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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?

#121

Post by YZF »

somerandomqaguy wrote: post #116
BadHumans wrote: post #9

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…

Kind of depends. I live in Canada, most companies don't pay software related jobs like dev or SDET particularly well. When I left my QA / SDET position at 9 years of experience my salary was $52,000 Canadian a year. To give you an idea, it would've been like living in Denver, Colorado on a $35,000 USD salary in 2020-ish or so. Not every engineer is going to be making six figures. You just don't see those folks talkin…

I would say that's a very low total comp for an SDET in Canada in any major metro area (e.g. Toronto or Vancouver). New grads with a CS degree that can code can find an entry position for double that compensation. Startups or big co.

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

#122

Post by etchalon »

1. Roles have budgets and companies only have so much cash to pay people.

2. Raises done arbitrarily to match market rates snowball across the organization. One 20% raise is going to turn into 2, or 3. See #1.

3. "Losing time" because of a junior hire is, oddly, less of a disruption than issue 2 becoming issue 1.

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

#123

Post by YZF »

icedchai wrote: post #41
BadHumans wrote: post #9

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…

Same. Over the past ~25 years, I've had 10 jobs, everything from junior engineer to a (failed) startup CTO. I've never left a job due to compensation. Poor morale, stubborn leadership, dysfunctional teams, uninteresting work, obviously bad business models, managerial incompetence and nepotism, have all been reasons. I even left jobs to take a pay cut to get out of these bad situations.

Same.

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

#124

Post by longdustytrail »

thot_experiment wrote: post #93
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" 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.

There are many people who don’t get asked about their regrets when they’re older. And there are many people living lives of quiet desperation.

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

#125

Post by ralferoo »

I worked in the UK at a FAANG, so I was on a different bonus system, but my US colleagues had a very significant lock-in. Both your starting bonus and annual bonuses were implemented in terms of share grants that vested at 25% each year. I heard from several of these colleagues that the annual bonuses were often about the same as the base salary, so for some of these guys it was around $200k. So, at any given time they had between $150k and $200k locked up in un-vested shares that would be lost if they left the company. It's framed as a benefit rather than paying someone to stay, but ultimately it's structured this way so it serves the same purpose of providing a strong disincentive to leaving.

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

#126

Post by sceptical »

Some companies do. At my previous company (I have since retired), I would get yearly outsized stock grants to motivate me to stay. I sincerely doubt I could have found matching compensation at another company.

I never had any expectation of loyalty from the company and it didn't from me either, otherwise the stock grants would be unnecessary. I had some loyalty to my manager and had promised him to give a heads up before leaving the company. He knew I would retire once I hit my target.

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

#127

Post by SomewhatLikely »

holden_nelson wrote: post #107
jppope wrote: post #103

I wrote a related Article "why aren't software developers paid more" ( https://jonpauluritis.com/articles/why-arent-developers-paid... ) the reality is that we get comp way wrong... and its related to hiring, and its related to Venture Capital and related to a million other things

Article not found

https://jonpauluritis.com/articles/why-arent-developers-paid...

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

#128

Post by chii »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #104
lainga wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What prevents engineering firms from acting like law firms?

> What prevents engineering firms from acting like law firms? I wonder if it's harder to associate an employee's skill level with company profit. If most lawyer companies have established hourly billing rates for each employee, then the owners can more clearly see an employee's true value to the company?

and yet for software consulting firms, this billing hours are also done the same. Yet, you don't see the same level of compensation raises unlike with law firms.

I think it's true that Engineering is just mere "foot soldiers" and hence replaceable/dispensable as needed (as mentioned in another sibling comment here).

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

#129

Post by rightbyte »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #52

Hiring people is like gambling for companies, as in most tech companies hire some person on the off chance they're a 10x developer, though expect them to be a 1.5x one on average. Even if you're a 2x developer, you haven't lived up to the hypothetical 10x ideal to your employer, so they aren't willing to put in the extra money and effort to convince you to stay, there's more incentive to put that money into hiring th…

The chest need to have the risk of containing a pirate ghost that punches you in the face, for the analogy to make sense.

Churn is a risk in that sense.

Known average programmers have the quality of not punching you in the face.

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

#130

Post by basch »

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?

In theory, this would become some type of exploitable game theory.

Send out offer letters to companies most indispensable people, just to jack up your competitors labor costs. Arms race. Eventual mutually assured destruction.

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