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

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

#321

Post by softawre »

mac01021 wrote: post #282
scaryclam wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 value their team and will fight for them if they are unhappy 1) It's not a matter of being happy or unhappy. Just about everyone wants to earn as much as possible, the goal being to get as quickly as possible to the point where one no longer requires employment. 2) It's not possible to know how much the market values you without seeking other offers and seeing how much they'll offer you. 3) If on…

> the goal being to get as quickly as possible to the point where one no longer requires employment.

Most people don't have this goal. I personally have it (FI/RE), but most don't, even most software engineers. This is pretty evident by the cars that they drive and the other money that they can be seen "wasting".

Some happy medium is really what people want.

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

#322

Post by _Codemonkeyism »

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…

Might work somewhere else. I always felt blackmailed in a situation like this and wished the employee all the best with his new job.

[Edit] To clarify the blackmail note: It's better to talk in the weekly 1:1 about salary expectations, changing markets or during people development focus, than to pull up a competing offer out of your hat while not talking about your dissatisfaction with pay during weekly 1:1s.

1. If the employee is only motivated by money, he will be gone rather sooner than later as there is always a higher offer around.

2. If you give in once to this, the employee will come back 6 months later with demanding the next pay rise.

3. You might have done something wrong in the past. An employee who can envision herself in the company in some years in a different role with personal development and fair pay rises (see 4.) does not leave.

4. You might also have no transparent pay rise process in place and clear guide lines why people have which salary. You might also have a wide band of salaries, which will bite you sooner or later.

5. Your salaries might also be too low and not working in the local market. This often happens when startups grow (or employee markets change) and salaries are not adjusted properly. Earlier employees - or employees before a VC round - often have too low salaries in this case. Fight for a budget rise to get every salary up in line again.

6. This might also happen if you agree to too low salaries when hiring. This often happens when you hire women, but also happens otherwise. You should always pay what the employee is worth, not what he is demanding (often too low). Don't feel happy if you hire below budget, this is a mistake. As a manager the easiest pay rise you can get for your team is during hiring.

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

#323

Post by gorkonsine »

_wwz4 wrote: post #277
djslakor wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. "Pull this on you"? You sound like a real joy to work for. This is expressly why I choose gigs where I'm working directly for an owner if at all possible. If you've created value, owners know how important you are and will take your request seriously as long as it's reasonable. In my career, I ha…

Letting everyone know they'll immediately be shown the door if they dare request an increase would create a terrible culture The person to whom you're responding explicitly drew a distinction between discussing a raise with your boss vs going to your boss with another offer that you have secured. I can see the importance of that distinction. To put the relationship in a different context: Imagine the difference betwe…

It's a very interesting analogy, and shows the terrible and wrong mentality that managers like 'scaryclam' have.

Work is NOT like having a girlfriend. Like the other poster said, a better analogy is your relationship with a prostitute. But it's good you brought up this incorrect analogy, because I think it really shows the horribly wrong mentality that bosses have, because they believe this to be a good analogy even though it isn't.

I'm not showing up to work every day because I have any warm and fuzzy personal feelings for the people there (especially the management). I go to work because they give me a paycheck. That's it. It's no different than prostitution, except not quite as icky. If my girlfriend tells me she needs to spend less time with me for a little while because she's going to spend some time with her family for some family problem, or she's working on her own start-up business and needs to spend extra time on it to make it successful, etc., then sure. If, however, employer tells me they need to cut my pay in half because they're having money problems, I'm immediately going to look for a new job. I don't have any personal feelings for my employer, and I don't expect to grow old and retire with them either, and I also know that if they don't need me any more, I'll be out the door with a pink slip that day.

I think this analogy really shows how many employers think (wrongly) that employees should have some kind of loyalty to them, even though the employers rarely have any loyalty back to the employees.

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

#324

Post by gorkonsine »

pm90 wrote: post #307
corobo wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Business is business and personal is personal. If you look at them both the same you'll end up stuck in a job you hate for 8 years thinking you're being super loyal and that raise is just around the corner. Spouses are loyal back, businesses are not.

This. Its so important for workers to realize just what predicament they're in. So while it was possible for lifelong jobs to be possible in the past, its not so much the case today. No job is really secure, and one does have to stay on ones toes. Not saying that you should be concerned about getting fired everyday. But if you don't create demonstrable value to your company over a longer period of time (a couple of y…

Generating value is only a small part of it. You can get fired or laid off for any reason in most places in the US. You can be doing great work personally, but if upper management screws up, or the business environment is just bad (despite management's best efforts), you'll get laid off as soon as it makes financial sense for the company to do so. You can also get canned or at least mistreated to the point of misery because of interpersonal problems having nothing to do with your performance, a terrible manager, etc.

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

#325

Post by devy »

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…

Your advice is in direct contradiction to common wisdom on career path building and offer negotiation because:

1. Even though you may be able to get a 50% more offer somewhere else, your value to your current employer (note not perspective employer) is mostly determined by your contribution to the team and comparable peers at your team/position in the company. Your market value was already considered when you first offered/joined the company, after that it's usually not a major factor to determine how you worth.

2. Your many short term tenure employments and the tendencies to job hopping is a STRONG bad sign for the long term health of your career development. And it deters future employees. It may be fine to be a junior engineer to hop jobs frequently BUT it's really hard to move up the ladder to management. More importantly, it shows that you have no loyalty to any single past employers and will not willing to invest in a long term career development track to rise up (with a few exceptions). For example, I was told anecdotally that BridgeWater Associates would not consider anyone who hops more than 3 jobs in a ten year period.

3. You rarely accrue long vacation where most companies offer that based on tenure, again with a few exceptions (companies with unlimited vacation days policies).

4. You have to build up personal relationships with a new team every other year (assuming you job hop less than 2 years in every job.) Trust me, your personal relationships with your close teammates is a big factor in job satisfaction. Meeting new people new team every other year could be cumbersome and tiring. This matters if you are aiming for a long term career development.

5. Less than two years of employment might not be long enough to really build up your values. According to Jesse Watson[1], as a software engineer, your value really lies in "the synthesis of programming skill and deep context in the business problem domain, in one skull." And it's unfortunate that less than 2 years does not strengthen that synthesis one skill but rather makes your more vulnerable to be replaced by outsourcing as a commodity monkey coder.

I used to work for TheLadders.com first job out of college and gained a lot of insights because of that. And I am very thankful for the valuable advices my former colleagues gave me. Although I job hopped a lot when I was a junior engineer but not anymore given all the reasons above.

So next time when you are at the crossroad for a switch, make sure you truly understand the consequences of pros and cons. And be sure to ask yourself, is my career development ready and worthy for short term 50% bump?

[1]: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hard-thing-software-developme...

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

#326

Post by Pogba666 »

went thru many comments here and despite lots disagreement between people, I believe one thing people will all agree with is: in this game, individuals are much weaker than companies and much more vulnerable regardless.

company can never go bankrupt because of loosing one super star, but a worker and his/her family can be in a bad situation if company decides to do something to him/her. So the whatever negotiation between company and works can never be a fair game at any point.

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

#327

Post by losteverything »

thedarkginger wrote: post #41
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.

For anyone interested (I was...), here's a good recap of Forbes' "contributor" model which is based in 'entrepreneurial journalism.' Non-professional writers get paid based on unique visitors (like presumably with this piece). So you get what you incentivize. http://www.poynter.org/2012/what-the-forbes-model-of-contrib...

Your link really helped me sharpen my thinking.

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

#328

Post by coldtea »

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #322
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…

Might work somewhere else. I always felt blackmailed in a situation like this and wished the employee all the best with his new job. [Edit] To clarify the blackmail note: It's better to talk in the weekly 1:1 about salary expectations, changing markets or during people development focus, than to pull up a competing offer out of your hat while not talking about your dissatisfaction with pay during weekly 1:1s. 1. If t…

>1. If the employee is only motivated by money, he will be gone rather sooner than later as there is always a higher offer around.

What else would they be motivated by? It's not their hobby.

This doesn't mean they are also not into programming and coding challenges -- but those are constants that they can find in another employer too.

if they like the programming, it's not that they can't find a programming job elsewhere.

>2. If you give in once to this, the employee will come back 6 months later with demanding the next pay rise.

Sounds like the slippery slope fallacy. Even if they do, you can deal with it (and e.g. let them go) then.

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

#329

Post by [deleted] »

dsacco wrote: post #32
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.

Do you mind sharing what region you're in? You may have found it was easy to significantly increase your compensation because you were significantly underpaid , instead of just because you were frequently changing jobs.

[deleted]

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

#330

Post by curun1r »

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…

> In general, folks who switch jobs every two years are the folks who are not getting offered big raises by their current companies

I think the selection bias works in the opposite way that you assume. The employees switching jobs every two years are the ones that are in higher demand and are easily able to get and pass job interviews. They're the ones that better know their market value and the ones that are most easily able to leverage one offer against another to negotiate a better offer.

It's this phenomenon that leads companies to even consider morale zapping policies like always laying off the bottom X% of their employees. The theory behind that idea is that if you just allow other companies to poach your top employees, you'll be left with nothing but your bottom employees who have trouble landing other work. Having seen this play out in a few of my employers, I believe it's a very real danger, though forced layoffs are a really terrible way to deal with it.

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