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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?

#161

Post by zelos »

fire_lake wrote: post #154
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…

Any resources on these levels? Never worked for a FAANG so curious where I would sit.

https://www.levels.fyi/ . I don't know how accurate their data is, though.

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

#162

Post by philipwhiuk »

mmarq wrote: post #145
colesantiago wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. In monetary terms this is not true. A good software engineer can make 150-200K in the UK without going into finance or FAANG. In real terms you are better off making 50-80K in Germany, Spain, France, Poland, Italy, etc…, especially if you have child…

Name a company paying 150-200K that’s not finance or FAANG?

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

#163

Post by hiddencost »

It's challenging being in big tech right now. I spent a year applying for equivalent level jobs at peer institutions and startups. Finally got an offer from a startup that was heavily stock weighted. Took the offer to my boss and got a $100k raise within a week.

TBH suspect I was being seriously underpaid.

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

#164

Post by roncesvalles »

jongjong wrote: post #156
steelframe wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should try leaving a company for money sometime. Financial independence really is life-changing, and you can get there surprisingly quickly in the tech industry by putting yourself on the market more often. Anecdotally, at my current company nearly everyone I know who left did so within a few months of hitting the 4-year cliff on their signing equity. I've left 3 companies in my career primarily because the next…

I've never been in a position where I had any kind of leverage to negotiate a serious increase. I've even been in an extreme situation in crypto sector where I was putting pressure on the company founder for a salary increase. I was earning like USD $100K per year comp total. They had over $100 million of assets. The founder, a multi-millionaire who had more money than he knew what to do with said that the pressure I…

Getting more money from your current company based on market conditions almost never works. Even star performers get shafted on the regular.

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

#165

Post by somerandomqaguy »

YZF wrote: post #121
somerandomqaguy wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Low but it wasn't exactly unheard of either. There were full time positions publicly offering only $20,000 a year right on the listing itself. Not sure how publicly offering below minimum wage makes any sense though.

Highest offer I've heard specifically for a mid level SDET position was $72,000 for 4 to 5 YOE but it was with a big company out of Vancouver. AFAIK they had no problem filling that opening within a few weeks.

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

#166

Post by moritz64 »

it's the same everywhere, not just with jobs and careers. contracts for (mobile) internet are always much cheaper for new customers than for old customers. or old customers don't automatically get the better conditions of new customers. and that although old customers are even more valuable, because they have already earned their acquisition costs.

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

#167

Post by District5524 »

Ancalagon wrote: post #131
1oooqooq wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

engineers either have patent quotas or are blue collar as far as any Enterprise is concerned. do you have patent quotas at your position? if not they are counting the days to replace you with a machine, someone overseas, a script, AI. depending on the decade.

Why is a lawyer position irreplaceable, but an engineering/blue collar one is not? Not trying to be spiteful or angry, just geniunely curious about the business logic and psychology behind that kind of decision making. Isn't every job replaceable?

I think the reason is not that lawyers are irreplaceable, to the contrary perhaps. The reason is most likely that law firms are always led by lawyers, while that's rarely true for firms where most engineers work (or for most other professions). Typcially, law firms can only be owned by lawyers due to regulatory constraints (the UK, Australia being a notable, but not particularly successful exception). While this rule restricts the possible size, scalability, efficiency and profitability of law firms compared to many other sectors, it can ensure a certain degree of independence (insulation) of the management from extra-professional influences. Like "Das Kapital" trying to change the way the firm works to achieve better returns in the next 5 years. That leads to law firm management and owners being composed mostly of people who have previously worked in that exact field and PROBABLY being better at judging the worker's worth in terms of potential revenue he/she may earn, the client trust they have and the chance that they may transfer that to another firm... Maybe law firms also have less of an illusion about what is valuable in their law firm as opposed to those companies relying on engineers who have or believe they have some special moat outside their people (technology, source code, inventory etc.). No professional law firm would have any illusions that their lawyers are special - perhaps outside trial lawyers and some very special field of litigation, the firm just needs burnout resistant cannon-fodder with the capacity to run for at least ten years, so they may acquire the sufficient experience, plus a number of bland human skills and patience in coping with other human beings. There never was a genuine myth of the "10x lawyer", that's something that only ChatGPT invents. (Sidenote: I wouldn't call an engineering job blue collar as long as you work in an office - WFH, we are all collarless workers now.)

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

#168

Post by ath3nd »

nextworddev wrote: post #13
s-lambert wrote: post #8

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

> They can be onboarded and trained

Over a period of 6 years, until they reach 30% of the knowledge/velocity of the people who wrote the original thing. /s

Basically the company:

- hires a new engineer on the new market rate so they get up spending extra money

- spends extra time and resources to onboard the new engineer to a fraction of the productivity of the engineer that's had tenure

Over the years, I used to think that companies are taking the hit on money and productivity in order to not have "irreplaceable" engineers. Better have replaceable cogs in the machine rather than important pillars of your company, right? Workers need to know their place, even if it costs you money and productivity.

Nowadays, I just think it's the sheer incompetence and the stubborn insistence of managers in thinking that giving a new engineer the same title as the title of one of your tenured engineers will somehow magically mean they both can do the same things, at the same pace.

I used to think that kind of company behavior was calculated malice, now I believe it's simply brutal stupidity.

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

#169

Post by fire_lake »

zelos wrote: post #161
fire_lake wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any resources on these levels? Never worked for a FAANG so curious where I would sit.

https://www.levels.fyi/ . I don't know how accurate their data is, though.

I mean experience wise, not TC.

Like “how do my skills compare to a Google L7?”

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

#170

Post by GianFabien »

BurningFrog wrote: post #106
BadHumans wrote: post #31

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.

Doubling your income would mean you can take 50% of your time off with the same income. Pretty sure that would change your life!

Typically with a higher income you taxation rate increases even more. So 50% more salary might only end up being 20% more in your hand.
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