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Comment by Bedon292 | Hacker News Reader

While I agree if the 10x is making 120 and it moves to 150 that is good for everyone. But what if there is a 10x who actually makes 200. Would you ask them to take a pay cut so everyone is on that same 150? I think people will have a hard time with that. I feel people will always want more money for performing better, or get incentivised to perform at the exact right level of that compensation and not more. I am curious what other people think on this. Is there some desire that most people have to be that stellar performer and get that extra compensation, which might make them not want to Unionize so they can try? Would also be curious as to how the breakdown in these votes go. Are the people already better off (well above mean compensation) less likely to vote for Unionization?

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> While I agree if the 10x is making 120 and it moves to 150 that is good for everyone. But what if there is a 10x who actually makes 200. Would you ask them to take a pay cut so everyone is on that same 150?

I think that one key aspect of your comment is that you're taking about a 10x. Which can be generalized into a question: should a solution be rejected if it leaves a well-off minority less well-off than they are now, regardless of how much good it may do otherwise?

I, personally, think the answer to that general question is no. That answer may be hard to swallow if you're part of that well-off minority, but I don't think that changes the truth of the matter.

However, that doesn't mean that a union would or should force that guy to take a pay cut.

> I feel people will always want more money for performing better, or get incentivised to perform at the exact right level of that compensation and not more. I am curious what other people think on this.

I feel that people will always want more money regardless. I also feel that compensation is actually a poor motivator for performance. I think the real motivators for performance are internal factors (such as a desire to improve oneself, to avoid annoyance with badly made things, or to be challenged rather than bored).

Personally, I think once you make enough money, the extra compensation is more a form of recognition than anything else. Recognition doesn't have to be in the form of money, it's just that a souless corporation only cares about money, so money is the only way you can extract recognition from it.

Generally I think I agree. The well-off minority should not hold back changes for the betterment of the majority. I just wonder how that gets executed cleanly.

And you are right, compensation is definitely a form of recognition, and perhaps there are better ways to do it. Just not sure how you bestow that recognition in some reasonable way. So what other form of recognition conveys your actual value to a company? What else can be done here?

Actor’s guilds don’t specify a ceiling to wages, only floors. We could do the same here.

True, is that how people are attempting to form these sorts of unions as well? I honestly don't know what one would look like here. Are there documents from existing Software Engineer unions out there that can be used as a good model? Does the Kickstarter Union already have some form of docs in place, or is that what starts now?

It is good to incentivise stellar performances with higher pay, but for me personally, it isn't the reason I aspire to be good. I think I would do exactly the same thing in a "Star Trek-like" economy where everyone basically has the same standard of living. (Probably because I was born wealthy and am not pressured by fear of subsistence)

One thing people would probably stop doing is chasing wealth and career to the detriment of their private life, and that might be a net negative to corporate spreadsheets and economic growth, but probably a net-positive for society.

I say to both my leftist and rightist friends to please spend some time analyzing Scandinavian societies. They are much more advanced than us on a lot of social issues, and a lot of their successes are directly applicable to our societies, too.

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