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When new hires get paid more, top performers resign first

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Re: When new hires get paid more, top performers resign first

#31
post #9

This is one of the reasons I loved Netflix. Each year they would say "to get new people in the door with your level experience, we had to offer them $XXX. Therefore we are raising you to $XXX." Some years I got 25%+ raises. Netflix understood this like no one else.

Companies should understand when their business hangs on people, you need to keep the people happy.

Hiring people off the street for more money than people with 20+ years of experience isn't a good way to keep experienced workers employed.

Re: When new hires get paid more, top performers resign first

#32
post #14
post #8

Can someone who understands economics better than me explain how the workforce can "shrink" in 2024? The number of people isn't going to dramatically decrease, are just a ton of people retiring? Or does this imply that there's going to be a reduction in the number of available jobs?

In the industrialized world, the fertility rate is almost universally below replacement rate, and has been for a long time. So, as boomers are retiring, there are not as many people replacing them.

[flagged]

Re: When new hires get paid more, top performers resign first

#33
post #21

Used to be a high performer at Big Tech. Found out a coworker with less experience at the same level had $200k/year more in comp. I didn’t care about the money, I care about being taken for a fool. There were additional factors, but I left and started my own company within three months and nobody in my old team has anywhere close to my experience.

Not only is it an example of the idiotic decision making processes that companies use that are not effective in the long run, it demonstrates how they are happy to pit employees against one another. It is awkward for a person to know that they make substantially more than coworkers. It forms a feeling of guilt and other negative feelings. But what are they supposed to do? Negotiate lower salaries when starting or aft…

The social order is fundamentally nepotistic. Family/Tribe/Caste matters more than experience/performance within the managerial bubble. Keeping the actual workers down helps to keep them desperate to put food on the table, but you better perform well enough to float the non-workers. Deloitte/Wipro/Infosys/et.al know how to play this game very well to discourage anyone not in the tribe from advancing.

Re: When new hires get paid more, top performers resign first

#34
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the industrialized world, the fertility rate is almost universally below replacement rate, and has been for a long time. So, as boomers are retiring, there are not as many people replacing them.

[flagged]

I understand, I just don't care. It's the economic elites who don't seem to understand that they need a next generation to exploit and that the proletariat cannot be squeezed indefinitely. Eventually we look around and say "fuck this, I'm not wrenching sentience from the void to live in this morass".

Re: When new hires get paid more, top performers resign first

#35
post #30
post #8

Can someone who understands economics better than me explain how the workforce can "shrink" in 2024? The number of people isn't going to dramatically decrease, are just a ton of people retiring? Or does this imply that there's going to be a reduction in the number of available jobs?

If you do not have a job and are not actively looking for work, you are not part of the "labor force". The "labor force" is defined as (working + actively looking). Also, the denominator of the unemployment rate is the size of the labor force, not the size of the working-age population. In particular if someone gives up on looking for a job because they're too discouraged, or if someone decides to become a stay-at-ho…

> In particular if someone gives up on looking for a job because they're too discouraged,

I've never understood that either; do other people just not have to pay rent or buy groceries? How do you "give up looking for a job"? I understand becoming a stay at home parent, but what else would make it so you "give up" looking for paid work?

This isn't a rhetorical question, I am actually asking because I feel like I'm missing something.

Re: When new hires get paid more, top performers resign first

#36
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leave.

Unfortunately this is the answer. The bean counters do not give a shit about your experience or value. They just need warm bodies. They know the friction of leaving a company is high so they'll intentionally make you feel like a sucker until you finally quit, getting more years and months out of you for a lower rate than you deserve. When you finally do leave, they'll pat themselves on the back for retaining you for…

I guess the problem with bean counters is they don't know how to count our beans. The low performers look exactly the same as the high performers to them. So they make foolish decisions.

Re: When new hires get paid more, top performers resign first

#37
I just had a very valuable teammate quit this week from lack of salary progression. New-ish grads are making more than him for much lesser jobs. The business refused to do even a token salary increase because of the ‘economic climate’

Now a critical project won’t happen on time, which will cost the company many magnitudes more in revenue than it would have cost them with a token increase.

Oops.

Re: When new hires get paid more, top performers resign first

#38

I’m in the unique situation where I’m hiring my replacement after having made a promotion. I know they will make (substantially) more than me. How would I negotiate a matching or superior salary?

Leave.

Leave? Into what is anecdotally the worst job market for developers since 2008 and maybe even the dotcom bust?

Re: When new hires get paid more, top performers resign first

#39
post #9

This is one of the reasons I loved Netflix. Each year they would say "to get new people in the door with your level experience, we had to offer them $XXX. Therefore we are raising you to $XXX." Some years I got 25%+ raises. Netflix understood this like no one else.

Would the 25% raise be composed primarily of salary or stock?

Cash. Netflix lets you basically turn a dial on the ratio of cash to stock, but it starts with a single cash number.
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