Why don't tech companies pay their engineers to stay?

Companies consider any employee who is not selling (not bringing in dough) and who is not an exec - a liability.

HR's exists to keep minimizing liabilities - maintaining set of excuses to enforce minimal possible pays, ensuring employees have little or no say over important matters, prioritizing diversity over talent and painting a good face over all the necessary corp BS to maximize profits.

Engineers are necessary evil that "cost lots of money but doesn't bring any revenues". This of course an idiotic point of view but that's how execs are thinking.

Thanks for the response and glad to hear the new hires have been good!

Admittedly I'm a little burned on this issue. My previous (and first job) was severely underpaying me and all my coworkers. I stayed there for 3 years, wanted to leave after 1.5/2, put a pause on it when covid hit, and finally completed the move earlier this year just around my 3 year mark.

Leaving got me an 80% raise in total compensation and 4 other people on my team/org all left with at least a 50% bump.

All within a few weeks of each other too o.O!

It's such an interesting dynamic and market today and so fascinating to hear about people's experiences as they jump around. Thanks for sharing your perspective!

I find the biggest problem I have is that as time goes on too many people come to recognize me as a person who can likely solve their problem. Somewhat ironically this makes it more difficult to accomplish things over time because I'm constantly getting pulled into things to give my $0.02.

I fully recognize that some of this is my fault and possibly poor boundaries and time management. But it's easier to just leave every few years and also more lucrative. So there's zero incentive for me to stop this from happening.

> “most developers do their best work after about 6-8 months of starting a job at a new company, and that comes to an end after about 24-36 months of working at the same company”

From what I’ve observed, the reason for this is not that people intrinsically lose the motivation to do great work.

Rather, often they realize that the company’s ability to reward their performance doesn’t scale with their effort.

Company’s have to delicately balance incentivizing performance of newer employees vs. risking alienating older employees who probably have a lower base rate but are key to the company’s daily operation.

The schelling point eventually settles to an environment where people surge for a few months and coast while doing the minimum amount of work.

This is especially true in a smaller company where cash flow may be constrained. Though the smaller companies often have more flexibility to offer non-monetary rewards like an overblown title or growth opportunities.

The “optimal” strategy for the company is to overpromise rewards to new hires to get them to do most of the challenging work while doling out minor incentives when needed once employees are indoctrinated and somewhat burnt out.

Because they’re a commodity.