That's bunk. Number of years of experience being a major factor is one of the quickest ways to kill any kind of meritocracy. It's true you earn the same regardless of gender, extrovertedness, etc. But it means you also earn the same regardless of competence, creativity, or general usefulness as an employee. Talented people go where they can be rewarded for being exceptional. Mediocre people dig in and count the days until their next automatic raise for continuing to breathe in and out.
But it means you also earn the same regardless of competence, creativity, or general usefulness as an employee.
There is probably no strong correlation between creativity/competence and the skills to negotiate a salary. There is probably a strong correlation between salary and gender, extrovertness, etc. and some correlation between years of experience and competence (within a particular scale). So, yes, it is inherently (more) fair.
No its not, it punishes competent people and rewards incompetence. There is a reason no leading tech companies do this. A university can only get away with this because good professors can earn more money from grants and can get perks like tenure.
Also, if someone can't negotiate their own salary, that's their own problem. Not being able to convince a company you are worth money either means you don't understand what value you can provide or you actually aren't providing that much value. It's not up to the company to do that for you. Doing it is less fair to anyone that knows what they are doing.
Isn't this whole discussion exactly the same old one made between salaried based wages and performance based wages? One side arguing that salaried employees could just roll their thumbs and still get paid, while the other side argues that you would get fired or simply that people who do so won't get hired in the first place.
The reason no leading tech company does this is that they are all trying to pay the least amount of money. You seem to forget that just a few years ago most big tech companies were found to run a scheme to reduce salaries of people working for them.
I agree. I work one of germanys biggest engineering companies (automotive sector), where pay is pretty much equal. There are certain job levels (secretary, technician, engineer, manager, etc.), but inside of these levels the salary is only determined by "years of experience" (which is mostly how long you have been in the company). I found it totally frustrating, because independent on how much effort you put in your work and how much benefit you bring to the company you won't get any monetary benefit or promotion. On the other side you see some older guys which are leaning back and waiting for retirement which get higher salaries. This really lowers the motivation to achieve something good amongst all employees after a while.
It was one of the reasons I resigned and will start at a smaller company next month.
And still, a lot of exceptional people are working at these universities.
If you, as professor, for example, start a research project that is interesting, you also often get funding from the industry – part of which goes directly to your salary, too.
So, exceptional people still have chances to get exceptional pay, but only if scientific organizations like the Fraunhofer Institute or industry corporations are interested in it.
And of course, there is a brain drain of the very best that come to the USA from any place that doesn't fairly compensate. I'm all for these unfair compensation schemes because I want the best and brightest to come to the USA.
Well, that doesn’t happen, though, especially in hardware – the US excels in software development, but especially in classical engineering and more hardware-focused engineering, it’s a lot behind.
Yes, in terms of car design, Germany and Italy are tops, in terms of industrial machinery, (mechanical printing, cloth), the Germans.
But I used to work as a VLSI (computer chip) designer and in that area USA (Silicon Valley) and Israel are tops. After Silicon Valley, Israel has the most computer chip designers in the world, about 20,000. Intel employs 10,000 Israelis in two design centers and two fabs. One of the fabs is a 22 nm node being upgrade to the 10 nm node. It was the Israelis that were in charge of mobile and instigated Intel's change of higher performance from lower clock rates.
Apple looked all over the world for its computer chip design center and chose Israel where it now employs 700 and hiring more. Tim Cook was there in February dedicating a new building. His VP in charge of hardware/computer chip design is an Arab Israeli who has his BS and Masters degrees from Technion, the MIT of Israel.
One of the professors at my university, after he worked as one of the leading ALU designers at intel for some years, founded a company focused on general purpose computing extension cards for PCs, which he later sold, and made a fortune with – all of that outside of Germany. He only came back when he lost his money (which he invested) during the dotCom crash. Now he’s teaching here, and one of our best professors in chip design and digital engineering.
As you said, a lot of the stuff happens outside of europe currently, but that’s also due to extreme electricity prices.
That's bunk. Number of years of experience being a major factor is one of the quickest ways to kill any kind of meritocracy. It's true you earn the same regardless of gender, extrovertedness, etc. But it means you also earn the same regardless of competence, creativity, or general usefulness as an employee. Talented people go where they can be rewarded for being exceptional. Mediocre people dig in and count the days until their next automatic raise for continuing to breathe in and out.