Re:“If you get a C or lower, I’ll buy you a present”
by derefr on Monday October 17, 2016 @09:28PM
(#12731308)
I would think that's just a representation of why people decide to hire employees.
Most employee roles start as assistant roles: someone hired to take the less-important work off someone else's plate, so they can concentrate on the more-important work. Assistants aren't expected to be better at their job than the person hiring them would be—rather the opposite—but are employed anyway, because they have a comparative advantage in doing that thing. They're usually valued by the company strictly less than the person delegating the work to them.
On the other hand, there are specialist roles: people hired specifically to do a particular type of work better than a generalist (e.g. the person hiring them) could have done it; or hired to do something a generalist couldn't have done at all. These people can extract a lot of value from a company if they know their own worth; people like lawyers, trade-workers, etc. can all command high contracting rates.
But corporations tend to think a lot more in terms of the assistant role than the specialist role. There are a lot of jobs in companies that started off as assistant roles, and then kept the low pay and low status even after they became specialist roles. Companies have a hard time noticing that the people in their assistant roles are actually specialists, as long as they don't actively revolt and point out their worth.
This is, I think, a big part of why you can get an average salary as a programmer at a BigCorp "through the front door", but can get a much higher salary from the same BigCorp by building a startup that they acquire. BigCorps hire assistants, but acquire specialists, and that informs how they think of you; what they're willing to pay; and what they'll employ you to do.
Most employee roles start as assistant roles: someone hired to take the less-important work off someone else's plate, so they can concentrate on the more-important work. Assistants aren't expected to be better at their job than the person hiring them would be—rather the opposite—but are employed anyway, because they have a comparative advantage in doing that thing. They're usually valued by the company strictly less than the person delegating the work to them.
On the other hand, there are specialist roles: people hired specifically to do a particular type of work better than a generalist (e.g. the person hiring them) could have done it; or hired to do something a generalist couldn't have done at all. These people can extract a lot of value from a company if they know their own worth; people like lawyers, trade-workers, etc. can all command high contracting rates.
But corporations tend to think a lot more in terms of the assistant role than the specialist role. There are a lot of jobs in companies that started off as assistant roles, and then kept the low pay and low status even after they became specialist roles. Companies have a hard time noticing that the people in their assistant roles are actually specialists, as long as they don't actively revolt and point out their worth.
This is, I think, a big part of why you can get an average salary as a programmer at a BigCorp "through the front door", but can get a much higher salary from the same BigCorp by building a startup that they acquire. BigCorps hire assistants, but acquire specialists, and that informs how they think of you; what they're willing to pay; and what they'll employ you to do.