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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?

#351

Post by rightbyte »

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…

> a lot of engineers stagnate after a few years

Stagnate is also a way of saying got good at the job.

I mean after a couple of years at a place an engineer might be the person that know the systems best in the whole world if they are no commodity. It takes year to gain the experience and inside out knowledge of a complex system.

To me it feels like I get a mental picture over a system after some time where I can smell where bugs comes from and very fast decide were functionality should be inserted. Up to that point things are just a hassle and then it clicks and becomes a breeze.

Then I switch jobs to get a pay raise and the grind begins again ...

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

#353

Post by bumby »

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…

Is there a trade off between depth and breadth here? While not the SV tech scene, I remember working for an aerospace company that had some people in the same positions for a couple decades. For the administrative positions it seemed to breed complacency, but for the technical positions it seemed to provide a very deep level of technical expertise that would be difficult to cultivate within a couple years

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

#355

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd »

I’ve changed jobs a few times and achieved great compensation. But each hop required arduous months of networking, study, and interviewing, all on top of a full time job. I know other engineers who are more talented than me, older, and get paid half as much, because they don’t have the personality type to go through that gauntlet. Some of these people work at companies that pay very well, but their managers have successfully cowed them from demanding promotions they deserve. Their employers are getting an amazing value. Why would they rock the boat?

In short, the software engineering interview (and leveling) process is designed to discriminate between employees with different levels of competence signaling and negotiation skill, so each employee can be paid as little as possible.

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

#356

Post by nickforr »

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…

And if the revenue tanked would you accept half your salary, say, or would you expect a floor to be applied?

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

#357

Post by wpietri »

NortySpock wrote: post #318
wombatpm wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But HR sees it as a way to prevent a subpar employee from escaping the natural HR process. The fact that you have not been informed yet is just a failure of current management to follow process, but does not obsolve you of your subpar performance. HR is there for the company, not for you.

But really, if the only goal is to not be able to shirk a PIP by repeated team-hopping, the PIP should just follow you as you move teams rather than blocking your progress, right? "Here's Joe Candidate, he applied for your open position, and he has a 3 month old PIP on track to be resolved in 3 months. Accept or decline the transfer to your team?"

In theory that would be good. The issue is that a lot of managers don't like dealing with problems. If somebody is doing badly and maybe should be fired (which is what a PIP is supposed to indicate) you don't want a manager just passing the buck to some unsuspecting team.

Ultimately, I think you're right. It's impossible to build a bureaucratic pachinko machine that will make the correct personnel decisions. You really need line managers dedicated to coaching staff, and higher-level managers coaching line managers. One-size-fits-all rules are not the optimal solution. But bad management is endemic in so many organizations that I'm sure these abuses go on all the time.

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

#358

Post by salt-thrower »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #176
cyb_ wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Except they aren’t flat. I worked hard the first two quarters. Got a 5/6. Did very little this quarter and also got a 5/6. So I’m basically just vegetating until I quit.

This is what all the cool-aid drinkers are missing in this thread. You can feel like you worked your ass off, or you can feel like you've been coasting, and still get the same performance review. I've seen genuinely valuable engineers get middling performance reviews because they didn't commit as many lines of code to Github that quarter as the other guy on their team.

That's an extreme example, but even in a "good" system, management is notoriously blind to the actual value of an engineer. In a perfect system, performance could be measured empirically and compensation would be based on that. But no one on earth has figured that out yet, and something tells me they never will.

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

#359

Post by wpietri »

the_rectifier wrote: post #326
hunter321 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

False. In many teams half of the engineers are randomly put on pip and cannot switch team.

Half?!? In most companies, a manager with half their people on PIPs would indicate the manager is really fucking things up somehow. Bad at hiring or bad at managing. That's not the case at Amazon?

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

#360

Post by salt-thrower »

akiselev wrote: post #346
jollybean wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fl…

> my goodwill only goes as far as "at will" employment protects me

Something tells me that the commenters in this thread who are defending the idea of working hard just for the good fuzzy feelings have never been through a bad layoff.

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