41–50 of 92 posts
The industry does not properly reward long tenure. If the person stays curious and hungry then the accumulated knowledge and experience they hold is worth a tremendous amount. Smart companies will start appreciating and compensating for this in the future.
Or as one of my colleagues so aptly put it, "SWEs are not fungible."
In my opinion, employers need to do more to significantly reward existing employees they want to retain. Right now, I can see how frustrating it could be for tenured employees when new hires come in with (quite a bit) higher comp packages than them, while they get a measly pay bump in accordance with inflation (sometimes even less). Routinely see 100% increases in total compensation for switching jobs. But I’ve never…
The biggest fear (or risk?) a business owner might have is to be held hostage by a employee whose function/knowledge/skill is essential for business continuity. This gives the employee undue leverage, which lowers the profits, and allows said employee to extract close to 100% of the value they produce.
Therefore, a business would actually prefer a set of replaceable cogs rather than irreplaceable (but higher performing) employees. The business process could be adjusted so that the downsides of replaceable cogs is mitigated - such as strict processes or procedures and docs, or rely on technology that is can be easily hired for, rather than niche tech that would require finding a particular engineer with such knowledge of the niche tech (even if such niche tech is more productive!).
And this leads to the situation where employees' pay are market rate, but only at the time of hiring. Old employees, even tho they are experienced in the business's particular domain, aren't valued higher than a new hire.
I wonder what he feels the difference between say 2yrs and 4yrs at the same company is, because it definitely seems possible to see and experience the things he's talking about in less than 4yrs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve stayed at my current job 24 years. I was hired at a Senior level above my experience with better pay than I probably deserved as I was 18 month out of uni. Still, my total increase is 278%. I had a 7 year span in the middle with almost no increase - about 7%. I wonder if those seven years coincide and were during an economic downturn?
That's less than 5% compounded annually. I'm not sure if your underlying message was agreeing with OP or not, but 278% over 24 years is atrocious compared to how insane the market has been this last decade. Hell, inflation alone has been 73% between 1998 and now.
a 5% risk free return is not bad. I would actually say that if your job did not change over those decades, it might not make sense to get paid more than just matching inflation!
Ok, I can believe the authors point but why 4 years specifically? I wonder what he feels the difference between say 2yrs and 4yrs at the same company is, because it definitely seems possible to see and experience the things he's talking about in less than 4yrs.
I love my job, and give it 110% (and I don't even count in binary when I say that), but at the end of the day, it doesn't define me. It's a means to an end. I believe in the company and what we're building, and as such I'll stay until I retire. I'm not going to jump ship over pay.
The industry does not properly reward long tenure. If the person stays curious and hungry then the accumulated knowledge and experience they hold is worth a tremendous amount. Smart companies will start appreciating and compensating for this in the future.
Management often likes treating software engineers as being replaceable, not accounting for the lost experience they now have to build up from scratch. Or as one of my colleagues so aptly put it, "SWEs are not fungible."
For some reasons, PM are thought to have a great understanding of both functionals and technicals of a solution, while at best, the only good they are at is navigating the organization and shielding the team.
So in a word, management is most likely useless and PM even more, especially if the management believes that a PM can handle a few projects at a time for cost saving (!).
The longer you go without moving the more divorced from industry standard practices you are.
Worked at google for 10 years and can’t spin up a docker container to save your life?
Every organisation has their own internal stacks and the longer you spend using them the more productive you get and the less productive you’ll be without them.
So… you know. Just remember the longer you stay, the less able to move you become.
There’s good things about, but also risky things about it.
I don't doubt that engineers can hop from job to job making tremendous increases these days, although that wasn't my experience when I was a web developer in the late 2000s and early 2010s. I generally did get an increase, but it was not like "woo my salary doubles every time a recruiter sneezes on it," which is kind of the vibe HN has given off for the last five years or so. I'm not convinced that's a sustainable model for the industry long-term, though.