Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

marker.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 515 posts

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

#381

Post by perl4ever »

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…

>Trader Joe's

It's only been a year since they were in the news for not letting people wear things that say Black Lives Matter.

And there was also the employee fired for sending a letter to the CEO about working conditions.

https://www.inc.com/suzanne-lucas/trader-joes-dan-bane-firin...

I think there was a boycott, but people move on so quickly.

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

#382

Post by positr0n »

dwater wrote: post #78
bookofsand wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of companies ask for a 'we own everything you breathe' agreement as a prerequisite for employment. The vast majority of employed software engineers don't have the luxury to work on side projects, unless they relinquish the IP to their employer for no additional compenstation, which renders monetization moot.

I worked with someone who was working 2 full time 9-5 jobs simultaneously for a few months before being found out. When the company did realize what was going on, they quietly parted ways with him without any punishment, because they didn't want it to get around that he got away with it for so long. I think if you're not at a big organization with a proper legal department, that's the most likely outcome.

I know someone who did this for a over a decade.

Even got promoted to management in one of the two jobs! They would sometimes have to take calls from both jobs with one earbud in each ear connected to each laptop.

The industry the companies were in are not known for employing the best and brightest programmers... so I can understand being able to output enough to keep everyone happy. But it still boggles my mind that they never slipped up and got caught.

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

#383

Post by perl4ever »

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…

>Because it's a form of systematic corruption, maybe the biggest kind of corruption in the White Collar world.

There is generally surplus value in any exchange of goods or services that benefits both parties.

Some people insist that if the employer captures it, they have stolen it from the employee, and others think that if the employee captures it, they have stolen it from the employer.

The fact is, it's up for grabs, and what I think is salient morally, is that neither party created it alone.

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

#384

Post by captainredbeard »

Retric wrote: post #145
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?

Performance ratings are meaningless if you’re jumping ship every 2-4 years and the difference is between working twice as hard is a 2% raise vs a 4% one. What companies forget is new employees see the legacy of how you treated old employees over time. The basic structure of small consistent pay bumps was extremely effective when people stayed at companies for decades. Work twice as hard and make 2 percent more for th…

The gap at big tech companies between okay and "doing well" (i.e. twice the effort) is not a 4% raise, it's a 40% raise.

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

#385

Post by dragonwriter »

dasil003 wrote: post #380
cletus wrote: post #327

There are several factors: 1. Organizations will often see bumping up an employee's pay to match another offer as some variant of extortion and it's they view this as disloyal. Never mind that the other offer clearly shows they're now below market. I didn't say it makes sense; 2. There is friction in changing jobs and companies and people will generally have a threshold for making that jump (eg they won't switch for…

This is a great list, to elaborate on #4, I think there's another factor at play related to the social implications of Dunning Kruger. To be specific: ones sense of ones own productivity and value to the company is not very well correlated to actual performance. For new hires, management doesn't what their value will be, so it really comes down to market rates and negotiation based on the limited signal. If you make…

> I think there's another factor at play related to the social implications of Dunning Kruger. To be specific: ones sense of ones own productivity and value to the company is not very well correlated to actual performance.

Dunning-Kroger is approximately “one’s sense of one’s own relative ability capability is tightly-correlated with actual relative ability, but shifted toward the 70th percentile from actual relative ability.”

The usual misunderstanding of DK is believing it to be a strong but inverse correlation between self-perceived ability and actual ability.

“Not very well correlated” not only isn't DK, its a fairly unusual misunderstandings of DK.

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

#386

Post by SonOfKyuss »

ed_elliott_asc wrote: post #149
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…

Another thing that happens is people get dragged into more and more meetings and also become the “go to person” for stuff. I’ve seen it time and time again, start somewhere new and start with very few meetings and you can really deliver.

I’m living this currently. Fortunately, my manager understands and appreciates the value of being a domain expert and mentor and the time commitments that come with it.

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

#387

Post by notJim »

cletus wrote: post #327

There are several factors: 1. Organizations will often see bumping up an employee's pay to match another offer as some variant of extortion and it's they view this as disloyal. Never mind that the other offer clearly shows they're now below market. I didn't say it makes sense; 2. There is friction in changing jobs and companies and people will generally have a threshold for making that jump (eg they won't switch for…

These are good. I think I'd add one:

7. Tech companies (explicitly or not) are skeptical of people who don't switch jobs. People call them "lifers" as a denigrating term, for people who are just coasting. Switching jobs implies that you're hungry or ambitious (regardless of whether it's true), whereas remaining at a job shows that you are complacent.

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

#388

Post by whycombagator »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #85
hiram112 wrote: post #29

Maybe in FAANG world, salaries really do increase linearly like the graphs from the blog showed, but in the F500 corporate and contracting world, the slope starts leveling out after 10 years of experience. A decent and ambitious dev can definitely gain 30% salary increases after their first few jumps, but once you're at the "senior" level, it's just not happening. In the first 5-6 years of my career, I jumped about 4…

I live in coastal New England, and I faced a similar situation until ~6 years ago, when I started working for all-remote companies. I've been fortunate to find all-remote employers who pay average non-FAANG silicon valley salaries, regardless of where in the U.S. you live. The result is I'm paid a little (+20%?) higher than I would at a non-fintech company in Boston or NYC.

As someone who will be going back to the office… where did you find those companies and what is the ball park total comp amount we are talking about?

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

#389

Post by thx2099100 »

bumby wrote: post #353
maxbreaker wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

the other side from my experience at a previous engineering job is that it can also breed deep defensive layers around bad engineering work.

the same 3 core people stayed on the project for 11 years from the begging and hired and fired around weither you're a threat to their position. managers would come and go, they were helpless and held no real power in the project, until they settled for a puppet manager who would defer every decision up to them and act as a secretary.

the result was a huge pile of tech debt that only they could touch and they kept getting raises because the project couldn't afford to lose them, until the project died of it own weight.

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

#390

Post by lupire »

wpietri wrote: post #86
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…

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…

A software dev changes between a wide range of tasks pretty frequently, if "stock shelves, cashier, repeat" is your basis of comparison.
Post reply on HN