The Future of Success by Robert B. Reich

Author:Robert B. Reich
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780375413438
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2001-04-16T16:00:00+00:00

PUTTING YOURSELF IN PLAY

Years ago, most people didn’t know what they were “worth” on the open market because there wasn’t much of an open market for their services. They were part of an organization, and they tended to remain inside it. For them to solicit offers from rival enterprises would have been as unseemly as for rival enterprises to try to lure them away. But increasingly, people know what they’re worth on the market because they’re “in play,” as are their colleagues. Specialized Internet chat boards (like “Greedy Associates,” for young lawyers) keep them apprised of the going rates. They let it be known they’re looking for new opportunities, and rival groups bid for them with abandon.

A rising star typically solicits an offer from a rival firm that is considerably more generous than the star’s current compensation, and then dangles the offer in front of a senior executive. “I really don’t want to leave here,” the star says sorrowfully. “This is a great place to work, and you’ve been damn good to me.” And then, innocently: “What do you think I should do about this?” The message is clear: Match the bid or better it, or I’m gone.

Some enterprises depend on rival bids in order to establish appropriate pay levels. When an acquaintance who is a computer engineer recently sought a raise, the head of the software house where he works asked him to get a bid from a rival software house, and the executive would match it. The executive explained that there was no better way to determine the engineer’s market value than to test it in the market.

Not long ago, it was reported that the president of Brown University, after only eighteen months on the job, received a salary offer from Vanderbilt University roughly three times larger than the $300,000 a year Brown was paying him. It used to be an unwritten rule that Ivy League presidents remained at their posts for a decade or more. Apparently, that is no longer the case. The still-new Brown president told the Brown trustees about the offer from Vanderbilt, and then departed for the more lucrative position, leaving in his wake a lot of hurt feelings as well as a powerful lesson for thousands of Brown undergraduates about money and loyalty in the new economy. The Vanderbilt trustee who recruited him said she didn’t see what all the fuss was about. She runs a large wholesale book business. “People take people from my company all the time,” she said.18

“Headhunters” maintain stables of prospective candidates for potential spots even if the candidates are now happily employed elsewhere. “Eventually they’ll want to try something else,” one headhunter explained to me, referring to the people in his stables, “and eventually something will open up that will be perfect for them. We want to establish long-term relationships in advance, with both sides—people who are hot prospects, and hot groups that are likely to need them.”19

It’s been this way in professional baseball for years, ever since free agency.

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