Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

goethena.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 294 posts

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

#181

Post by mmarq »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #162
mmarq wrote: post #145

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. 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?

According to levels.fyi: Personio, Deliveroo, Samsara, Atlassian, monday.com (and others, including my employer)

I know many consultants that make 150K+ (which is 600£ per day)

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

#182

Post by Arisaka1 »

mppm wrote: post #172

It's always puzzled me why many tech companies seem so reluctant to give counter-offers to departing employees. Trying to pay as little as possible and not easily giving raises, even to their most productive employees, is at least somewhat understandable. But if a valuable employee is about to leave, possibly taking some critical knowledge with them, you'd think that a 50% raise should be on the table out of pure sel…

I saw someone explaining how they would never accept a counteroffer because it proves how the company was fine with not giving them a raise they seemingly deserved until they finally found it somewhere else.

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

#183

Post by rollcat »

mppm wrote: post #172

It's always puzzled me why many tech companies seem so reluctant to give counter-offers to departing employees. Trying to pay as little as possible and not easily giving raises, even to their most productive employees, is at least somewhat understandable. But if a valuable employee is about to leave, possibly taking some critical knowledge with them, you'd think that a 50% raise should be on the table out of pure sel…

Perhaps it's because the ones who stay always pick up the slack, thus a single employee doesn't actually matter that much? Maybe it's because we still feel too entitled to consider collective action?

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

#184

Post by Arisaka1 »

ljlolel wrote: post #29
notepad0x90 wrote: post #27

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?

You think unprofessional workplace interactions, lack of growth (personal or/and company), and micromanagement aren't bad because it happens to you while you're at home?

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

#185

Post by metabagel »

android521 wrote: post #99

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.

It doesn’t seem to work that way. It seems like you need to seek new employment every 4 years or so in order to maximize your salary, unless perhaps you are working at a FAANG company, in which case perhaps it might be difficult to get an offer competitive with FAANG compensation.

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

#186

Post by metabagel »

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…

I’ve left two jobs, because I was dissatisfied with my compensation.

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

#187

Post by ttyprintk »

lrvick wrote: post #176
red_admiral wrote: post #148

As a regular reader of Rachelbythebay - I agree with the sentiment of a lot of other posters here, it's not the money that makes people quit. A classic story here is the "Sodas are no longer free" one: https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear... The total cost of free sodas for engineers is probably small compared to their salaries, and for the individual engineer, the new $0.50 per soda cost is p…

100% this. In every company I have been at that was going south, the first things to go after a hiring freeze were snacks and lunch. When companies walk back any benefits of the job that cause you to pay for things out of pocket, you just got a pay cut, and should GTFO.

I’ve seen two sides of this: when the company is small and 80% of the sodas are taken by 20% of the people, it’s a quirk of personality.

When the company is large, removing a building’s $750/year snack budget is a trial balloon for identifying who will tolerate the much deeper cuts.

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

#188

Post by chgs »

ryandrake wrote: post #81
kennyloginz wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. Is this really true? Do you live in a studio apt in the Midwest while working for a FAANG?

I consider myself a "FIRE devotee without the compensation necessary to actually FIRE." So yea, time to retirement is definitely a variable that I actively try to minimize however I can. I don't want to be one of those guys who has to wait so long to retire that they're dead.

I’ve known far too many people who die within 3 years of retirement regardless of age.

Quality of life now is more important to me.

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

#189

Post by Joel_Mckay »

red_admiral wrote: post #148

As a regular reader of Rachelbythebay - I agree with the sentiment of a lot of other posters here, it's not the money that makes people quit. A classic story here is the "Sodas are no longer free" one: https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear... The total cost of free sodas for engineers is probably small compared to their salaries, and for the individual engineer, the new $0.50 per soda cost is p…

The other metric is it is easier to leave for a better position, than experience a layoff for redundancy.

I was always happier floating between 2 different firms, as you literally don't have to engage with peoples games. You can call the bluff every time, and simply drop your hours if people get irrational.

Tip: When one sees a place with perpetual Ads for fresh desperate grads, than you know it is likely a digital Gulag operating on tax subsidies. lol =3

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

#190

Post by ttyprintk »

notepad0x90 wrote: post #27
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…

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…

Consider the following: we don’t train LLM to optimize for a decision made on local context. That would cover a minimum viable manager-bot.

We train on (admittedly flawed) context and offer decisions. Much closer to an executive advice bot.

If given two checkpoints: your competitions manager bot, or your competitions executive advice bot, the latter is much more valuable.

Post reply on HN