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Ask HN: Why is it easier to get a raise with a new job?

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31–40 of 67 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why is it easier to get a raise with a new job?

#31
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Schedule them at lunch, do them before work, have a doctor's appointment to go to, there are a multitude of excuses you can give. It's business, they aren't your friends, you don't need to tell them the whole truth.

The difficulty I Found was when there were 5 in short order - they start to notice your absenteeism.

By this point, do you really care?

Re: Ask HN: Why is it easier to get a raise with a new job?

#33

Equity compensation is both the cause and solution to this, I think. Newer employees are favored on a cash salary basis, but older ones have lower option strikes and/or larger equity grants. Roughly speaking, any new equity grant from a company your parents haven't heard of is worth $0 when you join. If your employer is successful, these grants become worth actual money, and that is your effective raise. If not, then…

> any new equity grant from a company your parents haven't heard of is worth $0 when you join.

There are companies that give sizable equity grants that your parents have never heard of. Equity you could see on a public market that's worth more than $0.

Re: Ask HN: Why is it easier to get a raise with a new job?

#34

I found I was being 12% less than my peers. My boss said yes I'll get you a pay rise to match. 6 months later, nothing had happened. It then took me 3 weeks to get another job paying 20% more. When I told my employer I had this offer, all of a sudden the 12% appeared. I said no, too little too late - a few weeks later they said "Name your price" to stay. Simple explanation: they saved money. Of course now they have t…

I had the exact same situation. When I left they said how much do we have to pay to get you to stay. I literally told them that there is no amount I don't want to work for a company that won't pay me what they think I'm worth. The next job I took I got a 25% pay increase, and the job after that I got another 30% pay increase. At my current company I've gotten a bigger raise every year than I ever would have asked for…

Your 2nd company didn't pay you what you are worth so clearly you so choose to work for companies like that.

Re: Ask HN: Why is it easier to get a raise with a new job?

#35
post #3

I've seen it time and time again. An employee wants a 10% raise but management says no and the employee quits. Then after a long search a new hire comes in at 10% more. Why not just give the existing employee that 10%? I think the reason is that big raises are not sustainable over time. If you keep giving your employees 10% raises every year, eventually you can't afford it. So you keep raises to 2-3% as long as possi…

The alternative would be to actually measure how much employees are worth, and pay them that amount minus overhead. However, most employers have no idea how much each employee is worth, especially in engineering. The equation is basically “coder? Ok, add $50k. special coder? Ok, add another $50k. We can’t do too many of those though.” It’s like, utterly out of touch with the actual business value that people create.…

An apple pie is delicious. I believe it's 17% because of the sugar, 36% because of the butter, 12% from the egg, and 45% from the apple. See the problem with your proposal?

Re: Ask HN: Why is it easier to get a raise with a new job?

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be prepared to follow through. Always Be Interviewing. Give notice, move, level up, rinse, repeat.

How do you keep the interviews on the DL? The few times I've moved positions it's been a nightmare trying to keep my current boss from figuring it out.

why keep it secret make it known and maybe they just give you that raise

Re: Ask HN: Why is it easier to get a raise with a new job?

#37
post #19
post #3

I've seen it time and time again. An employee wants a 10% raise but management says no and the employee quits. Then after a long search a new hire comes in at 10% more. Why not just give the existing employee that 10%? I think the reason is that big raises are not sustainable over time. If you keep giving your employees 10% raises every year, eventually you can't afford it. So you keep raises to 2-3% as long as possi…

The other option is that after some time you notice that you actually do not need a new hire. Or that the new hire matches the needed position more than the guy that left. Or that instead of a senior dev, you hire a junior one instead. Everyone talks about the case where it would have been better to just give the raise to the existing employee, but there are TONS of situations where the company ends up winning instea…

In the situation with the jr dev, it works for 2-3 years, until they leave because they're not getting raises, and all of a sudden they realize that they don't know everything (a typical stage in becoming a mid-level) and now have nobody to learn from. Or, when they are getting older and realize they probably aren't long for the company because nobody has their family, values, lifestyle.

Re: Ask HN: Why is it easier to get a raise with a new job?

#38
post #3

I've seen it time and time again. An employee wants a 10% raise but management says no and the employee quits. Then after a long search a new hire comes in at 10% more. Why not just give the existing employee that 10%? I think the reason is that big raises are not sustainable over time. If you keep giving your employees 10% raises every year, eventually you can't afford it. So you keep raises to 2-3% as long as possi…

The alternative would be to actually measure how much employees are worth, and pay them that amount minus overhead. However, most employers have no idea how much each employee is worth, especially in engineering. The equation is basically “coder? Ok, add $50k. special coder? Ok, add another $50k. We can’t do too many of those though.” It’s like, utterly out of touch with the actual business value that people create.…

One big problem with your approach is when one person's value depends on another. Say I build the app but marketing doesn't sell it?

Re: Ask HN: Why is it easier to get a raise with a new job?

#39
post #3

I've seen it time and time again. An employee wants a 10% raise but management says no and the employee quits. Then after a long search a new hire comes in at 10% more. Why not just give the existing employee that 10%? I think the reason is that big raises are not sustainable over time. If you keep giving your employees 10% raises every year, eventually you can't afford it. So you keep raises to 2-3% as long as possi…

> I was able to average 18% raises for over a decade by switching jobs nearly every year.

Hmm. For those curious, assuming I still understand how to do basic math like this and a few relatively low starting salaries for year one:

  40k*(1.18^10) = 209k
  60k*(1.18^10) = 314k
  80k*(1.18^10) = 418k
Are you one of these software engineers I hear about making 400k? I suppose I would find 150k-200k as more believable since your bio states you are a "remote software engineer". Or maybe you over-estimated the annual raises?

Re: Ask HN: Why is it easier to get a raise with a new job?

#40

I think there are two main reasons. 1. Internal process: the budget/process for promotion and pay raises are probably relatively fixed for mid to large companies, so there isn't much room for managers to navigate even if he/she champions the salary bump. 2. More cynically, there is also friction for an employee to leave their current position (interview, potentially relocate, risk of new job being bad fit, etc). And…

1. is cited most of the time, and it is exactly the issue at hand: it is not set in stone budgeting must be done poorly.
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