Employees That Stay In Companies Longer Get Paid Less

Post by gaius » Mon, Jun 23, 2014, 5:57 PM UTC

notacoward wrote: post #54

This "loyalty penalty" is far from new. It was totally obvious to me, and to many of those around me, over twenty years ago. If you stayed at one company, you'd fall behind the industry-wide trend. You'd start to see people who were more junior overall, and clearly less familiar with your product, hired with salaries above yours. If you wanted to keep up with that industry trend, you were forced to keep moving. I eve…

Post by AppSec » Mon, Jun 23, 2014, 7:18 PM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #150

overgard wrote: post #46

HR is really a problem here (at least in the software industry). Pay is usually based on title and how many people you manage, but I think that's pathological for managing developers because developers aren't interchangeable. You have huge variances in skills and knowledge. The thing is, development skills scale in a way most job skills can't. You can have at developer that has 10x more impact than other developers.…

>>I think that's pathological for managing developers because developers aren't interchangeable. Actually in most cases we are super easily interchangeable. Java related technologies, that involve interacting with databases and presenting data in some way(HTML etc) is what most business software is out there. Developers working in such domains are pretty easily replaceable. Almost like cogs in a wheel. Pay is based o…

Post by gaius » Mon, Jun 23, 2014, 7:24 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #116

notacoward wrote: post #54

This "loyalty penalty" is far from new. It was totally obvious to me, and to many of those around me, over twenty years ago. If you stayed at one company, you'd fall behind the industry-wide trend. You'd start to see people who were more junior overall, and clearly less familiar with your product, hired with salaries above yours. If you wanted to keep up with that industry trend, you were forced to keep moving. I eve…

There's also the pervasive attitude that people will stay because of the projects, culture, people, etc., and don't care so much about the money. That can be true to a certain extent[1], but I think the people who make salary-bump decisions think way too much of it. [1] I suspect this is actually very true when an employee starts fresh at a new company, but, over time, the money (or lack of it) becomes more and more…

Post by encoderer » Mon, Jun 23, 2014, 7:54 PM UTC

nawitus wrote: post #192

encoderer wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, lawd, help me. Kidding. You ask a legitimate question. This is by no means a comprehensive answer, but... 1. Domain knowledge. I think most of us enjoy the creative and problem solving parts of software engineering. That takes domain knowledge and domain knowledge takes time. You will get an intro to your domain in a year, but mastery? I would bet against it. 2. Working on a hard project from start to finish and…

Domain knowledge is only useful if you work in the same domain year after year. That's often not the case. Atleast I've worked with three completely different domains the past year.

Post by usrusr » Mon, Jun 23, 2014, 10:59 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #80

wldlyinaccurate wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Saying "we can only give you this much because your title is X and we don't have an open management position, but we really value you!" is a great way to lose your best people. This resonates with me so much. I've left a few companies after having conversations which ended with my manager saying exactly this. In most cases they have ended up hiring somebody else at a salary higher than mine. It really confuses me.…

That is what you get when you isolate decision maker from consequences of his decisions. HR does not feel the pain of you leaving, so he does not care. However, he has trouble to find a new person for low salary, so he is forced to raise the offer.