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

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

throwawaysleep wrote: post #118

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…

> 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.

Post by handrous » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:42 PM UTC

errantspark wrote: post #133

handrous wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

Post by Retric » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:43 PM UTC

cyb_ wrote: post #141

throwawaysleep wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Or perhaps they have and that is why your performance ratings are flat, you get a lousy annual raise/bonus (if any), and your career is stalled?

Post by nostrademons » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:45 PM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #82

nostrademons wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in tech 2-3 years is also about how long it takes for one's mental model of how the world works to become stale and outdated, usually coinciding with other projects (that had been too nascent to use) maturing. I remember that in my peak webdev years in 2008, you built webapps by designing the HTML, converting it to templates, filling in data with Django or Rails, and then adding judicious interactivity with J…

I think it's specifically a disease of the frontend community to believe that nothing you knew about programming 3 years ago is relevant anymore.

Post by ed_elliott_asc » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 6:46 PM UTC

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…