The new hire he trained earns fifteen percent more than he does. He’s been at that company for four years. He trained the kid for three months.
This question has been sitting on Zhihu, with over 700,000 views. I scrolled through thousands of answers, and almost all of them said the same thing: Me too.
Most people’s first reaction is that the boss is cheap. But after going through several compensation reports, I realized it’s not that simple. The money for hiring and the money for retaining people are in completely separate budgets. Hiring comes out of the recruiting budget. HR is judged on targets, and if they don’t offer market rates, nobody applies. Raises for existing employees come out of the compensation budget. If the boss doesn’t sign off, nothing happens. Two spreadsheets. Two people signing off. Each side does its own thing. The result? No one has to take responsibility.
But is there really no one responsible? There is: HR. And they only have one set of books to work with.
This year’s RGF report has a telling figure: 33 percent of surveyed companies admit they have pay inversion. The report also says that four in ten hiring negotiations fall through because salary expectations don’t match. According to Qiancheng Wuyou, the average raise this year is 4.0 percent; in finance, it’s fallen from 3.5 to 3.2 percent. Market rates rise 20 percent a year, while internal raises go up three points. The gap can only get wider.
Public companies’ annual reports are even more blunt. Last year, Hang Seng Electronics’ average salary per employee was 369,200 yuan, down 10 percent year over year. It had 651 fewer employees. Revenue fell 12 percent, while net profit went the other way, up 18 percent. Revenue was shrinking as profits rose. Where did the money in between come from? You tell me. No need to guess.
Japan is the other side of the same story. This year, there are 4.12 job openings for every high school graduate entering the workforce—four positions for each kid. Daiwa House raised the monthly salary for new graduates from 216,000 yen to 350,000 yen in five years, a 40 percent increase. Teikoku Databank surveyed more than 1,500 companies, and 67 percent are raising starting salaries. In that same survey, only half of small companies were raising wages, 17 points below large companies. The reason for the difference? Nobody can give a straight answer.
The market pushes up the price of new hires, while budgets hold down the pay of existing staff. The two drift apart, and nobody in the office gets a memo. Companies know exactly what they’re doing. Long-timers have mortgages and kids, so switching jobs is costly. Put it off for another year. Then another.
The crypto world is even more brazen. Exchanges offer referral bonuses to bring in new users. New registrants get trial funds. New wallets qualify for airdrops, while old addresses get nothing. The older the address, the less it’s worth. Brutal. And fair. Nobody on-chain makes a fuss about it, because all the rules are written in plain sight. What about the rules behind your payslip? They’re not written down.
I’ve thought this through, and the root of pay inversion isn’t the boss’s conscience. It’s that two different price lists are running at the same time. Internal raises are based on budgets; external hiring is based on the market. The same asset is being priced by two different systems. Sooner or later, the lower-priced side has to be cleared out. On-chain, the process is simpler and more ruthless: as soon as a price diverges, arbitrageurs wipe out the difference. Inside a company, there are no arbitrageurs. There are only people who quit.
So what really hurts isn’t the low pay. It’s that staying becomes a losing proposition. You spend three years at a company, and your résumé goes three years without an update. The last time the market tested your worth was three years ago. Back then, you thought you were secure. Pretty secure. But it was the company that was secure, not you.
And yet nobody teaches you this. The interviewer asks your salary expectations, and you give them the figure from your last job. With that one sentence, you’ve stuck your own price tag right back where it was.
Of those 651 people, how many left voluntarily, and how many left after negotiating? The annual report doesn’t say.
$BTC $USDC $BNB
#薪资倒挂 #打工人 #Salary
This question has been sitting on Zhihu, with over 700,000 views. I scrolled through thousands of answers, and almost all of them said the same thing: Me too.
Most people’s first reaction is that the boss is cheap. But after going through several compensation reports, I realized it’s not that simple. The money for hiring and the money for retaining people are in completely separate budgets. Hiring comes out of the recruiting budget. HR is judged on targets, and if they don’t offer market rates, nobody applies. Raises for existing employees come out of the compensation budget. If the boss doesn’t sign off, nothing happens. Two spreadsheets. Two people signing off. Each side does its own thing. The result? No one has to take responsibility.
But is there really no one responsible? There is: HR. And they only have one set of books to work with.
This year’s RGF report has a telling figure: 33 percent of surveyed companies admit they have pay inversion. The report also says that four in ten hiring negotiations fall through because salary expectations don’t match. According to Qiancheng Wuyou, the average raise this year is 4.0 percent; in finance, it’s fallen from 3.5 to 3.2 percent. Market rates rise 20 percent a year, while internal raises go up three points. The gap can only get wider.
Public companies’ annual reports are even more blunt. Last year, Hang Seng Electronics’ average salary per employee was 369,200 yuan, down 10 percent year over year. It had 651 fewer employees. Revenue fell 12 percent, while net profit went the other way, up 18 percent. Revenue was shrinking as profits rose. Where did the money in between come from? You tell me. No need to guess.
Japan is the other side of the same story. This year, there are 4.12 job openings for every high school graduate entering the workforce—four positions for each kid. Daiwa House raised the monthly salary for new graduates from 216,000 yen to 350,000 yen in five years, a 40 percent increase. Teikoku Databank surveyed more than 1,500 companies, and 67 percent are raising starting salaries. In that same survey, only half of small companies were raising wages, 17 points below large companies. The reason for the difference? Nobody can give a straight answer.
The market pushes up the price of new hires, while budgets hold down the pay of existing staff. The two drift apart, and nobody in the office gets a memo. Companies know exactly what they’re doing. Long-timers have mortgages and kids, so switching jobs is costly. Put it off for another year. Then another.
The crypto world is even more brazen. Exchanges offer referral bonuses to bring in new users. New registrants get trial funds. New wallets qualify for airdrops, while old addresses get nothing. The older the address, the less it’s worth. Brutal. And fair. Nobody on-chain makes a fuss about it, because all the rules are written in plain sight. What about the rules behind your payslip? They’re not written down.
I’ve thought this through, and the root of pay inversion isn’t the boss’s conscience. It’s that two different price lists are running at the same time. Internal raises are based on budgets; external hiring is based on the market. The same asset is being priced by two different systems. Sooner or later, the lower-priced side has to be cleared out. On-chain, the process is simpler and more ruthless: as soon as a price diverges, arbitrageurs wipe out the difference. Inside a company, there are no arbitrageurs. There are only people who quit.
So what really hurts isn’t the low pay. It’s that staying becomes a losing proposition. You spend three years at a company, and your résumé goes three years without an update. The last time the market tested your worth was three years ago. Back then, you thought you were secure. Pretty secure. But it was the company that was secure, not you.
And yet nobody teaches you this. The interviewer asks your salary expectations, and you give them the figure from your last job. With that one sentence, you’ve stuck your own price tag right back where it was.
Of those 651 people, how many left voluntarily, and how many left after negotiating? The annual report doesn’t say.
$BTC $USDC $BNB
#薪资倒挂 #打工人 #Salary