51–60 of 294 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Money isn’t everything, but the math behind retirement saving is compelling. https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...
Right but what if you enjoy your job and don’t want to retire?
An analogy is, let's say you get a treasure box that can be opened for 100 dollars and may contain 1000 dollars. You open it and find 150 dollars. There is a smaller box inside which you can open for another 50 dollars which could contain at most 75 dollars but will most likely only contain 50 dollars. Do you spend those 50 dollars on opening the smaller box, or do you use the money to buy another larger chest that could contain 1000 dollars?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you think the UK could do to make the situation better aside from increasing pay? Or is that the only issue?
UK companies do not respect software engineers or reward them properly (not even stock), even interns in other places get paid 5x more than a senior engineer in the UK. There is a also a huge cost of living issue in the UK which makes it dead on arrival for any software engineering job in the UK. I could say there should be more VC funding in the UK for startups but I don't think this would help either due to the abo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Money isn’t everything, but the math behind retirement saving is compelling. https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...
Right but what if you enjoy your job and don’t want to retire?
I'll work hard for less money if it feels like we're in it together and the potential compensation is fairly distributed.
But if someone pays me less just because they think they can get away with it, I'm out.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I make low six figures in a low to medium cost of living area. I don't think even doubling my income would change my life too much.
Money isn’t everything, but the math behind retirement saving is compelling. https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...
I've heard the argument that an engineer who wants to go should be let go. They won't be motivated anymore even if you pay them more to stay. Not sure if that's valid.
That can be with a lack of promotion; or career paths that are being blocked because the company looks outside the own organization for filling roles without even thinking to promote people.
Weak leadership/management can be very damaging. The whole Peter principle is a thing. If you get stuck below some incompetent burned out leadership, the best move is to just move sideways.
Companies are bad at fixing themselves. The symptom is usually high staff turnover. Throwing more money at the problem doesn't necessarily fix anything if the problem is deeply entrenched management layers protecting themselves with that money instead of using it to replace themselves with better people.
I used to have a great manager. We jokingly called him the cleaner because his career path was literally being parachuted into teams to fix them. All he did was listen to his team when he came in and then not shying away from doing surgical fixes. Including removing people or moving them sideways, promoting people, and just not being shy towards management about what needed fixing and why. He was a busy man. Lots of dysfunctional teams in that company and senior management had figured out he was good at this stuff. So he'd swoop in with the backing of management and then straighten things out and bruising some egos in the process.
And of course the reality is that we are in a job market with record high employment. Job security has relatively low value and is mostly an illusion. Especially if you are good at what you do. People that are insecure put up with a lot of crap. But a lot of jobs in tech are the opposite. This manager ultimately moved sideways as well. Because he couldn't fix the mess above him.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
HR has a saying "employees don't leave jobs, they leave managers". Pay has motivated me to look for other jobs, but only after I was already worn out and frustrated with my current job. Switching jobs isn't like getting a new car or moving to a new apartment. It's traumatic, kind of like going through a break-up. You work with the same people for years and then suddenly you will never see them again. That isn't pleas…
Still traumatic with remote?
By the time the Engineer has gone through the effort to find some place to go to, it's well past time for the company to increase pay. They'd have to pay more than the difference, so they don't. And they'd have to be able to predict which engineers are about to leave (and churn models are terrible.)
My boss loves me, swears I'm so full fo awesome knowledge & smarts. But every review, there's some VP pissed off I asked a question about why we were switching to OKRs or how to was going to work or how it would help or some security team pissed off because I have complained about NetSkope or their shitty undocumented USB drive blocking policies. There's always some fuck doing a shitty job offended that some engineer dare speak up, and my boss is telling me again and again it's costing me many dozens of $k in raises.
It's so so so sad. Even if there aren't the dogshit losers, there's still so little discernment & taste. And there's so many people who can look busy and suck up, but actual deep knowledge is so so rarely respected. There's so many orgs that straight up deserve to fail, based on how bad they are at supporting their truest asset, their human resources.