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

If the answer to that is no, no amount of backup will convince them otherwise. Then you get into the question of "why am I working here" and it forces you to leave anyway.

Somehow, all paths lead to leaving. And I think this is what the original article is getting at - if you want more money, your best bet is to leave.

That's why I wrote what I did: longer than a year or two on the same project in the same capacity is a negative indicator. It's not a deal-breaker, especially if it's just a small fraction of the employment history. If it represents the majority of the developer's history, then I expect to see significant expansion of his role as time progresses. Otherwise he's just doing the "same experience, N years over" trick, just on the other extreme end from the guy who never lasts longer than a year or so to see a project from initial development through maturity and maintenance.

Money must be my only consideration, because that is usually the only thing of value that I get out of the employer-employee relationship.

All those work-related properties reduce to money and time. A shorter commute means less time spent in traffic and less money spent on fuel and maintenance, but often also means more money spent on housing. If my company wrote software for managing cancer trials instead of flight mission planning for military aviation, I might give them a break of 2-3% on my salary expectations. But if they offer $20000/year less than I currently earn (anecdotally, this has happened to me), well, sorry doe-eyed leukemia kids, but I have to make rent.

As for the team... Well, do you pay them enough to stay? People who entice others to join because they foster a great team environment should be paid more, not less, and your suggestion implies the opposite--that people who work on a good team should be willing to accept lower salaries.

If you have employees coming to you with competing offers every six months, that means one thing: your raises are not competitive with the market. We all know that job hunting is a stressful, unpleasant ordeal, and that is a cost that satisfied employees won't be willing to pay. If you see competitive offers from your employees, not only do you pay too little, but you pay so little that someone was willing to do the job-hunting dance in order to find better pay.

Anecdotally (n~=9) I have found your final statement to be inaccurate. Companies are interested purely in how much money they can make from your work. Your individual manager at a company may value more things, but those things might not translate to another manager, or might not help you if the money is ever a problem. For instance, you might get a $500 discretionary bonus for exemplary work one month, and be laid off with 3 days notice and no severance the next (this actually happened to me).

Companies value money. I value money. As long as we are both honest about this, it tends to work out. It doesn't get rough; it's just business as usual. It is only when people start lying about how their companies value things that problems occur. Based on the statistics, companies generally value loyalty at -3% of current salary per year, or worse. The article implies -7%, I think; the math wasn't entirely clear, and heavily assumptions-based.

There's another one: I once heard the phenomenon described as "the difference between having ten years of experience versus having one year of experience ten times". The kind of people who end up having ten years of experience will typically be the kind of people who will want to move on and do something new/more after having mastered a given set of tasks. Sometimes they can do this inside the same company, but oftentimes they will need to look outside and switch jobs for the challenges they're after.

The other kind will typically value stability and comfort over money (and let's not underestimate the stress of applying, interviewing and switching jobs). Sometimes they will have "fallen" more or less accidentally into this mode, but I've met more than a few good people who actively choses this, and explicitly acknowledges that it's not exactly a money-play.

When the former kind makes more money, it's not because they switch jobs often, that's just a symptom. People in investment banking or management consulting with clearly defined up-or-out career paths are subjected to the same dynamic, and also make a lot of money.