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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

#191

Post by bevekspldnw »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #78
bevekspldnw wrote: post #4

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.

> I didn’t care about the money, I care about being taken for a fool. Truly one of the worst feelings there is... But I sure would have cared a lot about the 200kUSD/year too.

The money from big tech is dirty money, ironically the more one piles up the less they are aware of the stench.

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

#192

Post by bevekspldnw »

space_oddity wrote: post #169
bevekspldnw wrote: post #4

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!

Always. :-)

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

#193

Post by mancerayder »

Can someone tell tech hiring on Wall Street? Financial companies seem to suffer from salary rot, a seasonal affliction appearing towards and after Comp Day.

New hires get paid more. Sometimes a lot. Salaries are geared to stay at or just above inflation while more risk is taken by the employee due to bonus turning after a few years not into "bonus" but "missing piece of salary".

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

#195

Post by bevekspldnw »

mupuff1234 wrote: post #58
bevekspldnw wrote: post #4

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.

Was it the result of them getting lucky with timing the RSU grant or was it just their original offer?

I got fucked on my offer. Something of a phyrric victory for HR - lost a high performer and gained a competitor over a rounding error in the budget.

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

#196

Post by bevekspldnw »

shaneoh wrote: post #46
bevekspldnw wrote: post #4

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.

More curious about your story of starting your own company on a near-whim! I've been grinding out trying to do the same over a year or so without any traction at all and I'm finding myself almost back at Square 1 without any more solid ideas.

I’ve been working at the forefront of my speciality for many years. It doesn’t really matter where I am, I’m always working on solving the same challenges.

Jobs and stuff are an annoying necessity, the business is really just a thing I had to build to keep working on my primary tasks.

A lot of what looks like success on the outside is really just stubborn focus on a hard problem across many years. So I’ve had many prestigious jobs and titles, but it’s all just to allow me to do what I want.

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

#197

Post by execat »

newaccount7hhhf wrote: post #70
dragon-hn wrote: post #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.

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.

In addition to everything mentioned here, projects based on holiday dates (Christmas sale feature, Thanksgiving promotions etc) not rolling out on time means that the feature can go out only in the next year.

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

#198

Post by xethos »

xyproto wrote: post #157
rybosworld wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is easily fixed by giving management attrition targets. Some companies (Amazon) say "you need to let go of ~6% of your headcount every year." Others will flip this and say: "you need to retain 94% of your headcount every year." The effect on salaries is more or less the same. If you know you need to keep employees, you give salary increases to the one's most at risk of leaving. If you know you need to let go of…

Teams start to battle to have low performers on their team in a climate like that, though, as an insurance from being let go. It's absurd.

But a rank stack is cause for insurance because somebody is being let go. Needing to keep at least 94% of headcount, with no penalty to management for being above (and possibly a bonus for staying above the minimum) sounds like the opposite.

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

#199

Post by avinassh »

Saulivar wrote: post #90

There was an article at Forbes that said employees who stay with the company for more than 2 years are underpaid by as much as 50%. So why do they stay for so long? Humans are resistant to change. Speaking of myself, when I was working as a programmer, finding a new job meant going through endless interviews with leetcode tests even though I had 15 years experience. Turns out it was Joel Spolsky who invented that pra…

> Turns out it was Joel Spolsky who invented that practice. I'm sure most programmers want to strangle that guy. Lol.

Did he though? or did you mean Fizz Buzz? But that was by his friend Jeff Atwood

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

#200

Post by c_o_n_v_e_x »

How often are you supposed to "mark to market?" Quarterly?

What happens when the markets drop? Will employees accept seeing their comp drop?

I suppose you could offer some base level of compensation + have some market adjusted component? Having the entire salary marked to market creates uncertainty in annual compensation.

Or you give employees options on how frequently they want their salaries to be re-evaluated but that comes with the potential of going down?

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