Comment by buzzerbetrayed | Hacker News Reader

Comment by buzzerbetrayed | Hacker News Reader

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First off, those employees have been paid already, so I'm not sure what the relevance is. If they agreed to work for 100k/year, and forgo the risk of starting a company, why should they get more than the agreed upon price after the company does well? It may be in the companies interest to give them a bonus to keep them around, but that's a separate issue.

Second, the only way you can argue they created more value than the founder of the company is in aggregate. But they also likely made more money than the founder in aggregate. A company tries to pay employees based on the value they bring. If a CEO makes 10,000,000/year, it's probably because the company thinks that CEO is worth it (adds more value than that). So it's silly to point out that the 1000 engineers below him add more value in aggregate. Why, yes.. they also get paid way more than 10,000,000/year in aggregate.

And if the CEO/founder flat out owns the company then all this talk is irrelevant. It's theirs. They can do what they want. If they hired people to build the company for them and the people agreed, good for them. Sounds like a beneficial negotiation for both parties.

Edit: I'm not necessarily arguing for or against the existence of billionaires. That's a tough problem that I don't think I know the answer to. I'm just saying that pointing out that "employees add the real value to the company" is a dumb argument.

What you talk about in your first paragraph is irrelevant. I am talking about the actual value the employees bring through their value, not what price they managed to negotiate for their labor on the market. If a restaurant is operated by 10 employees who manage to do all the work while the owner lives in Costa Rica, then all the value is created by the employees, even if they are only paid 10 USD an hour each.

Secondly, it’s just laughably wrong to suggest that a “company tries to pay employees based on the value they bring”. Employees are paid what they need to be paid in order to get them to work there. No more, no less. A sweatshop worker might bring much more value than the cents they are paid, and a programmer might bring much more value than their 100K salary would suggest (see e.g. no-poach agreements between Google and other big companies).

(Seriously. Cite on economist that claims that “company tries to pay employees based on the value they bring”.)

And risk is irrelevant to the question of value. If someone wins a billion dollars, should we thank them for their hard work if they donate it to charity? Maybe for the money, but it would be misleading to conflate speculation/gambling with work.

You are so fundamentally misguided that it’s just laughable.

Does the employee still get that money if the company goes under? People getting pink slips says that they're taking on just as much risk as the founder. Signing that contract does not guarantee the 100k/year

You get paid as long as you keep working, which is what the contract is. If you had to keep working whether or not the company can pay you, that would obviously be a lot riskier. But that isn’t how things work. If the company goes under you go get a new job, and sign another contract.

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