11–20 of 294 posts
It is simple. Because they have no money. For startups, they want engineers to take a pay cut to work 996-like hours. Especially in the UK, where there is a running joke where companies complain about a “skills shortage” when in reality companies cannot find engineers at top universities that want to take a pay cut and work for less pay.
This entire piece starts from the conclusion that engineers leave because they aren't paid enough then works backwards from there. This is wrong from my experience. Anecdotally, I have never left a job because of money. Sure, I left jobs and got ones that ended up paying more money but the reason I started looking in the first place wasn't money. It was for other reasons that usually included frustrations with manage…
and here I am thinking this was a meme by HR
myself and all my competition leave jobs due to - and for - money. if you're sticking around to stay in graces of your comfortable management you are contributing to the wage gap for your respective gender in the wrong direction.
This entire piece starts from the conclusion that engineers leave because they aren't paid enough then works backwards from there. This is wrong from my experience. Anecdotally, I have never left a job because of money. Sure, I left jobs and got ones that ended up paying more money but the reason I started looking in the first place wasn't money. It was for other reasons that usually included frustrations with manage…
> It was for other reasons that usually included frustrations with management. and here I am thinking this was a meme by HR myself and all my competition leave jobs due to - and for - money. if you're sticking around to stay in graces of your comfortable management you are contributing to the wage gap for your respective gender in the wrong direction.
I have no idea why I should care about this.
This entire piece starts from the conclusion that engineers leave because they aren't paid enough then works backwards from there. This is wrong from my experience. Anecdotally, I have never left a job because of money. Sure, I left jobs and got ones that ended up paying more money but the reason I started looking in the first place wasn't money. It was for other reasons that usually included frustrations with manage…
For many people working in the tech industry for the past ~15 years, they could easily find a new job with comparable or better pay. That’s no longer a guarantee for most people.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But there's no supply for the people who know your product and codebase except for your existing employees, isn't that the whole point of paying them to stay?
They can be onboarded and trained
This is why projects tend to be put on maintenance mode or rewritten (piecemeal or from scratch) once their original owners are gone. This can be, but isn't always, expensive for the business' owners.
Or maybe somebody leaving and having to be replaced by a new hire kind of rolls the dice on headcount, which low and mid-level managers might find interesting.
The answer I like the most is that, as the article says, when you hire a new person you have to pay, on average, market rate. When you're evaluating whether to change the pay of Joe Lifer, you sometimes have to pay market rate but often you don't have to. Maybe you'd save money by giving raises to Joe Lifer, but who knows? You're hiring people anyway, so if Joe Lifer wants to leave, that's a shame, pay the new guy instead of him.