The Goat Pen

sardis wrote: ↑Sat Dec 04, 2021 12:01 pm

DS wrote:People are way too damn greedy, and I blame this bullshit on the Reagan / supply side / Friedman / “Chicago school” dipshits who came of age during the 80’s / still buy into that cult with the whole “greed is good” mantra. The fuckers forget the other side the equation and infected the world with their bullshit, leaving us with this fucked up situation the vast majority have not seen adequate increases in wages over the past 20-30 years.

Don't blame Reagan on the suppression of wages, blame the bi-partisan NAFTA, globalism, and the pro immigration billionaires on Wall Street and Silicon Valley including the Kochs. Your connecting billionaires to Republicans. That's outdated thinking. The vast majority of billionaires support the Democratic party these days. There is nothing these guys would love more to have mass immigration to lower their labor costs. Liberals love immigration because it gives them more votes so the Bernie Sanders and the AOCs will hold their nose and support the Biden wing while to hell with workers. The revolution started with electing Trump. Trump may be disliked and gone, but people love his stance on immigration, climate and China to protect their livelihoods. They are voting with their feet and leaving the states and cities that are socialist.

eCat wrote: ↑Sat Dec 04, 2021 12:44 pm

innocentbystander wrote: ↑Fri Dec 03, 2021 6:48 pm

eCat wrote: ↑Fri Dec 03, 2021 2:53 pm I just talked to my boss a few minutes ago and I'm going to give the first guy a $10K raise in June. We'll also bump his bonus pool so he should be happy.

The second guy , well, he is a great employee but he needs to read the room. I just bumped his salary more than $10K. I'm not prepared to go to bat for him twice in the same year

eCat, question. You don't have to answer it, but I am curious.

Are you giving these guys raises because

• you know that the market will give them a raise if you don't
• they told you that they had a job offer to give them a raise and you have to match it
• they just threatened to leave if you didn't give them a raise
• all of the above
• none of the above (it was something else)

I only ask because I am usually on the other side of this. I don't ask for raises (ever) and I just expect that my employer knows my worth and rewards me adequately. When that doesn't happen (and the following scenario has happened 3 times) then I send out resumes, I get job offers with the raise I am supposed to get from my current employer (that they didn't automatically give me), I ask to talk to my boss privately and I give him/her my 2 week's notice, my boss is ALWAYS surprised, and they lose their shit and try to threaten me or blackmail me into staying. They act in some way like I am "abandoning" them. They are never happy for me. And they go out of their way to tell me that I am the asshole for not letting them know that I was sending out resumes.

I have heard some really awful, tug-at-your-heart-strings, threats.

We can't find workers, so I asked my VP yesterday

look, if we were looking to hire a guy with 10 years experience, who knew our processes and products, would we hire him at X amount? He knew immediately where I was going wih my questoin and he agreed we would, so the next obvious question is then why aren't we paying this guy that amount? Its easier to keep a good employee than to hire one.

I know the guy is worth X on the market ( I don't want to get into specific but its over $100K) and he could find a job. So right now he has big leverage.

That said, I don't want to put him in a position where 2 years from now when the job market balances out and you can find workers again that we can find a replacement worker for $30K less. The other part of this is , assuming he is still working for me in 5 years, he better not come to me again with the I'm not paid enough routine. My experience is in an organization this size, you can't go to the well twice. I suspect that is going to happen however if the market continues to grow and there is a lack of experience STEM workers.

Sadly, I'm geting to that point so at my age, I constantly have to make sure I am adding value and creating opportunities within the organization due to my salary. I have 20 years experience, but a guy with 10 can probably do my job, so the company is paying me for an overhead of 10 years salary.

I had a guy working for me that was a few years from retirement, making serious money. His yearly bonus was almost what we hire kids right out college, and he had got to the point where he was only doing work that he was good at, that was low effort. The reality was I could hire a guy making half what he made and be more productive. So raise time came around and I gave the guy essentially a cost of living - which I wasn't even supposed to do, I was told to give him nothing.

So here is a guy making about $105K more a year than his boss (me) which happens. I don't hold a grudge - he has put in him time and managed himself to where he got to this point so more power to him. But he'd become lazy in thinking that he could just do stuff that he was good at and the company would continue to value him for it. So management wanted me to essentially let him go which I pushed back on, then they told me to not give him a raise, which I ignored and gave him enough money so that he didn't lose year over year. During our annual meeting where I give him his raise similar to what I was talking about earlier, he fucking unloads on me, telling me how I'm the worst boss he has ever had, how he can't work for me, borderline accused me of being age discriminatory (and here I am in my 50's) and he went to HR to file a grievance on my evaluation of him. I chose not to tell him about any discussions I had with management - that would be bad for me so I just nodded my head during his rant and let him think I had this personal vendetta against him. I did discuss with him the average salary of a person doing what he does but his response was he was part of another team, not those losers so that went no where.

Fast forward 3 months later, he goes to work for another group and transfers out of mine. I asked him was he sure because his new boss had a history of getting rid of workers who don't perform. His new boss wtihin a year transferred him to another boss in their organization and about 6 months after that the new boss fired him. There was more to the story, we knew he was running his wife's real estate business during working hours. It wasn't an accusation I wanted to pursue because of the veiled threats of age discrimination, so I considered it a blessing he left me.

DooKSucks wrote: ↑Tue Dec 07, 2021 12:40 pm Let’s just shoot you instead