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How Much Should You Pay Your Engineers to Ensure They Stick Around?

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Re: How Much Should You Pay Your Engineers to Ensure They Stick Around?

#141

Post by dijit »

iso1631 wrote: post #44

The large UK broadcaster I work for is having to make large amounts of savings. They've decided that they don't like paying for slack (for £10 per user per month), and instead are going to force everyone to use MS Teams. Since 95% of people have been working from home (and no plans for most to go back this year), they won't allow people to take unused monitors back because they might end up lost. These are £80 monito…

I see this sentiment a lot.

from what I hear of our management Slack's enterprise sales folk are a bit shit w.r.t working out deals and the like. 10 quid per person, for context, is roughly the price of all the MS software stack if you're a decent size.

So for 10-bob you get email, word, excel, teams and exchange/AzureAD -- or a chat app.

So that's the context that they're dealing with; but I fucking hate teams with white hot passion. So I still get annoyed.

And yes, these nickle and dime tactics are rife everywhere, we buy 3k computers for people but our budget for a monitor is 70gbp and it is supposed to last 6 years. :|

Re: How Much Should You Pay Your Engineers to Ensure They Stick Around?

#142

Post by clairity »

Pfhreak wrote: post #104
js8 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful though. For example, I don't really care that much about money, but I do care very strongly about fairness. So if you try to cheat me by paying me unfairly (for example, compared to coworkers), even if I would be happy with the money all things considered, I could be unhappy just because you're being unfair.

I'll even add that engineers should understand the value they bring to the company and adjust their concept of fair not just against their peers but against what the company is earning from their labor.

not just engineers, everyone. that's the unfair advantage that companies especially have over lower wage workers.

we need fairer, more transparent and liquid labor markets everywhere, not just in the upper echelons.

Re: How Much Should You Pay Your Engineers to Ensure They Stick Around?

#143

Post by ForHackernews »

yibg wrote: post #112
blahbhthrow3748 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Netflix philosophy is basically that the job sucks and they will drain the life out of you but they pay above market. YMMV

This is the first time I’ve seen a job at Netflix characterized this way. Total comp at Netflix also isn’t any higher than say Facebook or google.

But Netflix pays real money, right? FB and G heavily compensate with stock that has historically been valuable, but could always tank with a cooling ad market or strong privacy regulations.

Re: How Much Should You Pay Your Engineers to Ensure They Stick Around?

#144

Post by fennecfoxen »

yibg wrote: post #112
blahbhthrow3748 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Netflix philosophy is basically that the job sucks and they will drain the life out of you but they pay above market. YMMV

This is the first time I’ve seen a job at Netflix characterized this way. Total comp at Netflix also isn’t any higher than say Facebook or google.

This class of characterization gets around, though usually the coverage is more directly about the "culture of fear." Please consider how terrible a job is when you're constantly afraid and working yourself to the bone to avoid being fired; it's probably in line with that.

The WSJ had a piece in 2018 which sparked a bunch of follow-on coverage:

"Mr. Hastings’ ring of top executives take the keeper test seriously. At a meeting in late spring of Netflix public-relations executives, one said every day he comes to work he fears he is going to get fired. Karen Barragan, the vice president of publicity for original series, asked how many other people felt that way. A number of hands went up. “Good, because fear drives you,” Ms. Barragan said, according to people familiar with the meeting."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-netflix-radical-transparency...

Other coverage from 2018:

https://qz.com/work/1439451/the-seven-ways-netflix-culture-s...

https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/netflix-culture-of-fea...

https://theweek.com/articles/805123/netflixs-culture-fear

Older coverage:

https://www.businessinsider.com/netflix-culture-of-fear-2010...

Re: How Much Should You Pay Your Engineers to Ensure They Stick Around?

#145

Post by my_username_is_ »

hedora wrote: post #108
vbtemp wrote: post #62

I just want a straight answer from someone who knows more than me. How come every time I switch jobs I get a 30-40% raise, but at any one company I never get more than a 1-3% raise each year, no matter the growth of productivity and responsibility. There's obviously some kind of prisoner's dilemma-like iterated game that reaches that Nash equilibrium, and I'm trying to figure out what it is exactly. I would have love…

There have been studies of Silicon Valley, and your experience is the common case. Some of it has to do with stock based compensation. I’ve not heard of any companies that, by default, renew RSUs at a dollar value comparable to what they gave the employee as a new hire (even if they’ve promoted the person!) Even if they did, that would be less than what that employee is paid when the initial grant expired, or what th…

Stock based compensation may be the norm in Silicon Valley, but it isn't par for the course across different roles and industries. But the ~3% raise seems to be pervasive. This tells me that it doesn't have to do with stock based compensation.

Re: How Much Should You Pay Your Engineers to Ensure They Stick Around?

#146

Post by the_gipsy »

vbtemp wrote: post #62

I just want a straight answer from someone who knows more than me. How come every time I switch jobs I get a 30-40% raise, but at any one company I never get more than a 1-3% raise each year, no matter the growth of productivity and responsibility. There's obviously some kind of prisoner's dilemma-like iterated game that reaches that Nash equilibrium, and I'm trying to figure out what it is exactly. I would have love…

Maybe it's that "rotation" is viewed as normal, and nobody is really blamed if someone goes. If employees suddenly leave en masse, it's normally not due to salary.

But growing personel count on the other is definitely a concrete objective/bonus for someone. That someone will allocate whatever possible budget to get his bonus or praise.

Re: How Much Should You Pay Your Engineers to Ensure They Stick Around?

#147

Post by _y5hn »

Loughla wrote: post #109
Pfhreak wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of folks these days are sharing both their starting and current compensations, both internally and externally. I (personally) believe it's super healthy to do.

I agree in theory that it's super healthy to do, but the reality is that people have, what I would argue are, incorrect attitudes about who to blame. I work in a field that posts salary publicly (higher education). It is public knowledge what we all make, with databases devoted to this. When someone is hired at more than a current employee, instead of getting mad at the employer for their compensation plan that takes…

Over many years, the current leadership have set the culture. They decide who to keep and who to let go. People may nibble at the hand that feeds them, for necessary upwards feedback, but they generally refrain from outright biting it. So fresh bait straight from college is always easiest prey.

In essence, how people treat newcomers, especially vulnerable ones, speaks volumes about the values and culture already set in the organization. There are organizations and countries where people can expect nothing good from leadership.

Re: How Much Should You Pay Your Engineers to Ensure They Stick Around?

#148

Post by clairity »

zffr wrote: post #37

The article's title is pure click-bait. It would be more accurate if it were "How to Keep Your Engineers Interested in Sticking Around" Very little of the article says anything about how much to pay engineers. I only found 2 paragraphs about engineering compensation: > The most comprehensive study, though, is Daniel H. Pink’s Drive, which is summarized in this animation from the RSA. Pink suggests that money isn’t th…

yes, this is explicitly taught in business school--that companies and managers should strive to develop intrinsic over extrinsic motivation (lke pay), to both increase productivity and create a good working environment (whether students paid much attention is a different matter).

Re: How Much Should You Pay Your Engineers to Ensure They Stick Around?

#149

Post by mywittyname »

sys_64738 wrote: post #95
mywittyname wrote: post #64

I left a job which paid in the 95+ percentile of my area for one that paid right about the median wage (maybe a little less). My reason: I like to own the software I write. We had an influx of people on our team who began to rewrite sections of stuff I wrote a long time ago for no real reason. Basically, some of them didn't like promise chains and decided to rewrite every one they encountered. Things finally bubbled…

Why didn't code review catch this? If the review worked the way it's supposed to then you'd be one of the reviewers as you were the original author.

Our setup was you needed one person to approve a merge request. These guys were buddies and would fast-track approvals. Also at that point, there were ~10 contributors to the code base, so things moved quickly.

Other product within the company had a more formal code ownership structure, but this project was only two years old. So there were no owners, other than for infrastructure.

Re: How Much Should You Pay Your Engineers to Ensure They Stick Around?

#150

Post by mitmfrida »

mcgrathpm11 wrote: post #105

I worked at Netflix for several years, where they actively practice paying ‘top of market.’ This is an oft misunderstood tactic, but in action means: 1) Yearly, employees are asked to seek evidence for their top of market compensation. 2) employees do two things as a follow up - They either interview elsewhere to get competing offers to establish ‘top of market,’ or they feel fairly paid and do nothing. Having worked…

I've had this same practice with a team of two that has moved with me to different orgs over time. Had no idea it's a norm and followed by big companies.

My motive was exactly this. If you remove the "am i paid enough" concern, it allows talented engineers to focus at the job at hand and deliver really impactful outcomes

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