Why don't tech companies pay their engineers to stay? • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by maxk42 » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:27 PM UTC

On the one hand Mr. Dean rightly recognizes that longer-tenured developers bring more company-specific and domain-specific expertise to the table and they should be paid attractively to prevent them from leaving and taking that knowledge with them.

On the other hand he touts his use of a compensation formula, reducing engineering salary to a formula rather than taking into account an individual's background, experience, expertise, demeanor, and individual impact. (To be fair, he does emphasize that the formula will include "performance" in some way, but I've always been leery of boiling down performance to a simple equation. We've all been in roles where people have had material impacts other than lines of code committed, features completed, or KPI scores.)

I suppose I fundamentally agree with the author's premise that tech salaries should rise with the overall market to keep institutional knowledge from walking out the door, but on the other hand I don't think following a simple equation is the best way to get there.

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

#132

Post by throwawaysleep » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:29 PM UTC

maxk42 wrote: post #131

On the one hand Mr. Dean rightly recognizes that longer-tenured developers bring more company-specific and domain-specific expertise to the table and they should be paid attractively to prevent them from leaving and taking that knowledge with them. On the other hand he touts his use of a compensation formula, reducing engineering salary to a formula rather than taking into account an individual's background, experien…

I think the market has demonstrated institutional knowledge is worth $0 at most companies.

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

#133

Post by errantspark » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:31 PM UTC

handrous wrote: post #115

jollybean wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 lat…

This is the all-important point. It would be insane for me to try my best to make money for a company when the effort reward curve is so non linear. The only reason the idea of "doing the best job you can" is propagated is because it allows one to abuse workers. I could see myself working hard at a company with a flat-ish compensation structure tied directly to the revenue of the company.

"If I make a penny my boss makes a dime, that's why I shit on company time."

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

#134

Post by yupper32 » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:31 PM UTC

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…

At the end of the day you were underpaying them, so I'm not sure putting the "blame" on the employee is the right way to frame this.

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

#135

Post by Ensorceled » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:34 PM UTC

suifbwish wrote: post #69

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…

This isn’t surprising. 3 years is about the length of time it takes most humans to become bored with monogamous relationships. There is a very high rate of breakups and divorces in non arranged relationships by the 4th year.

The divorce rate for the first 5 years is less than 20% in the the US. The US has a higher divorce rate than many countries so, in general, this is untrue.

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

#136

Post by nine_zeros » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:36 PM UTC

foobiekr wrote: post #90

nine_zeros wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might have constraints but you can still raise your voice EACH time attrition happens because of constraints. Only then will the system change and make lives easier for everyone. If not, you are forever going to be stuck in the cycle of hiring and attrition.

Speaking from experience, most large tech companies view engineers as area under the curve, as fungible hours. Speaking out about attrition usually doesn’t have any impact at all above the Director level.

> Speaking from experience, most large tech companies view engineers as area under the curve, as fungible hours. Speaking out about attrition usually doesn’t have any impact at all above the Director level.

And blindly accepting things as it is, is the root cause of corporate decay.

If you want a high performance team that cares about management and the job, management will have to return the favor. If corporate structures prevent managers from doing this, managers need to band together and fight HR or whoever is far behind the curve.

Sorry, you are representing your company to the ICs. If you, a middle manager, can't talk to the powers-that-be to change the system, your reports will lose their trust towards you.

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

#137

Post by maxk42 » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:38 PM UTC

throwawaysleep wrote: post #132

maxk42 wrote: post #131

On the one hand Mr. Dean rightly recognizes that longer-tenured developers bring more company-specific and domain-specific expertise to the table and they should be paid attractively to prevent them from leaving and taking that knowledge with them. On the other hand he touts his use of a compensation formula, reducing engineering salary to a formula rather than taking into account an individual's background, experien…

I think the market has demonstrated institutional knowledge is worth $0 at most companies.

It might be valued that way presently, but that doesn't mean that's the worth. The companies that rightly assess the situation and determine that the cost of mistakes made because institutional knowledge is gone or the cost to productivity of retaining replacement personnel is high enough to justify an additional 2% - 6% annual salary increase across the board will outperform the companies that are constantly paying the training toll.

How many times have you had a deployment go wrong shortly after the one guy who knew how everything worked left? What did it cost the company in terms of developer hours, productivity, opportunity cost? How many times have you witnessed a new hire take 30 - 90 days to get even halfway up to the speed and productivity levels of someone who's been with the company for a year or two? If you're swapping one employee for a small handful of failures plus a new, at-market employee who has half the productivity level for a full quarter then you're easily paying a 25% premium to let that employee go, when you could've retained them and made them feel appreciated for a 6% annual raise. It's frustratingly straightforward to determine which result is better for the company's bottom line.

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

#138

Post by visarga » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:38 PM UTC

vsareto wrote: post #81

b3morales wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not really making an independent measurement here. You see developers "stagnating" and moving on; how do you know that's not caused by lack of pay increases and other things you're doing (letting people pick new projects, for example, to keep them interested)? Maybe if you did "go out of your way to retain employees" you'd have employees who end up making your business even more successful during their longer…

I don't think pay increase will help stagnation. Maybe picking projects will if the company has enough variety. The best cure for stagnation I've found is to take long breaks and get into something else.

My cure for stagnation is to play more. Amazing how playing at a pet project will get your juices flowing.

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

#139

Post by zz865 » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:39 PM UTC

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…

> There is a very real salary range between "low enough that I'll think about applying for other jobs" and "so low I'll actually start applying for jobs".

True, the other side is if you're trying to hire and pay the same industry salary, people aren't going to move because what's the point? If you're trying to hire a lot of people you have to pay more than average just to get people interested.

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

#140

Post by teawrecks » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:40 PM UTC

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…

That's a great idea on TJ's part. I have also wondered how giving some amount of project ownership to low level employees would help with morale. In grocery stores you see every little thing optimized by a marketing team; from the way products are stacked, to what the cashier is allowed to say to you. But what if some of these jobs were given to the employees? I think we need to let workers be more creative. Give them a reason to feel invested in what they're doing and reward them for trying hard. You can find what they're good at over time, the hard part is making them feel like what they do matters.

It seems like modern management theory has gone out of its way to optimize out the impact that any one low level employee can have on the company. And that makes sense when the goal is to make money. But what you're left with is a society full of people in mind numbing dead end jobs developing psychological issues.