Originally Posted by
Ralgarog
Let's say you work in a small office. You are invested in your work, but you don't have enough resources, but you decide to work extra hours to get work done. Let's say that you develop a system that leads of better preprocessing and structuring of work, which now means that you can perform 40 hours of work in only 10 hours. But you still work your 40 hours.
Tim also works in this small office. He barely even does his base job right. You constantly have to interrupt your work in order to help him with his issues. When you introduced the new system, he flat out refused and decided to stick to the old system, wasting resources (in this case, time) working through an old system.
Tomorrow, it was announced that everybody's getting a raise! You went from making 60k to 70k. Tim went from making 40k to 70k. Does that really seem fair to you, given the amount of work and dedication you offered to this hypothetical company?
If you have enough resources to give everybody a raise to 70k, you definitely have the resources to give better workers even better pay. It is never a good idea to just raise the minimum pay of -all- employees to a certain amount without rewarding the highest performing workers. That is a one trip ticket to losing your top 50% most effective workers.