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

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

#451

Post by alex-nt » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 4:35 AM 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…

The company knew the problem. I had a discussion with the manager of another team, and she was well aware that I/we were payed well under market prices. They just banked on the fact that to leave it is a lot of work, and some people will avoid that. New hires had market lvl salaries. I could leave and come back, but why would I do that in a company that clearly didn't value me.

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

#452

Post by KirillPanov » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 4:43 AM 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…

You seem to attract people with short attention spans.

Imagine if academia tried this.

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

#453

Post by alex-nt » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 4:44 AM UTC

pklausler wrote: post #271

bla3 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This is kind of the strategy, every 2 years. It's a new company because I/most ppl kind of feel slighted by the previous employer, especially if we know a bit more about the compensation of their direct manager/other colleagues. It's a churn and I hate it. I have ideas about how to improve the things I work on, medium to long term plans for different components/features to make things better. But now, after about 2y I have to drop everything and start interview practice. I literally have to discard all thoughts of improvements and switch to interview mode.

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

#454

Post by hn_go_brrrrr » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 4:47 AM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #187

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>...I can't help but stop caring about the job I'm doing when it's only real utility to me is that I don't have to put in any effort to keep having it. Yikes! That's my current situation in a nutshell. My biggest concern is that I don't want to risk jumping ship and landing at a toxic company/team, or landing in a bad work culture. Don't get me wrong, I've got a nice vision about what I want to do where I am, but I c…

If you land somewhere toxic, you can always move again. In my experience there’s almost always something toxic about a workplace, it’s finding one you can live with for a few months or years that’s the trick.

It's all relative. I left an absolute clusterfuck of an engineering org (leads would scream at each other in meetings when things went wrong) a few years back. I landed somewhere much better, but now find myself complaining about much less severe problems.

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

#455

Post by craftinator » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 4:48 AM 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…

> After that the vast majority of people just stagnate, get complacent, the job stops being interesting to them and they move on.

> so I pay them less, regardless of whatever objective measure of impact may exist.

Ah, the classic "blame the person you hired for being bored with a low paid, dead end, high churn rate job", most excellent.

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

#456

Post by cable2600 » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 4:49 AM UTC

Simple, you work 5+ years at a company you earn a pension, extra days off, and a larger salary.

Even McDonalds and fast food joints do it. They have benefits that cost a lot if the employee continues to work there.

Always finding new employees via citizens or H1B Visa workers.

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

#457

Post by savanaly » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 4:52 AM UTC

notJim wrote: post #387

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.

I think this is the main one. It's a form of price discrimination. Folks fall on a spectrum from willing to go to more trouble to get more money to not willing to go to any trouble at all. It's in the best interest of a company to pay a higher rate to the former than the latter, but you can hardly go around polling people and then adjusting their salary accordingly. So you favor policies that implicitly offer the higher salary to those who signal they demand it without having to offer a higher salary to all. It doesn't have to be that they perceive the former to be worth more. Even if both perform exactly the same it's still worth it to pursue a policy which allows you to price discriminate effectively.

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

#458

Post by hn_99 » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 4:55 AM UTC

maxbreaker wrote: post #394

helsinki wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This was GS indeed. I personally liked that a lot. I've learn a lot there.

I don't know of any such mandate in GS, was it for a specific division or group of teams? The company culture supports moving internally, but I never heard of anything like a mandate in my very recent stint there.

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

#459

Post by makeitdouble » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 4:55 AM UTC

cbushko wrote: post #445

makeitdouble wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's worse than that, as some of the bags they are holding are full of junk. Yet they can't just throw them away, because their peers are not confident enough to support the conclusion that there's nothing of value in there. A litany of "How can we be sure that XXXX" are thrown at the expert to clear, creating continuous inertia. The choice becomes to keep holding the bags eternally, or go elsewhere they can…

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Is it really junk or are we lacking in time/money/tribal knowledge to understand how it deeply works? I like to think that I am a Very Good Engineer™ but I am sure that I would produce a similar piece of "junk" if I was under the same lack of requirements, training and time. who wrote this garbage??? > git blame oh crap, it was me 2 years ago!

To me it is part of the problem.

> are we lacking time/money/tribal knowledge to understand how it deeply works?

This is a serious issue when a system becomes complex enough.

For instance you work there for 4 years, became the most versed into the system, and have a hunch that the manual process to validate all submissions to some system could be wildly simplified.

But then random managers come to ask “are you 100% sure there won’t be hidden issues ?”, and by definition the answer is “no”. And since you’re the only one on the proposition, you have to bear the risk alone if you push it through. You could, but it is hardly worth it (diminishing rewards at your level, heavy bashing in case of troubles).

And there’s ton of other subtle and not so subtle situations where you have some knowledge, you could do something, but you don’t have any backing to make it worth it because others just don’t know. So stuff keeps piling in.

TBF not all companies work like that, but you also don’t end up a lone expert in places where these kind of issues are solved early and organically.

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

#460

Post by helsinki » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 5:01 AM UTC

hn_99 wrote: post #458

maxbreaker wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was GS indeed. I personally liked that a lot. I've learn a lot there.

I don't know of any such mandate in GS, was it for a specific division or group of teams? The company culture supports moving internally, but I never heard of anything like a mandate in my very recent stint there.

Circa 2014 they started a program where Analysts temporarily work on teams that did not hire them, following their three-month orientation. Based on the parent comment, it sounds as if it was taken even further. I was in the Tech Division before it was rebranded as Engineering and merged with SecDiv / Core Strats by Eli Wiesel et al.