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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)

#181

Post by eastbound »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #106
nonethewiser wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>This is why the trend towards remote seems inevitable. I wish, but not in my country. Remote here means 2-3 days/week WFH tops and that's it. Nobody offers more. Meaning you're still tied to the location of your employer as you have to come regularly in the office. It boggles my mind that employers don't see the advantage of employing people remotely nation-wide as that gives them access to a wider talent pool outsi…

I’ll give you the startupper’s sad side. See, if we want to hire, then a team of Matrix people in full remote isn’t going tk be sexy. We need young faces on the pictures, and we need to make every day an event worth instagramming. First hire for a team of developers should be a community manager. The scene is as stupid as it sounds.

I’ve walked the path. Developers won’t develop anything good for $200k, but they will if you give them attention, care, events, and hope. I literally have to refrain myself from giving higher raises, because I’ve made people rich in the past and they’ve stopped being motivated. The more you pay them, the more they have the thrill to play competition.

(Please watch me if I don’t give them fat equity for the exit event, God, they deserve it).

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

#182

Post by datavirtue »

kilroy123 wrote: post #42

I really wish this would change. I'm sick of constantly moving around every few years. Too be fair the last 3 startups I worked at failed financially but still. I would love to go work somewhere for 5-10 years. It's just hard to find these days.

Yeah, I took a huge pay cut for what I thought was stability with an 85 yr old company. You have to hire on to learn the real deal. Turns out they are having trouble managing the changing workforce and shifting market conditions.

Everyone crooned on and on about all the "boomerang" employees and long tenures during interviews. I realized after joining that the employees were coming back after being laid off!! WTF!?

They were absolutely over the moon to get me and have been blown away by my work and are remodeling a new office for me and queuing me up for bigger projects but I can't leave my eggs in this basket. This will be my shortest tenure ever at under a year.

An old CIO friend is creating a new Principal Architect role for me now at another company. I will dive into that startup for 3-5 years until it is acquired.

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

#183

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

amarant wrote: post #154
tombert wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and, as per your suggestion, those were the best paid ones too! I've never worked in game dev, but at least in NYC I was being interviewed by Rockstar Games for a pretty senior-level position a couple years ago, just to find out that it maxed out at considerably less than my previous job. I didn't continue the process and I just assumed that it was standard in the games industry.

It actually might be the standard. One of us has had an unusual experience in the gaming industry, and I'm not sure who. We also live really far away from eachother, so that might be a factor as well. I'm based in Stockholm, which is _very_ different from NYC.

It's probably more that non-game-dev-Swedes actually make significantly closer to what game-dev-Swedes make in general. Regular software engineering jobs have pretty inflated salaries in the States - Swedish take home salary for software engineers (and indeed, much of the rest of the Western world) is about 1/3 of the equivalent USA salary. Obviously there are other factors at play here, like the functioning healthcare system and social safety net, but all other factors aside the take home pay for non game dev engineers is significantly inflated in the States compared to the rest of the world.

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

#184

Post by _cenw »

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…

I've been in several places where this leads to a death spiral of "comfortable" employees doing a lot less (or rather, the bare minimum) and the people that compensate for it leaving after 1-2 years of this supposed social capital of being the go-to person (and sometimes the only competent person / person who cares around) killing all joy they had for the job. They were the (large) IT department of a (large) retailer though, and they tend to have meh hiring standards to begin with.

One day my boss "forgot" to bring up a very small raise I had negotiated with the CEO (who signed off on all raises personally), failed to see any urgency in fixing the situation to restore trust and gambled on me being one of those people that don't find another job. He seemed very surprised to be wrong.

My raise from switching jobs was about 50% - and I got to work with people who hadn't given up on improving things half a decade ago.

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

#185

Post by s1artibartfast »

ziddoap wrote: post #167
greentxt wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Less assertive, less ambitious, less risk taking, less confident.

More passive, more avoidant, low confidence.

Depression undermines basically everything that helps initiate complete a negotiation. This is on top of any impact to actual work product.

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

#186

Post by oarla »

amarant wrote: post #130
oarla wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worse pay is what adds on to the feeling of the job being terrible. As much as many want to claim, its not very satisfying to slog away and ship an elegant product for peanuts. When the pay is lower than what is the standard, it's always going to make the job feel terrible.

You're not wrong, but that's not the full story here tho, at least not in my experience. Worst job I ever had paid about 60% of what I usually earn, and I was told of by the manager for pointing out that there were compilation errors in our master branch (at this place, anything pushed to master was automatically deployed into production, with zero testing. The only reason prod didn't burn that day was because the pi…

Would you have tolerated that if you getting paid 1.5 or 2x instead of 0.6x? Maybe you wouldn't, but on average many would be ok with that environment for higher pay. One interesting data point is that places that pay higher than the market on average have much higher rate of retention as well. Barring some egregious conditions, many will tolerate an non-ideal environment for better than market pay.

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

#187

Post by tombert »

amarant wrote: post #154
tombert wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and, as per your suggestion, those were the best paid ones too! I've never worked in game dev, but at least in NYC I was being interviewed by Rockstar Games for a pretty senior-level position a couple years ago, just to find out that it maxed out at considerably less than my previous job. I didn't continue the process and I just assumed that it was standard in the games industry.

It actually might be the standard. One of us has had an unusual experience in the gaming industry, and I'm not sure who. We also live really far away from eachother, so that might be a factor as well. I'm based in Stockholm, which is _very_ different from NYC.

I'm pretty sure that at least in the states, game dev jobs pay somewhat mediocre. Looking at Rockstar and Activision's job posting, even for senior level stuff they're paying considerably less than some of the more unsexy senior engineering jobs.

As I said, I've never worked game dev, but people who have here told me that they are pretty brutal, expecting you to work a lot of extra unpaid hours. It would not surprise me if Sweden has better labor protections in this regard.

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

#188

Post by mondomondo »

sunshowers wrote: post #180
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…

Excessive job hopping simply does not look good on a resume! I want to work with engineers and PMs who build lasting monuments, seeing them through to completion, dealing with both the fun and the unfun bits.

Yeah but IMO most people learn 90% the stack in a year, smart people usually get bored after two years. I say that as someone who’s been at the same job for 12 years now. I never met a dev who worked at the same place for more than 4 years that was actually worth the money.

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

#189

Post by zer00eyz »

giantg2 wrote: post #64
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…

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.

I think one thing that disability highlights, is tolerance. Some people find other job perks attractive, like stability, hours, access...

For me having a shit boss, or a company who is crappy in a million other ways isnt a big deal. I can be flexible, in where and when and how in a way others cant.

IF having a good boss or sane hours matter to you, changing jobs is a risk.

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

#190

Post by rshah_45 »

Terr_ wrote: post #170
nonethewiser wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You have it backwards. In remote areas, it can get lonely and hard to find a partner. Think about people who's only social interaction for the most part is coworkers. Moving to where other people are increases your chances of finding others you click with.
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