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Ask HN: Salary Increases Over Time

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Re: Ask HN: Salary Increases Over Time

#41
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experience is secondary. It's only any good to your employer if it increases the value you provide.

I think not; from what I've seen, just moving to another company unfortunately makes you suddenly worth more. I've seen that first hand with more than a couple of friends: people who remained in the same company saw a much less significant raise over time (10 years) than people who changed 2 or 3 times of company in the same timespan. This is unfortunate but it seems to be a fairly common pattern (at least here in Fr…

> just moving to another company unfortunately makes you suddenly worth more.

It's important to not confuse what you're worth generally, what you're worth to a specific employer and what an employer is actually paying you. Don't make the mistake of thinking that you are automatically worth only what you are getting paid.

The goal of negotiation is to end up getting paid what you're worth to your employer. If you move to another employer and get paid more, then either you're worth more to your new employer than you were to your old employer, or your old employer was not paying you what you were worth to him.

Some employers will never pay you what you are worth to them. They take advantage of the fact that most employees are either poor negotiators or not in a position to risk moving. This is more likely to happen after you've been there a while, since that tends to be when even more employees are poor negotiators or not in a position to risk moving. The best thing to do is to move (if you can).

Re: Ask HN: Salary Increases Over Time

#42
When I was a Sys Admin in USA, your salary never increased unless you left the company and took a job elsewhere. Those were your raises, and it's why SA turnover is so high and how even companies just treat them as a dime a dozen now a days.

Re: Ask HN: Salary Increases Over Time

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

native english speaker here, and I grant that english is flexible enough that such things are largely a matter of opinion, but "nother" bugs me. I would write 'other with the apostrophe used to indicate the mixing of "a whole other" and "another" into 'other. I would pronounce it "other" if I was thinking, but possibly "nother" if I was being sloppy.

I never thought about this until now, but I think this is a case of an interfix. So, it is turning "another" in to "a-whole-nother" much like "abso-f*ing-lutely" or "legend-and-I-hope-you're-not-lactose-intolerant-because-the-second-half-of-that-word-is-DAIRY!"

Technically it's not an interfix (interfices don't have a semantic meaning) but a tmesis.

Re: Ask HN: Salary Increases Over Time

#44
post #17
post #7

Experience to date has been that without promotion, pay-rises within a company have always trailed inflation. So either you get promoted, and at that point you've negotiated a substantial raise (to offset the real decline in earnings and to protect your actual earnings in the years after the payrise)... Or... You go get a job elsewhere. It's a sad fact that the majority of real pay rises that I've ever seen, and that…

The phrasing bandied about where I currently work is: "You are doing the same job as last year, so your pay should be the same adjusted for inflation. If you want more money, you need to be taking on more responsibility, growing your role."

In so doing you saved the company the cost of finding, hiring and bringing your replacement up to speed. It's a bullshit argument because the speaker doesn't care if you believe them.

Re: Ask HN: Salary Increases Over Time

#45
post #11

My policy is that every year I aim for a substantial pay rise. There is no set percentage that I aim for, I basically just come up with a number that I want, and start negotiating. The day that the company claims there is no more room in the budget, and I can't see any realistic chance of progression, is the day I start looking for a new job. Generally speaking, the easiest way to secure a decent pay-rise is to chang…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Salary Increases Over Time

#47
post #40

I'm in a fun (and unique) situation. I work in and am paid from the UK, but am on a US Salary. I get a performance based raise on my US salary, between something like 2.5% and 5%. The fun part is that at the beginning of the year, they also set the exchange rate! It lasts for a whole year, so it can have good or bad consequences. The gods favored me last year, but who knows what the beancounters will come up this yea…

I'm curious - where do you pay tax? Are there not funny rules about overseas earnings? Or are you "based" in the Cayman Isles ;-p

I pay UK, and if I go over the limit I pay US on extras.

Re: Ask HN: Salary Increases Over Time

#48
post #2

Varies wildly from company to company. Some will keep an eye on the market, and make sure they are paying you market rate. If you're great, they'll make sure you're paid more than market so you don't have any reason to even talk. However, many companies will only open their checkbooks when you're hired, or when you have an offer they need to counter. These are the companies that suck to work for because everyone is t…

Yep, happened exactly this way at my last job. I was ridiculously underpaid, and I was attempting to negotiate about a month before pay reviews and was told to wait. My intentions were clear though. The mandate came down - 3% for everyone more or less. I argued, and was politely shot down. Three weeks later I had a new job offer at a competitor I really wanted to work for. My current employer asked me how much it'd t…

Paying an employee enough to keep him from leaving, before he declares that he's leaving, could be seen as a form of early optimization.

We don't like early optimization, for good reasons. "They" probably don't like it either, for similar reasons. No reason to fix the employee machine if it isn't making noise.

Re: Ask HN: Salary Increases Over Time

#49
You asked for numbers. I probably shouldn't do this under my real name but... who gives a fuck.

US, 29 years old, 6.5 years in the industry. Salary growth has been about 12-14% per year, and I've made a lot of career mistakes, hence fairly average results. I'd probably have done 18-20% if I had (a) not made those mistakes, while (b) switching employers strategically. Most of the growth, as others have noted, occurs when you switch.

Obviously you can't continue getting 20% improvements every year for 40 years, but if you work hard, you should be able to get 10-15% per year for a while, and then you get to a point where it's easier and more fruitful to push for more time and autonomy than salary increases.

What are called "performance" bonuses actually have a lot to do with macroeconomic conditions. One year, at one job, I got a 60% bonus. I was good, but nowhere near the strongest on the team. Equity allotments have a lot to do with what the board will allow. One of the reasons Facebook has been able to get so many good engineers is that the board doesn't set caps on engineer stock allotments, which is the case for many startups. Consequently, Facebook was free to offer 6- and 7-figure options packages (at valuation; not packages that eventually became worth that much) to engineers and get some really credible people, while many startups can't.

When you get into the game has an effect on what you'll make and what your trajectory will be. If I'd entered the market in 2002, I'd have entered in a time when $50k was a good salary for an entry-level software engineer. (No, I'm not kidding.) In 2006, when I did enter, it was in the $80k range. At peak in early 2012, it was about $105k.

Getting an increase usually involves changing companies unless you're in the top 10% for political success and can have a real career there and keep getting promotions. Why is it this way? Well, there are two things to keep in mind. The first is that salaries are low because the company is taking a risk. A good software engineer is worth $500k easily, but the salary is going to be lower because there's a risk that any specific person is not going to be any good. So what happens after someone has a chance to prove him- or herself? Well, that's the second problem. Now you've worked for cheap for a year, and if you ask for a raise, you're asking your boss to pay more for the same work. If you ask for a promotion or better work, then you're a demanding subordinate and that hurts you as well.

Most companies have a "real player" track that involves a promotion (and a ~20% raise, with more potential for bonuses) every 2 years, and an "everyone else" track where a promotion might happen every 6-8. If you end up on the latter track, you need to change jobs and build your own real-player track. I think the optimal leaving point (if you're on the loser track) is around 2 years of employment, because at 2 years you are likely to get a real promotion in your next job (you have to create the impression, though, that you're about to get promoted where you are, even if it's not true) whereas bolting after 6 months will just get you a lateral move and too much of that is damaging.

Salary reporting sites tend to be accurate regarding base salaries, but data on performance-based bonuses and equity grants seem to be dodgy. There's also a hell of a lot of false signaling that goes on there, especially in finance where employers ask about bonus history and everyone claims to have had top bonus.

Re: Ask HN: Salary Increases Over Time

#50
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The phrasing bandied about where I currently work is: "You are doing the same job as last year, so your pay should be the same adjusted for inflation. If you want more money, you need to be taking on more responsibility, growing your role."

In so doing you saved the company the cost of finding, hiring and bringing your replacement up to speed. It's a bullshit argument because the speaker doesn't care if you believe them.

So my employees should get a raise for not leaving me? Not sure that logic will fly.

I'm certain there's a bad date analogy somewhere in there too! :D

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