much I believe the story about finding a vestment sheet.