Friday, June 13, 2008

Glassdoor, public salaries and does that add up?

I have become intrigued by glassdoor.com and I am not the only one I should imagine. It aims to help demystify salaries and employee opinion by gathering mass contributions in a web2.0 ugc style.
Clearly this taps into the whole trend for sharing, and one that I am usually quite happy to go along with. Indeed I think that openess in organization atleast on salary when performance is said to be relative to your peers when rated, yet the results are secret seems a bit barmy to me.
However the openess on pay has to be across the board, a few of us volunteering publicly to share will simply be used as a weapon by those who choose not to share.
The anonymous nature of glassdoor tries a different approach. Many corporates benchmark themselves against the wages and benefits of others, but again its cloak and dagger stuff. I mean that information in the hands of a potentially disgruntled workforce leads to all sort of problems for those attempting to keep control of the purse strings. A prime example if the current petrol tanker drivers strike. Fuel companies have to publicly declare their earnings and massive profits, also maybe the bonuses of bosses to shareholders for accountability. Well, thats public information and sure enough those workers down the food chain will say "where is my share?"
However, getting back to glassdoor. There is another side effect that will happen. Clearly people who share what they earn will feel underpaid and be wanting to prove it in general. If the mass amount of data on the site is people who feel underpaid and undervalued then the averages will be low. Those averages will then not help those salaries increase? The opposite may be only the very well paid confess, as an anonymous blag "loadsamoney" style. That make the average insanely high and makes the actually average paid not to badly done by population annoyed along with the undervalued.
Of course the way around this is not individual action, but companies publishing all their salaries, but that is very unlikely to happen.
So we are left with something that really should work, should be done, but seems to be in a place that would take a politician from the West Wing tv programme to sort out.
Yes I have shared mine on there, mainly to feel what it feels like to give that information. Its never really gone well if I have discussed my salary with anyone. People with less experience are bound to think its too much, people with more experience laugh at it and remember back, people with the same or near experience...well they are in competition so who on earth believes anyone.
Lets see where this one goes.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Wow I am in a lot of books

I just did a quick count up of the number of books I have made it into in various ways the past 2 years. I have kept fairly up to date with references on delicious to epredator I keep a pile of press cuttings and pamphlets to show the grand predlet's one day, and also to remind me of what an amazing time this has been with virtual worlds, IBM and of course Second Life in particular as Ian Hughes/epredator/epredator potato. So, by way of personal ego massage and plug for some great books here goes:

Second Lives by Tim Guest - A major part of the chapter on the rise of corporate interest in virtual worlds and of course Wimbledon
The Making of Second Life by Wagner James Au - A very kind mention in the list of thanks, something I did not expect as much of the great stuff in this book is before my time as epredator potato.
Eating the IT elephant by Richard Hopkins and Keving Jenkins - A nice credit suggesting I was helping put the final nails in the coffin of powerpoint architectures.
Second Life the Official Guide (Second Edition) (by lots of folks) - Not seen a copy yet, but I appear to be in the index (*update my copy arrived today from Amazon and ther is a shiny new whole page on epredator potato, thanks to Wagner James Au again as I now remember the vignette I wrote for the page)
epredator in print
A brand new book on marketing 2.0 on its way to the publisher as I type.

It seems I should write my own book, or maybe I should save that for when its all business as usual :-)

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Yikes £1.19 a Litre


Yikes £1.19 a Litre, originally uploaded by epredator.

Enough said really. Very expensive to move around these days. If only we have some sort of way to communicate as humans, yet still feel the presence of others, we could call it a metaverse or something.

Monday, June 09, 2008

It's amusing when the sky schedule display combines in such ways

This happens a lot, either the names are truncated on the on screen viewer in amusing ways, or two programmes flow into one another as a concept.
One to look out for :-)