Recently experienced an excellent colleague ask for a raise to $X, get rejected, leave, the replacement was hired for more than $X, the replacement complained about the workload being too much, and so we hired another body to cover the original developer leaving, again for more than $X. Absolute madness.
When new hires get paid more, top performers resign first
91–100 of 225 posts
Re: When new hires get paid more, top performers resign first
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
What line of work is that?
Probably wood working, seems to be where all the burnt out programmers end up.
I can think of half a dozen former programmers I know who now do things like finish carpentry, furniture building, luthierie, and other fiddley wood stuff, and it's been a private joke with friends. I didn't know it was such a widespread phenomenon though!
Re: When new hires get paid more, top performers resign first
#93Re: When new hires get paid more, top performers resign first
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's better than being forced to do interviews at other FANGs, getting offers and only then getting raises matching those offers. I heard Netflix suggested this as well, for determining the current "market rate". Offloading the market research to engineers basically.
In finance this is called price discovery. In the labor market it’s called waiting until someone is one foot out the door. It’s much more expensive to correct the situation once someone has already decided to leave.
But corp logic: it's cheaper to raise ONE top performer when he wants to go than to raise EVERYBODY (even those not interested in leaving) to match market
Re: When new hires get paid more, top performers resign first
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The problem is - historically it hasn't bitten companies badly enough that they stop doing it. On aggregate, you can get away with massively underpaying your top talent and overpaying new hires - most of which aren't good and will go to other companies before they're even moderately productive. I question why they're so obsessed with hiring so many new people to do basically nothing. That's the reason they have to ov…
> The problem is - historically it hasn't bitten companies badly enough that they stop doing it.
The reason for that is the culture around keeping compensation secret. Most people (in the US at least) believe it's impolite to talk about salary directly. I do wonder how much of this taboo has been cultivated by corporations that benefit from workers feeling like they shouldn't talk about salary.
On top of that, some companies tell their employees they are not allowed to talk about salary. That practice is illegal, but some companies still do it.
Re: When new hires get paid more, top performers resign first
#96I have a periodic thought exercise of a counterfactual where our culture had developed in a way that paid early career people relatively more than now and vice versa for late career. The concept behind it is that interest compounds and beyond basic competence it can be difficult to tell the relative value of experience versus eagerness and top performers with/without the supportive environment in which they operate.
On top of that in terms of your life outside of work, some of your biggests costs are up front in your life. Education, childcare, housing, paying into retirement plans through it all, etc. When you are in your 50s-60s with your kids moved out, your healthcare later in life to be subsidized by the government, your home payed off, your student loans long gone, your retirement portfolio built out, with another 20 years lets say on average of life left in you, what do you even need a raise for?
Re: When new hires get paid more, top performers resign first
#97Re: When new hires get paid more, top performers resign first
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The problem is - historically it hasn't bitten companies badly enough that they stop doing it. On aggregate, you can get away with massively underpaying your top talent and overpaying new hires - most of which aren't good and will go to other companies before they're even moderately productive. I question why they're so obsessed with hiring so many new people to do basically nothing. That's the reason they have to ov…
> there's got to be a better way
Be better managers. Do more human work during the hiring selection process. Take HR away from the lawyers. Take Responsibility and Accountability for the management layers of the company (including the C-suite).
But we all know these are just pipe dreams.
Re: When new hires get paid more, top performers resign first
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
This just tells me you’re not well versed in sales and marketing. Learn those first (specially direct response) and the other pieces will glide into place with less effort.
What are some good resources to learn this?
I'm interested in developing in this area as well, but I can say for sure that "The Mom Test" is basically an essential read.
Re: When new hires get paid more, top performers resign first
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
They rely on the incomes of family members, savings, or governmental transfer payments (social security, welfare, disability, etc). Not sure the percentages of each, but those categories probably about cover it.
That's fair, I guess if you're already around retirement age, being unable to find a job might be an impetus to quit looking.
I think there's also nuance in what "actively looking" means. Someone might decide to stop actively looking but not permanently retire and instead wait until conditions are different; maybe someone in their 20s or 30s might move back in with their parents for a bit, or maybe someone just decides that living more modestly for a year and then trying again either when more jobs are available or when they're less burnt out. Even less common things, like having to go on disability to to an injury or illness might add up to a decent number when aggregating across an entire country. I think the main point is that the single statistic alone doesn't describe "why" or "for how long", only "how many"; there's (almost literally) a world of potential reasons that aren't necessarily going to be related to any others.