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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

#163

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.

What do you mean “cost them money” I legitimately can’t think of situation where releasing a product behind deadline would cost a business money? Obviously they just allocated resources more efficiently because they have fewer people. Likely they made more money because of increased demand.

Some contracts specify liquidated damages if deadlines are not met. The contracts I’ve been a party to have daily cash penalties that will quickly erode any margin away.

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

#164
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

This thread and study seem to disagree with your assessment: https://x.com/captgouda24/status/1773031323604488342?s=20

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

#165
post #35
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mis…

I've see this happen to a number of friends. Most of them have enough saving that they can 'retire', but none of them wanted to retire yet. It often means moving away from friends to implement a lower cost-of-living. Once you are >40, it can be hard to find a job. You are too experienced for mid-level roles, but your core skillset may no longer be relevant. e.g. There are far fewer Win32 developers than 10 years ago, but retraining to be a web developer can be a big challenge. I've also seen people get promoted to a managment level, based on a targetted skillset, where it can be hard to find find a new role.

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

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix has a one year paternity/maternity leave policy, and some people take the full one year.

Paid / unpaid?

Paid. Looks like they changed it to "take whatever time you need", and most people are taking 4-8 months.

https://jobs.netflix.com/work-life-philosophy

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

#167
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.

High staff turnover some companies consider as a good thing

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

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep. It's not the clueless HR but systematic. I have yet to read anything specific about why this happens and the benefits of it.

One of the reasons I have realized is that it's sometimes about control. A manager (people, project, product) will not have as much control over an experienced employee who has potentially been at the company a long time or just has a lot of experience in general in terms of getting what they want from the employee, despite the employee having the business' best interest in mind. So it's an implicit attrition that seems to sometimes be desired.

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

#169

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.

You turned challenges into opportunities for growth!
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