r/todayilearned • u/EtOHMartini • 27d ago

TIL that philanthropist and engineer Avery Fisher was motivated to start his own company after, identifying a way to save his employer $10,000 a year, was immediately denied a $5/week raise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avery_Fisher
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u/BobT21 27d ago

A very large industrial org I worked for made engineers ineligible for beneficial suggestion awards because "engineers are paid to have good ideas." I was an engineer. When I had a good idea I would hand it off to a shop guy who would submit it. It would then come to me for evaluation. I would evaluate it as Great. Shop guy would get the award.

It is a lucky engineer who has friends out on the shop floor.

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u/KaiToyao 27d ago

Same story in my current company. One of the tool maintenance guys invented a new closure mechanism and reduced the loss in material and increased the maintenance interval from twice a week to once every 3 months. This mechanism was than used in all tools. The guy never see a cent for this cause "it was his job to do this" and the company who build the tools for my company patented the mechanism...

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u/MonkeyMercenaryCapt 26d ago

This is just such a poor investment on part of the company, how do you not pay this guy a nice lil royalty (or just some lump some decent payout) and have him be happy and keep innovating.

Capitalists are jokes, they're bad at their own game.