Hacker News Reader

Comment by gklitz | Hacker News Reader

Put a positive spin on it. We don’t talk about coworkers getting hit by a bus, we talk about them winning the lottery and quitting on the spot due to their newfound fortune.

Same discussion but it’s less morbid, and doesn’t end up sounding like your prioritizing the health of your project about the literal lives of your employees.

View on HN

The implications are different. There has to be a high euro sum you can offer to get someone who won the lottery to still brief a colleague. You can throw money at a dead person all you want but that will not have the same result. It is a sudden end in knowledge that can not be restored with time or money (like running out of lottery funds)

Also, the idea that the only reason people work on the project is that they need the money surely seems less appealing than that the only thing stopping them from working on it is death? Or are we now just okay with saying the quiet part out loud and acknowledging the exploitative nature of the economic system?

> Also, the idea that the only reason people work on the project is that they need the money

No one has presented this idea. Your arguing that we should stop paying employees, because they will obviously continue to work unless they are only working because they need the money?

Saying that if someone wins the lottery they’ll likely leave to Perdue the opportunities that bag of money will present them to is not the same as saying the only thing keeping them at the job is money.

You don’t need to plan for people leaving the company if you have a emergency reserve big enough to literally compete with the lottery payout wise in emergency. If someone leaves you can just hire a couple of hundred people to replace them and still save money.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com