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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

#261

Post by ethbro »

PixelB wrote: post #173
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…

Great, but that most certainly does not work at all companies. The last company I worked for unequivocally treated their non-management employees like garbage. The company basically had the same management for 10 years prior, with a few "loyal" employees promoted to manager along the way. By "loyal" I mean that they were willing to sell anyone out to advance their own careers. If the company even caught wind you were…

Do you know what the incentives were for training their replacements? I've always been curious on this.

Employment-at-will cuts both ways. If a company asks you to do this without adequate (and I'd definitely say bonus also merited) compensation, tell them to pound sand and walk away that day.

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

#262

Post by EADGBE »

When I started in this industry, my father, who also works in this industry gave me this advice. Something along the lines of "if you want a raise, go somewhere else, that's the only way to move up quickly". He was right, three times in the last 4-5 years.

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

#263

Post by UK-AL »

sokoloff wrote: post #160
mikekchar wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. I call this the "one year of experience, ten times" phenomenon.

Ironically I find the developers, who have stayed at company for 10 years the worst for this. They've been maintaining the same product, for similar requests for the past years. Doing the exact same thing.

Moving to different employers means you get a wider experience of different technologies.

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

#264

Post by PixelB »

dustinmoris wrote: post #178
PixelB wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great, but that most certainly does not work at all companies. The last company I worked for unequivocally treated their non-management employees like garbage. The company basically had the same management for 10 years prior, with a few "loyal" employees promoted to manager along the way. By "loyal" I mean that they were willing to sell anyone out to advance their own careers. If the company even caught wind you were…

Are you talking about developers? Currently the market is in favour of employees, as there is more demand for them than supply, at least that is my feeling based on constantly being harassed by head hunters trying to desperately fill positions and not even having luck by recruiting people from all around the world. If a company can afford to treat its employees like "garbage" then they will and that is the exact poin…

Pharmaceutical research.

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

#265

Post by stephengillie »

zelos wrote: post #110

Yet large companies still launch investigations into why retention is so bad and have employees fill out surveys to try to figure out why people are leaving. Multiple-choice surveys, of course, with no questions about compensation.

They do this amongst mergers and spin-offs and contingency staffing plans, oh my!

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

#266

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

cmahler7 wrote: post #197
EdSharkey wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This thread suddenly became gold. Don't you dare die on me, thread!

Single, childless women make 8% more than single, childless men across the country, and as much as 20% more in some cities. This only changes when they have children or when they work fewer hours. But don't let facts stop you from repeating the same tired lies that have been debunked for years http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/apr/09/... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EK6Y1X_xa4

Please keep your tone civil. It's one of the factors that keeps HN discussions worthwhile.

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

#267

Post by Sharlin »

FRex wrote: post #89
sverhagen wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

90% of programmers are almost certainly better programmers than an average person. 90% of programmers are almost certainly not better programmers than an average programmer.

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

#268

Post by UK-AL »

Steeeve wrote: post #191

Job hopping works. But the more you do it, the more you can expect to see skepticism from hiring managers. Software development is a little bit different because right now there is more demand for workers than there are good developers. It hasn't always been that way and it won't always be that way. When you're working for the right employer at the right salary, an extra 25-50% isn't going to be enough to lure you aw…

"extra 25-50%" - That's really bad financial mangament on the employees part. 20-50% per annum extra, invested and compounded is A LOT of money. Literally for some people that could be an extra million at retirement.

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

#269

Post by thomascgalvin »

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…

> Most line managers worth working for, value their teams and will fight for them if they are unhappy, without the threats.

Agreed. I've already gotten my team the best raise/promotion that I could. If they can find better at a different company, I wish them well.

And that's not sarcastic. I genuinely wish them well. It hurts to let a good employee go, and finding/training a replacement sucks, but we're all kind of stuck in this shitty US corporate culture together, and we have to look out for ourselves.

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

#270

Post by sidlls »

fweespeech wrote: post #74
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…

> Two year tenures isn't job hopping. It's a reflection of how this industry works. Very few companies offer sufficient breadth and depth of product complexity, career advancement, or other similar things to make it worthwhile. I'd say the sweet spot is 2-4 years, except at very large companies (e.g. Google) (EDIT:) or companies which are developing complicated products with physical engineering or regulatory factors…

> Why exactly should people like me leave when even places like want to pay me 10% less than I make now?

You shouldn't, necessarily. However consider that may offer more career advancement (if that's your goal). Also consider that you're going to be well-liked by hiring managers who mistake "years at the same company" with "years of experience", and those managers are much more common than not. They're as mistaken as the people they deride as having "the same year of experience 10/20 times", but because of the way work has evolved they have a lot of cultural inertia behind them.

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