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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?

#491

Post by salt-thrower »

BackBlast wrote: post #438
salt-thrower wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignore my last sentence then. All I mean is, I get paid the same whether I put in half effort or full effort. Full effort, which can lead to burnout and stress, is a cost to me. Why would I increase personal cost with no monetary compensation for doing so? They're already paying me for half effort and I keep being told that I'm doing a great job. So I'm not going to go out of my way to do more . Edit: if I could doub…

Burn out is a symptom that you are out of balance, if that's your path you need to make a change. Full effort should allow for a balanced life, there is stress, sure, but there is also reward and fulfillment. I don't think the formula is particularly linear. Double value produced means double the salary is likely the wrong equation, but it is right in principle. If you work hard you will be developing a lot more rele…

> reward and fulfillment.

I get more reward and fulfillment from my hobbies and personal relationships than I'll ever get from creating another CRUD app for ${boring_business}. Half effort leaves me more energy for those things, and half effort still gives me more than enough experience and talking points to nail my next interview and demonstrate value to hiring managers.

> In the event you strike out on your own as a freelancer or your own business

I have no intentions to do this, but if I ever did, then as my own boss my performance would be directly tied to what I earn. So yes, I'd have a much different approach.

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

#492

Post by thefunnyman »

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.

Where I work, switching teams basically requires a full reinterview (technical questions and all). At that point I’m going to have to interview prep again so I may as well interview around other companies for a pay bump. If there was less friction to a team change I’d be much more likely to stick around.

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

#493

Post by bla3 »

projectazorian wrote: post #298
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…

Worth noting that this tactic is risky, especially at smaller companies. A lot of managers might get you the raise to avoid immediate disruption, while assuming you're out the door in a few months and acting accordingly. You might suddenly find yourself frozen out of desirable projects.

Yes, it assumes a dysfunctional company that values profitability over keeping engs comfy. But every larger company I know of works like this, due to market forces I suppose.

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

#494

Post by Tcepsa »

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…

One more point of anecdata: I've been with my current employer for just over 14 years, and I've worked on probably about that many different projects--generally two or three at the same time--in a variety of roles and with a variety of technologies (often with some degree of leadership, both formal and informal). There are many aspects of my current situation that I appreciate, but the plethora of options available for me to work on certainly feels like one of the big reasons I've stayed for so long.

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

#495

Post by blub »

nostrademons wrote: post #49
munchbunny wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not fully convinced that this is just about the devs. 2-3 years is also about how long it takes for a nascent project to transition into a mature one, and when that happens the culture and energy of the team tends to shift. The same dev that thrives in one setting might end up out of place in the other.

I think in tech 2-3 years is also about how long it takes for one's mental model of how the world works to become stale and outdated, usually coinciding with other projects (that had been too nascent to use) maturing. I remember that in my peak webdev years in 2008, you built webapps by designing the HTML, converting it to templates, filling in data with Django or Rails, and then adding judicious interactivity with J…

2008 was probably the pinnacle of web development. Everything else coming after that was a continuous line of decisions sacrificing usability and user friendliness for developer convenience.

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

#496

Post by Ensorceled »

randomdata wrote: post #484
Ensorceled wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The original assertion is that monogamous relationships AND marriages breakdown in the first five years at “very high rates”. Marriages do not. And, as you say, if you got married you were probably monogamous for some time before that. I’m not disputing that humans get together and break up all the time. It’s unclear that monogamous relationships breakup “at very high rates” due to boredom either. There are many…

No. There is no mention of marriage at all. The assertion was specific to monogamous relationships. A monogamous relationship is usually, especially when not arranged, established well before marriage. Divorce rates that hinge on years of marriage and not years of relationship does not provide us with any useful information here.

How do you have "divorces" without marriage?

And why this strange obsession with arranged relationships?

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

#497

Post by blub »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #212
returningfory2 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't really understand this article, or the current trend of job hopping. The answer is in your comment: your friend who started recently at Intel is getting more than double the salary of the long-timers. What's not to understand?

Good point. I would say the confusion is due to my outdated expectations.

The hustlers are winning against those that are loyal. It's sad, but that's how it is.

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

#498

Post by Salgat »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #463
Salgat wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're trying very hard to dismiss experience specific to a company and industry, but I'm not buying it. Someone who has intimate experience with an established code-base and the company will be vastly more proficient than a new employee of similar intellectual capability. It's why companies often try to hire people within similar industries and tech stacks to help reduce this gap. It's like trying to argue that a me…

But the status quo is already change and loss of expertise and teams and products continue along fine. Also you maybe discounting the change in code itself even when I have years at a company I’m still continually learning things because I’m working on new things or new things are being built. If I left a new hire would be able to ramp up on these fresh code based without much hassle. So expertise itself has a half-l…

>status quo is already change and loss of expertise and teams and products continue along fine.

Change in a way where past experience still translates to value. And yes, with enough money and brute force you can overcome the loss of tribal knowledge, but that's the whole point of this conversation; it's an expensive thing that's often not worth it and definitely not something easily dismissed.

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

#499

Post by ppeetteerr »

yupper32 wrote: post #490
ppeetteerr wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company is not out there comparing salaries with salaries at other companies (not all, anyway). That would be too much pressure on a company to determine what compensation should be for that specific person. Not everyone can get into the top companies, so it's up to the employees themselves to determine what it means to be underpaid.

> so it's up to the employees themselves to determine what it means to be underpaid You can say that all you want, but at the end of the day it's you that's losing talent.

Yeah, programers move around a lot. I'm not saying don't pay them competitively, but a) you can't compete with Google, and b) there is a huge delta of salaries in the industry.

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

#500

Post by randomdata »

Ensorceled wrote: post #496
randomdata wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. There is no mention of marriage at all. The assertion was specific to monogamous relationships. A monogamous relationship is usually, especially when not arranged, established well before marriage. Divorce rates that hinge on years of marriage and not years of relationship does not provide us with any useful information here.

How do you have "divorces" without marriage? And why this strange obsession with arranged relationships?

It is rather straightforward. Some monogamous relationships will establish marriage. Sometimes before the four year mark of the relationship. This means that some relationships that fail in the fourth year will also end up in divorce. The date of marriage does not usually coincide with the date of establishing the relationship, however, and thus marriage data is not useful here.

I'm not sure where you find obsession with arranged marriages? The original comment excluded arranged relationships, presumably because people in arranged relationships maintain a relationship for different reasons than those in voluntary relationships. But if you really want to understand his intent, I'm not sure why you're asking me?

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