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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?

#341

Post by salt-thrower »

BackBlast wrote: post #333
pnutjam wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if my low effort is better then the other guys on my teams "good effort"? You're also selling yourself short. You paid for all that stuff. Your employer paid for the work you did, and probably took more whenever they could; through on-call, off hours work, etc... I try to comp my time, but I know I put in more then I'm compensated for, even when I was technically "hourly". I'm fine with that, but I expect to tak…

Putting in low effort during your billable hours is a personal character weakness that you are cultivating. You should avoid it because it's bad for you, not just being unfair to your employer. Regardless of your relative effectiveness.

> Putting in low effort during your billable hours is a personal character weakness that you are cultivating. You should avoid it because it's bad for you

Why is it a character weakness? Why is it bad for you?

By putting in low to average effort and switching jobs often, I doubled my salary in 5 years. All the while, I've had tons of time for vacations, hobbies, and having a life outside of work. And I've never gotten a single negative performance review. All my 1 on 1 feedback from managers has been glowing.

If a company could use half the labor to get twice the profit, they'd do it in a heartbeat. That's the purest essence of capitalism. Why should I behave differently? The guy on my team who works nights and weekends to get assignments done gets paid the same as I do. He's just more miserable for it.

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

#342

Post by mixmastamyk »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #154

I don't really understand this article, or the current trend of job hopping. I'm from the generation where you have one job, maybe two, and that's it: I've had 7, but I really only ever wanted one good job. For some perspective: when I left Intel circa 2010, I was a Senior Staff Engineer fighting to get promoted to Principal Engineer (followed by Senoir Principal, then Fellow, then Senior Fellow, hahaha). FYI I loved…

It's an in-demand skill, supply and demand.

However, lots of folks leave for a while, get some new experience, and come back with a big boost in salary and maybe title. Give it a try if still interested.

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

#343

Post by randcraw »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #295
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 ignores something very important: tribal knowledge. Truth is, losing a tenured engineer carries a MUCH larger cost than HR and some managers seem to understand-- these engineers understand the nuances behind why certain decisions were made, what kinds of things tend to work and don't, minutiae of various systems that simply will never get documented, etc. Not to mention the influence they can carry in the org. Y…

The value of tribal knowledge is even more apparent when 'engineers' describes a) traditional engineers (EE, mechE, chemE, civilE, etc), or b) software types with deep specialized skills that grow with domain experience (e.g. image analysis in medical/pharmaceutical, signal processing in audio/radar/telecom, or finite element analysts in weather/mixture modeling).

The experience gained with years in roles like these isn't just in the use of computer tools, but in how to approach and solve proprietary domain problems with constraints that often aren't obvious. Knowing the pitfalls or conventions inherent in complex or regulated domains like automobile or pharmaceutical safety takes time to learn, making those with such experience more valuable to retain.

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

#344

Post by wpietri »

baxtr wrote: post #301
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 for a company where devs would rebel because teams were partly re-shuffled at the beginning of a new year! I guess people are different.

Yeah, I don't think it really has to be mandatory, but it certainly should be allowed and encouraged.

In the case where people were objecting to being re-shuffled, did they get to pick where they went? Or were they just told? a little agency can help a lot.

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

#345

Post by bumby »

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…

>there are many more competent lawyers and designers out there

Curious if you could elaborate on how you came to this conclusion? According to ONET [1] there are 819k lawyers in the U.S. but 1.469MM software programmers.

If you come from a software background I wonder if it’s easier to spot an incompetent programmer than an incompetent attorney which could bias the heuristic. Or do you think there’s something else at play that makes the proportion of competent software developers inherently much lower? E.g., there’s no “bar exam” for programmers to ensure a basic level of competence

[1] https://www.onetonline.org/

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

#346

Post by akiselev »

jollybean wrote: post #275
akiselev wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fi…

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

The former is the employer's problem and as far as the latter, I assume in this discussion that the employee isn't committing borderline or outright fraud with respect to the job description laid out in the contract. Considering how many people get hired to do flex work like security guards or to deprive competitors of talent, plenty of employers are aware of this dynamic.

However, my goodwill only goes as far as "at will" employment protects me, which isn't very much.

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

#347

Post by sorry_outta_gas »

swiftcoder wrote: post #38
pizza234 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not necessarily "ridiculous". AFAIK in US is typical to change SWE job every few years (those 2-3 years indeed). Those who succeed in doing this consistently (I'm not implying one should, or not) ganerally end up with a high salary, a higher position, and more satisfaction (assuming that change give them satisfaction). Parent's observation may be a reasonable explanation when looked into context - the time to mo…

Anecdotally, all the devs I personally know who hopped around like this did so because promotions/compensation were stalled out at their current job. Almost all of them would have stuck around if offered competitive titles and compensation, but they were often being paid 25-50% less than they would be as a newhire at the same company.

This has been the case for most orgs I've been at, I tend to tie it to poorly managed growth and planning.

it's shocking the number of developers I've seen left standed in their carrer progression (to quit eventully) due to overhiring and ending up siloed away somewhere

but I guess that's just kind of the way it goes working for other people though

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

#348

Post by wpietri »

tikhonj wrote: post #178
teawrecks wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

> But what if some of these jobs were given to the employees? This seems like another thing Trader Joe's does—I've been to their stores in a few places I've lived, and while they always have a similar aesthetic, a lot of the specific decorations seemed to be unique per store with nice local details. Of course, this could still be done in a totally top-down way—hiring local consultants or something—but I wouldn't be s…

Exactly. And if you're curious what this says, I'd recommend reading Spender and Locke's "Confronting Managerialism". It's a great look at the dominant ideology of MBA-style management. And for me Rother's "Toyota Kata" was a good inspiration as to how to think of management not as control layer, but where teaching and support are the most important functions.

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

#349

Post by salt-thrower »

simonh wrote: post #199
BoxOfRain wrote: post #152

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? 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.

Sure that’s fair, but I’ve been very fortunate to have worked reasonably or very well paid jobs most of my career. Those jobs also enabled me to develop valuable skills. I think it’s only fair I put in a good effort in return. Yes if business priorities change I could end up out the door, and that happened once, but no hard feelings. I quit all my other jobs anyway and there was nothing malicious either way. The clot…

I disagree. What's fair is that they pay you for your work. Anything beyond that is just in your head. If they could still get your productive output and pay you half as much, they would. You should look at them through the same lens.

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

#350

Post by bern4444 »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #339
MattGaiser wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that his view has cost him millions of dollars. Not job hopping is a multi million dollar error his the part of them and their colleagues.

Eh, but I'm at the end of my career: in hindsight, what would I have done with that extra salary? Bought a new BMW every year, or owned a "premium beige" McMansion with a pool? Or two McMansions? I'm not a status-shower, and the salary increase wouldn't have been enough to be filthy rich (e.g., buy an island). I can't complain though: I ended up about to retire a multimillionaire despite not job-hopping. But I was lu…

> my first mortgage was $600/mo just outside the Bay Area

Is that in todays dollars or what it was at the time? If it's in today's dollars that's just incredible.

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