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>Warn them or even sign NDAs prohibiting any talks about wages, bonuses, compensation plans, etc. Isn't this actually illegal?
might depend on the state but for sure illegal in most. At the same time, I've never heard of it being litigated, ever. Usually the people told not to talk about their salaries are making the most.
Oh buddy, I hope you didn't fall for that one.
And I can't stress this enough, just how much work in both "dotcom type" companies and corporate IT goes completely to waste.
N out of 10 software features some smart "requirements manager" manager, or an artsy type "product manager" make up usually end up as ballast.
I'm saying that to highlight that the prime majority of companies spending pennies on devs are almost as a rule pathologically inefficient, and that is the root of their problems.
I think there is a wrong image of tech companies among the rentier types as a maintenance free cash cows, and that they can pick a well performing companies, fire all devs, but the "maintenance crew" and secure their retirement in a few years. My own experience with that is a complete opposite:
Companies with well selling tech products only do so for as long as they give good support, and keep money burning on marketing. The moment the rentier type buys the company, and cuts both new developments (which in reality usually are support, and bugfixes) and marketing, they really destroy the only things that were keeping the business going.
Don't forget free lunches. $10 bucks for an extra hour of productivity.
For this you where required to always have internet access, return a phone call within 10mins to acknowledge a issue then be investigating within 20-30 mins. This means for 7 days if you wanted to drink you could not, you could not travel to a place without phone signal, you always had to have a laptop and phone on you. Essentially your personal time was not personal time, you are severely inconvenienced and for 168hrs you where essentially at work. For this you got 200AUD extra in your pay packet minus tax. It was non negotiable, this was no small company but at the time a recently IPO’d company with a shit load of cash. If you look at it as 168 hours for the week on call due to loss of personal time it’s a massive pay cut. I would of come out significantly ahead working minimum wage for just the sat/sun and loose less personal time.
Discussing it with my managers how I did not want to loose personal time and was happy to do it for free on a best attempt I’ll answer a call if I get it and available vs being absolutely available and accountable resulted in “but you get free lunches here, take it for the team”, the perks where used as leverage. As you said the cost of lunches to the company was peanuts, worse than that I had special dietary needs so never utilised it.
Didn’t stay long after that
This is very true. I've worked for several employers like this. Usually it's better to quit but sometimes it's still worth staying because some jobs can open up more opportunities. In these situations, the best you can do is build leverage by creating direct relationships with stakeholders (e.g. clients and investors).
Even better some developers have even been brainwashed into thinking Scrum is for their benefit!
>Warn them or even sign NDAs prohibiting any talks about wages, bonuses, compensation plans, etc. Isn't this actually illegal?
The other "agreement not to hire competitors' employees" stuff is definitely illegal under the Sherman Act it's both the basis for a lawsuit and criminal.
> Brainwash them regularly by communicating how great your company is, how big its mission is, and how important their contribution is. A few year ago a friend was working as a consultant for Disneyland mentioned about how little Disneyland would pay its lowest rung employees who kept the place running. Instead the workers were fed corporate bullshit about how lucky they were to work at the "happiest place in the wor…
It does not work on people who are not intellectually challenged (that is, take a moment to think - many low rung people cannot afford one) if the culture does not value this kind of conformity. (Such as not Asia.)
Additionally when they treat managers as other engineers - meaning that they want to discuss changes or improvements without judging others for their ideas - just decide for them and announce your decision to show who is in charge.
That reminds me of a conversation I had with a CEO once when I was a VP Engineering:
Me: "I think we have the scope of the new version pretty well understood by everyone and things are looking good for delivering on time"
CEO "I know for a fact that you don't understand the scope"
Me: "Pretty sure I do"
CEO: "Well I've decided as things are going so well we can add a few additional features"
Me: "Arghhhh..."
NB This was a while ago - my rookie mistake was having everything under control and everyone working calmly and productively and letting the CEO know, whereas the CEO favoured the "everyone must be near to panicking at all times" school of management.
Edit: Of course the features he mentioned were daft and were never implemented - he wasn't actually interested in them, just in unsettling me