En-titled

There's an issue at BK that has been bugging me a bit and that is about our job titles. Yes, I may be airing some dirty laundry here, but it's my dirty laundry since I am the only one that seems to have a problem with it.

One thing that I have always loved about BK is the transparency around staff salaries and positions. Everyone receives the exact same pay depending on the position or rank they hold in the company. Having worked in a few  places where there could be up to a ten-thousand dollar difference between two earners with the same job title in the same department, BK's way is a lot more civilized and fair. But here's the catch: to earn more, you have to be promoted to a higher position and rank with corresponding pay scale. This bugs me because:

a. You could be bringing a lot of value to the company with the work that you do, but that doesn't mean you'll earn more. To earn more, you have to be promoted, and promotions are not based on current performance but the successful execution of advanced directives outside of your job description. That is, you have to operate in the capacity of the position you are angling for prior to being promoted to that position. In one sense, this is brilliant because you avoid the Peter Principle, but it bugs me that someone who really enjoys what he or she is doing and does it outstandingly well still can't be paid what they are worth unless they take on additional duties. And you know what happens when you take on additional duties? You suddenly don't have the time to do those things that you used to have the time to do exceptionally well. Somehow the equation doesn't work. I still am responsible for about 85% of all the things I was responsible for when I first joined BK over a decade and three promotions ago.

b. In a company like BK which has minimal turnover and outstanding employee retention, this means that everyone gradually (hopefully) gets promoted to a higher position. However, there's no new blood coming in because the company isn't growing in staff, just in employee expertise -- which normally would be a good thing. But right now, BK has twenty-two staff members and only two of them are not at the manager rank or higher. What's more, we have five vice-presidents. The organizational map looks like a precariously perched Jenga tower that is four times wider at the top than the foundation supporting it.

But maybe these are also good things. After all, rankism becomes obsolete when everyone becomes an executive, right? I don't want BK to become one of those corporate monoliths with a few key players at the top and a number of worker drones everywhere else with strict rank-related social subdivisions. Also, I don't really want to return to that brown-nosing/duke-it-out-with-your-colleagues model to earn more money.

Given the alternatives, perhaps this is the way(?)