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Comment by cirgue | Hacker News Reader

I am paid less than one of my peers who has a masters from a prestigious university. I am cool with this: they have more debt and a larger skill set than me. However, I am thankful that other people in the organization do not see the difference in our salaries, because I would certainly be treated differently by people outside the team. Salary gets used as a proxy for competence: why do you think people stupidly expensive luxury cars as daily drivers?

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I'm fascinated by how cashflow (student loans, mortgage, family, etc) affects compensation. Given two equally skilled individuals (including ability to negotiate) but one has a bigger mortgage,y hypothesis is the the one with the bigger mortgage will get paid more.

I believe cashflow requirements make negotiating easier (provided there is room for negotiation). I'm not even going to entertain your offer for $120k. Not because I know my market value is greater than that, but because I cannot meet my financial obligations at that point. Even if I'm a clumsy negotiator, I'll get closer to my max compensation in that situation purely because I have a higher floor.

It makes sense, in a way. You base your pay on $MONTHLY_LIVING_EXPENSES + $DESIRED_MONETARY_GAIN. You can't really change your MLE by much (not in any short timeframe anyway), so your salary negotiation starts off depending on that. In which case two people with different MLEs will bargain for different salaries with the same DMG, in the end receiving equal gratification from their different salaries.

>why do you think people stupidly expensive luxury cars as daily drivers?

I think the expectation that you drive a car that is "reasonable for your income" doesn't really hold in the parts of the tech industry where I work; It's pretty normal for highly paid people to drive junkers or not have cars at all, at least in my area and industry; Even sales people don't seem too surprised.

why do you think people stupidly expensive luxury cars as daily drivers?

Because life is more enjoyable if your car doesn't make your commute suck more than it absolutely has to?

alloy wheel and so many other items from performance cars now only bought for aesthetics make rides less smooth but people with your rationalization never skips on them.

that's the point of a performance car not to feel like you driving a sluggish sofa

So someone with low salary who goes into debt buying luxuries is perceived as being more successful and gets promoted as a result? What you point out is that without real knowledge people are forced to rely on less accurate proxies.

why if your doing the same job you should be paid the same any thing less leads to indirect discrimination.

In many jobs, there is a wide spread of productivity.

The best programmer is worth quite a bit more to the company than an average programmer. The best salesperson is the same way.

The best major league pitcher or quarterback is worth quite a bit more to their franchise than the average or the best minor league/second string replacement.

Why should someone producing more value for their company be paid the same as someone producing less?

But the OP was saying that its ok to give people who went to the right universities more pay irrespective of merit

He said his colleague has a masters degree and it's from a prestigious university and has more skills. He very specifically said there was a difference in merit.

You can't focus on just the prestigious adjective and decide that it's unfair when the person involved has considered it and appears to believe that it's fair.

Read my comment, that is explicitly not what I said. She has a better skill set than I do.

But are they the same grade ?

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