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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

#541

Post by Tomis02 »

nojvek wrote: post #501
Tomis02 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's easy to say "the employee is just doing the job they're paid to do, why give them a raise?". Also, "we need to give an extra 20% to convince this person to come aboard, whereas we already own these employees".

Sure, what about training costs for the new employee?

If that question somehow arises, management will probably say the new employee will pay for themselves very quickly by generating loads of value. There's always a rationalization available for justifying irrational decisions.

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

#542

Post by Marazan »

EdSharkey wrote: post #500
Marazan wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grandparent point is based on a false premise.

Which part was false, and does the false part invalidate the whole? I think the point being made was, if women are paid less, and thus cheaper to employ, they'd dominate new hires - presumably because salary is the largest cost for most businesses. So, as as an employer you'd want to minimize salaries. Men are still getting hired, and that's the logical fly in the ointment that one needs to overcome - unless we allow…

Companies want to pay the lowest salary for the best worker.

Companies think women are not as good workers as men.

That is why men are still hired.

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

#543

Post by inferiorhuman »

smm2000 wrote: post #304
inferiorhuman wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Base + signing pay for me over the past ten years: Job 2: +14.29% Job 3: -18.75% / 23.08% / 25.00% (Motionloft... let's just say Mills and Garrison were full of shit and it took a while for me to get what had been promised initially) Job 4: 25.00% Job 5: 8.00% Job 6: 31.11% Job 7: 2.64% (back to employer #5, so about 35% over that) I know everyone likes to look at total comp, but especially if you're looking at small…

Are you in Bay Area/Seattle/NY? 200k total is not much for somebody with 10 years experience. Picking right employer and sticking with it could have netted you better pay.

Yeah, sticking with an employer could've been beneficial, and by leaving when I did cost me the opportunity for about $90k income from stock. Not returning could've also been beneficial. Being a rehire lowered their offer by 20-30k base. However, while I'm sure there are some places that do pay more, without jumping to an architect role $200k total comp looked to be pretty typical for a senior ops/SRE gig to me.

There were a number of reasons I chose to return, but among the top were the commute and culture. Which is to say no, I'm not at Google or Facebook and that was a very deliberate choice. Likewise I'm not stuck driving to the middle of San Mateo (or worse) on a daily basis either.

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

#544

Post by Tomis02 »

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…

> Currently the market is in favour of employees, as there is more demand for them than supply

I don't think that's the case, most of the time it's just employers being unreasonably picky. "10 years of C++ experience? You definitely won't be able to hack it in here, we use insert popular language of the day". Or, à-la Google, "we only hire the best, because doing mind-numbingly boring work that will have zero impact on the company bottom line needs the brightest minds on the planet". Or "can't hire gramps, they're too old". When there's a shortage you take what you can get and make the best of it, and it's not the case now.

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

#545

Post by conanbatt »

a_lifters_life wrote: post #221
conanbatt wrote: post #189

The single most important change that should happen to change things like this is having salaries being public. The day that happens, salaries statistics will very likely take a huge jump.

I believe they already are? Glassdoor

Hardly. Glassdoor shows that people really want to consume that information, but the one glassdoor provides has bias, is insufficient, and lacks precision.

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

#546

Post by ocdtrekkie »

laughfactory wrote: post #537
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps then, you should consider looking to work for a company that will be loyal to you. :)

I've never seen a loyal company. I'm not even sure what that would look like.

Wow. I managed a good number of downvotes for even suggesting they exist.

I can say of a previous employer, all of the senior management took pay cuts before impacting the rest of us in a downturn. When my department did have to reduce by a person (I was the obvious choice to downsize), the entire (small) department, including my boss, took a furlough day instead. (Obviously, I started looking for new offers at this point, but I was never unemployed due to this.) Love that company. Great people.

I think a lot of people here may have experience with two types of terrible corporate environments: Faceless entity behemoths and cutthroat startups. There's a whole realm of small to medium traditional businesses out there where the owner knows everyone personally, and actually cares about the people who works for them.

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

#547

Post by nul_byte »

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…

Awful advice to try and pull that one. Most managers will shake your hand right there or they are going to have in mind that you were previously looking for work and considering another offer, so are not a candidate they can build plans around. If hard times hit and companies have hiring freeze, followed by a head count reduction, you will be one of the first out of the door.

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

#548

Post by muh_gradle »

lwhalen wrote: post #494
muh_gradle wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of employees would gladly choose to stay at their current company if the pay raise was fair. It's not easy for people to uproot their lives every 2 years. But there has to be an actual incentive (financial) to staying at a company long term.

Why would they have to uproot every 2 years? Many (the majority of?) tech workers are close-ish to big cities with healthy tech scenes, and remote work is very much 'a thing' these days too. Live in Seattle, get paid for work done in LA, SFO, Portland, etc.

Not everyone is interested in remote work, including IBM. Not everyone lives in big, tech cities. There is an inherent transition cost when switching companies.

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

#549

Post by conanbatt »

lovich wrote: post #507
conanbatt wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I would add is that as well as there is an "internal knowledge fee" there is also a "good employee/risk fee". An employee ready to jump ship quicker than his peers means that his value is reduced to the organization, precisely because the long term value of the "internal knowledge fee" is reduced! I agree with the OP's tactical move, but strategically I'm not so sure the mindset is the correct one. Maybe I was l…

If it wasn't the right mindset, then why are the numbers showing that employees who stay at jobs more than 2 years earn less?

I didnt look at the source of the data, nor I am an expert in the field, but I can see many reasons what that can be ill-portrayed.

There could be a selection bias: does it show how many people switched to a job that turned out to be worse (pay/benefits/quality of work), or people that got fired because they had a much lower tenure than other employees, etc, or the cost of retraining personally for a different position.

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

#550

Post by piggybox »

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?

Stitch Fix also does that, at least in the data science team.
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