At Tekedia Institute, my lectures have been focusing on Personal Economy and Global Workplaces. Let’s discuss compensation and how it varies across economies and markets,
Compensation is a mirage in America because it could be convoluted. Yes, you can be a supervisor, big boss, and “Oga”, and the person reporting to you is making more money than you! Unlike in Corporate Nigeria where titles/levels correlate with earning, in America, anything is possible!
In the semiconductor industry, they can hire you as a new PhD graduate, and your role is to “supervise” design legends, with some logging decades of experience. You “manage” them, “review” them and set deadlines for them, but do not be deceived, you are an “ofeke boss”. Some earn 3x whatever you make. And if one is a Technical Fellow, you could be “managing” someone who earns 8x your take-home.
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How does that happen? America pays for value added, not titles, they say. The design legend you “manage” delivers more value than you the manager. It is like an Athletic Director in a university who hires a coach and can fire a coach, but the coach can make 10x what that Director takes home! Of course, in Southern America, the highest paid people in universities are not the presidents (i.e. vice chancellors) but football coaches (Alabama’s coaching legend Nick Saban takes home $11.41M yearly, the athletic director, his boss, may be taking home around $1M).
As we evaluate workplaces, Nigeria makes them simpler: in a bank, once you move a level, you earn what everyone at that level is earning. In the US, there is nothing like that. Both could be doing the same thing but the other colleague is going home at 2x your rate.
Here is my message: put efforts as you negotiate those range-based compensations of $25 – $120 per hour, knowing that someone could be paid $120 per hour when you are offered $30 per hour.
Comment on Feed
Comment 1: I once had a former colleague who had issues with this because he was earning lower than a subordinate.??. It’s actually painful if you are the one affected, but funny if you are not.
Although some Nigeria HRMs intentionally do this because of favouritism and not because of value added.
My Response: In Nigeria, you manage that by asking to be put in the right level. In the US, you can be in that level but still be paid lower. Levels typically correlate with pay scale in Nigeria; in the US, not.
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Do people get paid at workplaces in Nigeria for the value they bring or how long they have been there? Do we even have standards for measuring value? I am not sure if we have any law that says a manager must earn higher than a programmer in a private company, so it boils down to our understanding of value and how to compensate same accordingly.
A company can still do same here, and before you know it, most people will focus on becoming technically proficient in their trade, rather than fighting for promotion. How we organize things equally fuel our subpar productivity output.
Universities can also hire technologists and other technical people who do not have amalgam of degrees and still pay them more than the professors, it’s about who gets things done at scale. We do not need to be fixated with years of working experience or academic qualifications, those who work in the public sector can carry on with such system, but should not be the norm in the private sector.
There’s no cap on salaries if people can justify why they should earn that much, it’s not about emotional blackmail but logically and empirically demonstrating why you believe that you are underpaid.