Can you give me your genuine opinion on this article in terms of "Business Management," please?

I read the article in it's entirety and as someone who will be pursuing a MBA at some point next year, my take is that his (Dan) reasoning for what he did is two-fold. First, according to the article, his brother (Lucas) filed a lawsuit against him for his superfluous salary before Dan even initiated the 70k/year per employee benefit. Which leads to my second conclusion - Dan is a smart but cunning individual, who figured one, he could lower his salary, increase others to a flat median average throughout his company and use that for media gain - which would potentially lead to an increase in new clients from the media exposure.

By increasing his (Dan) yearly salary - he essentially robbed his brother of his % of the profits. By eventually lowering his salary - and increasing his employees, he advertently created a "hole" in which he couldn't buy out his brother's half of the company for what his brother would deem fair market value imo.

Conclusion: Smart and Cunning.

It is counter to reason and millennia of history of how people act in groups. If you pay everyone the same, regardless of role (NOTE: NOT quite what he did, I am oversimplifying), those who perceive that they work harder/contribute more will over time either leave (even if it ultimately means taking a pay cut, counterintuitive) or lower their performance to what they believe is expected/accepted for others.

What he did was actually worse, he LIFTED lower salaries to $70K. Which means that the guy who has 23 years in the industry and feels he earned his dues to finally get a management position with a $73K/year salary finds out that he and the new 19 year old customer service rep make the same amount of money. This actively dismisses the education, experience and expertise that the Manager brings to the table. A prior article mentioned that at least several of his senior people left for exactly this reason.

Great sound bite. Especially in Seattle. Horrid idea.

PO2 Angelika Laist You might enjoy the articles I linked below, BLUF: the reason this is getting play in business journalism is because it is counter to common business practice, and it appears to be working.