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Comment by dwrowe | Hacker News Reader

You need to re-read the gp comment. Knowing what you're worth is different than what companies value your worth. A company may undervalue or overvalue your work - the responsibility is on you to determine if you're getting screwed or not - it isn't dependent on what others are getting.

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I think I understand correctly. What I was trying to say is that if I am able to determine that I am being screwed over, this is management's fault and not my fault. It's management's responsibility to fix it. I shouldn't have to hire salary researchers and lawyers with my own money to create a report that I can use as an argument for my manager to consider it. And definitely must not put me in conflicting position with management over it. Otherwise I'd have to leave and nobody wins.

Well then, you can continue to be controlled economically by your employers, because nobody in the market --- nobody --- is putting your own individual interests before those of the company, except for you.

Personally, I wouldn't want an employer going through lots of effort to figure out what's best for me. I think they'd do a crappy job of it.

I've been a consultant for a while now and I have this conversation every week or so. What you said goes both ways, nobody has your company's best interest over their personal interest. So you better have my best interest in mind if you want me to have your best interest in mind. It's only fair :)

The employer doesn't have to figure out what's best for you. What's best for them is also best for you. Like almost everybody else, I am driven by respect. If the company measures performance based on profit, so do I. If it's a non-profit, so am I. If you give me what you value most I will do the same. Can't go wrong with that.

And what the article and several commenters are saying is that it absolutely is your responsibility. Why? Because you can control your own actions, you can't control management's. Management isn't obligated to pay you anything, and you aren't obligated to work for them. They choose to pay you something and you choose to work for them; you also choose how much to work for them, and your choice might relate to how much they choose to pay you (and if they continue to choose to pay you).

Leaving is absolutely the right choice if the amount they're willing to pay you is wildly out of whack with the effort you're putting in and value you're creating, because it frees your time up to work for somebody else who will value you (and pay you) more. Everybody wins.

There are some very subtle aspects in this discussion and we are talking about the same from different angles. I absolutely agree with everything you are saying.

But this is not the case I am discussing. If you are able to prove objectively that you are not getting a fair share of the value you bring and management doesn't fix it, then everybody loses. You lose what you could have gotten, and they lose because now they have a resentful and demotivated employee. You don't even have to leave or you can't leave until you find another job. It's not that hard for an employee to do the bare minimum and not get fired or demoted.

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