Employees Who Stay in Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by RangerScience » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 8:15 AM UTC

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…

> Another point worth focusing on here is that raises are really determined by the business value that you're producing

I mean, notionally, yeah. But that's putting the employer up a pedestal of competency that may not be justified. Less poetically: it's forgetting just how hard it can be to measure that value, and the role of optics and "managing up"; there's also the consideration for excellence on never-released projects; in such a case, do you or do you not deserve a raise?

There's many more factors that go into "your business value"; intelligence, passion, communication, and luck (right place, right time) are some, but not all, of the factors.

What you are saying is definitely correct in an ideal world, but we live in a sub-ideal world; that's why there's valuable problems to solve in the first place.

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

#112

Post by scaryclam » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 8:37 AM UTC

elnygren wrote: post #107

Best way to increase salary at current workplace? Get offers from other companies & ask for a meeting with your boss (or whoever decides your pay, so HR etc.). Bring up the offers, discuss what you'd get from there and also go through the potential career you could build at those companies. For example: Consultancy X would pay me $k/mo and every 6months it will go up the ladder if I perform well. With this kind of di…

I imagine this is good advice in some places, but as a line manager, if you pull this on me I'm more than likely to shake your hand and wish you luck in your new job.

In a lot of places, having a talk with your manager about your salary before going off and actively looking for other offers is going to go down a lot better. Most line managers worth working for, value their teams and will fight for them if they are unhappy, without the threats.

And TBH, if your company has to make cutbacks in the future and you've shown you're willing to up and leave at the drop of a hat, you're name's likely to get further up the redundancy list than you'd probably like.

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

#113

Post by abalashov » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 8:37 AM UTC

I have been self-employed since age 22, but from 18 to 22 I had 6 jobs at 5 companies in 3.5 years. I started out in tech support at a small local ISP, hopped, came back as a sysadmin, then became primary sysadmin, and really cut my early career teeth there (and am ever grateful for the experience!). But it was a small college-town operation that ran on student-type labour; at my peak, I think I topped out at $16/hr. The next job hop was a move to Atlanta, where I commanded a $55k salary (about double my peak hourly earnings at NEGIA) and ultimately reached $70k at 21 — not terrible for a 21 year-old in Atlanta in 2007.

It's easy to place big gains when moving up from entry level, especially if you entered into an employment bargain that presumed being paid vastly below market for doing fairly sophisticated and diverse things in exchange for having a diamond-in-the-rough skill set. I learned more at the small company than I have ever learned in my life, and more quickly, and was able to effectively parlay that into big-boy corporate jobs in Atlanta.

In one sense, this validates the thesis. But it's important to remember that it does plateau. When moving up from entry level and early-career pay, you're flying close to the ground and it feels like you're going fast. The ground rushes past you, and it's intoxicating. Minimum-wage checkout clerk to full-time salaried assistant store manager? Zoom!

The momentum doesn't last. Had I continued in W-2 employment, I would have likely hit low to low-mid $100k by now, after ten years, but no more.

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

#114

Post by Xylakant » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 8:39 AM UTC

jondubois wrote: post #109

Yes that never made sense to me. Employees who have been around for a couple of years are much more efficient and know their way around - They are worth more, and yet they always get paid much less than 3-month or 6-month contractors or even new full-time employees in many cases. Also if they say that they want to leave a company, usually employers let them go relatively easily without making any significant counter-…

> yet they always get paid much less than 3-month or 6-month contractors

I'd be careful comparing the salaries of fixed employees to contractors. The math works significantly different for contractors: They need to spend time on job acquisition, billing, ... etc. They don't get any of the benefits that an employee gets - PTO, potentially health insurance, retirement plan, whatever, ... They're also the first to let go when things turn sour.

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

#115

Post by hdi » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 8:46 AM UTC

That's been my experience as well.

But it didn't happen because I was on the lookout for a fat paycheck. It happened because the companies I worked at the time couldn't provide the stimulation, technical capabilities, working environment and personal development I was looking for.

Then I realised very few of them do where I am, so now I do 6-12 month contracts and it's helped with saving a bit of my soul and getting paid a bit more.

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

#116

Post by nf05papsjfVbc » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 9:07 AM UTC

deepGem wrote: post #103

willvarfar wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 article is saying that those who stay don't get offered big raises. The article says that if you stay you get 3% or less. There's even a pretty chart to make this point. Employees aren't paid what they are worth, they are paid as little as the company c…

This is true even when a company is hiring someone. They will try to hire you at the lowest possible tier. Of course there are exceptions to this.

The negotiating situation is different when hiring someone vs when offering a raise.

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

#117

Post by throwanem » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 9:07 AM UTC

cakedoggie wrote: post #45

vacri wrote: post #11

> Jessica Derkis started her career earning $8 per hour ($16,640 annual salary) as the YMCA’s marketing manager. Over 10 years, she’s changed employers five times to ultimately earn $72,000 per year at her most recent marketing position. Amazing, thanks Forbes. I never knew that if you started out on minimum wage and then moved into a mundane professional role, you'd earn considerably more!

Why the hostility? Are people not allowed to talk about events happening now? I mean, do you make a similar comment on all the articles you read? "Oh thanks a lot ENCODE for telling us that 80 percent of the genome had a biochemical function. I didn't know we were going to repeat stuff that everybody new in 2012."??

Don't take ENCODE's word for it: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/23431001/

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

#118

Post by inferiorhuman » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 9:10 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #87

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:…

Base + signing pay for me over the past ten years:

Job 2: +14.29%

Job 3: -18.75% / 23.08% / 25.00% (Motionloft... let's just say Mills and Garrison were full of shit and it took a while for me to get what had been promised initially)

Job 4: 25.00%

Job 5: 8.00%

Job 6: 31.11%

Job 7: 2.64% (back to employer #5, so about 35% over that)

I know everyone likes to look at total comp, but especially if you're looking at smaller companies the non-cash stuff is often worthless. Even when the non-cash stuff is valuable, the extra base pay helps. For example: ESPP purchases by law can be at most 15% of your pay, 401k matching and profit sharing may be a percentage of your base pay, and so-on. Technically total 401k contributions may be limited by your salary, but this only comes into play if you're making around $50,000 annually in a job where your employer is willing to make very generous contributions.

This last time around though I traded some cash (base and signing) for RSUs because the company is large and publicly traded. Total comp while the RSUs vest is a bit north of $200k, but once the RSUs vest my take home will definitely take a hit. The sad part is that this company was willing to authorize a heft hike in base pay over my previous gig... but for the fact that I was a rehire. The didn't give a crap how much I was making at the previous gig, they cared how much they were paying me previously. Lesson learned: always go for the cash. Always.

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

#119

Post by pas » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 9:11 AM UTC

Xylakant wrote: post #114

jondubois wrote: post #109

Yes that never made sense to me. Employees who have been around for a couple of years are much more efficient and know their way around - They are worth more, and yet they always get paid much less than 3-month or 6-month contractors or even new full-time employees in many cases. Also if they say that they want to leave a company, usually employers let them go relatively easily without making any significant counter-…

> yet they always get paid much less than 3-month or 6-month contractors I'd be careful comparing the salaries of fixed employees to contractors. The math works significantly different for contractors: They need to spend time on job acquisition, billing, ... etc. They don't get any of the benefits that an employee gets - PTO, potentially health insurance, retirement plan, whatever, ... They're also the first to let g…

A friend of mine has a small dev shop, he likes recessions. Why? Because when things look up for big corps, they hire like mad, no outsourcing, yes insourcing! But when life gets harder, it's easier to start with a small company, just order an app, a website redesign, and maybe just provisionally start a project about that new backend feature, you don't have to sign a 1 year employment agreement and so on.

(This is mostly EU, so no fire at will going on.)

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

#120

Post by robert_foss » Mon, Jul 17, 2017, 9:11 AM UTC

scaryclam wrote: post #112

elnygren wrote: post #107

Best way to increase salary at current workplace? Get offers from other companies & ask for a meeting with your boss (or whoever decides your pay, so HR etc.). Bring up the offers, discuss what you'd get from there and also go through the potential career you could build at those companies. For example: Consultancy X would pay me $k/mo and every 6months it will go up the ladder if I perform well. With this kind of di…

I imagine this is good advice in some places, but as a line manager, if you pull this on me I'm more than likely to shake your hand and wish you luck in your new job. In a lot of places, having a talk with your manager about your salary before going off and actively looking for other offers is going to go down a lot better. Most line managers worth working for, value their teams and will fight for them if they are un…

I can empathize with a response from a line manager like that. But from the point of view of an employee, if you go into a salary discussion with no recourse to getting a flat no, you're not doing much more than voicing the fact that you are discontent.

It seems to me that you, scarylam, would be a good line manager to work for.

But the reality is that most would not fight for you. Especially not when the two options being weighed are spending more money or having a somewhat dissatisfied employee, and maybe losing them later.

If the employee has some form of recourse the decision is very different. Spending more money or losing a part of your team now.