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

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

#271

Post by pklausler » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

bla3 wrote: post #210

alex-nt wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it takes about 6m in a medium to big organizations to figure out what to do and with whom you have to speek to get stuff done. And for 2 years everything is rosy. Then you speak with you colleagues that changed jobs and find out that their income is 30% to 40% higher. That will, of course, put a downer on your day/week/quarter/year. You have 2 options, speak with your current company about compensation or leave.…

> I was offered a measly 5% after being dragged in 4 meetings about how great I am. The way you do this is interview elsewhere, get an offer for 40% more, and _then_ tell your manager that you have an offer for 40% more and that you'd really like to stay but they'd really have to do something about compensation. You'll get more than 5% then (but likely less than 40%). It's annoying that you have to invest the time fo…

Or take the 40% boost and come back two years later for even more.

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

#272

Post by fleddr » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 8:43 PM UTC

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…

This is because many businesses are ran from an accounting perspective.

When they give you a huge raise, payroll costs are up. Yet you won't necessarily deliver a revenue increase to match it. So it's a financial loss.

This might trigger you to leave, but accounting doesn't care about future potential events.

Similarly, I could make the point to my boss that an additional monitor, would increase my productivity by 20%.

Accounting disagrees. Hardware costs are now up 20%, which is real money spent. Yet there's nothing in the books suggesting more revenue. So another financial loss. "Productivity" is not revenue, it's an abstract concept in knowledge work.

It's a very one dimensional way to look at things, and far from a good one, but it might explain some things.

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

#273

Post by ilamont » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 8:43 PM UTC

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.

Many large organizations do this for promising workers who are being groomed for managerial or leadership positions. The goal from the company's POV is to have people who are familiar with many aspects of the business and are comfortable with working with new teams/challenges, but I think it also appeals to people who like being challenged ... or are willing to do whatever it takes to reach the top levels of the organization.

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

#274

Post by jjav » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 8:46 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…

> that comes to an end after about 24-36 months of working at the same company

Have you looked into why?

The one job where I stayed over 10 years was the one where my expertise was highly respected (large degree of decision-making autonomy, no micromanagement via agile) and I was able to fluidly change projects every 2-4 years. The pay wasn't that great but it never mattered because the job was so rewarding.

Most other jobs just micromanage one to death and stagnate career, so a couple years of that kind of abuse is all one can take before moving on to the next deathmarch.

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

#275

Post by jollybean » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 8:47 PM UTC

akiselev wrote: post #260

jollybean wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

In an "at will" employment state - which I presume covers the vast majority of US based readers here - the final arbiter of whether someone is doing a "good job" or not is their employer. If they're still paying the employee, they must be doing a good job according to the employer's standards even if by the employee's standard they are doing nothing.

This doesn't quite work because employee productivity assessment is very grey, and there's a lot of goodwill assumed in the equation.

It's difficult to measure employee productivity. Sometimes, managers don't care. Sometimes employees make every effort to hide their lack of productivity.

Despite that we might think of companies as 'evil' - most of them are not. We're all human, none of us like laying people off or firing them. It also comes with negative political consequences i.e. the person you fired may never be a good reference in the future. The manager may have negative incentive to let people go, as their 'worth' is founded on headcount. And truly the vast majority of employers just don't want to layoff or fire if that don't have to.

What this means is that there is quite a lot of 'grey' in the system, and there's a lot of goodwill assumed by all parties.

Everybody is saying that they want to do 'remote work' and at the same time signalling that they may 'want to do the least, because technically, I'm getting paid for that?' - in a situation wherein there is quite a lot of 'trust' expected?

How do we expect employers to 'trust' workers in a 'very noisy productivity assessment channel' with this kind of approach?

It just won't work.

There isn't enough time in the world to be looking over each other's shoulders like that (I particularly don't like Amazon's approach for example).

So the onus is on us to 'do a good job'. It doesn't mean 'break your back' - it means try to do what is expected, keep your chin up, grind through it.

I feel that if people could see the big picture, and see that mountains are climbed one step at a time, that morale across the board would be higher. 'Passion and inspiration' are nice, but fleeting, whereas 'grinding' through the issues is how most things ultimately get done. In this way, they might be more personally incented to 'fix that bug' or 'get that build out'.

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

#276

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 8:48 PM UTC

Ensorceled wrote: post #135

suifbwish wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Marriage != monogamous relationships

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

#277

Post by locallost » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 8:49 PM UTC

> If a developer of a certain caliber is able to demand a given salary on the open market, why isn’t their existing company paying them that very same amount?

One possibility would be it's because of the price point that the manager has in his head for that individual. I don't remember the actual term from Dan Ariely's book, but it was about becoming attached to the first price you hear. So if you know the current salary of employee X, and they want more, you could be reluctant. But an unknown person that you want to hire will ask for more, and that might be fine.

Another possibility is that the management doesn't always know who they should keep, or simply they have a different perspective on who or what is valuable. So a regular employee might wonder that they let a person go, but their contributions were maybe either unknown or not as valued by the management.

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

#278

Post by jjav » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 8:49 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…

> What I do know is that it's much easier for me to hire a competent lawyer or UX designer than it is to hire a competent software developer

I'm curious if you grill the lawyer on some abstract topic from their undergrad courses (possibly 20 years ago) and make them write it perfectly on a whiteboard? Meaning, the same way software developers get interviewed?

Or do you look at the lawyer's professional experience and hire based on that?

It's easy to hire people when you make it easy, it's difficult when you put up artificial barriers to prevent the hiring.

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

#279

Post by AllegedAlec » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 8:49 PM UTC

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…

Then they should pay me for results, not for showing up. Then I'd have an incentive to actually try to do the best job I can.

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

#280

Post by helsinki » Tue, Aug 03, 2021, 8:52 PM UTC

maxbreaker wrote: post #244

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've worked at a (giant well known) company/bank in New York that basically mandated that people switch jobs internally every 18 to 24 months. It was part of the expectations. I was there for 4 years. I had 3 different roles in 3 different teams. It helped a lot in fact in doing quality work. Thinking that you will inherit things you didn't do. That some other people will inherit your work / decisions. And always lea…

This is smart. I left GS right around the time they were starting such an (similar?) initiative. It also makes employees more fungible, on average, which is nice.