Many big companies don't need 90% of their existing engineers so they don't care if most of them leave.
Why don't tech companies pay their engineers to stay?
21–30 of 515 posts
Re: Why don't tech companies pay their engineers to stay?
#22To chime in with my own anecdotal opinion that is likely to anger some people... in my experience most developers do their best work after about 6-8 months of starting a job at a new company, and that comes to an end after about 24-36 months of working at the same company. After that the vast majority of people just stagnate, get complacent, the job stops being interesting to them and they move on. After observing th…
I'm not fully convinced that this is just about the devs. 2-3 years is also about how long it takes for a nascent project to transition into a mature one, and when that happens the culture and energy of the team tends to shift. The same dev that thrives in one setting might end up out of place in the other.
Re: Why don't tech companies pay their engineers to stay?
#23I was working on a startup that could tell an employer if their employees were looking for a new job so they had a chance to try and retain them instead of paying the huge cost of having to hire, train, put strain on the team, etc.
I talked mostly to startups between 10 and 400 people, but the problem I heard from most leaders was "if they are thinking about leaving, fuck em, they are dead to me already". I tried to reason with them, but it was fought as if held like religious belief. I mean if it's your baby they are unhappy with, I guess you can get defensive and maybe you are still in a scrappy mindset, but it was a bit frustrating for me as my idea was not hitting very well :/
My wife was considering leaving her job, but not because she hated the work, or the company, but because she wasn't challenged, given opportunity or paid for her effort, when colleagues got paid more to do 1/20th of the work. If she was managed and compensated properly, she would have been more than happy to be retained, and I imagine there are a lot of others in that scenario (but more who just want to escape their manager of course, which is also very good valuable for the boss to have when trying to retain people).
Re: Why don't tech companies pay their engineers to stay?
#24To chime in with my own anecdotal opinion that is likely to anger some people... in my experience most developers do their best work after about 6-8 months of starting a job at a new company, and that comes to an end after about 24-36 months of working at the same company. After that the vast majority of people just stagnate, get complacent, the job stops being interesting to them and they move on. After observing th…
This is ridiculous. I would prefer being at my current job, leverage my tribal experience to build things (and I have specific things on my mind) better and faster.
If I pitch this to my CTO, he will agree that using my knowledge to build things better and faster aligns with business goals.
Only middle management rationalizes theories such as you proposed. Middle management sometimes just forgets what is the goal of their job and instead focuses only on their actions (self obsession), ego and the presentation of success. An example of middle management self-obsession is your use and throw mentality. Middle management does this because they don't actually listen to their reports. Managers think they are on another dimension and don't need to hear anything from anyone.
A really competent middle manager would know that senior engineers, especially ones with tribal knowledge are the real 10x engineers in practice. Not because they type fast, not because they are hungry and energetic but because they can process situations and circumstances faster in their head to yield results.
If I were a middle manager, I would do my utmost to retain trustworthy people around me. It's almost a no brainer productivity boost.
Re: Why don't tech companies pay their engineers to stay?
#25You have to see this from the point of view of a middle-manager whose main concern is his own career and salary. First, it's much easier to manage junior than seniors, more so when you are not an engineer yourself. Also, it's more likely you get a better salary when managing a large team of junior than a small team of senior. Even better, you can become a manager of managers if there is a bunch of juniors to manage.…
> it's much easier to manage junior than seniors, more so when you are not an engineer yourself
I definitely have not found this to be the case. Good senior folks require very little active management.
Re: Why don't tech companies pay their engineers to stay?
#26They don't? I was given an 11% raise (without negotiating) this year because the tech company I work for wants me to stay.
I could probably get more by leaving and finding a new job (15-25%) but 11% is more than enough to convince me to stay. Also, there are factors other than money at play, such as not having someone breathing down your neck, having coworkers who are nice, respecting your superiors, and so on.
I have a friend who recently left a position at a startup paying ~200K (which is a lot here, we're not in SF/NY) for a 145K position purely to avoid dsyfunction, stress, and incompetence.
Re: Why don't tech companies pay their engineers to stay?
#27> The hard truth that many companies struggle to wrap their heads around is that they should be paying their long-tenured engineers above market rate. From an ethical point of view, maybe. From a rational point of view, maybe not. Jobs are "sticky" — it's a pain to apply for jobs, arrange interviews, deal with the possibility of getting rejected. And if you do get an offer and accept you will be leaving colleagues th…
> [...] Jobs are "sticky" [...] My experience has been the opposite, in that sticky jobs are jobs held by people who aren't in demand. There's a balancing act for employers ("brilliant but flighty" is less desirable than "good but sticky") so it's certainly possible to argue that jobs being sticky for less-than-brilliant people is a good thing... but in my experience, jobs aren't sticky because of inertia for brillia…
It's not sufficient to make 1% more money. If it's not a 20%+ increase, you might as well bide your time. This means the first, lower paying job, is sticky. Otherwise you could leave instantly at every better offer without penalty to long term prospects.
And even for those brilliant people who can get it on the first try, you're taking about 2 months minimum to go through the interview process. If you're someone who doesn't like taking risks, that's a tall order until you've become convinced there is no path to promotion within your company.
Re: Why don't tech companies pay their engineers to stay?
#28To chime in with my own anecdotal opinion that is likely to anger some people... in my experience most developers do their best work after about 6-8 months of starting a job at a new company, and that comes to an end after about 24-36 months of working at the same company. After that the vast majority of people just stagnate, get complacent, the job stops being interesting to them and they move on. After observing th…
This is ridiculous. I would prefer being at my current job, leverage my tribal experience to build things (and I have specific things on my mind) better and faster. If I pitch this to my CTO, he will agree that using my knowledge to build things better and faster aligns with business goals. Only middle management rationalizes theories such as you proposed. Middle management sometimes just forgets what is the goal of…
> For example, I genuinely don't know if software developers have more of an impact than the product designers
Explains why this mentality exists. Middle management cannot see the impact.
Re: Why don't tech companies pay their engineers to stay?
#29Maybe in FAANG world, salaries really do increase linearly like the graphs from the blog showed, but in the F500 corporate and contracting world, the slope starts leveling out after 10 years of experience.
A decent and ambitious dev can definitely gain 30% salary increases after their first few jumps, but once you're at the "senior" level, it's just not happening.
In the first 5-6 years of my career, I jumped about 4 times, each with a large increase: from $55K to $80K to $100K to $120K and finally to $140K about 7 years ago in a relatively high COL city in East Coast US.
As expected, even though my knowledge and skills have really increased over the past 7 years at my current gig, the company gives only the typical 2% inflation raises each year, and there is no equity or bonus system based on seniority.
So now I'm at about $160K, which is still okay for my area, but disappointing considering somebody with similar experience and absolutely no institutional knowledge would be hired for my position at $180K (maybe higher in this market).
But I'm stuck. I can go and play the interview game. And based on what I've seen, at best I'm going to get a salary offer of maybe $180K, and of that $20K increase, I'll end up pocketing maybe $1K / month extra, as all of the extra income will be taxed at my max rate.
Is that worth leaving a company where I've earned respect, have a lot of knowledge, know is tolerable, and where I've got "credibility" and a history with senior executives and management?
It's not for $1K / month, which may even be less if it turns out health insurance has a higher deductible, or I end up having to spend $200 / month more on commuting costs.
I think most seniors hit this same glass ceiling earlier and earlier in their career - by mid to late 30's. And unless they move into management or really strive to jump to the next tier (e.g. FAANG company or finance industry), then there's no real financial incentive to jump, and a lot of risks if your current git is tolerable. And employers know that.
Re: Why don't tech companies pay their engineers to stay?
#30I think the answer is relatively simple. It is cheaper for the company to let a usually small percentage of their employees leave than it is to give larger pay raises to all their employees.