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

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

#241

Post by EastSmith »

mywittyname wrote: post #64

I left a job which paid in the 95+ percentile of my area for one that paid right about the median wage (maybe a little less). My reason: I like to own the software I write. We had an influx of people on our team who began to rewrite sections of stuff I wrote a long time ago for no real reason. Basically, some of them didn't like promise chains and decided to rewrite every one they encountered. Things finally bubbled…

No tech-debt JIRA ticket - no big refacroring. JIRA tickets gets assigned during planning and are usually talked through in the team and agree upon. Problem solved.

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

#242

Post by tuesdayrain »

foldr wrote: post #100
nurettin wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would've changed your code from promise chains to await statements (after warning you, of course) because they just look awful. And I would then have expected you to buy me a beer for getting rid of all that ugly code.

Refactoring a large JS codebase is like painting the proverbial Forth Bridge. By the time you've finished, fashions have changed and it's time to rewrite it all again. You don't sound fun to work with.

Async/await isn't exactly a fad that is going away anytime soon. If refusing to refactor outdated pieces of code is your idea of "fun" then I feel sorry for your coworkers.

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

#243

Post by dwaltrip »

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.

That isn't how salaries work. If there are many people who are willing to do the work at a given salary, it doesn't matter if the company earns 5x from that labor.

Supply and demand are obviously not the only factors, but they are very important and must be considered when looking at compensation for employment.

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

#244

Post by commandlinefan »

ghaff wrote: post #205
commandlinefan wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't you hit a limit at some point Not OP, but I did some job-hopping right after college in the late 90's. That was a glorious damned time to be a programmer: I doubled my salary twice in four years, changing jobs four times between 1995 and 1999. Then, around early 2000, I decided it was time to do it again (I was young and inexperienced, and it never occurred to me that anybody would have a problem with me job…

>around early 2000 Things were still hot but there were at least storm clouds on the horizon at that point. >Everybody looked at my resume and pointed out that I had never stayed at a single job for longer than a year. A year means that, to exaggerate just a little, you were basically starting to look for a new job as soon as you started the old one. But, yeah, if someone has moved between jobs like clockwork every y…

> just leaving those right out of school jobs from 20 years ago off

Well, with any luck I won't need to look for a new job any time soon ;)

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

#245

Post by [deleted] »

YetAnotherMatt wrote: post #237
oarabbus_ wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This means that even at a 1% raise per year, some people will stick around for decades. One of the best developers at one of the companies I worked for was exactly that kind of person. As someone in their 30s who has spent in-person time at about a dozen companies (a stint in consulting will do that) ranging from start-ups to large enterprise, this is exceedingly rare from what I've seen. Hardly anyone makes it to a…

I forgot to mention, my experiences are all based on EU countries. When we worked with US companies, we would occasionally joke that a 2 year tenure is considered long at the US companies we worked with. There would be people joining / leaving their teams every single month. In the teams I've been part of, average tenure at the company was over 5 years in every single case. In one case over 15 years. These are all de…

[deleted]

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

#246

Post by jackhack »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #144
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.

This class of characterization gets around, though usually the coverage is more directly about the "culture of fear." Please consider how terrible a job is when you're constantly afraid and working yourself to the bone to avoid being fired; it's probably in line with that. The WSJ had a piece in 2018 which sparked a bunch of follow-on coverage: "Mr. Hastings’ ring of top executives take the keeper test seriously. At…

No, not good. Not good at all. "...because Fear drives you..." yes it does. It drives you to a heart attack, or to the offices of a different employer once you wise up and realize that is a terrible way to life your life, and you are borrowing time from your lifespan due to the increased stress. I despise employers who play psychological games like this. Despise it. Are these people who burned ants with magnifying glasses as children?

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

#249

Post by edmundsauto »

tidenly wrote: post #206

My job gives me no bonus or raise after a year and a half, despite obvious vast increases in my responsibilities and the assumption of another engineer who lefts' tasks too.. I just don't know how to approach asking because I hate confrontation and those kinds of situations. I basically always change jobs because of this reason - I'm just avoiding a conversation I don't want to have and the raise is bigger by quittin…

If you'd like some unsolicited advice - the job hunt is tricky, because you should be optimizing for the best outcome for yourself. However, if you think of it as materializing your leverage -- just go out and get an offer that is better than what you have. Use that to approach your boss, it won't be a confrontation if you approach it with "I like it here, but it's clear that I'm underpaid. Can you help me find a way where it makes sense for me to stay?"

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

#250

Post by bumby »

cpascal wrote: post #215
WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leave, then. Seriously, just give two weeks and call it a day.

Yes that’s a solution to the problem but it shouldn’t be the solution. Why should I have to give up my coworkers, my domain specific knowledge, my job just to get paid what I’m worth?

I think the issue is that there isn’t an agreement on your worth. If you’re willing to leave, your employer would pay you that higher salary if they truly believe that’s your worth. I also think it’s not correct to frame it in terms of what it’s worth to you (my coworkers, my knowledge, my job). That isn’t particularly relevant. What matters is how well you solve a particular set of problems and how important those are to the organization.

What I think is a more interesting question is why is there such wide discrepancies between companies regarding a specific employee’s worth?

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