Beer, Batman and Business

I had an interesting conversation about hiring the other day.

I had met up with my hubby and some friends at the pub, and was a little later getting there than everybody else, so that by the time I had arrived, they were mid-appies and mid-debate. I walked in on a rather spirited debate about compensation and ethics, and so naturally I jumped right in.

It's worth mentioning first that these were my husband's fencing club buddies, who I have met only a couple of times, and who have no idea about my background in HR. It's also worth noting that a fair amount of beer had been consumed already by the time I got there, and that, as far as I know, none of those involved actually do any hiring of their own.

When I first sat down, the conversation was revolving around the hypothetical situation of a billionaire business owner (and I am very sure that this one was a completely hypothetical situation, and that there is no hidden billionaire lurking in the university fencing club) with a business manager of some sort who is negotiating a new salary. The debate centered specifically around the ethics and advisability of paying him $70,000 a year (as he or she apparently has asked) while knowing that you would be willing to pay up to $150,000 per year for the value he adds to your organization. One point seemed to be that the decision to pay $70,000 per year was both ethical and advisable, as you (as the billionaire, though why the business owner should have to be a billionaire was not mentioned and may have had more to do with the quantity of beer consumed than anything) are paying your employee exactly what he has asked you for. The other side of the debate seemed to be that the decision was not ethical, because you were working from more knowledge than the business manager, as you knew you were willing to pay more than double his asking price.

My contribution? I asked them who had done the market research for jobs of this type, our billionaire business owner or the manager, because having a salary range that was that far apart indicated that one or the other of them must be too stupid to find out what a position like that is actually worth in the labour market.

They told me that wasn't the point of the exercise, and the conversation segued into a discussion about the ethics (from a utilitarian standpoint) of being the man who murdered batman's parents. Which maybe explains the billionaire.