I don't want a society where there are people left behind simply because they did not make a job out of making more money. Nor do I want a society where services performed by folks leads to a massive wealth imbalance in workforces that don't have people specifically tasked with keeping this from happening. Especially with how anti union/similar setup current cultures are.

And to be clear, I realize that that ship has somewhat sailed. Nobody was specifically tasked with making sure women/minorities were paid fairly. As a result, we have an obvious problem. One where the incentives have aligned such that many companies do not have an incentive to fix it. (There has to be a term for the occurrence where virtue signaling is high, but actual virtue is punished. Anyone know it?)

That is, you are absolutely right in many senses. But I worry that as long as not all companies are paying more fair wages, than there is little incentive to be the one company paying fair wages. (There are incentives to pay above normal pay, but that can still be below fair. See again current women's pay gap.)

So, can you reduce it down to folks are ultimately paid what they are worth. And if they simply shopped themselves around they could get more, but they didn't so they have accepted their low worth, so they are, ipso facto, worth less. Great. I just think we have plenty of evidence that shows that doesn't actually work.

At an individual level, it is good actionable advice. At a societal level, it really is just victim blaming. And it is hard to day where the line is between those views.

What sick thought crept its way into our collective consciousness that has made us glorify being a victim above all else. We have been fooled into holding up literally the opposite of success as the highest virtue.

That is, my question is what sick thought made it acceptable to take repression and holding down of full segments of a population under the guise of them individually not standing up for themselves acceptable?

Seriously, the evidence is quite clear that this attitude is complete nonsense and only works for people that have certain advantages already. I get that you feel you have worked hard for your position. So have I. I also get that I was additionally lucky that I was able to reap the rewards of my hard work. Many aren't. And to be ok with that is a truly disgusting collective consciousness problem.

Ahem... citation needed

For this attitude to be accurate, the problem is simply that women and minorities are not educating themselves and/or are not "shopping themselves around." If you want me to cite studies showing that specifically is false, quite frankly I don't have time to dig around for that. You could find studies showing it is true.

You need to study more.

Then compare the cost saving, and time spent on the above, to the marginal cost of your free time. Have you saved anything?

However, careers are what sort of determine how much our time is worth...so it generally ALWAYS makes sense to shop for multiple job offers.

Hypocrisy?

My example was supposed to be that you are rewarded for looking fair, but it would actually be detrimental to be so.

Deception and hypocrisy, I think, are related to this, but I feel they are a little different, too. Don't know if I can explain why. So perhaps I'm just wrong on that feeling?

If both parties sign an agreement with complete agency, who is getting abused? How can it be "unfair" if you both parties freely agreed to the exchange?

(inb4 "What happened to your fuck-you money?" As if it's always the employee saying "fuck you".)

You are confused about cost and value.

I have seen a lot of people with high salaries that are more of a problem than a solution for the company. As an example, you can look at the executive that fired Salesforce red team at the DefCon.

Companies and upper management are usually bad at evaluating the value of employees. In some cases even punishing good employees while rewarding more ass-kisser types.

So you can be worth a lot, but be paid quite low. As cost and value are not always correlated, and rarely match each other.

For the part of looking elsewhere for a better salary, I agree. The managers are doing a poor job and moving around is the only option. This is a huge cost to the companies that lose expertise and need to train new employees and show how much overpaid their managers are because pay and worth are not related, and this is big a problem.

* https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/08/salesforce-fires-two...

Isn't that circular logic? By that logic, nothing can ever be undervalued, because its fair value is defined by how much it's sold for.

If you want to go all supply-and-demand, an employee's value is still not what they request, it's what it would cost to replace them, on average

Pretty sure most people who live paycheck to paycheck would disagree.

Er, can you clarify? If you don't work, you don't eat.

That's not what he means, just like that's not what you mean.

Plenty of people can negotiate to get closer to that so negotiating a raise isn't pointless - but lateral moves are often easier.

Although you can be more valuable in a different company - for eg. if your current company isn't good at utilizing your specializations.

Your argument is sound, but this is really unfortunate phrasing.

It's actually what your work is worth. Not what you as a person is worth, and it's important to keep those things separate, both for sanity and rigor.

No one cares if your apartment is clean which is why no one pays you to clean your apartment.

it has value to society, massive value. If no-one does it, society collapses pretty quickly.

But we don't pay people (women, mostly) to do it.

But certainly you must interact with people outside of your job?

That's how much that counterparty has offered. It may not necessarily be how much you're worth to that party, let alone some other party.

They may be bluffing. They may not have enough money at the moment. And so on.

If later on they get $10 million income and they can't continue without you, then even though they are still paying you $X you can easily find out you're worth more by threatening to leave.

You're worth whatever it costs to replace you in the open market.

If you have money saved you always have another offer. The biggest leverage you have as an employee is saying "no thanks" and leaving. As long as you're willing to do that you can demand whatever you want.

That doesn't make any sense and sounds like everyone is always paid fairly. That's far from true.

If you can't get more, you're not being exploited. You're taking advantage of the best option available to you.

Not much? I hate you Silicon Valley!