vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
It also depends on the firm that you work for. Some firms pay out overtime to their employees in the form of leave or cash. Either way, it is an additional cost to these firms to have their employees work overtime. Hence, you are less likely to work over and above your given work hours. Those financial firms that don't pay out in overtime and have a large client base will generally make you work like a bitch and compensate you for that via your yearly bonus.
How does increasing the company's profits get helped by paying for employees to fly domestically in first?    Many have business class policies for flying to other continents (although never first, just business class).     I have flown a plenty of domestic/international first class, and it is fascinating that most of those in paid fares in first are government workers, and non profit employees along with the odd retiree.   The rest are usually there on free upgrades, friends/family of airline employees and those that paid with miles.
It should go without saying (should being the key word) that you must pay employees enough so that they stop thinking about money. If your people are under that thresshold, these points aren't as powerful. Underpaid people will always underperform, mentally check-out, look for a new job, etc. Being underpaid is like being on fire. Before anything else can happen, this must be addressed.  Once they're above the thresshold and money is no longer a motivator, that's when you need these things to happen. Compensation sort of falls into the law of diminishing return. More is always better...to a point. I've read that point cited at $75-77k in the US. After that, people aren't working solely for compensation anymore.
How important sales people are in an organisation has been said but in some companies there is a bonus model among developers too.   The problem is that it's harder to see a direct relationship between profit and lines of code than it is to see between profit and number of orders.   I'm used to have bonuses to the developers based on 1. keeping deadline and 2. the customer response on the product.  that way the developers tend to work faster and create more quality user experiences.  By setting up quality guide lines that are easy to measure every company can have a bonus model for developers.
"Yes, there is a financial benefit, if and only if you can live on 24/26th of your salary. Thus, bi-weekly is 12/13 lower than a bi-monthly income.  However, you now get a so-called ""extra"" paycheck twice a year.  (We typically get them in March and October.)   You can either spend those extra paychecks on ""hookers and blow"" or spend them wisely on things like accelerated debt repayment, home/car down payment, property taxes, etc, etc. HOWEVER... none of this really matters, since you don't control whether or not you're paid bi-weekly or semi-monthly."
In all fairness, some of the benefits packages enjoyed by GM workers should never have been allowed.  To give you an idea of the kind of deals they used to have, my wife's uncle (so my uncle-in-law?) worked for GM.  He spent the last ten years sitting in a room doing nothing 40 hours a week for 80% pay.  The plant he was working at was shut down.  They couldn't fire him, and there were geographic restrictions on transfer so that he couldn't be forced to choose between resigning or moving to where there was another plant.  They didn't have any work for him to do where he was located, so they stuck him and a bunch of other people in a room hoping that they'd get bored enough to quit.
"A company doesn't offer up 100% of its shares to the market.  There's a float amount of varying significance, maybe 30% of the shares are put up for public offer.  Generally some amount of current shareholders will pledge some or all of their shares for offer to the public.  This may be how the venture capital, private equity or other current investors cash out their initial investment.  The company may issue new shares in order to raise money for some initiative.  It may be a combination of existing shares and new. Additionally, a company may hold some ""treasury shares"" on its balance sheet.  In this instance fluctuations in the share price directly affect the health of the balance sheet. As far as incentive goes, stock options to management and C-Suite employees keep everyone interested in an increasing stock price."
I dont understand pushback from companies regarding wage hikes.  Where are these customers going to spend their money? Companies  Where are employees going to spend extra money they recieve with wage hike? Companies  Whose products become suddenly more viable to a larger portion of consumers thanks to increases in income? Companies.  I understand short term profit incentives, but good god opening entire demographics to new purchasing power has never in the history of ever NOT made companies risiculous amounts of money. Look at every major economic development in the US history. Low wage workers get more time of and money? They buy more and consumer markets rise. Anything else is a small group of insiders penny pinching for their own pockets and not thinking beyond this month.
Your situation may be different if your employer contracts with a different company to manage these benefits (or manages them themselves), but I'll give you my experience. My employer contracts with WageWorks. I log on to the WageWorks site, select commuter options from a predefined list, e.g. public transit passes, gas debit cards, parking passes, etc. and the cost of my choices is automatically deducted from my paycheck each month, up to the limit. WageWorks either sends me whatever I purchased in the mail or reloads the card automatically, and the process continues each month. In my case, I couldn't use this to purchase a ticket for someone else, but I could choose the subway option for myself and let another person use it.
I own a non-union company in the construction industry and my employees are harassed weekly... At home, by phone, on jobs, all the time. They keep raising pay rates (around $75/hr + $30/hr in benefits now) but no one is working because clients are balking at the union prices. We pay well, give good benefits and are really low pressure. In the last 7 years we have not had a single employee switch over... I think that makes the union more annoyed than anything.
"But you're forgetting that the problem under discussion here is that the owners who set the wages tend to prefer higher profits over ""best employees, they are happier, lower turn over"". In a lot of industries that employ a lot of people, a marginal increase in productivity isn't going to overcome the increase in wages required to create it."
Fully Paid up Partly Paid up: A company may issue stock to you which is only partly paid up, for example, a company may issue a stock of face value 10 to you and ask you to pay 5 now and other 5 will be adjusted later by some other mechanism. This stock shall be partly paid up. Usually, these stocks are issued in different circumstances, for example as part payment for debentures, preference shares or other capital structuring. On the other hand for a fully paid up share no more money needs to be paid by you or no other adjustments need to be made. So, above, the company is issuing you with stocks for which you will need to pay no further money, they are fully paid for. Authorized Capital: Authorized capital of a company is the amount of money a company can raise by selling stock (not debt, equity). This number is registered when the company is incorporated, subsequently, this number can be revised upward by applying to the registrar of companies. Now, this means that at max. the company is authorized to raise this much capital and no more. However, a company may raise less than this, which is called Issued Capital. In your case, the company is raising its authorized capital by applying to the registrar of companies, though in this case they are looking at their full authorized capital to be issued capital, it was not necessary to do so. Increase of Authorized capital: The main benefit is that the company can get more money in form of equity and utilize the same, perhaps, for expansion of business etc., that is the primary benefit. Bonus Share: Usually, companies keep some surplus as reserve, this money comes out of the profit the company makes and is essentially money of the shareholders. This reserve surplus is maintained for situations, when the money may be required for exigencies. However, this surplus grows over a few years and the company usually the company plans for an expansion of business. However, this money cannot be just taken, as it belongs to the shareholder, so shareholders are issued extra equity in proportion to their current holding and this surplus is capitalized i.e. used as part of the company's equity capital. Bonus declaration does not add t o the value of the company and the share prices fall in proportion (but not quite) to the bonus.
Great read. Good points. My only complaint is that our North American union model could learn much from the German model where the union plays an important role IN the company. There are corrupt unions like anything else, which ruin it for the grassroots unions that operate as intended. I really don't think it's too much to ask for CEOs and companies to operate more like, for example, Costco; where the CEO sees his employees as his most important asset, and as such pays top wages in the industry, and provides benefits for families of employees. Somehow they still seem to reap a positive return for investors, while spreading the wealth by providing a living wage for their employees.   Thanks for your well thought out, we'll organized reply! Cheers.
"Does your company offer a 401k? or similar pre-tax retirement plans? Is your company a publicly traded company? These questions are important, basically the key to any of your investments should be diversification. This means buying more than one kind of investment, amongst stock(s), bonds, real estate or more. The answer to ""How Much"" of your salary should go to company stock, is subjective. I personally would contribute the max toward a retirement plan or even post-tax savings, which would be invested in a variety of public companies.  Hope that helps."
"My answer has nothing to do with tax brackets or mathematics (I'm taking advantage of the leeway your question allowed), but rather it has to do with career goals and promotion.  Large companies often have large ""Policies & Procedures"" booklets to go with them.  One policy that sometimes exists which would make it a bad idea to accept a raise is: Employee cannot be given more than one   salary increase in a 12-month period This means that if you accept a standard-of-living or merit increase of say, 2% or 3% in April, and then you apply for a job that would otherwise warrant a pay grade increase, you may be forced to wait until the following year to get bumped to the proper pay grade. Of course, this totally depends on the company, but it would be advisable to check your company's H.R. policy on that, if you're considering a move (even a lateral one) in the future."
Chiming with my experience, because I hate generalizations of an entire country.  I'm Indian, born and raised, but came to the US to do my undergrad/uni and now work out of the US. I had a lot of the same qualms about working with my Indian peers, but I've found that it also depends on the support structure that companies offer. High turnover is definitely an issue, but that seems to be because companies focus more on hiring and less on retention (offering signing bonuses but then little to no continued progress, limited growth opportunities, rigid hierarchy, terrible working hours).  I have someone who reports to me in India now and it's an experiment on how to better engage them, and it's worked better. Turns out you can expect more when you also treat them like an American employee while expecting american results. There are definitely still cultural clashes in work ethic etc. but they can be overcome if you get people to stick around long enough.  Of course, this is anecdotal but that's my two cents.
"The only thing worse than finding out you are paid less than a co-worker is finding out that you are paid more than all of your co-workers. A lot of people who *think* they would prefer an open and transparent pay-scale (as in unions), change their minds, when placed in one. I have worked in and implemented both types, as both an employee and as an owner/manager. There are pluses and minuses to both. - ""Transparent"" pay-scale is most effective in a high-turnover, aggressively performance-metric-oriented environment where you expect people to be competing for jobs, including their own job, every day. For example, a pool of commissioned sales-agents: the more you sell, the more you make. Winner gets a Cadillac. Runner-up gets a set of steak knives. Loser gets fired, that kind of thing. If you can't meet your numbers, we let other people start poaching your territory/clients and see what they can do. - Where it doesn't work is in a salary-type position where people are expected to have multiple ""soft"" duties outside of core performance metrics. The reasons are multi-fold: - One immediate effect of implementing performance-based pay for salary-type employees is that people who are in the office for 8 hours a day, five days a week, immediate start devoting their time and energy towards getting another notch up on the pay-scale, even at the expense of their co-workers, or the company. It intrinsically incentivizes ""gaming the system"", finding ways to attach your name to easy metrics, and to remove yourself from the most difficult problems. The people who are best at hitting metrics are often not even close to the MVPs. - If instead you take a ""soft metrics"" or subjective/holistic approach to evaluation, then you get a culture of brown-nosing and office-politics. People start sabotaging the ""boss's favorite"" and pursuing approval and credit, rather than performance. Instead of fostering a team-oriented, problem-solving approach, it fosters a counter-productive buck-passing, credit-grabbing, and blame-avoidance approach.
No clue, why you are getting downvoted. Most people need to understand that entry level positions garner entry level pay, and it's only after being loyal to a company that you get paid much more. However, if work sucks, they ought to do the best to find another one.
"Why do you think you are entitled to ""fairness""? In this world you get what you get. I am pretty sure your employer is not paying you for how you ""feel"" either. And by-the-way turning up on time and not leaving early is not exceptional behaviour; it is expected behaviour. Bottom line: do you add more value to your employer's business then the new hires? If so, ask for a raise, if not find a way to add more value and then ask for a raise or keep doing what you're doing and accept what you get."
Do you have any insight on average *effective* rates paid by SE owners?  As a counterpoint to your (very valid) links, filing as S-corp allows for taxes on distributions to be exempt from payroll tax and taxed at much lower rates. Also, being SE allows for various deductions not possible for wage earners. There's probably other examples not immediately coming to mind.  Also, SE taxes equal taxes otherwise paid by employer + employee. It's just that those employer taxes don't appear on the employee's paystub so not everyone realizes this.
One important thing that hasn't been mentioned here is that the vast majority of companies have eventually eliminated their Company provided Pension Plans and replaced it with a 401K with some degree of matching.  There is a cost advantage to doing this as companies no longer have to maintain or work to maintain a 100% vested pension plan.  This takes a great burden off them.  They also don't have to manage the pension/annuity that the retirement benefit entails.
Ideally, you would be correct.  There is an inverse correlation between wages and turnover rate... to a point.  We live in an economy where, unfortunately, there is a ready supply of labor to take the place of those who quit or otherwise leave the company.  This brings the value of your current employees down.
I recently rejected an offer at a different firm that would have provided a 14k yearly increase. The reason for the rejection was because I would have had to give up two work from home days, my commute would have been about an hour and half each way, I would have lost about 14 extra days of PTO and holiday pay, and the new company didn't match anything for 401k.
I'm not sure about reimbursement, you'll have to talk to a tax adviser (CPA/EA licensed in your State). From what I know, if you pay your own insurance premiums - they're not deductible, and I don't think reimbursements change that. But again - not sure, verify. However, since you're a salaried employee, even if your own, you can have your employer cover you by a group plan. Even if the group consists of only you. Then, you'll pay your portion as part of the pre-tax salary deduction, and it will be deductible. The employer's portion is a legitimate business expense. Thus, since both the employee and the employer portions are pre-tax - the whole cost of the insurance will be pre-tax. The catch is this: this option has to be available to all of your employees. So if you're hiring an employee a year from now to help you - that employee will be eligible to exactly the same options you have. You cannot only cover owner-employees. If you don't plan on hiring employees any time soon, this point is moot for you, but it is something to keep in mind down the road as you're building and growing your business.
One major benefit to being able to buy discounted company stock is that you can sell in-the-money covered calls and potentially make more than you would selling at strike.
He's trying to create a compensation system that is as fair as possible.  &gt;I can see certain benefits too, but look - as an employee, I want to work in an environment where I can advocate for myself and, occasionally, negotiate for better compensation. **Some people aren't good at these things, and frankly, that sucks for them. I'll eat their lunch if they let me.**  What you're saying is you want to work at a place that rewards the skills **you** have.  This is a very selfish perspective, but at least you're honest about it.  Of course you want to work somewhere that pays you more than other people.  However I don't see how it benefits the company to reward employees that are good at negotiating salary.  I'd rather have employees that are good at making product.
Financial benefit? No. No matter whether you are paid based on a salary or by the hour, the frequency of your pay check has no effect since at the end of the year you will have received the exact same amount of money. Psychological benefit? Well, from the many answers and comments on this page that seem to think there is a difference, then apparently there is a large psychological difference. Whether that is a benefit or not, I guess, depends on your personality.
"I had experience working for a company that manufactures stuff and giving products to the employees. The condition was to stay employed for a year after the gift for the company to cover its cost (I think they imputed the tax), otherwise they'd add the cost to the last paycheck (which they did when I left). But they were straight-forward about it and I signed a paper acknowledging it. However, in your case you didn't get a product (that you could return when leaving if you didn't want to pay), but rather a service. The ""winning"" trip was definitely supposed to be reported as income to you last year. Is it okay for them to treat me differently than the others for tax purposes? Of course not. But it may be that some strings were attached to the winning of the incentive trip (for example, you're required to stay employed for X time for the company to cover the expense). See my example above. Maybe it was buried somewhere in small letters. Can they do this a year after the trip was won and redeemed? As I said - in this case this sounds shady. Since it is a service which you cannot return - you should have been taxed on it when receiving it. Would the IRS want to know about this fuzzy business trip practice? How would I report it?  Here's how you can let them know. Besides now understanding the new level of slime from my former   employer is there anything else I should be worried about? Could they   do something like this every year just to be annoying? No, once they issued the last paycheck - you're done with them. They cannot issue you more paychecks after you're no longer an employee. In most US States, you are supposed to receive the last paycheck on your last day of work, or in very close proximity (matter of weeks at most)."
If the firm treats you as an employee then they are treated as having a place of business in the UK and therefore are obliged to operate PAYE on your behalf - this rule has applied to EU States since 2010 and the non-EU EEA members, including Switzerland, since 2012. If you are not an employee then your main options are: An umbrella company would basically bill the client on your behalf and pay you net of taxes and NI.  You potentially take home a bit less than you would being 100% independent but it's a lot less hassle and potentially makes sense for a small contract.
I'm an independent tech contractor in Canada.  The single payer health care makes it so much easier to be a contractor or to create a startup.  I have to wonder if the lack of healthcare in the US is the result of businesses trying to retain white collar workers that would otherwise go independent.  In this environment, it's little surprise that I prefer getting those big cheques over getting benefits.  Usually the benefit packages are little more than dental, many of which only provide partial coverage.
I'm not sure 1099-MISC is what you should expect. Equity means ownership, and in LLC context it means membership. As an LLC member, you'll get distributions and should receive a K-1 form for tax treatment, not 1099 or W2. If the CEO is talking about 1099 it means he's going to hire you as a contractor which contradicts the statement about equity allocation. That's an entirely different situation. 1) Specifically, would the 1099-MISC form be used in this case? 1099-MISC is used to describe various payments. Depending on which box is filled, the tax treatment may be as of employment income (subject to SE taxes) or passive income (royalties, rents, etc - subject to various limitations in the tax code). 3) If this is the only logical method of compensation (receiving a % of real estate sales), how would it be taxed? That would probably be a commission and taxed as employment income. I suggest to get a professional tax adviser consultation on this issue, with specific details, numbers, and kinds of deals involved. You can get gain or lose a lot of money just because you're characterized as a contractor and not LLC member or employee (each has its own benefits and disadvantages, and you have to consider them all). 4) Are there any advantages/disadvantages to acquiring and selling   properties through the company as opposed to receiving a % of sales? Yes. There are advantages and there are disadvantages. For example, if you're using a corporation, you can get salary, if you're a contractor you cannot. There are a lot of issues hidden in this distinction (which I've just discussed with KeithS in this argument).
The shareholders have a claim on the profits, but they may prefer that claim to be exercised in ways other than dividend payments. For example, they may want the company to invest all of its profits in growth, or they may want it to buy back shares to increase the value of the remaining shares, especially since dividends are generally taxed as income while an increase in the share price is generally taxed as a capital gain, and capital gains are often taxed at a lower rate than income.