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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?

#231

Post by jollybean »

BoxOfRain wrote: post #152
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…

How come in your mind there's an onus on the employee to work as hard as they can but not on the company to pay that effort what it's actually worth? Unless there's a genuine emotional reason that transcends your salary (such as in community/nonprofit work) the relationship between an employer and company should be transactional in my opinion.

"How come in your mind there's an onus on the employee to work as hard as they can but not on the company to pay that effort what it's actually worth? "

I didn't say that.

I said they should 'do a good job'.

As should the other company staffers, execs and the company as a whole.

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

#232

Post by elpatoisthebest »

scarecrowbob wrote: post #214

I literally had this conversation with my boss yesterday, and I was a bit floored that they don't quite "get" it. I'm the lead dev at a small co that does work, mostly custom WordPress, for gov / edu / SMB (mostly NGO or trade groups). I'm the senior technical staff... there's a junior dev and a "project manager who codes but doesn't read log files". I've been working with this company for 7 years and never gotten a…

I really struggled with this a few years back. I was adamant that I didn't want to "play the salary matching game." My boss insisted they didn't have the budget for a raise. I didn't want to job hunt, then bring my new offer to my boss, etc. I let myself be underpaid for at least 3 years because I was sure that my results should speak for themselves. Then I got really bitter and fed up. I got a job offer that was a 50% raise. I took it to my boss and immediately our company magically had a 50% raise in the budget. I quit in the middle of that interview because I couldn't stomach the idea that he'd been intentionally underpaying me all that time.

It changed my outlook on companies and playing the salary matching game completely. While I'm still in demand, I'm always looking for a better offer. I am planning on this bursting sometime. In the meantime, I'm going to get paid.

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

#234

Post by aszen »

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…

Sorry but I really cannot understand how this is the case. In my short experience one can't make a significant impact to a mature large scale software product in 2 years. What kind of impact I'm talking, the kind of impact that can affect the business bottomline, that can actually transform the company. Without anyone having more than 2 to 3 years of experience the level of insight into the product would be quite shallow. Not to mention people that only stay for 2 to 3 years at a job never get to experience the long term implications of their code and decisions. They never get to learn from their mistakes since they keep making new ones and moving on

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

#235

Post by peakaboo »

Justsignedup wrote: post #201
wpietri wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 worked with an engineer. She told me that when working at her previous company they permitted you to switch teams every 2 years. Every 2 years she would take that opportunity and got to work on a huge variety of projects with lots of different people. Some of them good, some of them not. It kept her there for 12 years or so.

Usually companies don't increase pay when you switch internally so the only reason to do that would be because you love the workplace so much that you don't care if you get payed much more somewhere else.

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

#236

Post by hunter321 »

wkimeria wrote: post #223
Justsignedup wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked with an engineer. She told me that when working at her previous company they permitted you to switch teams every 2 years. Every 2 years she would take that opportunity and got to work on a huge variety of projects with lots of different people. Some of them good, some of them not. It kept her there for 12 years or so.

I suspect there is a correlation between companies that have a culture of letting engineers change roles/departments (and a clear process for doing so) and retention/average tenure.

As much as everyone hates on Amazon, no manager can block a internal transfer, maximum they can do is keep you for 4 weeks (with a very, very good reason).

The average tenure on many, many teams is 6 months.

Does help starve off the boredom.

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

#237

Post by encoderer »

In urban tech centers, wages increased sharply over the last 10 years. Both due to base wage increase and tech stock appreciation.

Once you are within a company you will be given catch-up raises but in a fast moving market you will always be able to create a bidding war for your talent and increase your pay beyond what the employer will offer you.

You have 3 options.

1. Climb the ranks. Technical or managerial. This takes time and is rewarded generously at most tech companies.

2. Get lucky with insane stock appreciation. Stay four years. Leave when your income drops in year 5.

3. Leave every couple years for significantly more money, by combination of up-leveling and getting the now higher market rate.

Number 3 is the easiest path.

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

#238

Post by Arainach »

wkimeria wrote: post #223
Justsignedup wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked with an engineer. She told me that when working at her previous company they permitted you to switch teams every 2 years. Every 2 years she would take that opportunity and got to work on a huge variety of projects with lots of different people. Some of them good, some of them not. It kept her there for 12 years or so.

I suspect there is a correlation between companies that have a culture of letting engineers change roles/departments (and a clear process for doing so) and retention/average tenure.

Changing projects is only half of it, though.

Let's say I want a new project. I can search for a new team internally, find a mutual match, sign on, start and.....keep my current salary.

Or I can search for a new team externally, find a mutual match, sign on, and get (in most cases) a significant raise and a new sign-on bonus.

Even at a company I like, there's a significant incentive to leave.

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

#239

Post by solatic »

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". Employers are aware of this and are paying salaries accordingly.

This is the difference between employers who play the game at a low level and employers who play the game at a high level. If you play at a low level, then you view your workers as interreplaceable cogs in the machine. You charge for soda at vending machines and balk at shelling out a few hundred bucks for a ping pong table. Sure, it's "expensive" when people leave, since their replacements are more expensive (not to mention ramp-up costs), but your perspective on your employees is how much they cost you to employ, so you try to keep that number as low as possible for as long as possible.

Higher-level players order dinner to the office every night because they understand that the price of food is so ridiculously cheap compared to the additional productivity that the only way it doesn't make sense is if you manage your employees by what they cost and not by the value of their employment. Higher level players grant their employees large raises without being asked because they understand that defensive raises prevent your employees from searching for new work in the first place. Higher level players understand that loyalty has value, trust has value, and tenure has value.

Are lower-level players rational? Sure. They're also either stupid, or of low enough relative productivity that the market will subsume them soon enough.

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