Man, with the way the sharks have been in the water around this guy, you'd think he was running Theranos or something. So what if he was initially overpaid, and so what if the lawsuit predated the decision? The domestic violence allegations are another matter, but still, if he's guilty of that does that mean that his employees have to give half their salaries back to him just to appease the Ayn Rand acolytes?
He might have had selfish motivations, and he might be a bad guy. But neither of those things changes the fact that he did an experiment with giving employees equal salaries, and that experiment had positive results on the company.
I think sharks are circling because people have a zeal for debunking the idea that someone is selfless. If you Google it, you can even find people who criticize Mother Theresa for having secret, selfish ulterior motives.
I personally believe people who help others always get something out of it (even if it's just private satisfaction), and that's OK. A good act is a good act, regardless of the internal thoughts that triggered it.
People criticise mother theresa because she believed that suffering was a gift from god and because of that she didn't allow pain medication to be used in her "hospices". And her hospices didn't separate the curable from the untreatable, so a bunch of people died needlessly.
That's very interesting! I haven't seen that specific (and horrifying) criticism.
What I've seen was from Christopher Hitchens, who said that she wasn't a "good" person because her primary motivation was to proselytize, as she believed Jesus instructed her to do.
My comment was creating an analogy between those two: Dan Price doing something awesome for his employees because of a lawsuit is something like Mother Theresa serving the poor because she believed it was how she would have a good afterlife.
I don't know if either of those motivations are true. It's impossible to know someone's motivations with certainty. That's why I think an action and its consequences are the thing to focus on.
If it's true, as the article says, that Dan Price is creating the cult of Dan Price (a do-gooder-CEO kind of thing), great! Even if he's just some narcissist who wants people to love him, I'm happy that another wealthy person is pursuing some form of humanitarianism. All the really "good" people might be narcissists, for all we know!
The pay raise made it easy for Gravity to recruit, but the retention benefits are unclear (some employees left due to the raise). It does not appear to have improved customer retention. It's unclear whether the raise was a net positive for the company.
The subtext of the story is that the raise was an unqualified win for one person, though: Dan Price.
You could actually make a decent comparison between Gravity and companies appeasing Wall Street by juicing quarterly earnings or buying back stock. If Gravity is spending an inordinate amount on employee pay and it's not accompanied by corresponding growth... well we all know what happens then.
Ayn Rand would have been pleased that a CEO decided what was a fair deal between the company and its employees, based on whatever reason they decided was important to the success of the company.
S/he means people who believe that society and individuals are better off serving themselves without any concern for the well-being of others.
If this experiment, of giving up a bunch of profit (and his own pay), were to succeed and make the company more profitable, it would undermine the idea that selfishness is the best way to serve yourself.
Possibly more confusing, but have you played BioShock? It's kind of an Objectivism Pitfalls for Dummies.
Ayn Rand founded/advocated a strong, determined branch of Libertarianism called Objectivism. In an over-generalizing nutshell, it's a philosophy, often economic, of individual freedoms over community needs (a strong negative over-reaction to bad socialism).
Good point, and one that is lost in a lot of modern political discourse. I once had some very cool discussions with a (very) early fan of Objectivism, when it was more a religion than a economic philosophy, and his perspective on what the modern Libertarian Thinktanks have done to co-opt Objectivism was fascinating. Unfortunately for him, although the economics adherents have lost a lot of the nuance of the original Rand vision in addition to the stronger religious views, they certainly haven't fallen that far from the tree and have kept the religious sort of fervent devotion to their version of its ideals.
Objectivists argue about what branch of normative ethics it is. I like to see it as a branch of Consequentialism, like a cousin of Utilitarianism, except where the utility function is not what outcome is best for the greater good, but what outcome is best for the self. They tend to believe that what is best for the self is by definition best for everyone.
Debates usually get hung up on Tragedy of the Commons, and whether it actually exists as a meaningful concept or whether it can always be solved via private property ownership.
Bioshock isn't really a critique of Objectivism. Part of Ayn Rand's philosophy as demonstrated in her books is that charity and philanthropy are used as PR stunts to cover up some nefarious deeds, like Bernie Madoff donating millions of other people's money to charity.
The first half of the game sets up the Founder Capitalist Figure as villan, and the second half portrays him as victim to a Bootlegger/Baptist Figure. I haven't read her stuff, but I seem to recall this plot being closer to a re-enactment, based second hand descriptions of the books. The later games do a somewhat better job though.
In that light, he is absolutely buying the loyalty of his employees, and being a private company, we really have no idea how sustainable the system really is. Worse, these things are path dependent. Getting a raise from 28k->32k will feel a lot different than going from 28k->70k->32k, even though the end state is the same. This is the sort of thing that can wreck companies.
I wonder if such a jump is actually bad for people. Many would allow lifestyle bloat and have difficulty going back down to market value when they transfer jobs.
He's parading around as an altruistic person when the evidence seems to suggest he's not. Many people argued that giving arbitrary raises is a bad way to run a business and probably unsustainable. If the raises were given for reasons besides he claimed, it gives much more credence to those arguments.
It matters very little if he is on the whole "a good person" (I make no claim one way or the other). What is interesting to most including myself is how his 70k minimum salary works for the company.
That act alone, whatever the reason, is likely a "good" thing in that he is sacrificing his own income to help others less fortunate for himself. If there are ulterior motives, or if he has had a lifetime of bad deeds until now I'm not terribly interested.
Can't say for certain without seeing the financials but having the real reason for pay increases raises red flags for me. I view it as a short-term gamble that could potentially lead to future layoffs/bankruptcy. In a worst case scenario, would it still be okay to you if the pay increases were granted because of personal circumstance and later led to people losing their jobs?
I agree that a CEO's decision based on personal issues is bad for a company. For Gravity specifically, is there evidence that it extends beyond this one issue?
And, in the context of this one issue at Gravity, it seems to have been a good move (at least what's been made public).
Pretty much every long-standing, famous CEO has done something for a personal reason (Jobs' personal vendetta against Samsung/Android for "ripping off" iOS is an example). That doesn't mean most of their decisions are personal, or that they can't run a company incredibly well.
Jobs' personal vendetta can easily be interpreted as public theatrics for business reasons. Making a business decision because you are personally getting sued is completely different.
Let me frame it this way. Let's say I was working there and thought I was getting underpaid. I started interviewing, found a job paying 65k, and was about to take it. There's some grand announcement about how everyone will get 70k and I decide, great, I'll stay. Had I been provided with what looks to be the real reason behind the raise, I may have elected to jump ship for less money.
