And H1Bs are cheap.
Employees That Stay In Companies Longer Get Paid Less
21–30 of 207 posts
Re: Employees That Stay In Companies Longer Get Paid Less
#22This article should create a fun discussion, but be aware that it's most likely completely bogus. I suspect it suffers from survivor bias: anyone who is in a position to jump ship and get a 20% raise consistently is not average.
If you try to change jobs every 2 years and are not great at your current position, you'll likely be sorely disappointed.
Re: Employees That Stay In Companies Longer Get Paid Less
#23My dad figured this out in the 80s. Changed jobs every couple of years for a bigger title and more money. It seems obvious to me anecdotally.
Re: Employees That Stay In Companies Longer Get Paid Less
#24I found this absolutely true in my short stint as a software engineer so far (1 1/2 years) - I have switched jobs twice, the first switch giving a 50% raise, and the second giving an 80% raise.
Companies don't seem to be interested in retaining quality talent these days (or developing it), and get used to paying a certain amount for that talent, even if he/she is worth a lot more. It is in each person's self-interest to then seek out the compensation & promotion the person deserves, assuming all other things being equal.
Re: Employees That Stay In Companies Longer Get Paid Less
#25This article should create a fun discussion, but be aware that it's most likely completely bogus. I suspect it suffers from survivor bias: anyone who is in a position to jump ship and get a 20% raise consistently is not average. If you try to change jobs every 2 years and are not great at your current position, you'll likely be sorely disappointed.
I think that's one of the important parts of the article; corporate management is either unwilling or completely incapable of differentiating between average and exceptional talent and often doesn't reward the latter properly. This means the only option for exceptional talent to be justly rewarded is to continually jump ship.
IMO that's terrible business practice, especially in software development.
Re: Employees That Stay In Companies Longer Get Paid Less
#26For those of us in software development, an important thing to think about is what this does to code. The industry is full of old codebases tended by people who were never involved in the planning and initial design of those systems. Knowledge transfer rarely happens sufficiently to prevent accelerating maintenance headaches. I think that we really need to find different ways of developing software to deal with this…
I had one junior guy who had been working for some years confess to me that he hadn't learned much in all his years of working. The reason? He was always chasing better pay, which in software development almost always means changing employers, and he never stayed long enough to learn the ropes of any job. Granted, he was a junior developer, but I can see this applying to people with more "seniority" (measured in year…
How often did he change employers? I can't see how changing often somehow prevents learning. Even if he changes his employer every year, there should easily be enough time to learn.
Re: Employees That Stay In Companies Longer Get Paid Less
#27Top recruiters have known this for a long time and call it marking to market. The article nails what's going on but the implementation is a little more nuanced. You don't just switch jobs every few years to lock in pay raises.
When you're in a hot market where labor demand outstrips supply, you should leave multiple times. For example, most people are shocked at how high software salaries are when they actually take a look at GlassDoor. The market is hot, you should be using it to increase your pay. When supply outstrips demand, you should stay at your current company and your above market pay. The other thing is you should get what you can when you come in the door because some companies go multiple years without pay increases and, when they do, they use a percentage of your existing salary (1-3%).
If you're not leaving, you're getting screwed, plain and simple. At Oracle, there were high performers and they came in 5-10 years ago and only received small raises. You'd see senior developers at 100k after being there for 10 years and then you'd see a new grad from MIT hired in at 100k. You wouldn't really see VPs promoted from within but you'd see them hired in from the outside all the time. One woman left at 75-80k for maternity leave and got hired back in at 125k for the same position.
Moral of the story is be prepared to seek and get your actual market value because it's probably higher than you think.
Re: Employees That Stay In Companies Longer Get Paid Less
#28This article should create a fun discussion, but be aware that it's most likely completely bogus. I suspect it suffers from survivor bias: anyone who is in a position to jump ship and get a 20% raise consistently is not average. If you try to change jobs every 2 years and are not great at your current position, you'll likely be sorely disappointed.
Agree with this. One of the side effects of this is your top performers are always jumping and the people who tend to stay the longest tend to be average or below average.
Re: Employees That Stay In Companies Longer Get Paid Less
#29This is fascinating that there is actually hard evidence for this, but it's not surprising to me given my own experiences. When I first started out as an "intermediate" software developer (after a couple years as doing contract work) I was poached twice within a year of taking a position, both times the offers were at least 30% higher, an amount my existing employers where highly unlikely to match (in fact in the sec…
Have you seen any of Daniel Pink's work on what motivates people in business? It might inspire you to focus on other incentives than just pay salary increases. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y
>Autonomy
>Mastery
>Purpose
That's great. Really. Then you get invited to the company holiday party at the CEO's house. Meet his six children who are in college and traveling the world. Then you realize you and hundreds of others paid for that by living in a rental townhouse. True story.
There's no amount of motivation for me that will make up for a raw deal in pay.
Re: Employees That Stay In Companies Longer Get Paid Less
#30This is fascinating that there is actually hard evidence for this, but it's not surprising to me given my own experiences. When I first started out as an "intermediate" software developer (after a couple years as doing contract work) I was poached twice within a year of taking a position, both times the offers were at least 30% higher, an amount my existing employers where highly unlikely to match (in fact in the sec…
Have you seen any of Daniel Pink's work on what motivates people in business? It might inspire you to focus on other incentives than just pay salary increases. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y
I haven't seen that, but the "alternative rewards" suggestion seems to comes up a lot when talking about retention. However, it's at best disingenuous if the goal of doing those things is to pay people less. You're just not fully aligned with your employees needs. I would argue that if a company really does those things well then they are also dealing with the salary issue well.
Unless the motivation of salary (read: financial independence) is taken off the table, it will always be a significant factor in employee satisfaction, in spite of other factors. The gap between staying and leaving is just far too large to ignore it.
I know someone who currently works somewhere they intensely dislike being but they pay well over the local market and while he would take somewhat of a pay cut to be somewhere else, the gap is larger than that. Perhaps when he's more financially independent this will change but for now he's still earning that independence, and working somewhere that pays well means achieving that far sooner.