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Employees Who Stay in Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less

forbes.com

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Re: Employees Who Stay in Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less

#81

Post by ryandrake »

Retric wrote: post #24
chrisbennet wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully trained employees are worth more to the company. They just don't want to pay for extra value unless they have to. To get new recruits, they have to. Most employees don't want to change jobs if they can help it and employers use that "static friction" to pay them less than market.

Depends on the company. Some will hand out 30%+ annual pay increases to keep people at market rates. But, many companies are happy to have high turnover in exchange for lower pay.

The only company I know of that publicly makes this (bringing existing people up to market rate) is Netflix. Can you name other companies that actually do this?

Re: Employees Who Stay in Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less

#82

Post by throwaway7230 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #14
chrisbennet wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FAAMG?

Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google

Apple has a frustrating system for individual contributors where you can get promoted pretty quickly up until level 4, but then it stops. In order to get any kind of raise beyond that (level 5) you need to be pretty much a wizard with godlike job performance. Basically there is no career path past level 4 for most mortals, unless you want to go into management, which is also a difficult chasm to jump. Basically once you get to 4 and all your initial stock vests, you have to start looking around.

Re: Employees Who Stay in Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less

#83

Post by sverhagen »

nilkn wrote: post #80

I think it's important to understand that there's a significant amount of selection bias possible here. In general, folks who switch jobs every two years are the folks who are not getting offered big raises by their current companies. The ones who are getting offered big raises may still choose to leave due to other reasons, but they often will choose to stay instead. And they won't be making a big fuss about it onli…

Great analysis. Small addition, it highlights that being a developer is such a different skill than interviewing well.

It all makes me feel so much better.

/me gonna dig up them yearly salary letters and checking some percentages.

Re: Employees Who Stay in Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less

#84

Post by nikanj »

methodover wrote: post #38
sidlls wrote: post #34

There is a plateau as one reaches senior positions. As I went from "no" experience to my current position my job switches (every ~2 years) always were for 10%-25% (in one case, 100%, but that was Midwest to Bay Area so other factors are at play). I never got more than 5% merit increases otherwise. Most of my friends who have been at the same place for >10 years in engineering (not software) are just now reaching pari…

> Anything longer, especially if there is a lot of long-term stasis on a resume (e.g. "tech lead on product X" for more than a year or two), is an indication to me of someone who either isn't capable of stretching himself or doesn't want to. That's insane. Someone who is the technical leader of a project for more than two years doesn't "stretch himself"? I see no reason to believe that's true. If anything, it takes y…

According to the modern thinking, in two years you're supposed to switch stacks twice, and rewrite the whole thing five times. With that much churn, there's no value in seniority.

Re: Employees Who Stay in Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less

#85

Post by Evelyn533 »

sverhagen wrote: post #83
nilkn wrote: post #80

I think it's important to understand that there's a significant amount of selection bias possible here. In general, folks who switch jobs every two years are the folks who are not getting offered big raises by their current companies. The ones who are getting offered big raises may still choose to leave due to other reasons, but they often will choose to stay instead. And they won't be making a big fuss about it onli…

Great analysis. Small addition, it highlights that being a developer is such a different skill than interviewing well. It all makes me feel so much better. /me gonna dig up them yearly salary letters and checking some percentages.

My mothers neighbour is working part time and averaging $9000 a month. I'm a single mum and just got my first paycheck for $6546! I still can't believe it. I tried it out cause I got really desperate and now I couldn't be happier. Heres what I do, •••••••••>>http://mcaf.ee/4ngo1k

Re: Employees Who Stay in Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less

#86

Post by sverhagen »

nilkn wrote: post #80

I think it's important to understand that there's a significant amount of selection bias possible here. In general, folks who switch jobs every two years are the folks who are not getting offered big raises by their current companies. The ones who are getting offered big raises may still choose to leave due to other reasons, but they often will choose to stay instead. And they won't be making a big fuss about it onli…

Old joke, not mine: 90% of developers believes they're above average.

Re: Employees Who Stay in Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less

#87

Post by ryandrake »

sidlls wrote: post #34

There is a plateau as one reaches senior positions. As I went from "no" experience to my current position my job switches (every ~2 years) always were for 10%-25% (in one case, 100%, but that was Midwest to Bay Area so other factors are at play). I never got more than 5% merit increases otherwise. Most of my friends who have been at the same place for >10 years in engineering (not software) are just now reaching pari…

Yea, at least in tech, the whole "get a 10% raise by switching jobs" thing works great early on, but pretty much ends once you're 10-20 years into your career. There's a ceiling that you asymptotically approach. Here's an example, adjusted for cost of living but not inflation (sample size = 1). This spans about 20 years, switching roughly every 3-4 years:

Job 2: 33% raise over Job 1

Job 3: 15% raise over Job 2

Job 4: 10% raise over Job 3

Job 5: 0% raise over Job 4

Job 6: 2% raise over Job 5

Job 7: ??? we'll see!

Unless my experience is unlike most, I'd say the job hopping strategy is best when you're more junior.

Re: Employees Who Stay in Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less

#88

Post by blub »

nilkn wrote: post #80

I think it's important to understand that there's a significant amount of selection bias possible here. In general, folks who switch jobs every two years are the folks who are not getting offered big raises by their current companies. The ones who are getting offered big raises may still choose to leave due to other reasons, but they often will choose to stay instead. And they won't be making a big fuss about it onli…

Most companies do some kind of review where they tell the employee how good they did. I assume they review employees based on business value.

So, if one consistently gets good reviews and small raises it's quite clear what's happening.

Re: Employees Who Stay in Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less

#89

Post by FRex »

sverhagen wrote: post #86
nilkn wrote: post #80

I think it's important to understand that there's a significant amount of selection bias possible here. In general, folks who switch jobs every two years are the folks who are not getting offered big raises by their current companies. The ones who are getting offered big raises may still choose to leave due to other reasons, but they often will choose to stay instead. And they won't be making a big fuss about it onli…

Old joke, not mine: 90% of developers believes they're above average .

90% of a population can easily be above average in a real life scenario where most of the group is roughly equal with few elements dragging the average slightly below their level.

Example: nine 11s and one 10, the average is 10.9 and 90% of the population is above it. If you want to split a group in half then you need to use the median.

Re: Employees Who Stay in Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less

#90

Post by polotics »

fizl wrote: post #10

This is a really poor article, and I'm surprised Forbes would publish it. As far as I can tell, there's absolutely no data behind any of the assertions in the article, and the title is just conjecture by the author based on a whole lot of assumptions.

Also the few data points are for the general job market, salaries in the 40k-80k range. What happens above is another story entirely IMHO. (And so below)
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