> I don't believe you have any reason to pay people more than they are worth. That would be bad for your business and is not credible if we exclude nepotism.
> So, by admitting that you pay people different amounts for the same work, you are paying some people less than their genuine value to you. You are paying people unequally because of their personal circumstances.
That's an interesting perspective... But incorrect. I guess your perspective comes from a traditional work environment. Remember that all our finances are entirely transparent. Because of that transparency, any such unfairness (like paying black, gay and female employees less) would stand out painfully to everyone and drive people away from the company, particularly since many of us are quite sensitive to discrimination. For example, when we detected that one of our recruitment sources seemed to have a negative bias (sending us only candidates from fairly "elite" educational backgrounds), several people in the company (including senior people) declared that they would quit if we kept using this source of candidates. Imagine how they'd react if there was any kind of discernible policy to underpay black/gay/female people??
The rest of your comment is just extrapolating from this incorrect assumption, so I won't address it. Yes, if we did this it would be the worst kind of discrimination, but we don't.
As I've said elsewhere, our practices can't easily be translated to a secretive, control-based, non-open environment... Without trust none of this is possible. Perhaps a good analogy is surgery... without trust in the person doing the surgery, it's a criminal grievous bodily harm to cut people open... with trust it can life-saving, essential. You can't extract the action from its context and judge it in isolation.
I found it a bit shocking that elsewhere you suggested being openly gay at work is somehow unusual
I did not suggest that being openly gay at work is unusual, I was responding to someone who said that people wouldn't want to share their sexual orientation at work saying that several people here are clearly comfortable with that (and some others aren't).
> So, by admitting that you pay people different amounts for the same work, you are paying some people less than their genuine value to you. You are paying people unequally because of their personal circumstances.
That's an interesting perspective... But incorrect. I guess your perspective comes from a traditional work environment. Remember that all our finances are entirely transparent. Because of that transparency, any such unfairness (like paying black, gay and female employees less) would stand out painfully to everyone and drive people away from the company, particularly since many of us are quite sensitive to discrimination. For example, when we detected that one of our recruitment sources seemed to have a negative bias (sending us only candidates from fairly "elite" educational backgrounds), several people in the company (including senior people) declared that they would quit if we kept using this source of candidates. Imagine how they'd react if there was any kind of discernible policy to underpay black/gay/female people??
The rest of your comment is just extrapolating from this incorrect assumption, so I won't address it. Yes, if we did this it would be the worst kind of discrimination, but we don't.
As I've said elsewhere, our practices can't easily be translated to a secretive, control-based, non-open environment... Without trust none of this is possible. Perhaps a good analogy is surgery... without trust in the person doing the surgery, it's a criminal grievous bodily harm to cut people open... with trust it can life-saving, essential. You can't extract the action from its context and judge it in isolation.
I found it a bit shocking that elsewhere you suggested being openly gay at work is somehow unusual
I did not suggest that being openly gay at work is unusual, I was responding to someone who said that people wouldn't want to share their sexual orientation at work saying that several people here are clearly comfortable with that (and some others aren't).