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Why don't tech companies pay their engineers to stay?

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Re: Why don't tech companies pay their engineers to stay?

#111

Post by itronitron »

wpietri wrote: post #86
Kranar wrote: post #11

To 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 would look at inverting the causality there. If your data is accurate, I think it's better to say, "Most companies create developer jobs that get boring for people after 24-36 months." I was chatting with a Trader Joe's cashier Sunday. It turns out they change jobs every hour. That was a surprise to me; when I long ago worked in a grocery store, I was assigned to one position for 8 hours for every shift. Why does T…

I would really appreciate that as a developer, I have definite gaps in my skillset that I haven't needed (been paid) to fill. But everyone would have to get out of the mindset that developer Joe 'knows everything' about X.

The perfect match would be pairing a developer that can explain some technology to a 12 year old with a developer that has the equivalent knowledge of a 12 year old (for that technology.) That would keep things interesting and build a very resilient organization.

Re: Why don't tech companies pay their engineers to stay?

#113

Post by WYepQ4dNnG »

Kranar wrote: post #11

To 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…

Totally agree, that's exactly how it works for me.

I join a company, work hard the first year to get a promotion and do the fun stuff, after that, I relax and stick around to vest most of the stocks and leave around the 2nd/3rd year.

I have seen so called "architects" at big co that had been there for decades bringing absolutely no value to the table. And always asked myself why would the the company retain, promote and pay these guys big bucks. Nonsense.

I call them : the legacy guys.

The only thing I can think of is that the "legacy guys" retain the memory of all the legacy stuff, and the ability for them to maintain that piece of legacy/core/monolith piece of software that no one dares to touch.

I guess that's valuable for the company, but not certainly for the employee.

They stagnate exactly because by working on that legacy stuff they can rarely learn new tech, thus they wont be able to find a job at that level anywhere outside their current company.

They are stuck.

Re: Why don't tech companies pay their engineers to stay?

#114

Post by cwbrandsma »

ppeetteerr wrote: post #103

Many engineers are on their way out when they announce their departure. If they said: "hey, I'm thinking about joining this other company for a better compensation", that would be a topic of discussion. Most engineers instead tell me: "hey, I signed a contract with this other company. This is my last day". The other point is that money is not the only motivator (esp. in our industry). People just like change, either…

Especially for younger engineers (I'm thinking of software engineers in this case), it isn't just about money, but also experience. It is really easy to get type-cast into a specific role in the company and it can be hard to break out. One developer I interviewed spent 10 years maintaining one pearl script. Just one. He wondered why he was having trouble finding a job. Don't be that guy.

But it is also about the money. When you can get a 20% bump by switching jobs...hard to pass that up.

Re: Why don't tech companies pay their engineers to stay?

#115

Post by handrous »

jollybean wrote: post #104
errantspark wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much. Honestly if I can get a 20% pay raise by switching jobs, my job is to do the absolute minimum amount I can do to stay under the radar, why would I try? If I wanted to try I would go work somewhere else. There's just a complete mismatch in how much the company I work for values the experience and skill I gain over time and how much everyone else values it. Over time recruiters come to me with opportunitie…

"my job is to do the absolute minimum amount I can do to stay under the radar, why would I try?" Because it's a form of systematic corruption, maybe the biggest kind of corruption in the White Collar world. The objective is to 'do a good job' , not the minimum, in every endeavour. Doing the 'bare minimum' to keep a job is actually generally far under-performing, as most companies won't generally let people go. It's h…

I have a really hard time distinguishing between the idea that companies are entitled to some maximum of an employee's work-quality and effort and the notion that an employee is entitled to compensation amounting to most or all of the marginal value they add to a company through their labor, not just what they can convince the company to give them. Like, I don't get how one can argue for the former and reject the latter, not regarding it also as a form of "corruption", as you put it.

(I'm making an assumption here that you're not big on Marxism, I guess—maybe you do agree with both propositions)

Re: Why don't tech companies pay their engineers to stay?

#116

Post by alkonaut »

Kranar wrote: post #11

To 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 have the opposite observation. The first few years are needed just to learn a domain. Productivity doesn’t begin to take off until after a few years. If no one had worked 10 or 20 years in my team we’d struggle to get anywhere.

The impact of new hires can still be great when it comes from bringing fresh ideas and perspective (e.g processes, tech knowledge) and that obviously fades as everyone with a long tenure at the company has used the same tech.

Re: Why don't tech companies pay their engineers to stay?

#117

Post by yupper32 »

paul_f wrote: post #35
ukoki wrote: post #3

> 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…

Software engineers especially can take on side projects to supplement their income. Maybe a bit less focus on the day job to reflect the below market pay. Keeps things in balance.

I don't know. How much time do people put into side projects that make money? 15-20 hours/week?

I work 40 hours/week at a Big-N, but if I put another 15-20 hours per week into my current job I'd get promoted extremely quickly, and get a bigger raise from that promotion than any "side project" I could come up with.

I don't want to do any of that, and moving companies is still probably the easiest way to get a large raise, but my point stands.

Re: Why don't tech companies pay their engineers to stay?

#118

Post by throwawaysleep »

jollybean wrote: post #104
errantspark wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much. Honestly if I can get a 20% pay raise by switching jobs, my job is to do the absolute minimum amount I can do to stay under the radar, why would I try? If I wanted to try I would go work somewhere else. There's just a complete mismatch in how much the company I work for values the experience and skill I gain over time and how much everyone else values it. Over time recruiters come to me with opportunitie…

"my job is to do the absolute minimum amount I can do to stay under the radar, why would I try?" Because it's a form of systematic corruption, maybe the biggest kind of corruption in the White Collar world. The objective is to 'do a good job' , not the minimum, in every endeavour. Doing the 'bare minimum' to keep a job is actually generally far under-performing, as most companies won't generally let people go. It's h…

> The objective is to 'do a good job'

Nobody has that objective except the very passionate. A company will happily do a shitty job if it will still get paid. See IBM. See Facebook and Google on customer support.

> Doing the 'bare minimum' to keep a job is actually generally far under-performing

My manager hasn’t seemed to notice that I work a 1/3 of what I used to now.

Re: Why don't tech companies pay their engineers to stay?

#120

Post by HWR_14 »

diob wrote: post #71
Kranar wrote: post #11

To 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…

What came first, the chicken or the egg in your scenario? Did they stop doing great work because the rewards didn't match? Or did you stop matching because they stopped doing great work? Always hard to tell.

It's not hard to tell at all. You could just, wait for it, make the rewards match the expected great work and test that way.
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