[HN Gopher] Mercedes-Benz workforce to receive record profit-sha...
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Mercedes-Benz workforce to receive record profit-sharing bonus
Author : ofcrpls
Score : 341 points
Date : 2023-01-20 14:59 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (group-media.mercedes-benz.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (group-media.mercedes-benz.com)
| andsoitis wrote:
| Doesn't Mercedes-Benz pay very very poor salaries?
| aiqq wrote:
| Considering how small these "record" bonuses are they probably
| do pay a very very poor salary.
| wirrbel wrote:
| The base salary is solid and high. It's a salary and not a
| lottery.
| bluedino wrote:
| Very common in automotive companies during the good times. Heck
| they can even get bonuses when the union starts a new contract
| with the automaker.
| vlowrian wrote:
| I work for a small-mid sized German software engineering company
| (~200 employees). Last year the company raised all wages by
| 7,500.- EUR (additionally to the usual raises). This was not a
| one-time payment, but a permanent increase in pay and it was the
| same absolute amount for all employees (including office
| management and other non-engineering departments). The reasoning
| behind this decision was that the inflation was hitting employees
| with lower income harder than employees with higher income
| positions.
|
| Whenever I'm seeing posts like this, I wonder if "up to x Euros"
| isn't the other way around and smaller incomes are on the lower
| end of the bonus range.
|
| Link (content written by our PR department, in German):
| https://www.presseportal.de/pm/164280/5271230
| judge2020 wrote:
| > The reasoning behind this decision was that the inflation was
| hitting employees with lower income harder than employees with
| higher income positions.
|
| Isn't part of inflation that this doesn't work at scale? As in,
| if everyone gets higher wages, bigger bonuses, and more money
| is being poured into 401ks, inflation gets even worse? Or do
| wages become a rounding error when you add in stuff like real-
| estate and loans?
| donkeyd wrote:
| > As in, if everyone gets higher wages, bigger bonuses, and
| more money is being poured into 401ks, inflation gets even
| worse?
|
| This is the thinking companies would like you to have.
| Meanwhile, profits have been massive for many companies in
| spite of inflation. The in site of part is somewhat
| sarcastic, because a lot of it is driven purely by corporate
| greed next to macro economic factors.
|
| Companies that move part of their profits into wages don't
| have to increase prices if... They accept a decrease in
| profits.
|
| To me, this seems like one of the only ways to avert a real
| crisis right now. We're moving money toward the rich at a
| crazy rate, causing regular people to be able to afford less
| and less. Rich people tent to not spend their money in the
| real world. A rich person doesn't buy 10 iPhones or 10 F150s,
| they buy one yacht. The middle class is who cause economic
| growth and stripping them from purchasing power will slow
| everything down.
|
| In the end, the rich will also feel this, when their assets
| implode. But they'll only feel it in the value of these
| assets. They won't feel it in their daily lives. Only the
| normals actually feel pain from all this.
| astrange wrote:
| > Meanwhile, profits have been massive for many companies
| in spite of inflation. The in site of part is somewhat
| sarcastic, because a lot of it is driven purely by
| corporate greed next to macro economic factors.
|
| This is not a good explanation because you have to explain
| why it went up at time X rather than earlier, and of course
| why it goes down sometimes. Do they just stop being greedy?
|
| And it's empirically not true:
| https://www.kansascityfed.org/research/economic-
| review/how-m...
|
| > We're moving money toward the rich at a crazy rate,
| causing regular people to be able to afford less and less.
|
| Also not true, wealth inequality has been flat in the US
| since 2013 and has declined since 2020.
|
| People just love saying negative stuff!
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > Or do wages become a rounding error when you add in stuff
| like real-estate and loans?
|
| In the US - debt is >30% of the economy (government deficit,
| new corporate debt, new mortgages, and personal auto &
| student loans). But non-debt still makes up the majority - so
| I don't think everything becomes a rounding error compared to
| debt.
|
| The interest rate has to be the single most important
| variable - but wages aren't a rounding error.
| vlowrian wrote:
| Sure. But this is more of an argument against raising all
| wages relative to inflation. Inflation (at least in Germany)
| raised mostly prices for everyday goods - like food, fuel and
| rent. Raising the wages by an absolute amount meant helping
| those whose expenses are mostly basic goods, not trying to
| match inflation with pay raise.
| Closi wrote:
| > Isn't part of inflation that this doesn't work at scale? As
| in, if everyone gets higher wages, bigger bonuses, and more
| money is being poured into 401ks, inflation gets even worse?
| Or do wages become a rounding error when you add in stuff
| like real-estate and loans?
|
| Kind of, but wages are only part of the cost of goods.
|
| Assuming wages represent 30% of the cost of goods (i.e. 30%
| labour, 20% property/fixed costs, 50% materials) and wages go
| up 10%, then they only impact the cost of goods by 3% (thus
| 3% inflation might be expected at a simplistic macro level).
|
| Then there is a sort of loop where the 3% inflation could
| encourage another 3% wage inflation, but that only affects
| the cost of goods by 0.9% and so on. When you follow this
| theory, that 10% wage inflation only turns into an additional
| c4.5% increase in inflation (or 15% if you include the
| initial 10%).
|
| This is overly simplistic and there are other levers at play,
| which is why lots of economics calculations often have
| continous simulations which can show the impact of these
| feedback loops (Inflation causes wage increases causes
| inflation causes wage increases).
| devnullbrain wrote:
| Reminds me of when ARM cut salaries by a flat amount during the
| attempted NVIDIA acquisition.
| xyst wrote:
| Just a sliver of the profits given to the plebs to appease the
| masses, media
| delecti wrote:
| Seems this story only applies in Germany, but their US tech
| workers also get a bonus at the same time that is partially based
| on company performance. My bonus last year was _very_ nice
| because they 've been doing so well (in the ballpark of $50k as a
| senior dev), and it looks like it'll be similarly nice this year
| too.
| andsoitis wrote:
| How does your salary compare to tech companies? I know
| levels.fyi isn't very accurate, but it's all I've got and it
| doesn't look that stunning. On the other hand, maybe the
| culture, meaningful work, etc. is better so lower pay is fine:
| https://www.levels.fyi/companies/mercedes-benz/salaries
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Levels.fyi is highly accurate actually.
| delecti wrote:
| Salary is quite a bit higher than this shows (the "software
| engineer" salaries listed here are for Germany, not the US),
| but there are no stock options, so total comp is probably
| lower than FAANG. I started as a "engineer" (P2, between
| junior and senior) at 135k 5 years ago, and each level has
| come with a ~20k raise, plus annual raises in between. The
| bonus percent gets bigger too: as a P1-2, your bonus target
| is 10% of salary, at P3 it's 12%, and P4 is 14%. That's
| further modified by personal performance and company
| performance (0-1.5x for personal, and 0-2x for company; last
| year I was at 1.44x and 2x respectively, for a bonus of ~35%
| of my salary). They're also not stingy with promotions, I've
| been promoted twice in under 5 years, and my base salary is
| currently ~180k.
|
| I worked at Amazon for 5 years before here, and have been
| here for another 5. The job is less stressful, the work is
| more meaningful (to me anyway, in that cars are more
| interesting than web ads were), the culture is more fun, and
| things are less cutthroat. I probably don't quite make FAANG
| money, but I don't put up with FAANG BS either.
|
| And yes we're hiring https://jobs.lever.co/MBRDNA
| pcurve wrote:
| That's a nice chunk of change. Congrats :-)
| kraig911 wrote:
| any chance for a referral? ;)
| froggertoaster wrote:
| Very nice. Still not buying their cars until they get their long-
| term reliability and depreciation issues worked out.
| LazyMans wrote:
| Buy the latest year of a body style you can, each redesign
| means new modules and reliability problems are fixed with each
| new yearly revision. Then buy one that has depreciated most of
| the way already. 7-10 yr old is a sweet spot. C classes are
| kinda rickety imo. An E or S class is ideal. Lastly, if you get
| one that actually was maintained well, it shouldn't have any
| issues waiting to bite you.
|
| Currently rocking a 2010 S400, immaculate interior and
| exterior. I'm all in for about 12k after repairs, would be
| closer to 16-18k if I paid someone to do the repairs. This
| vehicle won't depreciate more than $500 a year at this point.
| It's MSRP in 2010 was 113k.
|
| I drove a 2022 Volvo S60 t8 recharge for a little bit earlier
| this year, the 13 year old s-class drives better and has nicer
| features...
|
| Of course this is all moot if you're trying to buy very new
| models, in that case, you gotta love blowing money. Hah
| aiqq wrote:
| Dont worry bmw and audi are in the same boat i dont understand
| why people think these are good cars.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| Because historically they have been, comparatively to other
| brands.
|
| They're getting to be far too complex to be reliable, and too
| much attention is paid to short term profits (IMO), so we get
| what we have now.
| jandrese wrote:
| BMW has never had great longevity. They're mostly fine for
| 100k miles, but people expect cars to last much longer than
| that now. Old BMWs have solid reputation as a money pit.
| aiqq wrote:
| Historically they have been but most innovation at least
| from bmw comes from slapping extra turbos to chase ever
| increasing bhp. Interiors are mainly the same but with
| updated instrument clusters and redesigned exteriors. Not
| groundbreaking i think what is happening is too much
| attention to short term profits and forcing customers to
| refresh their cars every few years. Literally after they
| out of warranty bmws fall apart not to mention mercedeses
| that fall apparent even within warranty (the m and s class
| do).
| sokoloff wrote:
| Family has been long-time Mercedes owners since the mid-80s.
| Our MB diesels have been phenomenally reliably over that time
| period and the last one I owned (a '98 W210 E300D owned from
| 2005 through 2016) was _by far_ the lowest maintenance car of
| my life until I bought an electric. The only non-routine
| repairs in twelve years were three window regulators
| (absolutely a part that should ~ never fail) and one preheater
| ( "glow plug") that failed, so I replaced all six.
|
| Depreciation issues are great; it means that (in normal times)
| I can buy a 4-6 year old MB for a fraction of the new price and
| enjoy it for a decade or more, because of its good long-term
| reliability.
| bluedino wrote:
| Good thing you have not bought a recent one with the OM651
| diesel engine.
| LazyMans wrote:
| I'm passively looking a om642 320cdi. They're incredible cars
| and a decent one can be had for less than 8k.
| kleiba wrote:
| I don't know, but just tried to find some stats about which are
| the cars with the highest depreciation. Of course, the lists
| you find on various do not agree with each other, but what
| seems to be common across the board is that there is a pretty
| strong mix of all kinds of different car brands. It's not like
| Mercedes is standing out in any way on the lists I was able to
| google.
|
| With reliability lists, it's slightly different, in that you
| see the name Toyota multiple times towards the top of the
| lists. Mercedes is nowhere to be found in that area, but at the
| same time, it's not like the bottom places are all taken by
| them either. It's a mix, again.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Those are precisely the sources of revenue that allow bonuses
| to be paid out to workers.
| froggertoaster wrote:
| Won't support a car company that can't make good cars.
| gnrlst wrote:
| Not that Mercedes is a good example, but is there a name for
| company philosophy of being employee/team-centric versus investor
| centric? E.g. all profits shared among employees instead of
| shareholders for example. I'd like to work for a company like
| that.
| hcal wrote:
| They exist in several forms. In the US I think the best kind
| are called employee-ownership-trusts or worker-owned
| cooperatives.
| culi wrote:
| Employee-owned? A co-op? B-corp assessment also includes worker
| satisfaction and ownership as part of its assessment:
|
| https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/best-for-the-world-2022-w...
| londons_explore wrote:
| There are corporate structures where all shareholders are
| employees and vice versa. "cooperatives".
|
| They tend not to be a great structure for fostering a massive
| growth, massive risk, massive profits type company.
| nickbauman wrote:
| The most radical are Co-Ops. The workers own the company.
| They're called Worker-Owners. Where management is a skill, not
| a rank. The problem with this model is three-fold:
|
| * Outside investment can undermine the Co-Op's autonomy (many
| don't allow it) * Raising capital is hard; usually you're
| bootstrapping (worker-owners must divert some of their income)
| * Sometimes worker-owners get caught up in the democratic
| process of collective decision-making and get frustrated
|
| On the other hand:
|
| * A real Co-Op is real community. They exist to support the
| humans through work. You're all in this together. You can be
| "kicked out" by vote, but when you do, you give up your share
| and all that share money accumulating is yours. * You are "The
| Man" in the worst and best way you can imagine If something is
| wrong with the company, you can change it. * No more perverse
| mgmt incentives.
|
| The biggest Co-Op is the Mondragon. They are very successful,
| too.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
| lm28469 wrote:
| Are you some kind of communist ? /s
| justin66 wrote:
| In the US, ESOPs, worker cooperatives, and consumer
| cooperatives (like REI) are options.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| I think that is called a cooperative.
| [deleted]
| parski wrote:
| Yeah, check out Mondragon.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
| rhamzeh wrote:
| That's generally what a coop is right?
|
| (And I guess family owned businesses where all the workers are
| members of the same family?)
| dan1234 wrote:
| In the UK, there's John Lewis[0], a company that is owned by a
| trust on behalf of its workers (who are known as partners, not
| employees).
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewis_Partnership
| CharlesW wrote:
| It seems like being employee-owned might be a prerequisite for
| that, but I'd love to see examples that persuade me otherwise.
|
| There _are_ tech co-ops, which are worker-owned: https://tech-
| coops.xyz/
| yabones wrote:
| "co-op" or "co-operative" is what I see them being called in
| Canada. A few small "craft" industry in my town is structured
| like that, where every employee is an owner with a stake based
| on their position, tenure, etc, and all profits are distributed
| back out each quarter/year. They're also common in agriculture,
| where a feed mill will be owned by all the farmers that use its
| services and/or store their grain there.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative
| mempko wrote:
| Welcome to socialism. This is what actual socialists want.
| Everyone to have ownership in the company and participate in
| it's success. Where the decisions are made democratically by
| workers.
|
| In the modern world, you will see this in co-ops today.
| NickC25 wrote:
| Crazy thing is that moves like this also benefit shareholders,
| albeit indirectly. A company that employees _want_ to work for
| because they know they 'll benefit first means that more and
| more of the top job seekers will try to work there, which means
| (indirectly) that the company will have the best of the best
| employees. As an investor, I would think that in the long term,
| that's the best use of the company's money and the best path to
| long-term growth.
|
| I don't want a quarterly, biannual, or annual dividend if that
| means that that excess capital will be re-invested into better
| employees (or keeping current top employees) who produce better
| products which can better position the company in the long run.
|
| For a long time I naively thought that was the whole point of
| investment: long term sustainability and allocation of capital
| that allowed companies to best compete.
| rcme wrote:
| What you say is true: investing in employees attracts top
| talent. However, that's only one side of the equation. The
| other side of the equation is that such policies cost money.
| So in order to say that this policy is a "benefit to
| shareholders", you'd need to demonstrate that the benefits
| outweigh the cost, which is of course impossible to quantify.
| Over the last 5 years, stock in Mercedes Benz Group is down
| almost 25%, so I wouldn't say that, generally, Mercedes has
| been good to shareholders.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Is that the best way to evaluate it? It looks like they
| also offered about $3-4 dividend each year. The stock is
| down $5 over the last 5 years, but has also produced almost
| $15 worth of dividends[0].
|
| For comparison, Ford might be up by about 25% (+$2-3) last
| 5 years, but it has only yielded a dividend of around $3.
|
| [0] https://group.mercedes-
| benz.com/investors/share/dividend/
| rcme wrote:
| You're right. DRIP is a much better metric.
| linster wrote:
| Down 25%?
|
| Mercedes Benz Group AG https://g.co/kgs/Qm7LK4
| rcme wrote:
| Oh sorry I was looking at the U.S. listed ADR, which is
| affected by currency fluctuation.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >A company that employees want to work for because they know
| they'll benefit first means that more and more of the top job
| seekers will try to work there, which means (indirectly) that
| the company will have the best of the best employees. As an
| investor, I would think that in the long term, that's the
| best use of the company's money and the best path to long-
| term growth.
|
| This does not work for businesses selling commodified
| products/services. Walmart can pay top dollar, but it is
| going to be disastrous because everyone will switch to buying
| from target/Kroger/Costco/Aldi/Amazon for cheaper.
| josefresco wrote:
| Bonuses are cheaper than pay increases.
| KMag wrote:
| They're also better for stability in numbers of employees, as
| it's easier to reduce expenses in bad years without having to
| go through layoffs.
| vlowrian wrote:
| True. On the other hand, if the increase in revenue is at
| least partially caused by inflation and it's not to be
| expected that deflation will revert this effect any time
| soon, new hires might expect significantly higher wages then
| what is currently paid within the company. If the current
| workforce is keeping their pre-inflation wages and new hires
| are receiving higher wages, this causes an increase in turn-
| over rate which is exactly what can be seen in Germany
| throughout the last two years.
|
| Admittedly, there might be other, additional causes to this.
| It should still be considered if higher turn over is a
| business risk for the company.
| KMag wrote:
| I think most companies and industries where bonuses make up
| a significant portion of total compensation still usually
| have annual inflation adjustments to base salaries, largely
| to avoid this problem.
|
| In an ideal world, people would be a bit better about
| managing uncertainty and most people would be able to live
| comfortably within their means on their base salaries and
| would have the restraint to invest large percentages of
| their bonuses.
| vlowrian wrote:
| Fair, but then it's not a question of either one or the
| other. Im not arguing against bonuses. It just shouldn't
| be the only outcome of what's expected to be a permanent
| increase in revenue.
| tracker1 wrote:
| It's funny in that the structure is inherently what Economic
| Fascism is, separating the economics from the nationalism/racism
| typically associated (from Nazi Germany). The economic bits seem
| to hold over though.
|
| Nothing is really stopping similar organization from happening in
| the formation of Corporation in the US and elsewhere. But it has
| to be part of the foundation of said company, especially if it's
| publicly traded, as it's very hard to do after the fact. I'm not
| convinced it should be restructured via force from the
| Government, and not even as a bailout, as I'm not a fan of those
| govt actions either.
| jedberg wrote:
| This is what happens when your country has laws requiring workers
| to sit on the board. Aka strong unions by law.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The optics on this one have been fascinating to watch on social
| media.
|
| I've seen a lot of people in my own network who work at U.S. tech
| companies share this as an example of what companies _should_ be
| doing. A lot of contrasting takes about how U.S. companies are
| laying people off while MB is handing out higher than expected
| bonuses.
|
| Meanwhile, I know for a fact that a lot of the people sharing
| this are getting paid significantly more than these employees and
| also have bonus plans that pay out several multiples higher than
| the highest MB payout (7300EUR) even in a bad year.
|
| Maybe this is an example of managing expectations. Mercedes-Benz
| paying four-figure bonuses to employees is noteworthy largely
| because they're paying more than expected. Meanwhile, I see
| people who earn significantly more being unhappy because their
| compensation was less than some number they expected.
|
| Interesting lesson in how expectations are relative, not
| absolute.
| laserlight wrote:
| Mercedes-Benz's market cap is $106M, while Microsoft's market
| cap is $1.78T. Microsoft is 16.8K times larger than Mercedes-
| Benz. People are aware of the difference when criticizing how
| US tech behaves.
|
| Edit: See comments below. Correct Mercedes-Benz market cap is
| $76.5B, in which case Microsoft is 23 times the size of
| Mercedes-Benz.
| greatwave1 wrote:
| Mercedes-Benz's market cap is way higher (like, almost 100x
| higher) than $106M, and I don't think that market cap is the
| right metric to use when evaluating a company's ability to
| pay its workers.
|
| Mercedes-Benz had roughly the same net income as Facebook
| last quarter, and in the same ballpark as all of the major US
| tech companies, and still has significantly lower average
| pay.
| brewdad wrote:
| Where did you get that market cap number for Mercedes? It is
| all kinds of wrong. Yahoo has their market cap at 70.4
| Billion.[0]
|
| [0]https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MBG.DE
| rerx wrote:
| Where did you pull that number from? That's off by a factor
| of 1000 or so.
|
| https://www.boerse-frankfurt.de/equity/mercedes-benz-group
| says the market capitalization is 70.29B Euros.
| laserlight wrote:
| Thanks for your correction. I got the number from a fucking
| company that claims to be the best in Web search and AI.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| > Meanwhile, I know for a fact that a lot of the people sharing
| this are getting paid significantly more than these employees
| and also have bonus plans that pay out several multiples higher
| than the highest MB payout (7300EUR) even in a bad year.
|
| Yeah I was surprised by the number. I have a relative that
| makes anywhere from 1.5x to 3x her annual salary on her annual
| bonus working for a US finance company.
|
| > Maybe this is an example of managing expectations. Mercedes-
| Benz paying four-figure bonuses to employees is noteworthy
| largely because they're paying more than expected. Meanwhile, I
| see people who earn significantly more being unhappy because
| their compensation was less than some number they expected.
|
| The tradeoffs are essentially this. In the US you can make
| orders of magnitude more money on salary, bonus and stock
| compensation. However, you get essentially zero employee
| protections. Meaning you can be fired without cause and without
| severance at anytime. You have no legal right to things like
| maternity or paternity leave, and you have no legal right to
| affordable health insurance coverage.
| skybrian wrote:
| It's a bit tricky to discuss because there are legal rights
| associated with things, though they're not nearly as good.
| (For example, a right to 12 weeks unpaid leave, for some.)
|
| Also, companies often provide benefits above the legal
| minimum, making the minimum less relevant for those
| employees, unless something changes.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| There's huge CoL differences to consider between the two,
| though, especially in housing and healthcare:
|
| https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/cost-of-living/germany/calif...
|
| > California is 58.4% more expensive than Germany. *
|
| https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/cost-of-living/stuttgart-c59...
|
| > San Francisco is 98.1% more expensive than Stuttgart [MB HQ].
|
| * My favorite part of this comparison is that a new
| _Volkswagen_ is allegedly 3.1% less expensive in California
| than in Germany lol
| dahfizz wrote:
| > Interesting lesson in how expectations are relative, not
| absolute.
|
| Yup. I have a hard time taking any of the whining on HN
| seriously. People being paid $300K+ but all they can do is
| complain that they attend too many meetings. People that job
| hop once a year but the idea of layoffs is high treason.
| potatochup wrote:
| You can be highly paid and still negativity affected by
| layoffs beyond the financial side. E.g. if you are on an H1b
| or L1 visa.
| erulabs wrote:
| I've been chastised before for suggesting "there is no
| humanitarian crisis" when engineers (like myself) are laid
| off. A strange "I deserve to be employed like this" vein,
| which is natural, but wrong.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > whining on HN seriously
|
| > People being paid $300K+
|
| It's probably very far from the average HNer
| brink wrote:
| Oh, also people contesting irrelevant points. :) The
| average HNer is probably paid half that, but dahfizz's
| point still stands.
| donkeyd wrote:
| Agreed. I'm not even nearing 1/3 of that.
|
| It is, however, a fact that a relatively high amount of
| HNers earn way over 100k due to the prevalence of people
| form SV on here. Tech salaries in the rest of the world are
| nowhere near those in SV.
| timdaub wrote:
| Coming from Stuttgart, Germany, it is well-known that if you get
| any position within the local automotive industry, it counts as
| making it. Doesn't matter what level, even if you work on the
| assembly line. So I interpret this post as follows: HN discovers
| that building German cars is a very good business.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> HN discovers that building German cars is a very good
| business._
|
| I'd rather we all cycle everywhere like the Dutch and need less
| cars.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Even with bikes there's still a lot of use cases for cars.
| With EVs, autonomous driving and current trends in urban
| mobility chances are high that automotive companies will
| become fleet management companies in 20-30 years (Uber has no
| chance to survive in the long term).
| bradhe wrote:
| "up to 7300 Euros" woof
| outside1234 wrote:
| We have sort of lost touch here of what it is like to be an
| average worker if that is your take on this.
|
| My wife works is a doctor and works in medicine and is "over
| the moon" when she gets her ~$3k bonus each year.
|
| I can't even bring myself to tell her what my bonus was anymore
| and just combine it all into my salary when we talk finances
| around tax time.
|
| The current situation notwithstanding, we are quite lucky in
| this industry right now.
| jacooper wrote:
| So the better part of a months wage, pretty good.
| aeyes wrote:
| Where do you even live? In Germany 7k is easily 2-3 months
| income.
| mk67 wrote:
| Well, I live in Germany and that's less than 1 month income
| for me. Which is pretty common for a senior+ engineer/data
| scientist. Not for a single person with a technical degree
| 7k would be 2-3 months income, lol.
| jmknoll wrote:
| In case you're new to HN, here are the guidelines we follow
| around posting & commenting.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Please try to avoid snarky or dismissive comments, and ensure
| that what you're writing makes a point and contributes to the
| conversation.
| pc86 wrote:
| It's pretty easy to see when a profile was created. Theirs
| was created 5-6 years before yours.
|
| Sometimes comments like this get the point across in ways
| some self-aggrandizing $WALLOFTEXT can't.
|
| EUR7,300 is chump change.
| pjc50 wrote:
| https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Mercedes-Benz-Group-
| Stuttga... : "The average Mercedes-Benz Group salary ranges
| from approximately $39,314 per year for a Customer Service
| Representative to $141,969 per year for a Manager"
|
| Looks like a month's pay for the top end, and several
| months for the lower end, depending on what the bonus rank
| cutoff is (interns aren't going to get it)
| eddsh1994 wrote:
| In Europe that's a good bonus in a place the average income
| is around 35k...
| whatatita wrote:
| Nah, 7'300 is a good bonus. I've never heard of a five-
| figure bonus outside of FAANG or long-standing senior
| positions in old companies such as law firm or banking.
| jhatax wrote:
| Calling a bonus chump change is reductive. Two key items to
| consider:
|
| 1) You don't know the size of the bonus relative to their
| annual salary. If this is a 10%+ bonus, it's sizable.
|
| 2) The bonus was given to _all_ -- "have jointly agreed to
| pay all eligible employees a special lump sum bonus of up
| to 7,300 euros"
|
| I can't recall an American company that gave out bonuses
| that satisfied both criteria listed above in the last 3-5
| years of intense hardship.
|
| Edit: Added specificity on bonus eligibility
| gambiting wrote:
| I work in tech and the biggest bonuses I ever received were
| about PS5-6k(pre tax too). That's pretty good money to be
| given as a bonus.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _EUR7,300 is chump change_
|
| Spoken like a true tech bro.
|
| In most suburban areas of the US, that's ~3-4 months rent.
|
| Or more than a year of car payments.
|
| Or a year and a half of groceries for an average American
| family.
|
| "Chump change" LOL.
| eddsh1994 wrote:
| You can check how long they've been on HN by clicking their
| username; this is a 2009 account just being snarky.
| lvl102 wrote:
| Record profits everywhere while inflation raged on. Only one
| explanation then for inflation: PRICE GOUGING.
|
| Corporate greed during global pandemic. Capitalism at its finest.
| Now we all have to pay the price just like on 2009. Privatize
| profits. Socialize losses.
| stuaxo wrote:
| Lets see if the thing where big companies applies here, (it
| won't).
| umeshunni wrote:
| Something missing from this conversation is that Mercedes is one
| of the few 'legacy' carmakers that are managing the transition to
| EVs and automated driving well.
|
| They have flagship EVs - EQE, EQB, EQS that are well reviewed.
|
| They are the first car company to get approved for L3 self-
| driving in the US: https://insideevs.com/news/630075/mercedes-
| first-to-offer-le...
|
| and they are building out their own network of charging stations:
| https://insideevs.com/news/629594/mercedes-ev-charging-netwo...
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| Do they manufacture and sell these cars? I see ads and read
| editorials but I can't find these cars on the road.
|
| I'm afraid they use this EVQ-T-B-D-R to impress, then get
| people to contact their dealers who dissuade them to go EV just
| yet, and finally sell the biggest ICE or hybrid possible.
| That's what happened with my dad who went to Lexus (for a heavy
| plugin hybrid, sigh).
| spery wrote:
| I see them quite a lot in Berlin.
| ericd wrote:
| They have some, but are they producing them in significant
| volume? Most car makers have some models, but seem to be having
| trouble scaling them up.
| r00fus wrote:
| Given their pricing (high end) they are definitely available
| in my area.
|
| It's not like Hyundai a few years ago where you couldn't find
| their EVs anywhere outside of southern CA. Just looked even
| Hyundai/Kia are available near me as well.
| digdugdirk wrote:
| "The company's management and General Works Council have jointly
| agreed to pay all eligible employees a special lump sum bonus of
| up to 7,300 euros, a figure that is even higher than the current
| maximum payment cap of 6,465 euros."
|
| This General Works Council seems to be something like a separate
| "union within the company", in addition to whatever union
| represents various workers within the organization. On top of
| that, Mercedes Benz has a corporate Supervisory Board with 1/2 of
| the members representing the employees.
|
| Interesting how this structure has a headline like this one, vs
| the ">10k workers laid off from giant corporation with record
| profits for the past two years" headlines that seem to be popping
| up here daily.
| amalgamated_inc wrote:
| Having a supervisory board w/ 1/2 of members representing (non-
| management) employees is mandatory by law for any corporation
| over 50 (?) employees in Germany.
|
| The "General Works Council" is just that board, I believe. So
| this is quite a normal setup for a large German company.
| arez wrote:
| It never mandatory to have a Betriebsrat in Germany even with
| 100k employees you could not have one. You can however start
| one already with 5 full-time employees. Companies tend to
| have one around 50+ employees because before that it rarely
| makes sense
| amalgamated_inc wrote:
| So it's not mandatory if somehow all employees decided not
| to form one, but if any of them wanted to, it's mandatory
| to let them and presumably support them/listen to them in
| some way?
| wirrbel wrote:
| Basically it's not mandatory in the sense that you will
| not be fined as a company if you do not have one.
| However, employees can make a motion to elect a
| Betriebsrat (works council) in a given location. Then, if
| 3 locations have a local Betriebsrat the
| Gesamtbetriebsrat can be formed which is regularly
| elected across the whole German staff. Grocery chains
| like Lidl and Aldi have prevented the formation of a
| Betriebsrat by employing union busting style measures
| (intimidating or firing staff, etc).
|
| Iirc teslas giga fab does not have an elected
| Betriebsrat.
|
| Since many American companies incorporate in Germany for
| their German branches, they can also face Betriebsrats
| elections.
|
| Overall I do think a Betriebsrat is a net positive for a
| company. It's not always as profit oriented as an
| executive but it has a long term interest in the company
| as opposed to executives who just think in quarter years
| and about keeping shareholders happy.
| Vespasian wrote:
| Tesla does have a Betriebsrat if I recall correctly.
|
| It was formed very early meaning before most of the
| Frontline employees were hired .
|
| There was criticism at the time that it was filled with
| people loyal to management rather than workers
| amalgamated_inc wrote:
| Thanks for the explainer!
|
| As always with Germans, the answer is "it's really
| complicated" lol
| netrus wrote:
| General Works Council is the Betriebsrat (100% employees, not
| mandatory, but employees cannot be stopped from forming one),
| the board is the Aufsichtsrat (50% employees, mandatory for
| large corporations). It works really well most of the time.
| jayd16 wrote:
| I guess I don't understand the pushback against layoffs. You
| layoff based on future projections, not past performance. It
| would be sinister to layoff someone to prevent some kind of
| timed bonus but I've seen no reports of that. As far as I can
| tell its just about reduced investments and reduced project
| scopes.
|
| It sucks and people deserve severance and unemployment but at
| the same time why is a reduction in workforce supposed to be
| immoral? Have severance packages been surprisingly light or
| something?
| wirrbel wrote:
| The works council is a legally regulated means of participation
| of the staff in a company. Establishing a works council there
| are a few hurdles just like in ionizing. But different from
| unionizing there is no membership fee and the works council is
| regularly elected by all associates.
|
| Works council has a say in hiring. And firing decisions. And
| also on other business decision in the company. At times this
| is good and progressive, sometimes not so much (usually huge
| fans of combustion engines).
|
| Elected Works council members can be union members but also
| independent.
|
| Iirc the mode worked so well that Daimler tried to export it to
| an American plant but it was shut down there because "this is
| not how we run things here"
|
| Ah and then with VW there is the story how the works council
| let itself be bribed
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _General Works Council seems to be something like a separate
| "union within the company"_
|
| It's less adversarial. In America, industrial unions sprung
| from a time when unions fought capitalism and management were
| criminals. That stain persists.
|
| Tech companies' stock awards are close to the German model. Add
| a Board seat elected by the ESOP and you have a tight
| approximation.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| Interestingly, I'm currently reading a book on the history of
| austerity and the author shows how worker councils _were_ a
| thing in the UK during and immediately after WW1; however,
| austerity was put in place to systematically prioritize capital
| and the minority capital class _over_ working class people.
| Lest that sound slightly conspiratorial the author cites
| specific memos and comments from the Treasury at the time that
| make that point explicit. They simply insisted that working
| class would have to "sacrifice" so that the system of capital
| could be restored. The interests of capital was always
| prioritized; it was all that mattered. People were expected to
| be more productive, consume less, and earn less.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| what book is that?
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| Capitol Order by Clara E. Mattei.
|
| It's very well written and the research into the actual
| memoranda from the period she is discussing is very eye-
| opening. It is also, unfortunately, quite depressing.
| swores wrote:
| Depressingly, Brexit has just caused the same thing...
|
| The old page [0] about EU-mandated law regarding Works
| Councils now says " _The Brexit transition period has ended
| and new rules on participating in a European Works Council
| now apply. This page is currently out of date._ "
|
| The new page [1] says: " _Only people employed in EEA
| countries can ask their employer to set up an EWC.
|
| If you are employed in the UK you cannot ask for one to be
| set up_"
|
| :(
|
| (I'm not actually sure if this was an intentional change or
| just an accidental side-effect of the UK leaving the EEA [2],
| but the Tories hardly deserve the benefit of the doubt
| regarding intent when it comes to a pro-capital anti-workers
| change, and they could easily just extend the old bill to
| cover "EEA or UK" rather than "only EEA" if it wasn't
| wanted...)
|
| [0] https://www.gov.uk/apply-european-works-council
|
| [1] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/participating-in-a-european-
| work...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_membership_o
| f_t...
| nickbauman wrote:
| What's the title?
| leshow wrote:
| I'm going to guess this, because I am reading it also
|
| The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and
| Paved the Way to Fascism
|
| Clara E. Mattei
|
| It is excellent so far.
| bluedino wrote:
| > Interesting how this structure has a headline like this one,
| vs the ">10k workers laid off from giant corporation with
| record profits for the past two years" headlines that seem to
| be popping up here daily.
|
| Aren't large bonuses common enough with FAANG that they don't
| even make the news?
| elil17 wrote:
| They aren't common for many (most?) employees in FAANG. This
| is more like all of Facebook's content moderators or Amazon's
| warehouse workers getting a $7,000 bonus. Certainly that
| would hit the news?
| jandrese wrote:
| I remember a few years ago when Elon Musk got a huge payout
| for hitting a production target with Tesla. It was
| basically a huge bet that paid off because they mandated
| tons of overtime.
|
| I did the math and realized that if he took half of the
| bonus and distributed it evenly to every single Tesla
| employee, from VPs down to cafeteria staff, it would amount
| to around $40,000 for every person in the company. Of
| course Elon pocketed it all.
|
| Later that year and for the following year Tesla would be
| embroiled in labor scandals.
| pc86 wrote:
| Exactly, and this bonus is less than $8k USD. Most FAANG
| bonuses are 3-5x that, and yearly.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| yeah.. I'm happy for the regular workers, but as a code
| monkey, I'd rather make $400k a year and get randomly laid
| off for no reason than make $100k forever
| mistrial9 wrote:
| [flagged]
| lmedinas wrote:
| one more upvote...
|
| >"Interesting how this structure has a headline like this one,
| vs the ">10k workers >laid off from giant corporation with
| record profits for the past two years" >headlines that seem to
| be popping up here daily."
|
| i often see people going or want to go to giant IT companies,
| as you refer, forgetting the "safety" of working for big German
| or even European companies. In some German companies you get a
| job for life, a contract without end and the "working council"
| works very hard to find solutions for all workers and for the
| company. This is one of the reasons why i would hardly work for
| an American Company in US.
| NickC25 wrote:
| > _On top of that, Mercedes Benz has a corporate Supervisory
| Board with 1 /2 of the members representing the employees._
|
| Absolutely love that, and stuff like that would never be
| allowed to form here in the US. Labor having an equal seat at
| the table should be seen as a good thing for the purposes of
| long-term sustainability, not a bad thing. Can it have
| drawbacks? Sure. However, the flipside is that currently in
| most places, such as the US, Capital has _all_ the seats at the
| table, or sometimes Labor will given a symbolic place at the
| proverbial kid 's table, with no real ability to enact change
| or make their voices heard. I applaud what Mercedes-Benz is
| doing here.
| jahewson wrote:
| OTOH US big tech workers are making large multiples of that
| bonus every year from RSUs.
| mchanson wrote:
| Bernie Sanders has plans on making that kind of stuff law of
| the land. (Not that it is likely to happen).
|
| At https://berniesanders.com/issues/corporate-accountability-
| an... the section labeled: "Democratize Corporate Boards".
|
| Worth reading to think about nuts and bolts of something like
| this being normal and required.
| Aunche wrote:
| For well developed industries, I agree that employee
| representation is a good thing.
|
| On the other hand, America's friendliness to capital has lead
| to funding companies that end up competing for software
| engineers. This is part of the reason why developer jobs in
| the US tend to pay twice as well as those in Europe.
| virtualritz wrote:
| Do they? And what does that money buy you?
|
| I was on a wedding in NYC last summer. One of the guests I
| talked to was a junior dev. He was making 120k/y. He had to
| flat share. With 120k?
|
| With 60k/y you do not have to flat share in Berlin.
|
| And this goes the other way around too. When I worked for a
| multinational in Berlin a few years ago we had lots of
| Ukrainians that we hired at externals through a
| subcontracting company in that country.
|
| Quite a few of the better developers applied directly and
| we happily took them on. The main reason was that they
| would make twice as much in Berlin.
|
| But that was on paper. After paying taxes in Germany their
| net salary was less than what they had made net in Ukraine.
| Most of them went back.
|
| Just saying.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I would suggest sticking it out for a year or two to get
| more experience, then get a job with a company working
| remote for similar/higher salary and moving to a city
| with a lower cost of living. The past couple years have
| really opened the job market for software development
| nationwide, and in most of this country (US) someone can
| live relatively comfortably at $120k/yr. Though the cost
| of food, and current interest rates make it harder.
| drstewart wrote:
| Why compare NYC and Berlin instead of NYC and London, or
| Houston and Berlin?
| smcl wrote:
| Presumably because that's where the junior programmer and
| the commenter in question are from?
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Berlin is a major European tech hub, is it not?
| [deleted]
| moonchrome wrote:
| More like wannabe tech hub - salaries reflecting
| competitiveness.
|
| Reality is SW engineering barely 2x median income in
| Germany untill you're talking like senior/lead roles.
| Meanwhile in the US grads start 2x.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Local CTO chat in Berlin has over 200 members and it's
| just fraction of all companies that work here. I'd say it
| is indeed a tech hub with very dynamic startup ecosystem,
| with its own Zalando etc mafias.
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| >I was on a wedding in NYC last summer. One of the guests
| I talked to was a junior dev. He was making 120k/y. He
| had to flat share. With 120k?
|
| Ok well the problem there is he's living in the most
| expensive place he possibly could. Live in the suburbs
| and you won't have to share a flat on $120k.
| astrange wrote:
| That's bad for society because living in NYC uses less
| real resources (especially energy) and is much less
| carbon intensive than living in a suburb. The only reason
| it's more expensive is they're bad at governing
| themselves.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Much of the property in NYC is just parking money into
| fixed assets... doesn't even have to be income property.
| I'm not sure the govt is capable of fixing the issue,
| short of separating corporations from personal liberties
| legally (via national legislation) and legislating usage
| requirements for corporate owned land/property. Both of
| which would be _VERY_ hard to do legislatively.
| astrange wrote:
| If there's no height limits, someone owning an empty
| condo shouldn't stop other people from living in the same
| building. They're paying property tax too.
| skizm wrote:
| On 120k you can get your own apartment in NYC outside of
| Manhattan and the expensive parts of Brooklyn easily.
| Plus that is for a new grad / jr engineer. They'll be
| making north of $200k in 5 years most likely.
| justsocrateasin wrote:
| Yeah but outside of (Manhattan and the expensive parts of
| Brooklyn) leaves like... not much of NYC? Most new grads
| do not choose to live in Queens, the Bronx, or Bed-stuy.
|
| Assuming you pay $200/month in healthcare, ~$1800 a month
| to max out your 401k, your take home pay is about $5,000
| after taxes. In Manhattan and the expensive parts of
| Brooklyn, your own place is realistically a minimum of
| $2,500, possibly as much as $3,000. Outside of those
| places, still $2,000.
|
| Source: I literally just went through this process, as a
| new grad, making slightly above $120k about 3 months ago.
| skizm wrote:
| $1,800 is a lot to save relative to your income. 50/30/20
| rule says you should be saving <$1,300ish and spending
| around $3,200 on needs, so maybe like $2700 on housing
| and $500 on utilities, groceries, etc. $3k / mo for an
| apartment on $120k salary is completely reasonable.
| geodel wrote:
| Well, I wouldn't know he had to or he preferred to. In my
| case I had that salary but I always lived shared
| house/apartment as long I was single. It wasn't like I
| had to spend more because I earned more. IMO living in
| shared accommodation at decent income level can be a
| lifestyle choice rather than a forced condition.
| Aunche wrote:
| >One of the guests I talked to was a junior dev. He was
| making 120k/y. He had to flat share. With 120k?
|
| For one, every city with a lot of career options for
| young professionals is actively hostile towards housing
| development, except maybe Seattle.
|
| $120k should be enough to live in apartment anywhere in
| the US though. However, with how high rents are, it makes
| much more sense to spend that somewhere else like an
| early retirement in a much cheaper city.
| ender341341 wrote:
| Seattle is pretty actively hostile to housing development
| (it seems to be swinging a bit more friendly but it's
| also a "I'll believe it when I see it.").
| m_ke wrote:
| They pay so much more because US is the largest english
| speaking country, which is why most companies that plan to
| go international start there first. Starting a company in
| Italy and expanding to other regions is a lot harder than
| going from US to Canada, UK, Australia and rest of the
| world with english only product.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| Probably unpopular opinion here on HN, but I'd love to see
| developer salaries come down and other workers' salaries go
| up.
|
| I'd rather live in a place where _everyone_ is comfortable
| than a place where only people like me are, even if I 'd be
| somewhat wealthy.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I would like others' salaries to go up. I'd rather not
| have mine come down. I mean, the median is $115k or so in
| the US. I make under that.
|
| Now this is a really unpopular opinion on here... I think
| the real issue is centralization of high capital tech
| work, and really the density of people in general. The
| cost of living in places like NYC, northern VA, and
| Silicon Valley are all hugely above the median. It's like
| a vicious cycle of groupthink instead of evenly
| distributing those jobs (companies) throughout cheaper,
| less populous areas. I'd love to see someone from a
| depressed area start a big name company _in that area_ to
| help being jobs and prosperity to their neighbors.
| Perhaps that 's just my deluded fantasy.
| notfromhere wrote:
| Good place to start would be in college towns where you
| could easily siphon off new grads.
|
| Problem is getting money to a place like that. Investors
| hate travel if its not to the same 3 cities
| jollofricepeas wrote:
| Good point.
|
| 1. Inflation - Though I will not expound here because I'm
| not an expert.
|
| 2. Salaries in the US have been stagnant since the 70s
| which correlates to the start of the weakening of Big
| Labor by corporate and government interests.
|
| Left-leaning source:
|
| https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/
|
| Right leaning source:
|
| https://www.aei.org/articles/have-wages-stagnated-for-
| decade...
|
| Brookings Institute coverage of both left and right
| sources:
|
| https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/09/10/are-
| wages...
| layer8 wrote:
| The parent is probably talking about $200K+ salaries.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Even then... for many companies the past couple years
| have opened up competition nation-wide. I'm able to
| compete for higher salaries with companies used to paying
| that along with what was only local talent before, while
| living in an area with comparatively lower cost of living
| and would like to move with that in mind (locked in until
| interest rates improve).
|
| The same works in the other direction, and it kind of
| sucks for companies in areas where income isn't as high
| having to compete for talent against others with much
| deeper pockets. It's been interesting to say the least.
|
| Unfortunately, I've seen the govt operating against
| unions... looking at the railway and airlines and think
| they're really on the wrong side of this, as much as I
| don't want to be _more_ inconvenienced from strikes, they
| should be able to do so. I feel the govt does more harm
| than good in the US and would prefer a little less
| picking winners and losers in the mix. On the same note,
| I don 't think they're playing their hands well at all to
| establish domestic production and security fia
| application of tariffs and FDA requirements.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Sure, but if you take those $200k people and make them
| $100k people, then I assume I'll lose my job to them all
| day long. Employers will pay me lower because I
| comparatively suck.
| novok wrote:
| HCOL cities is a policy choice that is somewhat
| independent of city density, that seem to be the worst in
| english speaking countries, pointing to a potential flaw
| in the culture or shared legal systems. There are many
| high density cities that are more livable than the USA
| and significantly more affordable. Cities managed
| efficiently are the most economically and environmentally
| sustainable places to have humanity live in by far.
| hobs wrote:
| $54,132 per year is the median in the united states, not
| 115k.
| teawrecks wrote:
| A quick google search shows varying numbers between 74k
| and 120k for median software developer salaries in the
| US. 54k seems quite low, where'd you see this?
| spondyl wrote:
| I believe $54k is for salaries in general across all
| industries. Mercedes is not a tech company so no reason
| to assume the discussion is about software salaries
| teawrecks wrote:
| If you scroll up for context, this thread of comments was
| referring specifically to sw dev salaries coming down,
| not all salaries in general.
| thfuran wrote:
| Dev salaries going down _and all the rest going up_.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Locality has natural efficiencies, which is why cities
| and caches are so powerful. That can't really be fought
| head-on in the short term. But over a longer period the
| increasing costs of a white-hot locale will cause other
| places to be more appealing. And new tech can find a new
| natural place to land with costs as part of that.
|
| This is happening all the time. A hundred years ago the
| Santa Clara (Silicon) Valley was orchards. Detroit was
| getting rich on the latest tech wave.
|
| A hundred years before that, the North of England was
| making fortunes in the Industrial Revolution.
|
| In our lifetimes China has changed incredibly. Foxconn is
| now a big name company that employs over a million people
| and moved a lot of money into the places they operate.
| ynx wrote:
| I agree with the general idea but disagree strongly with
| the execution.
|
| Highly paid tech workers are still workers, albeit ones
| that tend to lack class consciousness because they think
| they're on top (until they get fired en masse to save
| profits).
|
| Management earning wildly disproportionate salaries
| should share first. Management is worthless without
| labor, yet is responsible for choking workers from their
| fair share.
| thorncorona wrote:
| Yeah it's a ridiculous opinion when those holding our
| leashes make billions.
| rayiner wrote:
| It's not "ridiculous." The median American simply has
| more money under the American system. The OECD collects
| detailed data on this:
| https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-disposable-
| income.htm. Look at the dataset "gross incl. social
| transfers in kind" which looks at disposable income
| accounting for universal healthcare, etc. America is head
| and shoulders ahead of EU countries like Germany.
|
| Americans might be selfish but they're not irrational.
| Much of my family immigrated to Australia and Canada. My
| mom just got back from a long trip there, and was
| complaining about how small and close together the houses
| are, and how doctors can't really get rich there. If you
| care more about the square footage of your house or the
| number of cars you have (and Americans do, and
| continually import immigrants who have similar values)
| than about health care for poor people, then the specific
| trade-offs made in America economic policy are totally
| rational.
| thorncorona wrote:
| I think you're switchtracking me.
|
| I'm saying that governmental policies have allied the
| poor and the ultra wealthy to the detriment of the middle
| class. GP was saying American dev salaries are too high,
| when really they are not the issue compared to how many
| tax breaks 10MM+ individuals have gotten.
|
| Investors have bought up 40% of the real estate in some
| counties in the US. That's ridiculous.
|
| When the government _allows_ for predatory behavior by
| companies and the ultra wealthy that lowers their
| responsibility to society that is not a burden for the
| middle class to bear.
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| I don't understand why more people don't think like this.
| Even from a selfish point of view - you get to live in a
| place with less violent crime, you get to experience
| living in a "happier" community, etc etc
|
| I feel like this is the opposite of what's happened here
| in the UK and the timescales are not that long but the
| collective amnesia is staggering. Even just as far back
| at the mid 00's seems to have fallen out of the memory of
| a large proportion of the population.
| novok wrote:
| Violent crime & affordability issues in cities is a
| choice set by policy makers to make some politically
| connected people richer, it is not an attribute of
| cities. Poverty stricken rural places are just as bad, or
| even worse in many cases.
| arcturus17 wrote:
| Why are the people saying this not donating half of their
| 200k salaries? Is the only way to re-distribute your
| personal wealth by being compelled by market conditions
| or by the state?
| teawrecks wrote:
| Because they don't want to selflessly give away $100k for
| nothing. Rather they selfishly want to live in a
| healthier society. You're proposing they trade something
| for nothing, and that's misguided in the best case, or
| disingenuous in the worst.
| lordfrito wrote:
| I think the point being made is that it's trivially easy
| to make armchair moral/ethical arguments about spending
| money in other peoples wallets. And that the arguments
| would be taken more seriously if the person arguing has
| actually demonstrated that they have skin in the game,
| staked their own wallet.
|
| Isn't that what the complaints about NIMBYism are all
| about? Yeah, I'm all for having other people solving the
| problems of the poor workers. I don't have to do anything
| until they do. While we're at it, lets have the software
| developers clothe and house them as well. They can
| clearly afford it. It's only fair. Am I a good person
| now?
|
| Talk is cheap. Do something first before complaining
| about what others aren't doing.
| whoknew1122 wrote:
| It's a silly argument. Me donating half my salary, today,
| doesn't make any sense because it won't materially impact
| anything.
|
| If there were a stronger social safety net and everyone
| had to pay a bit more in tax, then that would actually
| impact something.
| teawrecks wrote:
| Again, the goal is not selflessness, it's selfishness.
| The selfish want to form a more perfect union. No one is
| saying they want to give away half their salary for
| nothing, no one is expecting anyone else to do so either.
|
| It's effectively a bunch of people who want a crowd
| funding campaign for a product to exist, and everyone
| else saying "if you want to throw your money away, here's
| a trash can". That's entirely missing the point and
| completely unhelpful. The goal is to make a collective
| investment and get something in return.
|
| If we're being real, this group, myself included, is only
| one step removed from a NIMBY, but it is what it is. If
| you want to suggest I abandon the little leverage I have
| to put towards creating a better society for myself and
| the people around me, I would say: you first. Oh, not
| interested? Welcome to the club. Now let's work together
| to make this place we live better.
| [deleted]
| arcturus17 wrote:
| In Europe, even in the wealthiest countries, average
| programmer salaries are about 10% higher than the
| national salary at best. This would mean probably cutting
| your salary in half, instead of talking about it. It
| would be interesting to see you face that reality. Words
| are cheap.
|
| And besides if you think that's an economically feasible
| zero-sum calculus, I don't even know what to tell you.
|
| But if you really think you earn too much, you can donate
| 40-50% of your salary and truly transform another
| person's life or make an astonishing impact in a charity
| of your choice. I hope you are being coherent with your
| words and are already doing this.
| teawrecks wrote:
| > I hope you are being coherent with your words and are
| already doing this.
|
| How do you feel about people who say to protestors, "if
| you don't like it here, move"?
|
| You're peddling the same logical fallacy that
| conservative billionaires have convinced the lower-middle
| class of for a century.
|
| OP proposes a trade: their high salary for a society that
| prioritizes the wellbeing of everyone over the wellbeing
| of the luckiest few. In response, you suggest that OP
| should give away half their salary to another individual,
| and they've solved their problem.
|
| The fallacy here is that you assume assume OP's goal is
| to be purely selfless; that is not the case. OP very
| selfishly wants to live in a healthier, more sustainable
| society than they currently do. In response, you
| disingenuously suggest that they take all of the
| negatives of their the trade with none of the positives.
|
| Hopefully you see why that's not helpful to anyone.
| jkubicek wrote:
| This is very well put, you said it better than I ever
| have myself.
|
| One thing I'd add is that, even if I were able to give
| away enough of my income to make a difference in my
| community, everyone in the community would benefit, but I
| would be the only one paying for it. I find this
| intensely unfair and distasteful.
|
| This is similar to how I felt during the height of the
| bay area mask mandates when most people were masked and
| one or two families were not. Those folks were reaping
| all the benefits of widespread vaccinations and masking,
| yet bearing none of the burden. I despised those people
| probably more than was healthy.
| andsoitis wrote:
| What holds workers back from starting companies with the
| culture they want?
| hcurtiss wrote:
| People will say capital, but there are successful
| businesses in America started in garages literally every
| day. Not every one becomes Apple, but many of them go on to
| support lots of families.
| ABCLAW wrote:
| >People will say capital
|
| Because the answer is capital.
| dantheman wrote:
| The answer is that it's hard and people want to be
| rewarded for the hard work at the market rate.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| There are many, many examples proving that's wrong.
| ABCLAW wrote:
| Both neoliberal and classical definitions of capital make
| it nearly tautologically required as an input for
| production. 'Wealth' and 'Capital' aren't the same thing.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Capital isn't the only thing that prevents workers from
| starting companies.
|
| Vision, good ideas, the ability to inspire, bringing
| people together, luck, etc. all factor in. To single out
| capital is to say if anyone has money they will be able
| to start a successful business.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Yes, but the assertion is that so much capital is
| required that it's a barrier to starting a business. And
| that's just not true. It is definitely possible to
| bootstrap a small business, and there are many government
| programs available to help. The bigger barrier, in my
| opinion, is an appetite for risk. In that capacity,
| America is definitely following in Europe's footsteps.
| dnrvs wrote:
| money
| dffdsa432 wrote:
| [flagged]
| jimbokun wrote:
| capital
| 56friends wrote:
| There is almost nothing that doesn't stop them.
| LambdaComplex wrote:
| You say that like starting your own automotive company from
| the ground up is as easy as pouring a bowl of cereal for
| breakfast.
| ericd wrote:
| Then try a less capital-intensive industry? If you don't
| have capital, and you want to use a _lot_ of it from
| other people, then maybe you don't get to dictate how
| that capital is used?
| sangnoir wrote:
| s/capital/labor/
|
| No? Why is it capital can dictate what labor does, but
| the reverse isn't true? Is it some law of nature, or a
| cultural victory by capital.
| ericd wrote:
| Because in that industry, you need a _lot_ of capital,
| which usually means you need to convince people to lend
| you theirs. If you're in an industry that doesn't, and
| labor is the limiting factor (tech is more in this vein),
| then labor tends to get its way. This has been a bit
| mixed up by super loose monetary policy, but that's not
| historically the norm.
| sangnoir wrote:
| I get your point: I was just making it clear that the
| opposite isn't true for labor-intensive industries where
| one has to gain the labor from a lot of people and still
| get to dictate how the labor is used. The obvious
| conclusion is that it's not about the quantity of
| capital/labor, but the current economic system where
| capital is king.
| andsoitis wrote:
| I wonder whether it isn't more fundamental. I think the
| underlying principle is "leverage" and "scarcity". The
| more leverage an input has and or the more scarce it is,
| the more it is prized, everything else being equal.
|
| That's why some labor is more highly paid or has more
| power than other kinds of labor. Capital, likewise has
| inherent leverage and scarcity power.
| ericd wrote:
| Yep, this. Most labor has much less leverage now that
| it's more easily replaceable by equally talented people
| half a world away. It's just in areas with shortages
| where it has strong negotiating leverage.
| peyton wrote:
| Property rights aren't a law of nature, but we've all
| come together and decided that we want them. I'm sure
| there are ways for groups of people to try other models
| on their own.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > but we've all come together and decided that we want
| them
|
| We have not, in fact "all come together and decided that
| we want" the capitalist model of property rights, and
| indeed the long term evolution since the early 20th
| century has been away from that model, which was largely
| imposed top-down jointly by the rising capitalist class
| and the fading pre-capitalist aristocracy.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| This isn't true. All settled agrarian societies need
| property rights, and allow for the accumulation of
| capital. You need to be assured the grain you grow will
| be yours to eat. You also need to be assured that the
| grain you've stockpiled for the winter will not be
| redistributed to people who may be staving _now_ ,
| otherwise _you 'll starve_ in the winter. Everything else
| flows from here.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > all settled agrarian societies need property rights
|
| Perhaps, but the upthread discussion doesn't hinge on
| merely the existence of property rights, but the very
| specific capitalist model of property rights, which
| obviously, not all settled agrarian societies have
| needed, since it is several millenia newer than settled
| agrarian societies are.
|
| Defenders of capitalism love to argue about the need for
| "property rights" and then just leap from there to "and,
| therefore, capitalism".
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Property rights + individual liberty = capitalism.
|
| The right to accumulate capital, and the freedom to
| voluntarily transact with others without outside
| interference is all that's needed to accumulate enormous
| wealth.
|
| There is no dismantling of capitalism without
| compromising either property rights (ownership of
| land/stuff) or individual liberty (labour regulation).
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Property rights + individual liberty = capitalism.
|
| No, one very specific model of property rights (plus _no_
| individual liberty not subsumed within that model) =
| capitalism.
|
| But, again, the capitalist model of property rights isn't
| the only one, and the developed West, where capitalism
| first became dominant, has been drifting away from the
| capitalist model of property rights for about 100 years
| now. (While at the same time rejecting alternatives that
| much more stridently oppose the capitalist model that
| grew up in places that attempted to avoid capitalism
| entirely.)
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Can you describe the difference between the "capitalist"
| model of property rights and the common law model? I
| wouldn't classify ancient Roman property law as
| fundamentally different from ours today, would you?
|
| Would you say that the ancient world practiced
| capitalism? Surely they had wealthy classes of merchants,
| landowners, bankers, etc. who accumulated capital and did
| stuff with it.
| ABCLAW wrote:
| I'm not going to discuss any of the tie-ins with
| capitalism, because frankly I don't care to, but I'm
| going to point out that as a historical note this is not
| an accurate representation of legal history. In fact it
| largely ignores it.
|
| Our current system of real property ownership is a result
| of adopting feudal legal structures to the growing need
| of society to build durable capital investments on land
| during the advent of industrialization. The 'fee' in fee
| simple is etyomologically derived from 'fief', a system
| in which land titles were granted to people in exchange
| for fealty and servility.
|
| Agrarian societies had significantly different needs and
| organized their affairs differently and they didn't
| starve during the winters. Except for those that did,
| like the settlers in iceland, who died from potentially
| too many property rights as landholdings became
| concentrated in the hands of a few small families which
| left their society brittle enough to be wiped out by
| inuit raids.
|
| Anyways, the naturalistic fallacy isn't good support for
| current property rights, which are about as artificial as
| any law gets.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| > _adopting feudal legal structures to the growing need
| of society to build durable capital investments_
|
| I would agree with the former, and not the latter. As
| soon as dispute resolution and contract negotiation
| became sufficiently formalized, and our societies became
| sufficiently _nonviolent_ , a class of people emerges who
| are able to accumulate capital legitimately (merchants,
| bankers, landowners). This all happens prior to any sort
| of industrialization, and can rather be seen as a
| prerequisite for it. Nowhere is this more clear than in
| Edo Japan, which was hardly industrialized, yet saw the
| emergence of a wealthy merchant class due to the legal
| structures which protected their assets from arbitrary
| seizure and redistribution. Wealthy non-ruling classes
| also existed all over Europe prior to industrialization.
|
| > _the naturalistic fallacy_
|
| The assertion that property rights _ought to exist_ isn
| 't a naturalistic one. I was simply pointing out that
| property rights are hardly a new development in
| civilization. Property rights can be asserted morally,
| without any naturalism, by equating the outputs of one's
| labour with an extension of one's self. If you have
| produced something for yourself, with your own time and
| labour, it should be _yours_ do dispense with as you see
| fit, in the same way that your body is. A claim over one
| 's property must therefore be justified as though it were
| a claim over one's own person, and this rather reduces
| the scope of legitimate claims.
| dublinben wrote:
| This is an ahistorical retelling of the development of
| property rights and capital. Agrarian societies existed
| for thousands of years[0], before the enclosure movement
| turned to commons into capital that could be privately
| owned.[1]
|
| [0] https://www.british-
| history.ac.uk/vch/salop/vol4/pp20-26
|
| [1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/enclosure
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I'm aware of enclosure, but it doesn't conflict with the
| notion of accumulated capital. Aside from precious
| metals, wealth in the agrarian world was often measured
| in fixed quantities of organic outputs - mostly grain,
| but also raw textile, etc. This _is capital_. It can be
| exchanged for goods, services, and real property. A 10th
| century merchant was a _capitalist_. He accumulated
| wealth and used it to expand his enterprise. This had a
| compounding effect and made some people _very wealthy_.
| Owning a fleet of trading ships is _a business_.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| Centuries of capitalists hoarding capital.
| qikInNdOutReply wrote:
| They are not very standing out, all big german companys have
| that model?
|
| Also that model swings both ways. Employees will usually
| remain loyal to the bitter end.
| moooo99 wrote:
| > They are not very standing out, all big german companys
| have that model?
|
| Its pretty much mandatory for many big German companies
| dffdsa432 wrote:
| [flagged]
| missedthecue wrote:
| That makes about as much sense to me as putting CEOs on the
| board of unions.
| Agingcoder wrote:
| It creates trust.
|
| Basically, instead of having unions/employees explain in
| conspiratorial tones why management is evil, they see
| what's happening for real. It's a lot harder to say 'evil
| board' when you have a seat there and are (for example)
| facing massive losses - your job then becomes to build a
| collective, satisfactory solution rather than just stay in
| the opposition and complain. Because employees trust the
| board, they will also accept changes, sometimes hard ones.
| greenn wrote:
| The difference might be that workers have an interest in
| maintaining the business so they still have well paid jobs
| while CEOs do not necessarily have an interest in unions'
| well-being.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Many CEOs don't even have an interest in the company's
| well being (in the long run at at least)
| nickbauman wrote:
| The big German companies invite the unions in because they
| are a source of innovation too. And managing the connection
| between the people who actually build the cars and the
| people who design/plan them is important.
| LegitShady wrote:
| big german companies do it because they are required to
| by law.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_representation_on_co
| rpo...
| nickbauman wrote:
| This is interesting. I sat next to a German manager of
| DaimlerChrysler (which really dates me, I know) on a
| flight. He agreed with the idea of worker unions being
| inside the company and having a seat at the table. He
| also disliked the practice of building cars "offshore"
| because, he said "the knowledge of building the car
| leaves the country".
| LegitShady wrote:
| Nonetheless, they don't let them on the board out of any
| self interest aside from following the law.
| nasmorn wrote:
| The designers are also unionized
| NickC25 wrote:
| I actually see no problem with that. If the employees have
| a mechanism to keep management in check, there should be a
| way of management keeping employees in check. As long as
| there's a way to make sure everyone is on the same page,
| and there's harmony on and also between every level of the
| company, that's fine in my book.
| leshow wrote:
| > there should be a way of management keeping employees
| in check
|
| You mean like the power to hire and fire them, tell them
| what to do, and how much they get paid?
| xerxesaa wrote:
| Supervisory boards are super common in Germany. I am not sure
| if there is some legal requirement that makes this the case,
| but you see it at many large companies.
| apexalpha wrote:
| It's a legal requirement. I think for any company with >100
| employees. But don't quote me on the number. :)
| zackmorris wrote:
| Allowed? We can choose not to work for companies that ban
| workers from their boards. Which is pretty much all of the
| big companies in the US.
|
| It's funny that we have a dozen different open source
| software licenses that are all some version of "how can we
| give this to you even freer" but we have no notion of what an
| equitable work contract looks like. Until that changes,
| things will never, ever, get better for workers.
| [deleted]
| guerrilla wrote:
| > Allowed? We can choose not to work for companies that ban
| workers from their boards. Which is pretty much all of the
| big companies in the US.
|
| No you can't. You're not thinking this through. As soon as
| enough people quit in order to start pressuring companies
| to allow this, it becomes more difficult for the growing
| pool of quitters to get new jobs and it becomes a buyers
| market, putting you in an even weaker position than you
| already were in. On top of that, capital always has more of
| an ability to hold out far longer. You need to eat and pay
| rent right now while they can scale down production until
| you come back with terms favorable to them. This is why
| unions save money ahead of time so that they can strike.
| true_religion wrote:
| The most charitable reading of the OP is to believe that
| they _want_ a union, since group labour negotiations are
| simplified when you have an official group representing
| you.
|
| So long as the company acts as a group and labour acts as
| a individuals, all the bargaining power will be on the
| side of the company.
|
| I think the union formed at Microsoft may be a good
| example to follow.
| eduction wrote:
| You are of course entirely correct. Unilaterally quitting
| or refusing an offer isn't going to achieve much.
|
| I do think a strike could be effective here though. A
| company is in more of a bind when all / many of its
| workers refuse to work.
| ericd wrote:
| So go start a worker-friendly company?
| zackmorris wrote:
| Ya that's what I'm wondering. The central problem seems
| to be wealth inequality (that capital has been separated
| from labor). So there's no money available for laid-off
| workers to start a business, maybe by design.
|
| As far as I can tell, there is simply no place where a
| group of workers can borrow money. We have no concept of
| loans co-signed by a large number of people in the US.
|
| For example, there should be a floor at which a loan is
| deemed risk-free because a typical person has that much
| money. Any of us can donate $5 to someone living on the
| street at any time. So 100 people should be able to
| borrow $500 together, no questions asked.
|
| Now, how high can that go? Certainly $20 each. Maybe
| $100? $300? It's going to be an amount similar to what
| payday loan shops offer to strangers.
|
| To me, this is like customer acquisition cost (CAC). In
| the 90s, CAC was under $1 before advertising got
| saturated. Today it's between $25 and $50, which has
| eliminated nearly all indie websites selling handmade
| goods for less than that. And driven the rise of
| influencers, and incentivized taking over making.
|
| I know we have Kickstarter etc. But for something like
| this to work, it would need to be available everywhere
| immediately with no nonsense, no exorbitant interest or
| fees and no wait time. The government could offer group
| loans like this with a $100 per person limit today and
| bootstrap the economy to where it was 25 years ago and
| make a huge return.
|
| Maybe this is what drove crypto and NFTs, just in a way
| that was obviously going to implode because workers were
| expected to pony up the cash. So I'd be curious to hear
| if investors know of any places to take out group loans
| like this.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >The central problem seems to be wealth inequality (that
| capital has been separated from labor).
|
| The central problem will be inequality of all kinds, such
| as aptitude/motiviation/effort/etc. Eventually, in many
| businesses, you will get into a situation where some
| people will think they deserve more than others, and then
| politics will take over, and you have a similar problem
| to weaknesses in democracy.
|
| >As far as I can tell, there is simply no place where a
| group of workers can borrow money. We have no concept of
| loans co-signed by a large number of people in the US.
|
| There is. A family reunion, a bank, a credit union, a
| local business group meeting, etc. There is nothing
| stopping this happening other than the fact that it is
| not economic. Underwriting, agency risk, and pursuing
| unpaid debt is not a negligible problem.
|
| >For example, there should be a floor at which a loan is
| deemed risk-free because a typical person has that much
| money. Any of us can donate $5 to someone living on the
| street at any time. So 100 people should be able to
| borrow $500 together, no questions asked.
|
| Very few lenders exist who would accept that deal. As a
| lender, would you?
| zackmorris wrote:
| _The central problem will be inequality of all kinds,
| such as aptitude /motiviation/effort/etc. Eventually, in
| many businesses, you will get into a situation where some
| people will think they deserve more than others, and then
| politics will take over, and you have a similar problem
| to weaknesses in democracy._
|
| That's othering. You're separating the "us" that are hard
| workers and successful from the "them" that are slackers.
|
| But wealth inequality is an injustice specifically
| because it doesn't discriminate.
|
| For example: in software development the hardest workers
| are penalized because the 10:1 or 100:1 leverage in their
| solutions often isn't recognized or rewarded. They might
| get paid twice as much as another dev even though decades
| of experience and orders of magnitude differences in
| problem-solving capacity separate them. That could be
| where your perception comes from, if you feel undervalued
| for your work and see others around you as entitled.
|
| The hardest workers I've met in my life were generally
| the lowest paid. When I was moving furniture from
| 2001-2003, women automatically were paid $9/hr to pack
| boxes while the men were paid $10/hr to load them. Never
| mind that packing is a much more difficult job
| psychologically. I could pack about 30 boxes/day if I
| went as fast as I could, while a woman I worked with
| averaged 80. Almost 3 times my productivity for less pay
| and opportunity. And she had kids. And she didn't have
| the money to go to the dentist. And she never complained.
| Not like me.
|
| Today 20 years later, costs have at least doubled while
| pay has stayed the same. I worry for her and the
| literally 100 million Americans who work harder than we
| do and live hand to mouth. It's a travesty of such
| proportion that it's become unthinkable. We literally
| can't overcome our own biases to think about it
| rationally. Our inability to empathize is the root cause
| of suffering.
|
| So yes, I would make that loan all day. And nothing
| against you, I don't know you, I don't mean to be
| critical. I just feel that your argument is rooted in
| bias which somewhat ironically causes you to not
| entertain the insights I've gained acquiring my bias.
|
| Edit: I may have misread your point. Do you mean that
| some people will think they deserve more than others and
| hoard the profits of the business? Sorry if I got that
| backwards or projected my context onto what you said.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >That's othering. You're separating the "us" that are
| hard workers and successful from the "them" that are
| slackers.
|
| Yes, and I posit "othering" is an innate part of humans
| (and other animals). Of course, it is worthwhile to work
| against excessive "othering" that causes a net loss in
| the functioning of society.
|
| >Do you mean that some people will think they deserve
| more than others and hoard the profits of the business?
|
| Yes, although I would not make a judgment call as to
| whether or not it is "hoarding".
| specialist wrote:
| IIRC, Richard Wolfe, advocate of worker-directed social
| enterprises, mentioned that old school unions like SEIU
| are now funding startups, small businesses, etc. Maybe
| like a Small Business Administration and credit union for
| union members.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Some people do that. The majority though can't afford to
| do that, obviously. It's amazing that people can be so
| disconnected from reality to not see that as obvious.
| ericd wrote:
| It was meant to provoke some thought as to why there
| aren't more worker friendly companies out there given
| that everyone seems to want them. Obviously not everyone
| is in a good situation to start their own.
| Retric wrote:
| I think you have that backwards, the more people quit the
| easier it is to get a job.
| guerrilla wrote:
| No, not if they are all quitting companies without these
| conditions to go to companies that do. You cannot create
| the pressure necessary to make the desired changes just
| by quitting.
| Retric wrote:
| If 1/2 of Microsoft's workforce decided to quit tonight
| the company would go ballistic looking for workers.
|
| The lag between people quitting and people finding their
| next job reduces the labor supply. That's compounded by
| onboarding time required to conduct interviews and get
| people up to speed etc. It's why companies so frequently
| fold in the face of strikes rather than just fire
| everyone, they have a great deal of individual leverage
| on any one employee but are completely dependent on
| having a workforce.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Yes, I did mention unions in my first post but that isn't
| what the person I was responding to was suggesting. They
| were suggesting individual action, not collective action.
| Retric wrote:
| I assumed he was talking about collective action or it's
| functional equivalent here:
|
| > As soon as _enough_ people quit
|
| You don't actually need a formal union to get large
| numbers of people to quit.
| gautamdivgi wrote:
| You can't choose not to work in the US. You will be without
| health insurance.
|
| I don't know of single US company that allows their workers
| on their board. I'm not against it. I think it's an awesome
| idea.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I do not know of a single US company that does not allow
| workers (employees) on the board.
|
| Technically, if a CEO is on the board, then a company's
| employee is on the board. Shareholders will probably not
| vote to put a line level employee on the board, though.
| sergiomattei wrote:
| Let's not argue semantics. They mean exactly what you
| mention: line-level labor.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is not semantics, because the statement that line
| level employees are banned from being on the board of
| directors is false. And that is important because the
| reason line level employees are not found on boards is
| that it rarely makes economic sense for a company's
| owners to put a line level employee on the board. And
| that is important because then the solution would have to
| be legislation.
|
| So the conversation becomes, should the government(s) in
| the US force businesses to place line level employees on
| the board (if the line level employees want to be on the
| board), and under what parameters?
| JakeTheAndroid wrote:
| Your entire line of comments seems to miss the entire
| conversation.
|
| In Germany, they do find it economically viable and
| important for line level employees to have direct
| representation on the company board. Talking about the
| CEO or other management classes being on the board is
| missing the conversation. Suggesting that because US
| companies don't believe in the economic value is missing
| the conversation. Suggesting that people are saying that
| this type of board composition is illegal is also missing
| the conversation. No one said it's illegal, but it's
| equally not a legal requirement either like it is in
| other places.
|
| The conversation is that this composition doesn't exist,
| by and large, in the US, and people think it should.
| People seem to believe that it does have value to the
| business.
|
| So yes, it does seem like you're creating semantic
| arguments because your points miss the conversation
| semantically.
| astrange wrote:
| Europe has sectoral bargaining (whole-industry unions)
| and codetermination (workers on boards) because they're
| running on newer legal systems than the US. It'd probably
| work here, but we have older corporate unions (per-
| company unions) which causes unions and management to
| fight each other more.
|
| On the other hand, we do have higher productivity, but
| not having codetermination probably isn't the reason for
| that.
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| Excluding a handful of co-ops, I don't know of a single
| company that does. This isn't about having one board
| member who happens to be an employee, it's about having
| >=50% of the board democratically elected by the
| employees.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it 's about having >=50% of the board democratically
| elected by the employees_
|
| Is this how workers' councils work in Germany?
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| Yes, for companies with over 2000 employees, although the
| chairman of the board (who must not be an employee
| representative) gets the right to cast tie-breaking
| votes.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Line level employees at employee owned companies are
| shareholders; perhaps the problem is not enough employee
| owned companies.
|
| https://www.certifiedeo.com/
| [deleted]
| specialist wrote:
| socialism, _def._ : when the working class aspire to join
| the ownership class.
| terr-dav wrote:
| "workers aspiring to join the owning class" sounds more
| like effective capitalist propaganda to me. A socialist
| aspiration would be to remove the distinction between
| owner and worker. By transforming a business to worker-
| ownership, the owning vs working class distinction is
| eliminated.
|
| The compliment to "workers aspiring to join the owning
| class" is that the biggest risk a capitalist faces is the
| possibility of being thrust back into the working-class,
| and having to actually work for a living, as opposed to
| living off of profits derived from the labor of others.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| In theory, socialism is when the working class
| redistributes the ownership class's assets.
|
| In practice, socialism is a power grab where populist
| leaders redistribute the ownership classes' assets to
| themselves.
| astrange wrote:
| The obvious issue here is that workers don't want to own
| their company and probably shouldn't. A .001% stake in a
| company is less useful than a 50% stake, and it's well
| known that if you work at a company that pays you in
| shares you should immediately sell them and buy an index
| fund.
| [deleted]
| georgeecollins wrote:
| Many companies in the US are employee owned. I think
| that's great and I would love to see people on HN form
| more of them.
|
| https://www.nceo.org/articles/employee-ownership-100
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| The system in Germany specifically differentiates between
| employees and the so-called managerial class: once you
| reach a certain amount of leadership, you aren't eligible
| for the workers council anymore, even if you are an
| employee.
| rayiner wrote:
| > You can't choose not to work in the US. You will be
| without health insurance.
|
| Neither Medicaid nor Obamacare require you to work. My
| father in law did this in Oregon. "Retired" years before
| being eligible for Medicare, and is covered by the Oregon
| Health Plan. In Oregon you don't even have to be legally
| in the country to qualify for fill OHP benefits.
| ericd wrote:
| You can buy health insurance on the marketplaces
| yourself, it's not hard, and it's much cheaper than eg
| housing in most places that are MCOL and up. The
| challenge is saving up enough to pay for all your living
| expenses while you're choosing not to work.
| misnome wrote:
| Isn't there supposed to be a problem with health
| providers explicitly rejecting insurance
| companies/packages that are possible to buy yourself?
|
| You don't really have a choice if nobody where you live
| will take your insurance...
| ericd wrote:
| I've never had that issue, or even heard of that issue,
| but I've only bought insurance from relatively large
| insurance companies, maybe it's an issue if you try to
| save money by going with a small one with no network.
| danenania wrote:
| I've had good and bad experiences. One thing I learned
| the hard way is that even as a young person with low
| healthcare costs, it's a _very_ bad idea to just choose
| the cheapest plan without doing any research.
|
| Some of the low cost companies are essentially scams:
| most of the "providers" they list on their site will not
| actually accept the plan; if you do have any medical
| costs, they will do everything possible to avoid paying
| even when you are clearly covered; you'll wait for hours
| on hold to talk to support, then they will be rude and
| unhelpful; etc. etc.
|
| It's well worth paying an extra hundred or so per month
| for a reputable provider so that you at least have actual
| functional health insurance.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Not in my experience. On east and west coasts, there are
| at least a couple widely accepted insurance plans
| available. A BCBS affiliate, a vertically integrated one
| like Kaiser or Providence, and other insurers offering
| PPO plans like UHC/Aetna/Cigna/Humana/etc.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Last I checked there were two companies offering
| insurance to individuals in my state--yes, two, yes, I'm
| serious, no, not just on the marketplace, there were no
| other providers who will take individual customers
| _period_ , yes, I checked _a lot_ and was repeatedly
| told, explicitly, by people who ought to know, that those
| were the only two options and other insurers had pulled
| out entirely from offering individual plans in this
| state.
|
| Both would only cover one of the four nearest major
| hospitals to me (though they did differ in which one it
| was) and only one of the two covered the huge local
| children's hospital that's also bought up nearly all the
| independent pediatrician's offices and pediatric urgent
| cares in the entire city, so if you have kids you
| actually only have one "option".
|
| So much for the bounty of choice we preserved by not just
| going single-payer.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| "There's supposed to be a problem.." I think that is a
| story you hear for political reasons because sadly
| healthcare became a partisan issue.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The plans in my state that you can buy on the open market
| are the same plans offered to local companies and the
| government for employer subsidized health care.
|
| There might be some states where the marketplace has
| nothing good in it, often because that state's governor
| was so ideologically driven they refused free money from
| the feds to expand medicare style systems. American
| health care is HUGELY state to state, largely depending
| on how willing a governor is to actually help their
| constituents instead of virtue signalling.
| johnebgd wrote:
| It is definitely not "cheaper" in my experience but the
| marketplace is definitely easy to buy good insurance
| through. That said, you need income to support the
| massive monthly payments. Family plans in the most
| desirable places to live can easily be $40k/year for the
| insurance policy before you have to cover any out of
| pocket expenses.
|
| Health insurance is the "golden handcuffs" for most
| people staying in a job.
| toast0 wrote:
| GP was saying health insurance is cheaper than housing in
| MCOL areas. Implying if you can pay to live somewhere
| nice with no job, you can pay for health insurance too.
|
| Regardless, there's subsidies if you don't have income,
| and it's just based on income; there's no requirement to
| seek income.
|
| I'm near seattle, and my marketplace place for 2 adults
| around 40 and 1 child was around $1,200; unsubsidized.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| You can't choose not to work anywhere, you'll starve.
|
| Class struggle happens everywhere and workers can win
| anywhere, even the US.
| pirate787 wrote:
| There's an entire class of corporate ownership that's
| employee-owned in the USA.
|
| https://www.nceo.org/what-is-employee-ownership
| mareko wrote:
| Definitely an awesome idea. If you ever need an example,
| cLabs.co is a US corporation that has an employee board
| seat.
| themitigating wrote:
| Since most people need a job to pay for housing, food, and
| medicial needs companies have the upper hand
| moffkalast wrote:
| So, a 13th salary? This is fairly common.
| netrus wrote:
| Mercedes Benz is an IG Metall company. So this is on top of
| the 13th-14th salary that is standard throughout the whole
| industry. This is basically their way of going above-and-
| beyond the industry Tarifvertrag (that is already considered
| to be quite generous for German standards).
| elil17 wrote:
| I don't understand what you mean by this. I'm not sure what
| it is in Germany, but an auto plant employee in the US would
| max out there salary around $50 or $60k/year with overtime.
| Many make much less than that. This is probably a 10 to 20%
| bonus for many of their workers, which is extremely high for
| factory work.
| outside1234 wrote:
| In some countries it is tradition for the company to pay
| out a "13th month" of salary as bonus. (Just explaining the
| reference)
| brewdad wrote:
| It that really the going rate for an auto worker in the US
| these days? I knew people making $100k+ per year at those
| jobs 30 years ago. They worked as much overtime as they
| could get but some of them saved a ton. Others bought boats
| and second homes.
| bluedino wrote:
| > an auto plant employee in the US would max out there
| salary around $50 or $60k/year with overtime
|
| That's definitely wrong.
|
| _GM has said its average hourly worker earns around
| $90,000 in wages, overtime and profit sharing. The only
| workers who can reach that level are skilled trades, about
| 15% of the workforce, the UAW said. In-progression and temp
| workers earn much less.
|
| However, a GM spokesman countered that skilled trades
| workers earn up to $123,000 annually, including profit
| sharing and overtime but not benefits._
|
| https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2019/09/27/gm-
| strike-...
| elil17 wrote:
| Skilled trades workers can make that much, but those
| aren't the majority of jobs.
|
| Glassdoor says Mercedes Benz production workers make
| about $18/hour on average:
| https://www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/Mercedes-Benz-USA-
| Assem...
| alex_sf wrote:
| This is a fairly normal structure for large German companies,
| fwiw.
| arrrg wrote:
| Worker Councils are to be elected in German companies beyond a
| certain (small) size (at least five employees who can vote and
| three employees who can be elected). This doesn't mean that all
| German companies have them. The workers have to organize the
| vote themselves and if they don't do it then there's no Works
| Council. Tactics similar to union busting are also a thing in
| Germany to prevent Worker Councils from forming.
|
| However, large (old) companies will nearly always have such a
| Council in Germany.
|
| What can they do? Basically, they do have a voice concerning
| anything that touches the day to day working situation. Monitor
| whether the employees adheres to norms and rules. Employers
| also have to inform the Council members about anything relevant
| going on concerning the workers.
|
| Especially when it comes to hiring, firing and restructuring
| the Council can also veto and force the employer to sue and get
| the court to override the veto. In general you don't really
| want to have the Council on your bad side as an employer, even
| though the power isn't limitless and how much power there is in
| practice depends on the specific Council and how it fulfills
| its duties.
|
| Unions aren't needed for any of this but they will always want
| to help install a Workers Council.
|
| I recently started at a public health insurance and we had
| someone from the Council sit in during my interview. When I was
| on the other side and took part in an interview we also had
| someone from the Council there to look over our shoulders, also
| when we documented our evaluation of the candidate.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| I am part of my company's Betriebsrat and while sometimes it
| is a bit overwhelming, it really is a helpful provision. We
| don't have infinite powers however the company management
| respects the Betriebsrat and is always mindful when it's
| trying to enact policies.
|
| This system of checks and balances is something that's not
| much appreciated. You won't believe what companies can get
| away with if there's not Betriebsrat oversight.
| donkeyd wrote:
| A works council is a requirement for every company over 50
| employees in The Netherlands. It's pretty common that they're
| involved in deciding on bonuses like this. However, they often
| don't have that much power in the actual decision.
| hef19898 wrote:
| A worket council is by no means a union, it is an elected
| council of employees representing employees interest all the
| way to the board. Usually so, members of the workers council
| are members of whatever union is representing the industry, in
| Mercedes case IGM (Industrial union of metal and electronic
| workers). Those members tend not to be union functionaries, but
| the head of Mercedes workers council for sure is an important
| figure within IGM.
|
| I do have my issues with all rhe politics and self serving that
| can happen with those councils, the overall idea is pretty
| solid so.
|
| For one situation gone wrong, google VWs Brazil scandals
| involving various private jet trips for high ranking worker
| councils members to visit their mistresses in Brazil.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > This General Works Council seems to be something like a
| separate "union within the company",
|
| No, its work council or workers' council that is integrated to
| the company's top management per regulations. Germany and
| various countries have them, and its a Eu recommendation. It
| seems to work quite well judging from the last 2 decades.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I agree that structure sounds enticing.
|
| I'm not sure the comparison between companies in different
| countries, in different industries/segments is really useful
| though. It sounds like you're implying the structure prevented
| layoffs. But in reality I feel it had little to do with
| profitability. Kind of like blaming a president for the overal
| stock market going up or down.
| agilob wrote:
| Such things exist because of an EU directive
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_council
| lispm wrote:
| Germany had that before the EU existed.
| acchow wrote:
| Those record profits are past looking and don't predict how
| future years will play out. Many tech companies over-hired and
| need to trim.
|
| For comparison, Google just announced layoffs of 12k today. By
| Sept 2022, Google had 187k employees. This is up 68k from 119k
| in Sept 2019's or growth of 57% from pre-pandemic. The 12k
| layoffs today represent less than 17.6% of their _growth_ in
| new employees since before the pandemic.
|
| Contrast with Mercedes Benz which had 152k employees in 2019
| and 173k employees today, a growth of only 13.8% since pre-
| pandemic.
| kristaps wrote:
| Meanwhile at Tesla ..
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| employees are working on cars that are competitive, whose price
| are becoming more affordable and that fit people's expectation
| (cheap to maintain, highly efficient, compatible with a
| sustainable future)?
|
| I'd prefer to work at a company that will hire en masse in the
| coming years, than at one that's rich on paper but prefer to
| pay dividends and one-time bonus while having no reasonable
| roadmap for the future of mobility.
|
| I hear the Qataris and Saudis are paying well, too.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Meanwhile at Tesla employees have become millionaires off of
| stock options. Crappy place to work for other reasons, but
| pretty much everybody gets RSU's.
| recursive_ wrote:
| There's a big difference between stock options and RSUs.
| Nobody became millionaires off RSUs unless they started at
| Tesla <2018. I'm not convinced everyone at Tesla is offered
| options.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Take this as the heresay as it is, but pretty much
| everybody at Tesla gets at least $20K in RSU's. If you got
| that pre-IPO and kept it this long it's worth more than a
| million. But even if it doesn't appreciate at all, over 4
| years that's a similar payout to the MB payout referenced
| in the article.
| kgwgk wrote:
| > If you got that pre-IPO
|
| Do you realize that Tesla has gone from 1k to 100k
| employees in the meantime?
| [deleted]
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| The people working in the tesla factories, the line workers,
| are millionares? Get RSUs?
| squokko wrote:
| Car companies are in for a rough 2023 so if Mercedes loses money
| will they deduct from their salary?
| sschueller wrote:
| Do car companies claw back dividend payments?
| pjc50 wrote:
| No? Why would they do that? This is a 2022 bonus.
|
| Lack of profit might mean a smaller or no bonus at the end of
| 2023, though.
| kerpotgh wrote:
| Is this supposed to be a lot? I used to get 50% bonuses on my
| base (which was already high) when I worked on Wall St.
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