you're going to be getting offers much higher than $250k per year, lots of offers.
There is something to be said for intrinsic motivation. Ideally, Ben and Jerry would have found a qualified CEO that would have the same love of ice cream that they have. I think this would have been a much better option for them. Unfortunately, a person like that is much harder to find.
I read it. My main concern is the rating system. Users only have an incentive to vote others down to make themselves seem more competitive. How can you guarantee honest votes?
I predict a voting war where, sooner or later, some one will have to take charge and settle the conflicts.
Mr. Holland will receive a basic salary of $250,000, more than the socially concerned company has ever paid but not an unusually high salary for a food company of its size.
$250k/7=$35.7k, This was in 1995, but I'm guessing Ben and Jerry were using some factor smaller than 7 to determine pay. I consider $250k reasonable for a CEO and $36k reasonable for a factory worker.
Imagine two goods, good A and good B, that are sold on the open market...
I've been through the economic allegories hundreds of times before. All of us on Slashdot have. I've read the Wikipedia summary of Atlas Shrugged (sorry, I'm not reading it, too high of an opportunity cost), and have been through several semesters of college economics, accounting, and finance.
I look around today and say to myself, I could run GM, Lehman Brothers, and AIG, into the ground just as well as anybody. Why shouldn't I get paid the big bucks like those guys? The fact is, they aren't worth what they get paid. There is some sort of flaw in that logic. If Ayn Rand was right, engineers would make more money than CEOs.
Seven times the minimum salary isn't an "arbitrary limit", the owner of the company I mentioned spent quite a bit of time figuring out that amount. At the time I met the owner of that company he was making $350k and the janitor was making $50k. If the janitor wasn't worth $50k, he would fire him, it's that simple. He told me that the janitor was very good at his job, and had been working for him for many years.
Policies like that encourage people to be conscientious about their work. It also reduces employee turnover, and hostility between the work force and the management. In the end, the company is more efficient because of it.
When Steve Jobs started Next Computers, there were only two salary levels. Of course, it didn't last very long.
If the leaders of the company are corrupt, there are many ways to get around these types of corporate rules. The first method that comes to mind is by creating an Enron style shell corporation. It's very difficult to create such a transparent corporate environment and keep it that way. However, for every Next, there is a Berkshire Hathaway, where the CEO makes a mere $100k/year.
This is the kind of thinking that made the hippie commune into the corporate juggernaut it is today. By "corporate juggernaut" I mean, virtually extinct.
The best "Open" corporate structure I've ever head of was a company that had a policy where no person could make more than seven times as much money as any other person in the company.
There are circles of people that game these types of tests. I posted about them back in January. Basically, to cheat on these tests, you must answer these question as if the following were true:
a) I loved my father and my mother, but my father a little bit more
b) I like things pretty well the way they are
c) I never worry much about anything
d) I don't care for books or music much
e) I love my wife and children
f) I don't let them get in the way of company "work"
The sad thing is that people who lie on the test (and are consistent about it) are the ones that are going to get hired.
I posted a story about these types of tests in January. One comment stood out:
These types of tests have been used ever since professional management was invented as a skill separate from actually being able to do anything economically useful.
I suggest that anyone who has to work in an organization that uses these types of tests read "The Organization Man" by William H. Whyte. Some key chapters are online here: http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/whyte-main.html [upenn.edu] However, what is not online is the Appendix, titled "How To Cheat on Personality Tests". The book was published in 1956.
Whyte doesn't suggest that you cheat on personality tests just because you are greedy, or because corporations are evil and you have to survive, or anything radical like that. It is clear from the book that Whyte is the kind of guy who presumes that most people are well-intentioned, that managers probably want to hire the best, and they need these scores to cover their ass, so people should give the correct answers on tests so managers can then pick the good guys and promote them.
Meyer-Briggs and Minnesota Multi-Phasic whatchamacallits have never been shown to be of any practical use, and their pointlessness has been known for decades.
"The Organization Man" is one of the funniest books I have ever read, but I think it is only funny if you have been exposed to Organization Men enough to recogize the traits he points out, and it is a kind of dry, no-punch line humour that I associate with old men who are constantly laughing at you inside. For the enjoyment of Slashdot I will reproduce here a couple of paragraphs from the "How to Cheat on Personality Tests" chapter:
"The important thing to realize is that you don't win a good score: you avoid a bad one. (...) Sometimes it is perfectly all right for you to score in the 80th or 90th percentile; if you are being tested, for example, to see if you would make a good chemist, a score indicating that you are likely to be more reflective than ninety out of a hundred adults might not harm you and might even do you some good."
"By and large, however, your safety lies in getting a score somewhere between the 40th and 60th percentiles, which is to say, you should try to answer as if you were like everyone else is supposed to be. This is not always too easy to figure out, of course, and this is one of the reasons why I will go into some detail in the following paragraphs on the principal types of questions. When in doubt, however, there are two general rules you can follow: (1) When asked for word associations or comments about the world, give the most convential, run-of-the-mill, pedestrian answer possible. (2) To settle the most beneficial answer to any question, repeat to yourself:
a) I loved my father and my mother, but my father a little bit more
b) I like things pretty well the way they are
c) I never worry much about anything
d) I don't care for books or music much
e) I love my wife and children
f) I don't let them get in the way of company work"
You know what is the saddest about these personality tests ? This guide to cheating on them was written just a few years after the basic ones became popular (they were developed in the 20's and 30's, came into use and were standardized (and also statistically tested and proven worthless) in the bureaucracy of WWII, and The Organization Man was published in '56), but the cheat guide works perfectly well even for tests developed long after the cheat guide was written.
You can take a computer administered test developed in the last few years by the best minds in modern management theory, and cheat it with a guide written over 50 years ago.
while I was walking down the street a guy came out of a building, hopped on a unicycle, and rode away. I found the whole experience random and strange. I turns out there is a whole club for jugglers and unicyclists. This machine might be a real hit at one of their meetings.
Looking at the site, I noticed that Ubuntu has a list of projects to work on which are mostly from the Brainstorm site. Most of the other projects have no such plan. I think this is what puts Ubuntu ahead of so many other open source projects.
With no exaggeration, I can say that the people who sweep the floor provide a much more useful service than most HR departments. I wouldn't impugn their intelligence (or species for that matter) by suggesting they are inferior to HR.
Tell me about it, the janitor's union just filed a grievance against me for that last comment. I guess they're really upset.
Slashdot Mirror
Was that before or after Ben & Jerry's was bought?
The CEO was hired in 1995 and the company was bought by Unilever in 2000.
you're going to be getting offers much higher than $250k per year, lots of offers.
There is something to be said for intrinsic motivation. Ideally, Ben and Jerry would have found a qualified CEO that would have the same love of ice cream that they have. I think this would have been a much better option for them. Unfortunately, a person like that is much harder to find.
Wow, that was beautiful! You've gotten to the very core of the problem. But I have one question.
Once the rest of the world industrializes, what will the CEO's do? They will have no where else to outsource and the price of goods will increase.
Will there be a great revolution?
Will robots take over for us?
Will aliens take over for us? (we'll make great pets)
Perhaps I'm getting to philosophical for Slashdot...
+1 Good find!
Social Darwinism is a propaganda tool used by conservatives to maintain the current power structure.
I'm confused... I thought conservatives reject Darwinism in favor of Creationism.
Read. The. Fucking. Article.
I read it. My main concern is the rating system. Users only have an incentive to vote others down to make themselves seem more competitive. How can you guarantee honest votes?
I predict a voting war where, sooner or later, some one will have to take charge and settle the conflicts.
very easy to set up, just outsource all the low paying stuff to contractors
I covered this above.
$250k/7=$35.7k, This was in 1995, but I'm guessing Ben and Jerry were using some factor smaller than 7 to determine pay. I consider $250k reasonable for a CEO and $36k reasonable for a factory worker.
Not that I don't believe you, but do you have a source to back that up?
Imagine two goods, good A and good B, that are sold on the open market...
I've been through the economic allegories hundreds of times before. All of us on Slashdot have. I've read the Wikipedia summary of Atlas Shrugged (sorry, I'm not reading it, too high of an opportunity cost), and have been through several semesters of college economics, accounting, and finance.
I look around today and say to myself, I could run GM, Lehman Brothers, and AIG, into the ground just as well as anybody. Why shouldn't I get paid the big bucks like those guys? The fact is, they aren't worth what they get paid. There is some sort of flaw in that logic. If Ayn Rand was right, engineers would make more money than CEOs.
Seven times the minimum salary isn't an "arbitrary limit", the owner of the company I mentioned spent quite a bit of time figuring out that amount. At the time I met the owner of that company he was making $350k and the janitor was making $50k. If the janitor wasn't worth $50k, he would fire him, it's that simple. He told me that the janitor was very good at his job, and had been working for him for many years.
Policies like that encourage people to be conscientious about their work. It also reduces employee turnover, and hostility between the work force and the management. In the end, the company is more efficient because of it.
When Steve Jobs started Next Computers, there were only two salary levels. Of course, it didn't last very long.
If the leaders of the company are corrupt, there are many ways to get around these types of corporate rules. The first method that comes to mind is by creating an Enron style shell corporation. It's very difficult to create such a transparent corporate environment and keep it that way. However, for every Next, there is a Berkshire Hathaway, where the CEO makes a mere $100k/year.
This is the kind of thinking that made the hippie commune into the corporate juggernaut it is today. By "corporate juggernaut" I mean, virtually extinct.
The best "Open" corporate structure I've ever head of was a company that had a policy where no person could make more than seven times as much money as any other person in the company.
no one else can help. If they can find them, maybe they can hire... The A-Team.
If they can't find The A-Team, I hear Micheal Westen is allowed to leave Miami.
The bar's name is Louise's by the way.
If you found a lawyer in a local bar, chances are pretty good that he wouldn't be a great lawyer. And he might have a drinking problem, too.
Unless you're in Milwaukee, where the Bar Association is actually located above a bar (with alcohol).
I always found that rather ironic.
The sad thing is that people who lie on the test (and are consistent about it) are the ones that are going to get hired.
I posted a story about these types of tests in January. One comment stood out:
while I was walking down the street a guy came out of a building, hopped on a unicycle, and rode away. I found the whole experience random and strange. I turns out there is a whole club for jugglers and unicyclists. This machine might be a real hit at one of their meetings.
Wasn't Betamax the better of the two, and VHS only won because of porn?
Betamax's big brother, Betacam was used extensively in professional television production until it was recently supplanted by hard disks.
Looking at the site, I noticed that Ubuntu has a list of projects to work on which are mostly from the Brainstorm site. Most of the other projects have no such plan. I think this is what puts Ubuntu ahead of so many other open source projects.
maybe they will finally get video and audio chat working.
The site sucks! Recovery.com is WAY better.</sarcasm>
With no exaggeration, I can say that the people who sweep the floor provide a much more useful service than most HR departments. I wouldn't impugn their intelligence (or species for that matter) by suggesting they are inferior to HR.
Tell me about it, the janitor's union just filed a grievance against me for that last comment. I guess they're really upset.
In many cases the people sweeping the floors are more intelligent than the HR people.
Note to self:
The janitorial staff gets offended when you compare their intelligence to that of a person in human resources.