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If you stop hiring juniors, your senior engineers own you

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Re: If you stop hiring juniors, your senior engineers own you

#11

Post by mettamage »

peteforde wrote: post #6

If you have people on your team that are valuable enough to demand a 40% compensation increase, then you should have been paying them 40% more without them having to demand it. It never ceases to amaze me that the owner class is so continually shocked that the people who build the value that the owners leverage into growing their fortune might suddenly realize their value. The entitlement is baked deep into the minds…

Often enough they don't care or realize it. I've seen all the data analysts that were eiter (1) senior or (2) also had data engineering skills leave.

They all got 25% more after leaving. And this is in the Netherlands, where pay is already kind of low. What was even weirder was that this company is a F500 company and the people that left, they left for all kinds of organizations (small and large) and still got paid more.

That includes me by the way. I was doing 4 roles (data analyst, pentester, software engineer through web development, AI stuff + data engineering and project manager). It was a lot of fun though. But it paid decisively mediocre.

Currently going to a fun job that pays way better.

Re: If you stop hiring juniors, your senior engineers own you

#12

Post by xyzelement »

peteforde wrote: post #6

If you have people on your team that are valuable enough to demand a 40% compensation increase, then you should have been paying them 40% more without them having to demand it. It never ceases to amaze me that the owner class is so continually shocked that the people who build the value that the owners leverage into growing their fortune might suddenly realize their value. The entitlement is baked deep into the minds…

This is such a childish mindset. How much did you pay your plumber to fix your toilet last time? Why didn't you pay 40% more than that?

Re: If you stop hiring juniors, your senior engineers own you

#13

Post by lukeify »

> A senior engineer says “I want a 40% raise or I’m leaving,” and the company’s ability to respond depends entirely on what their alternatives look like.

Except where I live there's a glut of people wanting any job they can find—for a variety of reasons ranging from high levels of immigration to layoffs in the last two years—and willing to accept discount rates because the alternative is being unemployed for another 3 months (New Zealand).

Both the employer and employee know this. So the employee is either foolish or risky enough for asking and gets turned down, or they do actually leave and the employer can hire a new senior engineer at below market rates to accommodate the specific learning they have to do for their new role.

End of story.

Re: If you stop hiring juniors, your senior engineers own you

#15

Post by anticensor »

doctaj wrote: post #9
colordrops wrote: post #5

This article is written from the perspective of a corporations's best interests. Large companies have made it abundantly clear that they are sociopathic entities that consider nothing but profit. They will put on a mask and smile and do the absolute minimum to appear to care about you and retain valuable employees but it's all a show. It is within the best interests of individual engineers to do the same.

They don’t even care about profit! It’s well documented that having long-tenured employees saves you money in a ton of ways (the tangibles are: recruiter fees, ramp-up time, higher pay for new hires… and the intangibles are all the hidden work or keep things running smoothly, building relationships between teams or departments, and innovation). But individuals have to quit to get a market-rate job, and the company en…

They in fact care about control more than they care about profit. I mean control over non-shareholders, including employees and customers, as part of an implied goal of any organisation, control over non-members.

Re: If you stop hiring juniors, your senior engineers own you

#16

Post by exabrial »

Unmotivator2677 wrote: post #10
troglodytetrain wrote: post #8

Senior engineers have always owned the application (by knowledge not by law). And that has never been a problem. The real problem is, that without new Juniors there will never be new Seniors, and your company will collapse when your Seniors retire.

I have seen this happen in some companies already. A slightly different scenario, the CEO actually wants to hire new juniors but seniors refuse to train them .

It happens cyclically. Sun Microsystems was a good example, Cerner was another (ironically both acquired by Oracle).

Re: If you stop hiring juniors, your senior engineers own you

#17

Post by catlover76 »

xyzelement wrote: post #12
peteforde wrote: post #6

If you have people on your team that are valuable enough to demand a 40% compensation increase, then you should have been paying them 40% more without them having to demand it. It never ceases to amaze me that the owner class is so continually shocked that the people who build the value that the owners leverage into growing their fortune might suddenly realize their value. The entitlement is baked deep into the minds…

This is such a childish mindset. How much did you pay your plumber to fix your toilet last time? Why didn't you pay 40% more than that?

[dead]

Re: If you stop hiring juniors, your senior engineers own you

#18

Post by miyoji »

xyzelement wrote: post #12
peteforde wrote: post #6

If you have people on your team that are valuable enough to demand a 40% compensation increase, then you should have been paying them 40% more without them having to demand it. It never ceases to amaze me that the owner class is so continually shocked that the people who build the value that the owners leverage into growing their fortune might suddenly realize their value. The entitlement is baked deep into the minds…

This is such a childish mindset. How much did you pay your plumber to fix your toilet last time? Why didn't you pay 40% more than that?

I did, because private equity took over the plumbing company and raised the prices.

Re: If you stop hiring juniors, your senior engineers own you

#19

Post by kykat »

doctaj wrote: post #9
colordrops wrote: post #5

This article is written from the perspective of a corporations's best interests. Large companies have made it abundantly clear that they are sociopathic entities that consider nothing but profit. They will put on a mask and smile and do the absolute minimum to appear to care about you and retain valuable employees but it's all a show. It is within the best interests of individual engineers to do the same.

They don’t even care about profit! It’s well documented that having long-tenured employees saves you money in a ton of ways (the tangibles are: recruiter fees, ramp-up time, higher pay for new hires… and the intangibles are all the hidden work or keep things running smoothly, building relationships between teams or departments, and innovation). But individuals have to quit to get a market-rate job, and the company en…

It's all just a sado maso power game.

Re: If you stop hiring juniors, your senior engineers own you

#20

Post by lateforwork »

peteforde wrote: post #6

If you have people on your team that are valuable enough to demand a 40% compensation increase, then you should have been paying them 40% more without them having to demand it. It never ceases to amaze me that the owner class is so continually shocked that the people who build the value that the owners leverage into growing their fortune might suddenly realize their value. The entitlement is baked deep into the minds…

It gets worse. I've seen some managers hold back strong developers because they want everyone to be a replaceable cog. They push for average work across the team so no one becomes irreplaceable--even if it means the product ends up weaker than it could be.
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