Why should people get paid more for better negotiating skills if those don’t help them do a better job? It’s good that we eliminate that factor as much as possible. I’d rather go for meritocracy.
Because there's hundreds of nuances and circumstances that can affect how much a business needs to pay someone to secure their service, and not all of it can be compared apple to apple.
Real world example: I'm paid almost twice the market rate for my current job. Why? Not because I'm better at it than my peers, but because when I started, I opted for more RSUs (public company) instead of base salary, and the company has grown tremendously. Folks who didn't take the same gamble have a much lower total comp now. Years ago no one knew this was going to happen, so my base salary was lower. If the market hadn't shifted the way it did, should I have been able to complain others are paid more than me? Seems like a gamble with no drawback which is a bit unfair for the others, no?
Some folks opt for more time off. People with the same title end up at a different place within the salary bands based on countless factors, many of which are very subjective (and if you put too many titles, then people will just negotiate the title instead of the salary, effectively doing the same thing).
People are also generally biaised when talking about themselves and aren't very good at fully understanding the context around the salary of others.
All these factors mean that an objective salary based purely on quantifiable factors won't end up 1:1 with how good people are at their job. Thus we have negotiations.
And then there's environmental factors. If companies aren't allowed to negotiate, you end up with a situation like this:
Company Foo pays 150k for a Sr Eng. Bob is paid 160k at his current job, and Foo is trying to poach him. Bob asks Foo for 165k. Without negotiations, Company Foo can either:
A) Tell Bob tough luck (which in the current market is a bad move. Software Engineers don't grow on trees)
B) Give all their Sr Eng (potentially hundreds or more) a 15k raise. But then the same thing will happen to Company Bar... When does it stop? Should everyone at all tech companies but paid precisely 150k? What if Company Foo and Bar are very different and why? It's very subjective.
Negotiating skills help most people do a better job. Every allocation of resources or prioritization of projects is very much a negotiation. Note that this doesn't have to be a zero-sum process. One of the important aspects of negotiation is that not everyone's priorities are the same. I might be willing to tradeoff something that isn't a big deal to me but is very important to you.
What is management for if not to establish priorities according to the needs of the business and then determine an allocation of resources accordingly?
I strongly disagree. Certainly management would normally be wise to hire good people and then listen to their advice and recommendations in a collaborative fashion, but ultimately it is management's responsibility to make these decisions and their subordinates' responsibility to execute management's plan.
There are several good reasons for this, not least that management is required to understand the bigger picture and how the activities under them fit into it, while in general subordinates are not.
Also, subordinates may have personal motivations that would conflict with the priorities of the business if everyone was free to do their own thing. A very common example is developers who come into a tech firm and want to use all the latest cool technologies because they're fun and look great on a resume, which is often not in the best interests of the business.
