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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

#121

Post by inferiorhuman »

mikekchar wrote: post #55
needlessly wrote: post #21

I don't get people who say, "Well I would never hire someone who has never worked more than 5 years at a single place!!!" I would never have increased my from $68k to $115k in 5 years.I probably would've been somewhere at like $80k right now at best if I was didn't switch jobs twice. If it means some hiring manager is going say some snarky opinion, then yes I'll take my extra money.

On the other hand, look at it from a hiring manager's perspective: people who have stayed in a job long enough to see how things go wrong are also less expensive. I'll be honest, if I'm looking at a CV for someone with 10 years of experience and they have changed jobs every year or two, I will suspect that they are missing some pretty important experience as a senior developer. Everybody makes serious mistakes that d…

> It's truly unfortunate that the industry rewards those who don't tackle these kinds of difficult problems. The legacy is an industry where the problems are ubiquitous: flavour of the month architecture, my way or the highway bullying, either process of the month or "pragmatic" (aka ad hoc) processes, absolute disrespect for coworkers (I'm the only one with an ounce of sense).

Yep. However I'd say it's less of an industry thing and more of a generational thing that you can see that from customers all the way on up to C-level people and out.

Perennial favorite ISP Sonic.net is a great example. They're giving away free basketball tickets, free service (6 months!) to customers who are referred via NextDoor, additional discounts for new subscribers, etc. Existing customers get told to pound sand and complimentary rate hike. Other ISPs do this as well, but it's funny to see the supposedly good guys succumbing to the idea that loyalty is worthless.

CEOs, of course, get tasked with propping up short-term profits and get showered with cash when their short-sighted efforts fail (ex: Yahoo, HP). Of course this isn't particularly new either as Gordon Gekko style corporate raiders have been around for decades.

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

#122

Post by pbhjpbhj »

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…

How does this work with equal pay legislation though - if you're male then you can't get a pay increase above a female because if that's discovered the company is in for a heap of pain??

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

#123

Post by ryanbrunner »

flukus wrote: post #98
manicdee wrote: post #52

My contrary opinion is that people who job hop every two years are the ones who come in, make enough progress that management thinknthey are pretty nifty, then leave before they have to domany maintenance on the technical debt they left behind. Sure, it is good to be highly paid, but the situation just reinforces the idea that people who wear suits are paid far too much. Though I find myself i the situation of wantin…

What about people that job hop because of that left behind technical debt? Often it's the long term employees that don't realize how much technical debt and other craziness they have, it's a kind of stockholm syndrome. The can also be woefully out of date on the industry and have likely reinvented many wheels out of ignorance.

If you've done this once or twice, sure, I think it's reasonable that the companies you worked for were exceptionally bad at keeping up with the times and ignoring technical debt.

By the fourth or fifth time that you've moved jobs for this reason though, I start to question your judgement. Every company is going to have some degree of technical debt, and the speed that trends come and go in this industry means that any company older than a few years is going to have some technology that isn't the latest and greatest.

A skilled developer isn't someone who refuses to accept any technical debt whatsoever, it's someone who knows how to manage it appropriately and balance it with the ability to execute.

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

#124

Post by Chris2048 »

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'm more than likely to shake your hand and wish you luck in your new job.

Sounds like it's still good advice if you won't fight for your employees to stay. The alternative to being upfront with your manager is just leaving when you think you can do better - many managers would prefer not to have the surprise.

> you're name's likely to get further up the redundancy list

Not my experience. In some cases, the employees able to leave easily are the better, or underpaid ones.

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

#125

Post by boomboomsubban »

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…

>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.

This doesn't agree with the research here, and your first statement doesn't agree with your second. If you value your team, they shouldn't end up unhappy with their salary, and they shouldn't be thrown under the bus for exploring what they're worth outside the company. The tamest threat to fire them reinforces the point.

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

#126

Post by ryanbrunner »

animex wrote: post #106

Ha, this is funny. I rarely ever stay longer than 2 years at a company and every time I jumped, my salary went up significantly i.e. >10%+ HOWEVER, I've seen guys who have stayed with a company earning less for years, ending up as the VP/Presdient of the company eventually and their pay going way up.

I think this is a risky strategy. For one, the only way to succeed this way is to be the best (or at least last the longest). Second place on the VP promotion doesn't mean anything.

Secondly, if your plan is to advance significantly up the management track at your company, take a close look the makeup of the current VPs / leadership team. I've worked in many companies where the CEO almost exclusively brought in outside talent for the VP level, and never promoted up. In those sort of situations, you're probably always going to be looked at as rank and file, even if you get into middle management positions.

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

#127

Post by ryanbrunner »

ryandrake wrote: post #81
Retric wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I've worked for companies that do this, although it's not publicized so I can't point you to a press release or something. Usually a very strong indicator is to look for companies who publish salaries, either publicly or to all employees. It's almost impossible for a company to underpay people when everyone knows everyone else's salary.

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

#128

Post by dustinmoris »

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…

Couldn't agree more. Basically your current employer should really pay you what the salary you would get somewhere else plus an additional markup for the internal knowledge which you have already acquired (you should put a value on that as well).

Also don't believe any line manager or anyone else here posting that this is not a good strategy, because remember, every line manager is only an employee as well and has a line manager as well and they want to get paid a fair salary as well, so they either will do the same or they will have 100% understanding for it and if they don't then you know that the company has no interest in paying you a fair market value for your contribution.

This is the free market, companies love to play the game when it comes to having people let go (like SoundCloud), when it comes to taxes and when it comes to profit distribution and growth, so they should also expect to play the same game when it comes to negotiating employee salaries.

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

#129

Post by werber »

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 agree with telling your manager and hr you want to discuss your salary before dropping other offers on the table, but have the offers.

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

#130

Post by netcan »

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 of our labour laws and policies are based on long term employment, as close to permanent as possible.

There are several "stories" we could formulate, though it's hard to know which dynamic is significant or dominant in the overall scheme of things. That's why it's hard to get conclusive results from ex post analysis (expiremental study is rarely possible).

Maybe young people (on a faster learning/earning curve) switch jobs more often. Maybe underpaying employers have higher attrition rates. Maybe people only leave if the prospective job offers a big raise (causation is reversed).

There is also the question of lead indicators in changing markets. 6-7 years ago, new employees (where I live) were earning far less than old ones. The labour market was terrible, so you could hire new employees for cheap. Older employees were earning salaries based on raises they received during the boom years, 2-3 years previous. As the market changed, the newer employees got bigger raises. In this case, the dominant ( I think) dynamic for about 3-4 years was a slow gradual reaction to a big market shock, because salaries are negotiated iregularly an seldom adjusted downward.

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