I think people know they are making the world a worse place. But the salaries are insanely high. It wont change until society frowns upon the job. Also it makes the world worse through second order effects so its easy to not think about it.
Readit Newstock commented on What makes you still work for Meta, when it's clear how toxic the company is? · Posted by u/camillomiller
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It's still just a market. You've got to make offers that people will accept. It's mostly silly to try to come up with some objective theory of value, except in the context of what potential employees will consider to be fair, which is right back at "you've got to make offers that people will accept."
Basing compensation on supposedly objective things like "the dollar amount a sales person brought in" might be important to a given pool of potential employees, but resist the temptation to think of it as objectively determining the value of the employee's work. Remember that all you're doing is making offers that people will accept.
I agree. But if employees know their objective value I believe it will change what they will consider an acceptable offer.
Yes, but sales reps have very specific targets and sales managers have no problem routinely letting people go if they miss those targets. It really is a somewhat different situation from engineering--although projects, for example, certainly get canceled and teams let go. There's a more direct correlation to quarterly revenue/margin input in the case of sales.
But its a more transparent system. Right now no-one has any idea if they get laid off or if they are being underpaid. I think the overall compensation would likely go up if you are good at your job.
And many would be getting let go because they weren't meeting some number.
Companies already do layoffs without commissions. They are always optimising to reduce salaries and increase profit margins. And its not "some number". Its the amount of $ brought in. Thats what companies care about.
I argued this in the previous discussion about oxide’s compensation structure: I disagree that sales must be commission based. Yes, finding sales staff that are willing to work for a salary and equity shrinks the pool but the same is true of engineers willing to work for a flat rate across the company.
Sales might seem mystical and magical to engineers but it isn’t. A small company with a small sales team can absolutely work without commission. Yes, it is harder, but it is not impossible. The carve out for sales undermines the ideas behind a flat salary structure. Just because we can measure a sales person’s contributions in dollar amounts does not mean we must measure it in dollar amounts. Sales is as much about the partnerships between sales people and product/engineering, why aren’t all the people who work on a deal getting commission?
I’d go as far as to argue that oxide is in the perfect position as a big-ticket long-cycle business to abandon traditional sales commission structures. They take on all the negatives (sales people overselling to get commission) with no benefits. There are other ideas. Company wide bonus based on sales made during the year?
> Just because we can measure a sales person’s contributions in dollar amounts does not mean we must measure it in dollar amounts.
This is the fairest form of compensation. It's unfortunate that engineering contribution cannot be measured the same way. If we could engineers would all be getting a nice pay hike.
tock commented on Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA ostechnix.com/linux-reach... · Posted by u/marcodiego
Role models for computer use in my generation: RMS, Bjarne Stroustrup, Doug McIlroy.
Role models for computer use today: “PewDiePie”.
This is why we can't have nice things.
PewDiePie is awesome. His linux video has over 6M views. We need to make linux cool again for the general audience.
Of our US $300,000.00 goal for 2025, as of July 13th, 2025, we are at:
- 25.6% funded
- $76,707 donated
:(
tock commented on Facebook is asking to use Meta AI on photos you haven’t yet shared theverge.com/meta/694685/... · Posted by u/pier25
I was writing a response before realising this profile is an AI agent. Is this seriously allowed on HN? The bio reads: "It's largely for my amusement and I like to play games."
tock commented on Germany and Italy pressed to bring $245B of gold home from US ft.com/content/e39390cc-e... · Posted by u/cempaka
And yet it wasn't a very good asset to hold between 1980 and 2000, despite quite high inflation during the period. It's nominal value barely moved while real value of USD halved.
Gold isn't really held because central banks expect its value to go up always. It's held because its safe from other risks like assets being frozen, the currency completely collapsing to 0, etc. Gold has managed to always hold "some value" over centuries. It's a hedge.