271–280 of 300 posts
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How do you measure that you're twice as fast?
well i do the same work twice as fast and with twice as less bugs. people are not machines we don't have all the same output and don't all deserve same money
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How does this align with turnover being so high at so many companies?
Is it high? Or is it in single digit percentages?
“Is our turnover similar to peer companies” is a categorically wrong question to be asking. “Could I save more money by paying better compensation and realizing less turnover” is the only rational question to ask - yet business people who are great at pursuing rationally optimal outcomes in their business offerings to customers often fail tragically to apply similar simple cost/benefit economics to their treatment of employees, and either leave money on the table they could otherwise have had, or more often create conditions for completely failed business units, failed products and ultimately failed companies.
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It is certainly possible to achieve these things by the methods you name. I'm sure some good employees do. But it is also perfectly possible to achieve good perception, strong connections, lots of face time, and ability to handle office issues, while also being really bad at your actual job, and without any of the positives you mention (except for the fairly bland "easy to get along with"). The real problem, of cours…
I think you're projecting your idea of "person who is bad at their job but good at selling / office politics" into what I wrote. Of course you need to be good at your job, but how do you even know what's useful to the company if people don't find it easy to discuss problems with you? How do you communicate how long something will take if there is a dependency on another team? Unless you're just writing rote plumbing…
Second of all, you seem to be looking at things in very black and white terms. Of course you need to be able to communicate project requirements and dependencies and whatnot, both within and between teams. That's nowhere near the same thing as "networking" or "making connections" in the commonly-understood sense, which is much more about going over to have a chat and a laugh with Steve or Patty down the hall...or, to take it a step further, going out for a game of golf and running into the CTO there, and just happening to have a chat about your upcoming review.
So, in short: yes, of course "being good at your job" requires communication and people skills, as well as (in our case) coding skills. But there are many places where the skills required to advance—both financially and in your career—are exclusively the people skills, regardless of the fact that the skills that are primarily relevant to job performance are the coding skills. This creates perverse incentives, results in unqualified people getting managerial positions, and massively disadvantages those who genuinely care more about doing a good job than "selling themselves"—especially introverted people—in the workplace.
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Acting rationally is not what I said. I said that they act in their rational self interest. That's a specific concept.
You are trying to split hairs. “Acting rationally” and “acting in one’s own (rational) self-interest” are widely synonymous and it’s beyond unreasonable to expect readers to view them differently. My response to you was already treating them synonymously. It’s not acting in self-interest for executives to create unnecessary turnover due to withholding appropriate compensation. This leads to worse financial loss than…
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-macroeconomics/chapter/...
A great way to think about this is voting. If we were all acting logically, everyone would vote, because in theory, we'd all be better off. But because of the principle of rational self interest, many or most people don't vote because the cost of researching candidates and policies and going to the effort of voting is very often higher than the benefit (a 1 in 100,000,000 chance of influencing the outcome of the election)
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Here's the thing, though. Wrongful termination lawsuits aren't "proof beyond a reasonable doubt". Most civil actions—including wrongful termination—need to show a "preponderance of evidence". That is, you need to convince a jury that the claim is more likely to be true than not true (e.g. 51%). So, assuming you have evidence of the chain of events: - Group shares salary openly - Employer says: "you cannot do that", s…
Here's the other thing though. Law suits are expensive. Law suits burn bridges (you'll never get a recommendation from an employer you've sued). Law suits prevent future jobs (would you hire someone who sued a previous employer?). And wrongful termination isn't the end. And things are rarely black-and-white. If your boss thinks you're a douche, it will hurt your career. If your next performance review is a 7 instead…
Maybe. Depends on the state, the complaint, and the lawyer. Several states allow/force the loser to pay legal fees, to allow small-fry folks with legit complaints to fight against larger orgs with money to spend.
Lawyers may also take cases on contingency, or you may be able to find legal aid / pro-bono / reduced rates.
There are also lots of levers available via state or provincial labor boards. These will vary greatly, and may not replace a lawyer or lawsuit -- but some will.
> Law suits burn bridges (you'll never get a recommendation from an employer you've sued).
They already fired you for reasons that are "wrongful" -- the bridges are already burned. Were they going to give you a good recommendation before the lawsuit? Probably not. Maybe they didn't, and that's why there are lawyers involved.
> Law suits prevent future jobs (would you hire someone who sued a previous employer?). And wrongful termination isn't the end.
Depends on the role and hiring pool.
For roles that are harder to fill, or situations where I'm willing to take a good hard look at the candidate then maybe. Like, these are public records, and if I'm on the fence I could always just get a copy of those records. Plus there is plenty of shitty behavior on the part of employers -- no shortage of stories about it here on HN -- so I'm willing to give a qualified candidate the benefit of the doubt.
Totally agree with your point if this is for a role where I get 500-1000+ resumes -- plenty of talent out there, so why settle for someone who picked a fight?
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Most employment lawyers would be very reluctant to take a case like this for 5-10k. Litigating against a company like the one he described would cost more than he would make even if he was paid on 100% contingency fee.
> Most employment lawyers would be very reluctant to take a case like this for 5-10k. We don't know the actual value of the case. The defendants seemed to think that it was worth hiring "the most expensive defense firm in California".
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I’m making an insane amount of money. I was way overpaid even before the most recent raise. I’ve been in the field long enough to be very familiar with going rates.
I think you may be surprised what the current rates are though.
Entirely possible the Parent comment was getting paid 6 figures years ago and is now up to 200-300k total comp... but that's still paltry compared to SV, NYC, or cleared Washington DC work.
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I’m making an insane amount of money. I was way overpaid even before the most recent raise. I’ve been in the field long enough to be very familiar with going rates.
I think you may be surprised what the current rates are though.
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> Why shouldn't the more aggressive, more strategic people earn more on average? I'd argue they give more of a damn by definition. The ability to project social force is a positive trait if used well, and can directly benefit the work if turned in that direction. One potential reason: being aggressive and strategic, as qualities, are orthogonal to one's skills. They're just as good signals for being an abusive manage…
Maybe I'm just an amateur, but this whole idea of negotiating your salary being some complex, strategic parlay--like you're brokering peace in the middle east--doesn't really match my experience with getting job offers. It's not like there are a lot of dimensions to bargain around. You get an offer from the company, and you can basically do one of three things: 1. Accept the offer 2. Walk away 3. Say "How about more…
You have more leverage than that; not all workers are equal. That's why interviews exist in the first place. Maybe you have prior industry experience, or experience with some paradigm/framework they want to adopt. Feeling like that probably hinders you in negotiations; if you're arguing that workers are largely interchangeable, it begs the question why they would hire anyone other than the cheapest possible person.
On your decision tree, you're missing a step where you explain why you're asking for more pay. The most compelling argument there is frequently a competing offer from another company for more money (which is evidence that what they consider "market value" for you is too low). Other than that, you can argue that they're misjudging your value to their company. Your industry experience should add value, or your ability to be a leader among ICs, etc. You'll have to justify why you should be paid more.
You've also entirely left out negotiating. If you're not happy with response 3a or 3b, propose an alternative. There are several compensation alternatives to salary.
In terms of pure cash, you can ask for a sign on bonus. Those are typically paid out of a different pool than salaries, and can be easier to negotiate than a salary increase. It's also CAPEX instead of OPEX, which I believe is preferable to a business (just based on what companies have told me, I don't know the entire reason why other than that it's a 1 time cost). If you have an idea of how long you'll be at the company, you can amortize the sign on bonus as part of your salary.
There's also a large array of non-cash compensations you can get. You can negotiate to work from home X days a week. You can negotiate for more vacation days per year. You can negotiate reduced hours for what they're paying. You can negotiate to have them send you to conferences, or to more than the standard number of conferences. You could probably have them give you hardware that's being decommissioned if that's your thing. Another atypical idea would be to have them pay for/subsidize/use their discount on an AWS/GCP homelab for you (that seems less likely to be possible because of issues with accounting, but can't hurt to ask). The limit is only your imagination.
I think aggressive is a misnomer here. I would call it assertive. You don't have to bang your fists, just know what you're worth to the company and maintain that you won't accept a lower value. If they say they'll pay X, you respond that it's below what you would expect for someone with your skills/experience/whatever and that the offer would be more compelling if it was $Y higher. What many people do is the opposite; they wait for the company to decide what they're worth and then they decide whether that valuation is acceptable to them.
At risk of sounding like a mercenary, in my experience the only realistic way to get paid your market value is to be on the market. It's just way easier to get a pay bump by switching jobs. If you wait for your employer to give you a raise, they usually will drag their feet for as long as possible and then give you something disappointing. One consequence of this is, in companies that are willing to do it, it can be…
On the other hand, turnover can bring a new perception to a problem. I have no idea what the value of that relative to the cost of recruiting and onboarding. In some companies like FAANGs it wouldn't surprise me if some level of turnover was intentional. Google probably benefits to some degree by hiring engineers that just quit over at Amazon; it gives them an insight into how Amazon is solving X problem, which may inform how Google tackles that problem.