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

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

builtin.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 349 posts

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

#161

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

tidepod12 wrote: post #51
xkcd-sucks wrote: post #9

In accordance with the standard hierarchy of needs, culture flows down from compensation. When everyone's material needs and desires are well satisfied, they interact genuinely and naturally. When people feel like good compensation is difficult to achieve, they put more effort into zero-sum internal politics, maintaining appearances, and so forth. You see this in upper management all the time; execs are friendly and…

This is demonstrably incorrect if you look at some of the highest paying companies in SV. FAANG are of course well known for paying way way above what is necessary to satisfy "everyone's material needs and desires", and yet they are well known for still being ruthless political cultures and backstabbing. Execs might be congenial because at that level, congenial is just how you play the game. It's still cutthroat, but…

Can’t find the video now. But saw some political theory thing where they argued that there is a U-shaped correlation greed and relative wealth

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

#162

Post by regularfry »

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…

It's a completely different negotiating situation. 1) The company knows exactly how much you're currently being paid. 2) The company doesn't have to tempt you over an activation energy hump to change what you're doing. 3) Unless things have changed radically over the past year, you're probably doing pretty much the same job as when you started, so you've not got much leverage, and the company knows you'll likely just carry on doing it. 4) The company knows that if you do want to change jobs, that's effort you need to put in over and above your current exertions, and most people won't bother.

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

#163

Post by ones_and_zeros »

ed312 wrote: post #69
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…

I can tell you as a manager the salary bands are generally set by HR for the whole company. I was told point blank at a previous employer that we payed the 70th percentile. I asked how they knew what that was - apparently there are companies that aggregate this data (legally?) and sell it back to HR orgs for $xx,xxx+ a year. HR for some reason wouldn't deviate from this band for top talent (discrimination maybe?)

Yes those salary survey's are just a way for businesses to enhance the information asymmetry in negotiations.

I think if software engineers ever decide to collectively bargain, and they want to include comp as an area to bargain on, the easiest thing to do is buy these same datasets and share with members.

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

#164

Post by bluGill »

yibg wrote: post #122
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…

A lot of companies have budgets allocated to salary increases, so raises are capped. Why that’s the case I have no idea. It’s also strange to me that companies aren’t willing to give a nice raise to an engineer, say from 150k to 180k but are completely fine with hiring a replacement at 180k.

Which is fine but the budget needs to go up by inflation every year. Most places it doesn't. I've switched jobs before because my salary didn't meet inflation. Yes I was near the max for my grade and my responsibilities didn't deserve the next grade. However if I'm losing to inflation I'm gone: that is a pay cut. (I was able to transfer)

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

#165

Post by lazyant »

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…

I think there's an anchoring mechanism. You come in at a level and maybe promote after a couple years but then every promotion becomes harder, they are used to you and there's the other engineers with their salaries and there's a lot of mental inertia to see that John should be now a staff engineer when he's already promoted (is he really so outstanding compared to the other engineers?).

But you interview with another company and you reinvent yourself. They have a problem to solve and you have experience in it. You interview well, now you are a principal engineer with a big raise.

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

#166

Post by Domenic_S »

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.

This is one of those things that sounds reasonable but is impossible to compute. Does the company earn more from the developer who makes the product, or the infra engineer who keeps it online? Well, without either they're not making anything...

Also, if the company makes a bit less money this year vs last year, are you willing to take a pay cut?

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

#167

Post by _jal »

secondcoming wrote: post #118
_jal wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Everyone I've ever known who had significant options knew exactly what they were worth. I knew someone who changed their bash prompt to (price * unvested count / days left). He said at the time it was the only thing that kept him from quitting or punching his manager.

How do they know the price unless the company has IPO'd already?

The particular case I mentioned with the bash prompt happened at Netscape, his tenure straddled the IPO.

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

#168

Post by thaumasiotes »

SubuSS wrote: post #107
prepperpotts wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely agree with the latter part here about execs, but I feel like anxiety around compensation doesn't tie back to material needs as much as to the extent to which people measure their self-worth by compensation. Years ago, these studies were going around saying that people are happier when they make more money up to about $70k, at which point more money doesn't make you happier anymore. I'm sure that has to be…

It definitely starts there, it misses on a key aspect: 70k for how long and how assuredly? Usually once you start making that, your next goal would be - To ensure that is true for your life time. (at 4% reasonable return, that would mean $1.75MM in savings) assuming you don't want to bite into the principal. - Then you want to account for inflation. (Add a buffer to the above) - Then you want to ensure this is on top…

> To ensure that is true for your life time. (at 4% reasonable return, that would mean $1.75MM in savings) assuming you don't want to bite into the principal.

> Then you want to account for inflation. (Add a buffer to the above)

A buffer?? Assuming 2% inflation, the "buffer" you're adding is just over 100% of the original amount.

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

#169

Post by bluGill »

clairity wrote: post #148
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).

Pay is a sign of how valued I am. If my pay is low I might not need more money but I need the recognition that I'm valued that comes from more pay.

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

#170

Post by trevyn »

ForHackernews wrote: post #143
yibg wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In practice, the difference is completely irrelevant.
Post reply on HN