How about ... get ready for a taboo word in hi-tech: unionized? at a certain size, a hi-tech company must face labour union?
Before anyone suggests that Union protect low performer and penalized high performer, keep in mind that right now, at this moment, high performers are culled left and right in FAANG because their salary is too high.
High performers also gravitated towards "cool new projects" that are getting wiped out as well. "High performers" know that if they performed well, they will get paid more, simple. They know the game so they will choose greenfield/moonshot projects (zero maintenance, more output regardless the biz-ROI).
Also on the topic of Union pushes Offshore/Outsource => already happened for some of these FAANGs anyway. Amazon India salary is going up up up up up up to a point where it is close to US salary.
Being laid off isn’t sufficient to make this a bad situation for high performers. If they’re getting new jobs quickly, it’s just a short-term setback.
Note that I’m not commenting on how high performers are doing in terms of getting new jobs! It could be bad, it could be good, I don’t know.
But layoffs with less worker protections have always been the trade-off for higher compensation for top performers. Just because the understood risk occurred doesn’t mean that it was a bad risk to take, or even that it was much of a risk at all (especially if top performers have emergency funds that tide them over to their next job)!
All this to say that your rebuttal to the high performer argument isn’t super convincing. I’m sure it could be made better, but as it stands it’s not offering much.
> Note that I’m not commenting on how high performers are doing in terms of getting new jobs! It could be bad, it could be good, I don’t know.
> But layoffs with less worker protections have always been the trade-off for higher compensation for top performers.
We'll have to wait and see how this play out in order to validate your statement.
Will the days of top-compn for high-performers come back again? Or are we heading for correction?
Hi-tech high-compn is one factor of inflation that bleeds to housing sector (see property prices in hi-tech dense area).
My other argument would be nobody can be LeBron James: high-performer for 20+ years consistently. Some only did for one stretch (3-5 years, or just in one company; different companies have different problems and organizational challenges), some longer (10 maybe, if they're lucky).
Burnout is real in hi-tech. Nobody has done any data or correlation between high-performers, top compensation, and burnout.
I see your angle "if it's a well understood risk" a.k.a making a deal with the devil ;).
Having said that, I'd like to see how things play out rather than using previous state of the hi-tech high-compn culture that exist thanks to cheap money via US printing machine.
Makes sense, thanks for your understanding! As I alluded to, I think you can make a convincing projection that the future state will be worse. It’s just that the current situation is still within the bounds of expectation, so it’s not itself a sufficient counter argument to anti-union sentiment.
I'm also a big fan of the model Germany uses where once a company reaches a certain size they're required to have employees on the board, who can then be accountable to their coworkers and make sure they have a say in major decisions that will affect them
How about ... get ready for a taboo word in hi-tech: unionized? at a certain size, a hi-tech company must face labour union?
Before anyone suggests that Union protect low performer and penalized high performer, keep in mind that right now, at this moment, high performers are culled left and right in FAANG because their salary is too high.
High performers also gravitated towards "cool new projects" that are getting wiped out as well. "High performers" know that if they performed well, they will get paid more, simple. They know the game so they will choose greenfield/moonshot projects (zero maintenance, more output regardless the biz-ROI).
Also on the topic of Union pushes Offshore/Outsource => already happened for some of these FAANGs anyway. Amazon India salary is going up up up up up up to a point where it is close to US salary.