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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

#401

Post by ASalazarMX »

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…

This strategy is likely to make your employer keep you until they can find a replacement at their convenience.

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

#402

Post by dclowd9901 »

_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…

"Might work somewhere else. I always felt blackmailed in a situation like this"

Are you fucking stupid? Your employee is giving you a chance to retain them. They want to work for you, but can't make it work financially, and you're turning your nose up at them? For what reason? It's probably going to cost you the money to hire someone new that it would've taken you to retain them! I will never understand this line of thinking.

And, no, I don't buy the line that companies can't find the money for their payroll. Not when corporate savings are at an all time high.

> 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.

So? What have you lost then? You upped their pay for a short period of time and now they're gone. Big deal. You've lost an employee who didn't want to work for you anyway. Seems like a fine outcome.

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

OK, and if it's unreasonable, they're probably going to have a hard time getting it. Or you won't be able to retain good talent. I'd say if it's the latter, you might want to restructure your exec bonus structure.

> 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.

First off, I like that you say "her" as though you're not part of the problem in the .75/$1 shortchanging for women (hint: it comes absolutely from companies being tight gripped on their payroll and playing hardball in salary negotiations). That aside, I'm not sure I get your point here. You're saying you wouldn't provide a pay increase, and here you're saying that your employee's perception of that being the case might be a problem. Gee, I wonder how they would've gotten that perception...

> 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.

Yet again, not sure how this affects the instance where an employee comes to you asking for a pay rise commensurate with offers they're receiving. Seems like a good time to get your pay structure under control.

5 and 6 seem to be tips all of a sudden on how to be a worthwhile compensator, so I'll ignore those.

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

#403

Post by rhengles »

magnetic wrote: post #365
coldtea wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 else…

> What else would they be motivated by? The actual work (what is being done), the mission of the company (are you helping kids send pictures that disappear after 10 seconds or are you working on finding a cure to hearing loss?), the team, the location (do I have to spend 2h commuting?), the opportunities to learn, the opportunities to grow, etc. We each value different things, but if money is your only consideration,…

Unless you run a non-profit, your company is also motivated by money and all your work and mission are only means to an end, which is to maximize the shareholders profit. That's why the company was founded, right?

Of course you have the right to deny a rise and let the employee go, maybe it really doesn't fit in your budget and/or you can hire someone else for less, but don't talk like the employee is wrong for searching a opportunity to grow.

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

#404

Post by sidlls »

remline wrote: post #218
jacquesm wrote: post #201

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. As your potential employee I'd be more than happy to shake your hand and leave. Very rarely does a company deserve employee loyalty, and you as a linemanager should at least try to earn your employee's loyalty by paying them what they are worth, rather than what you can get away with. Remember, y…

Employees have an inherent need for loyalty to work and face considerable risk just for following their true worth to new companies and situations. This makes it impossible to adequately take employers up to your real market worth as a long term employee. Too many of your coworkers will accept 50% of their worth rather than risk stress and a crises if a change falls apart. So as long as the employer only needs a kern…

I think the value of unions and professional organizations in these discussions is something that gets too little attention.

One of the most important reasons software development is not like actual engineering is because the practices associated with actual engineering aren't valued in the world of software, even though the political components of employment (e.g. loyalty, longevity at a company) are considered signals of high(er) quality.

The vast majority of developers simply don't have quality employment options for most of them to consider long-term (> 3-4 years) employment with a single company to be a good economic or career decision.

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

#405

Post by jldugger »

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #351
LostCharacter wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an employee is coming to you with those offers instead of just leaving for the other job, shouldn't that indicate to you that they WANT to stay, but they also want to keep their career moving forward and earn more money? Why is that unreasonable? You're sending people out the door that want to continue working for your company just because they're telling you they have better opportunities and giving you a chance…

For the reasons stated, I would not give in. This is a slippery slope. Raising the pay of one employee out of band will usually lead to group behavior, meaning others do the same for the same reasons. I was also mostly budget constrained in the past and could not raise budget to significantly (say 20%) pay raise several employees. If the employee for whatever reasons earns say 10% below average of the other employees…

Which is why changing jobs is the only way to get paid what you're worth: management has neither the backbone nor the incentive to price things properly. So instead we perform the cognitive hack of two underpaid employees trading jobs, because as you said, "The easiest time to give an employee a raise is during hiring."

I figure the only way to really fix this 'the only way to get a raise is to leave for a year' method is to figure out how to include retention in engineering manager's perf evaluation.

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

#406

Post by maccard »

coldtea wrote: post #328
_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 else…

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

Working conditions (am I expected to be on call/respond to contact outside of hours), vacation time, flexibility in work from home and in leaving for appointments, how in traTed by my colleagues or other teams (does the sales department continuously overpromise and put me under fire?). The office space - I'd rather be in an open plan with my own "area" than in a cubicle farm with 500 other employees and no natural light.

Obviously pay is important but I'm not going to jump ship for a 5% raise if it comes with a worse work/life balance. Also, not everyone lives in San Francisco. There aren't _too_ many companies hiring c++ programmers in my area, so I'd go through them all in 5 years and probably annoy a lot of people along the way. Personally, for something that takes up so much of my time (40 hours a week) I'd rather be comfortable and get on with the people I share a working space with, than have them waiting for me to jump ship in 6 months

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

#407

Post by matwood »

mamon wrote: post #246
pc86 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if you're paying half a dozen people below market, that's sort of to be expected, isn't it? Management knows the market rate for a given role. Let's say a good-not-great senior developer (as in give them a code base and a quiet room and you've got substantive code on day 1 or 2) commands $100k cash comp to make the math easy. You take the job for 10% below market for whatever those reasons happen to be. Maybe yo…

Who said anything about paying below market? Illusory superiority[1] is a real issue - about 70% of people think they are above average, so they keep demanding above-market salaries. Plus, as I mentioned in my previous post, other employers have harder time evaluating person's skills through interviews than a company that currently employs them. So they offer above-average salary to your average employees and by the…

The whole point of showing up with an offer is so that the market is known, and to avoid any delusions of grandeur.

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

#408

Post by methodin »

What makes the most sense to me is making moves early on in your career then hopefully finding a company/CEO/team you really like and settle in for a while. You aren't going to learn some of the valuable lessons if you swap jobs too often as you will never really become an expert at what you're doing.

Certainly valid you are underpaid and don't particularly enjoy your job.

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

#409

Post by Veratyr »

magnetic wrote: post #365
coldtea wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 else…

> What else would they be motivated by? The actual work (what is being done), the mission of the company (are you helping kids send pictures that disappear after 10 seconds or are you working on finding a cure to hearing loss?), the team, the location (do I have to spend 2h commuting?), the opportunities to learn, the opportunities to grow, etc. We each value different things, but if money is your only consideration,…

> We each value different things, but if money is your only consideration, you will be treated as a "disposable mercenary" because that's exactly what you are. You will never be trusted, because your loyalty is directed at whoever shows more $$ to you.

The problem is that most companies treat you that way anyway. If you want me to not act as a "disposable mercenary", want me to stay longer and want me to give you loyalty, give me a contract to prove it. Unless you're willing to surrender your power to dispose of me at will, I'm going to treat you as if you'll use it at any time.

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

#410

Post by _xhok »

crusso wrote: post #341
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.

That's not true at all in my experience. Both as a manager to others, I've always tried to be loyal to employees who invested in the employer/employee relationship - and as an employee who benefitted from having an employer/managers look out for me when inevitable bumps in the road occurred in my personal life. Outside of my own direct experience, I can also recall many other co-workers' experiences where the compani…

Loyalty on a large scale requires threat-backed enforcement. Mafia members were loyal to each other not just because family was sacred but because they'd be killed otherwise. Big megacorps of the 20th century basically worked by vesting your payout over your lifetime; leave halfway, and you'd miss out. No such threat exists in America today, so while it's possible for individual managers and employees to choose to behave in the loyal manner you described, when giving general advice, it's wise to treat business as business.
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