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Employees who stay in companies longer than two years get paid 50% less (2014)

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Re: Employees who stay in companies longer than two years get paid 50% less (2014)

#161

Post by giancarlostoro »

dumbo-octopus wrote: post #23
giancarlostoro wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At which point your only options is (unless you're in the) FAANG or making your own business if you're in tech (or relatable ish businesses). Or moving to a low cost of living state / city. I feel like the ceiling for me is awful, since in Florida the cost of everything is going up, but companies aren't willing to pay competitive salary, despite boasting about it, they all seem to pay standard / average pay.

Therein lies the trick: if nobody is competitive, everybody is competitive. FWIW I'm actually coming out of a 3 year hiatus making 50% more than the FAANG position I left in 2021.

I assume you don't live in Florida? I don't know anyone here making insane amounts of cash doing the kind of work I do, unless you're doing mainframe programming, then you're just guaranteed some paychecks.

Re: Employees who stay in companies longer than two years get paid 50% less (2014)

#162

Post by Scubabear68 »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #60
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #14

Odd to see skepticism here, I thought this was well known. I've seen it first hand just a couple years ago where a large company was offering new hires a 20% bump, and yet when I told them I was leaving the counter offer was only a 3~% bump.

I would be interested to see this after switching every 2 years for a couple decades. It goes up 20% each switch, but there still has to be a ceiling where the company can just hire 2-3 young people for the same price.

You have to be careful with percentages in this context as well. People care far more about actual dollar amounts then percentage, for good reason.

Consider someone making $60,000 getting a 10% raise vs someone making $200,000 getting a 5% raise.

The first will get $6,000 more per year, the other will get $10,000.

These days you also have to look at total comp as well.

Re: Employees who stay in companies longer than two years get paid 50% less (2014)

#163

Post by nomel »

ukoki wrote: post #54

Employers don't reward long-term employees because they don't need to. Even though everyone knows you make more by job-hopping, companies are following a rational strategy because too few people "walk the walk" despite wanting more salary. Arguably unethical, but rational. At the cost of losing a minority of job-hoppers they retain the cheap majority that: - finds job interviews exhausting, or is anxious about being…

Two more:

    - The company has a limit for how many times you can leave and come back. For example (last I checked), Intel is 2, Apple is 0.

    - For large companies, internal transfers can be diverse enough to make someone happy with a change. Although, pay raises are more limited.

Re: Employees who stay in companies longer than two years get paid 50% less (2014)

#164

Post by VirusNewbie »

bradlys wrote: post #143
HEmanZ wrote: post #71

This seems very generally true to a point, so on average it works out. But I think there is a big caveat. My thoughts are centered around software development, but I know there are many analogous career paths. I really believe if your career goal is to peak a lot higher than just middle-management or senior software engineer, and earn the pay that comes with those higher positions, you need to stay on the same compan…

People who continually get rewarded at their companies (higher level positions, promotions, etc.) tend to stay at said companies. That’s all you’re seeing. I’ve seen folks go from new grad to staff in under 4 years at FAANG. They just had a favorable relationship with their manager. It’s a ton of luck. You don’t get to entirely choose your manager and company trajectory in most cases. Almost everyone in SV is overqua…

>I’ve seen folks go from new grad to staff in under 4 years at FAANG.

That only happens at Meta and i'm dubious they could do the job of staff at any other company.

Re: Employees who stay in companies longer than two years get paid 50% less (2014)

#165

Post by tombert »

gamepsys wrote: post #139
tombert wrote: post #81

I'm not sure that this is sustainable anymore. I've definitely done the job hopping game, and it generally led to a substantial increase in salary each time, but eventually that comes back to bite you. I got laid off three times last year, and that already looks pretty bad on a resume, but then seeing a bunch of jobs beforehand where I was only there for two years makes a lot of employers really hesitant to move forw…

Did you leave positive impressions on your coworkers? Did you maintain contact? Part of the advantage of moving every few years is that you work with more people, which means more people are willing to recommend you for open positions. In those three jobs you were laid off from did any of your coworkers also get laid off? Where did they go to, and can they give you a recommendation? No matter what story your resume t…

>Did you leave positive impressions on your coworkers?

Some of them, though it's hard to become really good friends with a coworker after only three months of a remote job.

At the jobs that I stayed two years at I definitely made lots of friends

> Did you maintain contact?

For a few of them, the ones that I got close to (generally the people that were as geeky as I am about bizarre CS concepts). That was immensely handy to get job referrals, and it's in no small part why I was able to land my current (very decent!) gig.

In most places I've worked, people generally like me ok (I hope), and usually I will develop one or two pretty close friends as a result if I've been there sufficiently long.

> In those three jobs you were laid off from did any of your coworkers also get laid off?

Yes, though in the more recent laid off jobs I sadly didn't know people well enough to get them to give me referrals or anything.

> No matter what story your resume tells, social connections will usually be a louder signal.

I mostly agree, but only to a certain extent. If you can make it to the interview stage, a good referral and social contacts can be great and really helpful, but the problem with short stints is that you're considerably more likely to fail the initial screening by the internal recruiter.

I get it, I don't really blame them, you can't go into super thorough detail on every resume that's submitted, so they have to look for red flags to immediately filter out stuff.

Re: Employees who stay in companies longer than two years get paid 50% less (2014)

#166

Post by ghaff »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #159
PopAlongKid wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>healthcare (US) is a major factor. Not as much since Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) became law over ten years ago. Anyone can get minimum essential coverage, with a subsidy if income is low enough (as it would be when out of a job), regardless of pre-existing conditions.

While I have done this, problem is most people don’t view health insurance as a cost they should cover in any capacity. Most employers aren’t really providing much “healthcare value” when compared to simply going on the exchange directly.

Even Medicare--with various add-ons--is not exactly cheap.

Re: Employees who stay in companies longer than two years get paid 50% less (2014)

#167

Post by ziddoap »

greentxt wrote: post #98
giantg2 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on my experience, I assume disabled people also job hop less often. I often wonder if my lower pay is because I don't job hop, because of my disability, or if I'm just a piece of shit.

Depressed people get paid less. I'm guessing that's the dissability. Apropos the larger context, job hopping correlates with over-confidence. It's all related.

>Depressed people get paid less.

I'm not sure if you are joking or not. This doesn't really make sense to me. Can you explain?

Re: Employees who stay in companies longer than two years get paid 50% less (2014)

#168

Post by dang »

Related:

Employees Who Stay in Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14784900 - July 2017 (535 comments)

Employees That Stay In Companies Longer Get Paid Less - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7928008 - June 2014 (198 comments)

Re: Employees who stay in companies longer than two years get paid 50% less (2014)

#169

Post by sashank_1509 »

fishpen0 wrote: post #22
tnel77 wrote: post #10

I wonder how stock options play into this. Assuming you have generous stock options in a thriving company, wouldn’t it be worth it to stick out 3-4 years for a majority of that equity?

Gambling vs Guarantee. I've lost options or unvested RSU 3 times to companies suddenly rolling over, getting acquired, or doing layoffs. Of the two times I've hit it and actually had them pay out, one payed out at only 1/3 of the original valuation of the equity and one only paid out for two quarters before we were acquired. Take the pay increase vs the equity every time. Plus by changing 5 times, I diversified my eq…

RSU’s most of the time are not gambling. You’re talking about gambling in startups (or small companies ) that can get acquired, run out of funds etc. Tech layoffs, people don’t realize that after the dot com crash this might be the first time layoffs happened at big tech companies (even then Apple and NVIDIA didn’t layoff).

Not taking RSU’s in these tech companies is a very bad idea financially, I like to think of it as equivalent cash. You can always sell your RSU immediately to get cash. But another advantage is when you individually invest in stocks, you rarely have a large fund into 1 stock, you probably diversify into index funds. This gives you consistent returns but leaves no shot at making a fortune. In my experience RSU’s as by default are fully invested into the 1 company you’re working for, give you that outsized return opportunity. Just ask employees at snowflake, NVIDIA, Tesla. Heck even MSFT RSU’s have doubled in value every couple of years and Amazon had insane growth from 2010 to 2022, where if you had gotten equivalent in cash you would be more than 10 times poorer than someone who just held Amazon RSU’s. Yes putting large amounts in 1 stock is risky, but not nearly as risky as you make it sound to be.

Re: Employees who stay in companies longer than two years get paid 50% less (2014)

#170

Post by Terr_ »

nonethewiser wrote: post #63
ukoki wrote: post #54

Employers don't reward long-term employees because they don't need to. Even though everyone knows you make more by job-hopping, companies are following a rational strategy because too few people "walk the walk" despite wanting more salary. Arguably unethical, but rational. At the cost of losing a minority of job-hoppers they retain the cheap majority that: - finds job interviews exhausting, or is anxious about being…

Remote vs. non-remote seems like a huge factor here. Sure, many people when they're young are geographically flexible. But that's less true as you age and are tied down by a house, spouse's job, kid's school, daycare, etc. If you have to come into work, then all those details depend on your job location. You can't just change job locations. Again, this works for some single young people who rent apartments in NYC or…

> You can't just change job locations.

Also when a family has/needs two parents working, Spouse A's next job becomes limited to locations that do not require Spouse B to also quit, and vice-versa.

I have a pet theory that dual-incomes are one cause of movement to urban locations: The family needs to be in a location with enough overlapping opportunities in each person's role/field.

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