Most people need money to eat. I don't know if you can ever really have a fair negotiation with an employer when "the rent is due" is involved. You know those companies that buy settlements from people in exchange for a fraction of their value immediately? You could say that this is a fair trade in an econ 101 sense that body parties rationally entered into a mutual agreement. But you could also notice that one person just got laid off and doesn't have enough money to pay rent and is therefore pressured by circumstance to accept extremely unfavorable terms because the alternative is homelessness.

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csallen 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Most people need money to eat. I don't know if you can ever really have a fair negotiation with an employer when "the rent is due" is involved.

Your definition of "fair" is questionable.

If you're negotiating from a position where you've taken on debts and rent that you can't afford to pay, and time has run out to the point where you're desperate for a paycheck as soon as possible, that's unfortunate. But that's not the fault of the person you're negotiating for a job with. Exceptional cases aside, 95% of the time that's likely due to your own risk-taking, neglect, poor decision-making, or financial mismanagement. And you had a "fair" chance to not get into that situation to begin with.

But regardless of blame, it's certainly not the fault of the counterparty in your employment negotiations in that you're in that spot. Nor is it their responsibility. Nor should we want it to be! What kind of system would that be, exactly? A brutal one where many more people fall through the gaps than would otherwise. A much better system is the one we have, where people pay taxes, and do so at higher rates the more fortunate they are, and that tax money goes into programs like unemployment, which helps people in exceptional situations.

What's so unfair about this, exactly?

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stackbutterflow 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Actually it's probably more 99.99% likely due to the family you're born in.

> What's so unfair about this, exactly?

We don't roll the same dices at birth.

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csallen 2 hours ago | parent [-]

No one's saying we roll the same dice at birth. That doesn't mean that people who are so desperate that they can't risk negotiating a job offer are 99.99% in that situation because of birth rather than decisions made subsequent to birth.

Especially because in America at least, over 200 million people are born middle class or above. An even lower class in America is doing much better than many other countries in the world.

At what point in your mind does personal accountability come into play? How prosperous does a nation have to be for people to have some responsibility for the consequences of their own actions? Or are people never responsible?

	▲	stackbutterflow 7 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Regarding personal responsibility, at an individual's level it's your responsibility to improve your life, because that's the only lever you have and you don't have the time to wait for societal changes that take decades or centuries to arrive. When we're discussing policy for our society however it's too easy to blame people for the choices they made so we don't have to think harder. The world's complexity is beyond what the humans brain can hold at any single time. Some people are dealt bad hands, born in a difficult family, born in a body that slow them down or drag them down. Some people make one bad choice (even something mild like a financially unprofitable carrer choice) at 18 because millions of parameters that played since their birth compulsed their brain to make that choice at that moment in their life. Not even mentioning meeting the wrong people. You can do everything well and cross the path of someone who breaks you. Truly and without getting too philosophical,looking back and learning about people's stories I've come to realize that we have little agency and by the time we understand how the world works and what we should have done instead it's often too late to change the outcome drastically. To tie it all back to the topic of this thread, the 19 year old who's been pushed by his parents all his life to get good grades, study well, get involved in the right extracurriculars, ends up at Stanford, starts a startup because that's what people do around him, is told to apply to YC, is accepted, is taken care of by YC, tell me how much is he responsible for his success?

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derektank 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If you’re an early employee at a startup, you almost certainly had other options for employment

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Grombobulous 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I don’t think you can assume this to be the case, especially outside of the Bay Area.

My first startup was one where I was hired because I was young and cheap. I could be paid in free lunches rather than 401k matching and decent healthcare plans.

Big companies often pay better salaries.

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csallen 3 hours ago | parent [-]

There are plenty of people who would consider themselves extremely lucky to work at a startup, even for cheap. I know many older people working much worse jobs. I think it's fair to assume that most startup workers have other options, and that generally those options are worse.

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Grombobulous 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Could you imagine this perception you describe playing into being underpaid?

Your last sentence you’re saying it’s fair to make this assumption that most other jobs are worse.

So that means if a non-startup offered you a better pay package your assumption and bias might steer you away and take worse compensation to do the same job.

I ask you this question because I made a similar mistake in my youth. I took a pay and benefits cut for a startup because it sounded a lot more fun. 6 months later and the company was going under and I was out of a job.

There are also plenty of employees who just didn’t get a job offer elsewhere. When I took my first startup job I didn’t have a competing offer.

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csallen 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I too have worked for startups that failed. And when I took those jobs, I had many thousands of alternative opportunities I could've taken instead that I considered to be worse, or at least not worth pursuing compared to the startup jobs. What's your point?

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Grombobulous 39 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Here's an example that could help make my point: Glimpse is hiring a Security and Compliance Lead in New York City and is only paying $150K - $225K.

Meta is paying a Security Engineer (not a lead) $271,000/year to $347,000/year + bonus + equity + benefits across the following locations: Bellevue, WA, Menlo Park, CA, Washington, DC, New York, NY

I find it hard to reconcile that salary difference, and I think the only way to explain it is that startups offer dreams of upside like a smoky Vegas casino.

Working for Meta [1] is "boring" and corporate, but it's also objectively a better financial decision unless Glimpse becomes the next Uber. My point is that I am hypothesizing that tech culture encourages people (especially young people) to prefer objectively worse financial outcomes to do the exact same work at a more "exciting" startup company.

At the time you joined those startups, you considered those other opportunities to be worse, but I wonder if that was true or if that was perception? Of course, I don't intend to tell you that you were wrong, in fact I think it's highly likely you were right. I only mean to say that it's worth introspecting on the concept.

[1] Or insert any other large and slightly more ethical company, if we want to disqualify working for Meta due to its "evil empire problem."

	▲	csallen 23 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, I mean, when you put it that way, I don't disagree with you. I think it's a matter of perception. What's better or worse will always be subjective. And there will always be gaps in the market where people make genuine mistakes, because of a lack of knowledge, or an error in judgment due to inexperience, etc. But there are also genuine advantages that others simply might not see. For example, many would rather apply to work at a startup because it's an easier job to get than one at Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, etc., and not having to study as hard for interviews is a genuine advantage to some that's worth the money left on the table. Or for others, maybe they want a more casual work environment. Or others might just want startup experience because they hope to start a startup someday. Etc.

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2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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