Comment by eganist | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eganist | Hacker News Reader

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> Colorado State Senator Jessie Danielson would make you believe it's more likely that millions of companies are "bad actors" than that she just doesn't have the relevant experience in business to predict which way her bill was going to work out.

I think this misses the point, and I think the idea of a "huge surface area for conflict" also misses the point.

In the end, unless an entity is a public benefit corp or a not-for-profit, the literal sole goal is to profit. "Reducing surface area for conflict" is one of many steps on the way to the goal for profit, and if cutting out Colorado is less painful to profits than disclosing salaries and opening up that conflict surface, then that's naturally what will happen.

Colorado doesn't really need to apologize. They made a bet that their state was relevant to remote work, and they lost that bet for some number of companies (I can think of plenty with no Colorado carve-outs and with specific disclosures due to Colorado despite not having a presence in the state, so clearly some firms think the talent pool is worthwhile), and that's to be expected given Colorado isn't one of the most populous states in the country. That calculus quickly changes for many more companies if it turns out the population of remote talent in Colorado is trending upward and worth tapping into, or if California etc pass similar legislation.

> the literal sole goal is to profit.

When trying to build an argument from first principles, it's important not to make a mistake early on. In your case, you use the profit seeking as an argument that this automatically leads to minimizing everyone's salaries.

In reality, profit gets maximized when you have a team full of high achievers and with very low turnover. That's fundamentally not compatible with your original hypothesis.

> When trying to build an argument from first principles, it's important not to make a mistake early on. In your case, you use the profit seeking as an argument that this automatically leads to minimizing everyone's salaries.

Where did I say this, or even imply it?

> In reality, profit gets maximized when you have a team full of high achievers and with very low turnover. That's fundamentally not compatible with your original hypothesis.

I mean, if I made that claim, I'd agree with you, but I'm currently quite lost as to how that conclusion was reached. I said and implied nothing about minimizing salaries.

> if cutting out Colorado is less painful to profits than disclosing salaries

So you implied that disclosing salaries cuts into profits, which I took to mean that you're seeing an inverse first-order relationship between salaries and profits.

Just quoting the whole sentence shows that that's not what they meant:

> "Reducing surface area for conflict" is one of many steps on the way to the goal for profit, and if cutting out Colorado is less painful to profits than disclosing salaries and opening up that conflict surface, then that's naturally what will happen.

Thank you

When trying to build an argument from first principles you should stop. You don't, and quite possibly can't, make complete and irrefutable arguments. The world is filled with exceptions, humans with emotions, probabilities, etc.

> In reality, profit gets maximized when you have a team full of high achievers and with very low turnover.

Profit is a function with lots and lots of parameters. Who are you to say which parameter has the highest weight? How about market share? How about profit margins? How about illegal deals with public funding? How about marketing? How about creating addictions? How about being niche? How about having excellent customer support? How about having better quality?

Lots of companies make significant profit from a legacy project that's almost impossible to improve, but marketing still finds clients that want it. They don't need a team full of high achievers with very low turnover.

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