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Company Testing Standardized Salaries Is Struggling
jmcbain writes: In April 2015, Dan Price, the CEO of online payments company Gravity Payments based in Seattle, announced that all employees would have their salary bumped up to a minimum $70,000. Slashdot covered this news. Since that time, however, things have not gone well. Some employees quit because they felt it was unfair to double the pay of some new hires while the longest-serving staff members got small or no raises. Furthermore, after reducing his own salary from $1M to $70K, Mr. Price is now renting a house 'to make ends meet'. On an unrelated note, Mr. Price's brother, who is a co-founder of the company, is suing him.
Imagine that.
Differences in pay exist for a reason: Because different people perform functions of different value to the company.
Wait, so great employees don't like making the same as their mediocre colleagues?! Get the #*@! out of here!
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
LOL.
What about the company's revenue? Employees can easily be replaced, but revenue is key.
This guy sounds like a SJW which is a terrible CEO choice. You can't run a company on your feelings, and hope to remain successful.
It was nothing more than an empty headed attempt towards egalitarian principles.
You want people to be equal? Good idea on its own, but you can't just rush into it. You have to get them along with it. Which is hard.
But heck, it isn't like most companies want their employees knowing how much everybody gets paid anyway.
Fuck it, let's just get everybody truly equal in the only way that was ever true.
Those must be some shiny floors.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
This sounds like something out of an Ayn Rand novel. It's very similar to something that happens in Atlas Shrugged.
Silly quasi-communists.
At least that guy is allrigh as he only wasted own money, as opposed to the actuall communists and socialists, so good riddance.
Nice experiment of price difference as extra motivator...
One thing that often is missing from discussions about raising minimum wage / minimum salary is what to do with those already making more than the new value. I (like most engineers) make more than minimum wage. I've seen minimum wage go up by 40% since I entered the work force, but my own salary has only gone up by 25% in that same period. Minimum wage goes up, but my buying power goes down.
Hope he runs his company into the ground.
Same thing happened at walmart when they bumped their lowest paid workers up to the minimum wage.
http://business.financialpost.com/news/retail-marketing/wal-marts-pay-raise-creates-thousands-of-unhappy-workers-its-pitting-people-against-each-other
Senior workers got no raise and feel disrespected.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Utility is evidently not just a function of the job, the market conditions (outside options) and pay. Employee A is content with his or her salary given the conditions in the market so continues to work for the firm. Then a different employee gets a raise. Market conditions have not changed, but employee A is no longer content with his or her salary. This is one reason why firms like to keep salary information confidential.
It's kind of weird the way this was implemented but I like the notion.
I think that if you are willing to work, you should be able to support yourself comfortably. I am not sure that absolutely equal pay for everyone is exactly right although I do think that people who quit over having someone else make as much as them is pretty petty and entitled.
I would personally not care one bit if a fast food worker got paid as much as me or more.... good for them, I wouldn't want to do that job so why would I complain?
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
... goes unpunished.
When's the last time you saw a CEO of a company take a voluntary pay cut like that? Say whatever else you like, at least the guy was willing to eat his own dogfood, so to speak.
whenever CEO pay comes up on this site, people bitch about how much more the CEO makes vs rank and file. Okay, valid complaint.
Here a CEO bucks that trend, nukes his own salary and gives everyone a *minimum* 70k salary -- which is different from everyone getting 70k. He not only does a commendable thing: paying employees more than necessary; but walks the walk and takes a massive paycut himself.
The real story here is the crab-pot mentality. If I'm making 100k, and my cubicle neighbor goes from 35k to 70k, that doesn't have any impact on me whatsoever*. Why complain?
*small scale, intra-company comparison here, yes I know if the minimum wage was suddenly 70k, that's a different beast.
Today I turned down a $120k offer. They needed to be more competitive than that and they knew it, but they had an open salary policy and didn't want to upset the others or to set unreasonable expectations upon me. So in the end their progressive policy prevented them from being competitive and acquiring the talent. Gotta pay to play.
I gonna stop the motor of the world.
Now pay me please for this comment, I must not do anything for free.
Having run a company, I can get this...it's a refreshing and seemingly decent approach to sharing the wealth.
Great contrast to all the money-grabbing, "screw the employee" bosses that are in the news all the time.
Maybe where he went wrong is not allowing an "upside".
Sure, not everybody who *thinks* they deserve extra really do.
But in my experience some sure as hell do...the trick is to identify them and give them fair value.
(My top staff regularly got 20% over market rates - they earned me far more, so I was happy to pay.)
Snip: "You can ignore economics, but economics won’t ignore you.
That’s the tough lesson Dan Price, CEO of Gravity Payments, a Seattle credit-card processing company, is learning.
Four months ago, Price announced he’d slash his own multimillion-dollar pay and set a company-wide $70,000 minimum wage.
He got the idea after a friend explained her difficulty paying back student loans and surviving on $40,000 a year — a salary many Gravity employees were making.
Price’s stand against income inequality made him an immediate darling of the left.
But key employees saw it differently.
Financial manager Maisey McMaster liked the idea at first — until she thought about it.
“He gave raises to people who have the least skills and are least equipped to do the job,” she told The New York Times. Meanwhile, “The ones who were taking on the most didn’t get much of a bump.”
She thought it would be fairer to give smaller raises, with the clear chance to earn more with experience. Price brushed off her doubts; she quit.
Also out the door: Web developer Grant Moran. He says, “Now the people who were just clocking in and out were making the same as me.” Plus, having your pay level a very public matter is a problem, with “friends now calling you for a loan.”
Moral of the story: Some people work harder than others; some have stronger skills — and they don’t think it’s fair that they’re paid the same as others.
Price will soon be left only with workers worth his chosen minimum wage — or less.
The company is already in chaos thanks to the policy — but the big problem is ahead, as it tries to keep growing and innovating with only mediocre talent"
This, right after the Greece bailout.
Every time they try to artificially raise the bottom, it falls off as a result.
A company only hires the employees it needs, and without any of them it wouldn't be a success, so it makes sense that everyone is equally valuable and should be paid the same.
I quit my 7-11 job when I was in first year university exactly because I had just gotten a raise to $0.50 above minimum a few months before the minimum was then raised by $0.50. When told that I wouldn't benefit from the raise of the minimum wage, and then found out I would now be making the same as the new just-hires, I basically walked.
Having said that, I do long for the coming days of post-scarcity when a living wage is all one will need, and work will be voluntary, and won't even be considered work. Any manual labour will be automated, including production. Energy, food, and living expenses will be near zero, and humanity will enter a new golden age of freedom from the drudgery that is 'work'. People will be free to create, and be on perpetual vacation.
Ah, one can dream.
You should not expect any kind of loyalty from your employees, so you have no obligation to have any for them. Use them, work them down, toss them, replace them.
They do the same with you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
To a degree In Next - look it up. Two tier system, 75k seniors, everyone else 50k. The concept can definitely fly, as long the company operates like that from the get go. In the RTFA case the problem was the abrubt switch and not factoring senior employees at all, but that does not mean the model itself is flawed.
...Ayn Rand is laughing.
Doesn't make sense. If I make $70k and that's the max I can get in the market, how is it good for me to quit if someone with less skills and less contributions also gets paid $70k?
What do I win by quiting?
Sounds like CEO had an argument with his brother, and rather than give him what he probably deserved, he found an excuse to lower his salary in an attempt to keep his brother from getting anything.
LOL! All CEOs have known this at least as long as I have been alive.
It's many of the workers who still haven't figured it out the true nature of the interaction.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
The 'trouble' this article talks about is some drama amongst the workers, part of that fueled by the public spectacle of what happened. A critical ingredient of what's missing from this story are the answers to questions like: "Did the increase in pay cause profit margins at the company to drop?" and "... by how much?"
All this article really says is extreme actions have consequences.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Gee, who didn't see THAT coming! Socialism does not breed happiness. Paying EVERYONE the same breeds resentment. Those that worked HARD, and worked their way up the ladder, are now ticked off, because all of their hard work was for nothing, because now the new hire, off the street that knows NOTHING, gets paid the same. Those that goof off, don't work hard, get paid the same as the person that will bust their butt. Customers, some of which already left, are worried that paying everyone the same, will result in the fees going up. Great job! You backhandedly once again showed that socialism DOES NOT WORK, never will work!
Matthew 20:1-16
“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’
“The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
“But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. ... are you envious because I am generous?’
And then some workers pouted, and stamped their feet, and said, "my value is my pay, and you have taken away that margin that distinguishes me from the low", some said "only my pay reflects my performance, and if you pay me decently, I might not have an incentive to perform, or the pressure to perform will be too high" contradicting themselves at every turn, and they left in a huff. Or a minute-and-a-huff. And they complained that the man who owned the vineyard was a socialist, and was not out to screw as much money out of his vineyard workers as possible, and was therefore a weak man, and not fit to rule them.
Those who can contribute significant, above-and-beyond value naturally feel that people should be rewarded in proportion to their contributions.
Those who cannot contribute significant, above-and-beyond value naturally feel that everyone should receive equal rewards, regardless of their contributions.
By setting policies that pander to the second group, you wind up losing members of the first group, resulting in a company full of under-performing slackers. No surprise such a company doesn't do well.
This CEO chose a daft approach. He ignored his financial manager's sensible advice. Rather than giving everyone $70k whether they're worth it or not, he could have given everyone a pay rise and room to grow if they were worth it.
For example, even a $10k pay rise for employees on $40k is a huge boon, and you can't exactly complain that someone else got a pay rise if you just went up from $70k to $80k. And you know what? As a reward for being such a compassionate CEO, he could have only docked his own pay to, I don't know, $200k or something. Over-entitled upper-pay-tier types who are just leeching money from their "lessers" can leave the company, to be replaced with one of the thousands of competent people who consider a $150k salary good money. Win, win, win as long as the overall pay doesn't go up.
A few employees quit, big deal. They were clearly entitled and apparently do not mind not having a job.
A few employees quit, big deal. They were clearly entitled and apparently do not mind not having a job.
In my experience, when a company makes a move that's likely to drive it bankrupt, the first to leave are the ones smart enough to see it coming. They know they can easily get another job somewhere else.
Exactly how much experience do you have helping run shifty companies into the ground?
Second story on this in as many days. Both highly negative, basically telling people the company is in trouble.
Someone at /. hates this idea, a lot.
If you were ever curious about how exactly the media gets used to form and disseminate reactionary ideas to more egalitarian ideas, when those rare birds appear in modern Amreica, you could do worse than to study the current media reaction to this story, and you could do worse than to start at our own beloved /.
Proof that self-entitled cockbags can fuck up anything.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
In my experience, when a company makes a move that's likely to drive it bankrupt, the first to leave are the ones smart enough to see it coming.
Exactly how much experience do you have helping run shifty companies into the ground?
There are other possibilities. He could have repeatedly been one of the first to leave. Or he could be experienced, but not as smart as the first to go, and be one of the second to leave.
Personally, I think that laid off is better than quit, because then you get some of your unemployment insurance money back. Usually, a pittance. Still, it's nice to get some back when so much of your tax money is spent on moral atrocities.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Henry Ford was noted for paying more than his competitors. This allowed him to have his pick from the labor pool and reduce absenteeism. An actual capitalist is willing to pay what something is worth.
Gravity Payments is a privately held company. The majority owner is doing what he wishes with his property. If he was being miserly with his property many would stand up for his property rights. (His brother is the only one that might theoretically dispute his use since he is the minority owner, but that is not a given depending on how they agree to the split of ownership.)
People claim to left because the longest-serving people got little increase. But those people were making the same or less just before. If what the are being paid now is not what they are worth, why was it what they were worth before?
These anti-capitalists are cutting off their own noses to spite someone else's face.
“The salient fact of American politics is that there are fifty to seventy million voters each of whom will volunteer to live, with his family, in a cardboard box under an overpass, and cook sparrows on an old curtain rod, if someone would only guarantee that the black, gay, Hispanic, liberal, whatever, in the next box over doesn’t even have a curtain rod, or a sparrow to put on it.” -David X Machina
What they are doing is highly unusual.
If they want to succeed in doing something so unconventional, then they best be prepared to quickly "tweak" their plan/arrangement in different ways to deal with issues.
For example: putting everyone at exactly $70k is not going to work in the long run. Not unless you also have a way of rewarding and motivating employees to be productive AND punishing employees who aren't productive.
I don't see it working, unless they adjust so significant rewards can be available, and those who make the "minimum" can Lose money or be required to pay back, If they fail to achieve some set minimal objective
This has nothing to do with socialism. This is not a farmers co-op or whatever that "hasn't been working" for 100+ years, this is a company that has fucked up the concept of pay scales despite it being what every large company used to do and what a lot of governments do for their workers today.
It's not rocket science. After so many years you go from a band 1 whatever to a band 2. If you are shit-hot and clearly work above your grade you either get a promotion in pay grade, a temporary promotion, or a bonus. Just because HR weenies can't be bothered to stop playing Facebook games and can't learn from the past doesn't mean that it's difficult.
Disclaimer (since so many people here like shooting messengers), I work in a small place with a complete lack of HR weenies and have a negotiated salary but I have worked for a multinational (extremes of both reason and insanity), a government owned corporation and a university in the past - all of which had known salary scales and did not fuck that part of things up. I'm not advocating it (for all those messenger shooters out there) just pointing out that there is a very long list of places that do not fuck it up.
It's not actually the minimum wage - it's the "illegal alien employment threshold wage"
When government created (and now occasionally raises) the minimum wage, it does not change the value of the work the employees perform per hour, nor does it alter the value of having those tasks performed. In other words: If a shopkeeper needs his floor swept, that task has a particular value to him and if he can pay somebody below a certain rate to do he will hire somebody to do it and the task will be done. Having the government order him to may more per hour does not magically make the task more valuable nor does it provide more money to pay for the task. The shopkeeper must either pay somebody "under the table" (off-books) to do it at the realistic wage or let the task go unperformed.
Minimum wage hikes only provide four groups with a benefit:
1. Politicians who use it to appeal to certain groups
2. Minimum wage workers who get a small temporary bump in their pay - their pay goes up but then their job goes away or promotion options evaporate or the resulting inflation ripples through the economy and then prices rise so their new bigger salary buys no more than it used to.
3. Illegal workers who see an explosion of opportunities doing illegal work at below the minimum wage line (which has risen).
4. The most important element of the Democrat party: Labor unions who are generally not paid minimum wage (so most people would not suspect a link) but whose contracts often link their levels of pay and benefits to the minimum wage (so when minimum goes up, union members automatically see their wages and benefits inflate).
So...... if you have to read 100 pages without getting sex or explosions then you drop the book as gibberish?
I guess all the great classics of literature and philosophy are unfathomable to you.
[sigh]
I weep for what used to be called "Western Civilization"
Well, that seems to explain all the modern "blockbuster" comic book movies, and the rise of Obama.
Personally, I think that laid off is better than quit, because then you get some of your unemployment insurance money back. Usually, a pittance. Still, it's nice to get some back when so much of your tax money is spent on moral atrocities.
Personally, I think you're wrong, because if you quit and go someplace else they're going to ask why and you can say "I stopped feeling like I was learning and growing professionally" - to which they might think "sounds like a go-gettter!" and hire you - whereas if you get laid off and spend a few weeks on unemployment they might think you were laid off as a "low performer" and not such a good deal to hire (this might not apply if, say, the entire company is obviously headed to closing it's doors and is laying off everyone).
If someone else gets a pay rise early and comes up to your salary, SO WHAT? It isn't reducing your salary, so no harm to you. And if the work output is little to no different from yours, then why the hell shouldn't they be paid the rate for the job AS SOON AS THEY ARE DOING IT?
But you leave in a huff.
What do you put down as your reason for leaving? "Paid someone else the same as me"? Do you leave and look for a job without redundancy or welfare cheques?
No, most likely you were leaving anyway and had a job lined up.
But no matter what, despite a good moan about how you were gypped, which I engage in,but more as a vehicle to complain about how salaries are "calculated" to be "fair", what the hell does it matter than someone got a pay rise quicker than you did years ago? People who think like that are better off for the company leaving.
Atlas Shrugged was about a path to her fantasy about what Tsarist Russia was like when she was too young to read. The bit about all the great men going "on strike" of self imposed exile and the nation collapsing was very much what she wanted to happen to the USSR, total collapse and the nobility moving back, and she was not only naive enough to think such a thing was going to happen by magic even 40 years later but so naive that she thought Tsarist Russia was a better place to be than 1950's USA! It's hard to get to be more anti-American than Rand with her great men who should be in charge and serfs that should never be allowed to vote.
Confusing elements of the USA with very different elements of the USSR was the part of the work that renders it worse than worthless. I wonder if the loud "Randians" really understand that they are calling for the overthrow of what George Washington delivered to be replaced by what King George had in place?
Enough venting on my part - If you want an entertaining and easy to read fictionalized account of what it was like in late Tsarist Russia from an unbiased contemporary source then Joseph Conrad's "Under Western Eyes" is very good. It's as fresh a spy novel as anything by Tom Clancy despite being a bit over a century old.
That's right, they clam this is socialism and that it was BOUND to fail.
Odd how you got all this way and didn't deign to notice the right's perspective, but DID have "plenty of evidence" to make a claim about those other people who are left of you...
> I wholeheartedly loved working for this company, but it collapsed
> after finishing the first game.
this is SO different to what happens in most game studios now, where all the workers are fired as soon as the game is finished...collectively, they've cost the company 10 or 20 million to make a game that raked in hundreds of millions in sales, now they can fuck off and starve and default on their mortgage while management tries to get a new deal for a new game. some of the lucky ones might get re-hired for the next project.
Open up your own company and give your employees equal pay. If you can't, don't bull shit.
Or you can move to North Korea where most works get equal paid.
If you quit without having a new job lined up you're an idiot (unless you have substantial savings your ok with living on making it a vacation).
No sir I dont like it.
⦠countries having standardised salaries as a matter of course are booming.
Ah, some sort of politically fixated person has decided to insult my intelligence in an offensive way as if I was born yesterday - and the "correction" is spectacularly wrong.
How is it possible to get things so badly wrong?
This is how, if all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail.
There is no point being polite to such folk, if you disagree you are an enemy, and if you politely disagree you are a weak enemy.
Above poster, I suggest you get a bit more perspective on life instead of spouting ridiculously naive bullshit all over the place, unless of course it's deliberate sarcasm designed to look incredibly idiotic. Another alternative is some sort of political wonk paid as a "social media worker" to twist the minds of the kiddies to a political view, your UID looks a bit low for such scum but the comment really fits the "narrative" of such manipulative pricks. So above poster - WTF are you and why are you pretending this is all cold war bullshit that you should have either grown out of decades ago or never knew in the first place?
The topic is very obviously an implementation problem in an organisation and no "ism" of any sort applies since even countries with "socialism/communism" have different pay grades at different ranks (using an army example for simplicity).
This is as fucking stupid as the people who called the millionaire filmmaker Charlie Chaplain a communist - just about the biggest capitalist at the time and that label was put on him.
Can we have our tech site back instead of warring political shills or utter losers of clueless fanboys who do it for free?
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that socialist utopias don't work. This idea that everyone should be paid the same is utter nonsense. In any given organization there are achievers and there are slackers. It has been my experience that the top 20% of workers often do at least 50% of the work. Many people will do just enough to get by. Others will find ways to get other people to do their work for them. Others will find their way into jobs that really are not needed but somehow exist anyway.
I'm not suggesting that all CEO's should be making 5000x the average workers salary (or whatever the actual figure is). But clearly there are people in an organization that simply contribute more than others and should make more money.
The problem becomes how do you measure productivity and worth? Traditional methods seem to leave themselves open to gaming the system, for those that are cunning enough to do so. Many people make big contributions but are not recognized sufficiently. Others take credit for the work of others. Management tends to attract self promoters and some of them get a disproportionate amount of credit (and therefore money) off the backs of others. Interesting problem.
The "occupy" crowd also doesn't take into account that founders of companies may have failed more than a few times, lived in crappy apartments, eaten chili and rice every day for months, gone without adequate medical support, distanced themselves from family, worked 16 or more hours a day for no pay, and in general worked slavishly for years to make the American Dream come true. Very few new companies actually survive, and fewer still become mega successes. Most have a very very hard road to get were they are. I'm not exactly young, and still chasing a successful startup. I work 12-16 hours a day, and have had 4 prior companies I founded die on the vine, for lack of capital for the most part, then competition passed us or outright stole our tech. And I've been an well optioned employee at a reasonably high, (report to the "C's" level) placed employee,many those two went down as well... All good ideas, all meaning a ton of work beyond the average wage slave clamor inc for equality, saying the executives are overpaid. The stress is astounding, the effect on family life can be devastating when the SO thinks you should be able to take four weeks in Cabo, and a month in Europe, and so on, while trying to get things going.
Rich people aren't supposed to believe the socialist lies. They spread them, then embezzle the money for themselves and seize power. What was he thinking? Actually take a 70K job after having a 1M job? I know people who make 80K and have to live with one car, in a trailer. No buffer in case something happens. Product of the raising the minimum wage - which hurts poor and mostly black people. Not trolling here, it's a fact.
As for publishing what people make - that was very very stupid. It never goes well when people know. Just human nature. Well that guy isn't as smart as I am... I work far harder then she does... and so on. Mind works on this and it can really generate resentment. I've seen people that made half what I do work very hard. I've seen a guy that made over 200K as an oracle DBA... and he is no where near as useful as the guys making 100K.
Just worry about yourselves. Better that way.
How did Nadella emerge from this minefield of candidates?
In addition to being a Microsoft loyalist, he was perceived as being willing to change things and look outside an insular culture. More importantly, perhaps, heâ(TM)s a âoegenuinely niceâ person who both Steve and Bill love, and who people seem to actually want to follow. Gatesâ(TM) decision to take a more active role also required someone he could work closely with. Most
http://qz.com/278237/heres-how...
In GS everybody is VP with different payouts
The "Occupy Wall St" theme was cooked-up by left-wing political activists as a panicked response to the Rise of the TEA Party on the right. In the aftermath of the 2008 meltdown and the public anger at Wall St Bankers, there was a fear on the left that the rise of the TEA Party (which grew spontaneously across the country after a CNBC host (NOT some Fox News person) ranted on national TV might lead to populist anger in America benefitting the political right (funny, really, given that the GOP in Washington was just as freaked-out by the TEA Party - just google John McCain and TEA Party). In response, some on the left tried to organize a left version of the TEA Party - the "Occupy Movement", but given that it was NOT actually organic, they needed lots of cash to fund the leaders and organizers and even to pay some of the early "protesters" to get initial demonstrations that would in-turn draw in other legitimate protesters.
It was set up by a socialist political group in Canada and partly funded by cash washed through the "Alliance for Global Justice" after being washed through the "Open Society Institute" which is operated by famous actual proud NAZI (the REAL 1940's era-brown-shirted type) collaborator billionaire George Soros. It seems that national socialists and international socialists still have a lot in common.
In contrast, there WAS no money pipeline from billionaires to the founders of the TEA Party groups around the US when they started. It took nearly a year for the wealthy donor class to decide if they should fear the people showing up in tri-corn hats. A few wealthy donors then DID offer support to certain TEA Party groups, but others tried to take over TEA Party groups that had arisen on their own (one of which had to confront an old establishment Republican former congressman who was in their office with a gun demanding he had a right to run the place) and most of the rich donors on the right are still actively-funding the GOP fight against the TEA people. On the Left, Soros and his wealthy buddies at the Tides Foundation are the big funders of everything INCLUDING the Occupy people (same funders for both the left-wing establishment AND the left-wing agitators)
The only people in "Occupy" for whom it was about "the system being corrupt" were the people fooled into thinking it was anything other than a political backfire lit by the leaders of the left to try to suck the air out of a wildfire burning over the hill on the right. Some of the most vocal supporters of Occupy were the very Democrats in congress (lots of their speeches are on YouTube) who put in place the policies that made Wall St Banks "too big to fail", who voted to bail those banks out, and who then wrote and passed the Dodd-Frank bill to consolidate the Wall St Banks even further making them even "too bigger to fail" [bad grammar intended] and a future bigger bailout almost certain while not only NOT reigning-in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the government loan agencies at the heart of the 2008 meltdown) but actually making things WORSE by having the government take-over all student loans (What could POSSIBLY go wrong with that, right?)
or you have very poor reading comprehension.
Galt does NOT start a terrorist org. He just encourages all the people in the creative classes (NOT all the rich people or all the CEOs) to stop creating and innovating and letting other people demand a "right" to the results of their productive efforts. The Galt character, and the book, celebrate the hard-working average man, and the inventor, the composer of music, the architect, the industrialist, the doctor, the hard-working responsible train engineer, etc. who make the world a better place NOT because they set out to or because they boast that they do but rather as a simple consequence of doing what they want to do and what they are good at. Terrorism is NOT aligned with the heroes of the book. All the people who destroy things as part of the strike are destroying the stuff they themselves own and created (the oil man destroys his own oil field, the mine man blows up his own mine eliminating the money of a bunch of financial speculators as a bonus, the factory men walk away and let things fall apart when the new operators lack the knowledge to keep them running, etc), in order to block others from taking it and using it (this includes the "pirate"). This is a perfectly consistent theme: her characters assert that nobody else has a natural right to use them or their stuff without proper compensation fairly negotiated (between parties who have each brought something of value to the bargaining table, rather than between somebody with something of value and somebody pointing a gun). When they are told to produce by government bureaucrats without just compensation "for the public good" these characters remove their production from the marketplace and go on strike (something the Left LOVES when it's workers, but seems to hate when it's creators outside of Hollywood).
Rand's writing style is a bit rough, and her attempts at romantic writing are quite cringe-worthy. The movies are much quicker and easier for a modern audience, but are severely constrained by both budgets and the passage of time. Budgets seem to have led to a few marginal visuals and probably drove the swap-outs of actors and actresses in many roles between each of the three films. Time? Well, the story was written at a time when Americans still used passenger rail and ocean liners more than airlines for travel, which is integral to the story and affects many story elements; this filmmakers made an honorable effort to fix this problem by adding an economic collapse to the beginning of their version of the tale to force that railroads back to the center of the economy (it only sort-of works).
Rand's primary rant is that people have the right to the results of their own work and their own ingenuity and that to the extent they help others it is by their own free will. Her villains are those who get in the middle between those who produce and those who need help, standing between these two groups using politics and the force of government to take from the producers then pretending to be the benevolent providers as they "give" a portion of their ill-gotten gains to those in need (taking all the moral credit for the "charity" while getting rich and powerful from what they skim-off). The simple-minded modern leftist criticism of Rand is that she hates the poor or hates charity, none of which is true. She favors REAL charity, where individuals are free to choose to help others if they wish, in the ways they wish, and for whatever reasons THEY choose to. She and her stories oppose FAKE charity; armed robbery pretending to be a moral good.