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Why Don't Tech Companies Pay Their Engineers to Stay?

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Re: Why Don't Tech Companies Pay Their Engineers to Stay?

#91

Post by BobbyTables2 »

hintymad wrote: post #21

Amazon used to have an internal Slack channel that allowed employees to share their total compensations anonymously. Thousands of people shared and the numbers were eye opening. Basically, if one was not a star and got consistently promoted every two or three years, she would not get compensated at market price. As a result, an L6 who stayed in the company for years often got lower total compensation than an L5 new h…

Exactly. I find companies celebrating 20-30 years of seniority to be very darkly humorous…

Re: Why Don't Tech Companies Pay Their Engineers to Stay?

#92

Post by sameermore »

My 2 cents - I think this is also a function of the domain the organisation operates in. IMHO, there are predominantly two types of companies - one where the technology creates the business vs. one where the business uses the technology as an enabler.

For the former, think of companies like Boeing, nVidia or the Windows/Office divisions at Microsoft. Here, the product of technology is what brings in the money. For the latter, think of almost any "IT company" in the world which pieces solutions for clients in various businesses by leveraging existing technology/tooling and applying some amount of customisation.

The former tend to value engineers more (exceptions are always there) as there are usually less number of competitors, but the risk of the employee switching and enriching the competitor's knowledge (and hence, business) is significant. The latter tend to look at engineers as replaceable (with little to medium effort) resources, and value their payroll expenses more than retaining top talent.

Re: Why Don't Tech Companies Pay Their Engineers to Stay?

#93

Post by thot_experiment »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #86
kulahan wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s hoping you’re lucky enough to live until then. Don’t forget to live in the meantime. It’s a lot easier to hike across Europe in your 30s than in your 50s.

" Here’s hoping you’re lucky enough to live until then. "? The median lifespan is over 80 and developers are paid above the median, often by quite a bit. It's far, far more likely in your 50s that you'll be staring down the barrel of a layoff + industry downturn and cursing yourself for the money spent on your trip across Europe and other frivolities in your 30s.

I don't think this is true for most people, when you ask older people about their regrets, it's often that they worked too much and didn't live enough.

Re: Why Don't Tech Companies Pay Their Engineers to Stay?

#94

Post by thot_experiment »

It's honestly wild. Just had someone leave because of an incredibly dumb money-saving corporate policy reason. The overall impact will DEFINITELY be that projects get delayed and we waste a ton of time training the new guy, it would have been much cheaper to fix by just paying him more (or fixing the actual benefits issue). It's mind boggling how short sighted some of these fucking decisions are.

Re: Why Don't Tech Companies Pay Their Engineers to Stay?

#95

Post by pixelatedindex »

hintymad wrote: post #77
pixelatedindex wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can relate to this. I was hired as an L4, got a promotion after 3 years to an L5. I later found out that my L5 TC was high-mid band for new L4s. To rub salt into the wound, I had to have “consistent” L5 level output (translates to about a year) before I could even apply for promotion and compensation only kicked in at the next review cycle. The ~13% salary bump was retroactively granted but RSUs were not, which was…

On a personal level, promotion always means I have more freedom to do more interesting stuff (and lose freedom to some other stuff too, so there is a balance). Impact and validation of my ability are some other factors, though not that important. Now about the monetary side: the purpose of getting promoted is to get to a high enough level. Say L7 in Amazon. Since resources disproportionally concentrate to the top, L7…

> On a personal level, promotion always means I have more freedom to do more interesting stuff (and lose freedom to some other stuff too, so there is a balance).

In my role I didn’t have the freedom and the opportunity because we were a small team as part of a sub-org - not much scope for multi-team impact. I have influenced some product roadmaps but for minor changes.

Should I be hunting for chances that have more meat and convince others to see things my way?

Re: Why Don't Tech Companies Pay Their Engineers to Stay?

#97

Post by DanielBryars »

kulahan wrote: post #76
ryandrake wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I look at every extra dollar I could make (that I don't technically need to survive) as some number fewer minutes until I can retire. So every extra dollar is worth it, no matter how frugal my lifestyle is.

Here’s hoping you’re lucky enough to live until then. Don’t forget to live in the meantime. It’s a lot easier to hike across Europe in your 30s than in your 50s.

The sentiment is right, and sure, there are some differences, but please dont think your 50s is some geriatric period of your life where hiking across the alps/europe is not thoroughly enjoyable!

Re: Why Don't Tech Companies Pay Their Engineers to Stay?

#98

Post by rramadass »

lainga wrote: post #80
gregfjohnson wrote: post #78

A person close to me works at a law firm. She was feeling a bit stagnant, so she connected with a recruiter. She got a very solid offer with a significant pay bump. She gave her two weeks' notice to her firm, including appointments with the partners. One of the partners asked her for a half hour. They came back with a massive pay raise, and a promotion to partner if she would stay. She was in a state of shock, but th…

What prevents engineering firms from acting like law firms?

Well...

Because the Industry thinks that Management/Marketing/Sales are the important "leaders" and Engineering is just mere "foot soldiers" and hence replaceable/dispensable as needed. The above is justified as "Business needs", "Investor returns", "Profit next quarter" etc.

Re: Why Don't Tech Companies Pay Their Engineers to Stay?

#99

Post by android521 »

if the salary of a role is 100k and you can pay seniors up to 400k (or some number). After some point, it won't make sense financially to increase salary as you can hire people for this role with much less. So the limit of the pay is set by market. If engineers want bigger and bigger pay, they would need to change to other roles that pay more.
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