How Much Should You Pay Your Engineers to Ensure They Stick Around? • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by mjayhn » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 4:04 PM UTC

There's a style of management I encounter still that is very unsupportive of it's employees. Untrusting, thinking they're always out to leave just to make more money. It's interesting because the engineers I know tend to be pretty altruistic people and I won't say they don't care about money but it's not their leading factor in employment (I definitely know the other spectrum as well so don't think I'm ignoring that).

I've worked at places specifically didn't want to send employees to conferences because they think everyone uses them as farming tools (whether that's true or not, some engineers just want to go learn and it's pretty upsetting if you have a SME in some subject and don't allow them to attend a con while plenty of other $leaders go).

I've also worked for tech places where a boss would come in and fire you on Monday then call you up and offer you $1k to return on Tuesday, me being about 21 at my first sysadmin job kept me around for that abuse.

It's really, really not a good feeling to feel untrusted or like you're constantly being tested by your employer.

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

#62

Post by vbtemp » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

I just want a straight answer from someone who knows more than me. How come every time I switch jobs I get a 30-40% raise, but at any one company I never get more than a 1-3% raise each year, no matter the growth of productivity and responsibility.

There's obviously some kind of prisoner's dilemma-like iterated game that reaches that Nash equilibrium, and I'm trying to figure out what it is exactly.

I would have loved to stay at my first organization. Interesting work and research. I was PI and PM for interesting projects by the time I left. Now I make almost double. The thing is, my current salary at my original organization isn't unheard of for that level of responsibility at all, the problem is that getting that kind of adjustment is impossible. It's possible to be hired in at that salary, though. I've noticed this is true for most organizations I've worked at.

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

#63

Post by TomVDB » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

mrnook wrote: post #48

prepperpotts wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely agree with the latter part here about execs, but I feel like anxiety around compensation doesn't tie back to material needs as much as to the extent to which people measure their self-worth by compensation. Years ago, these studies were going around saying that people are happier when they make more money up to about $70k, at which point more money doesn't make you happier anymore. I'm sure that has to be…

Found the study: https://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489 It was conducted in 2010, so I wonder if anything would change if it was conducted again today. The current tech industry was in its infancy 10 years ago, and a lot of high paying jobs have been created since.

I wish I could find back the article that I read, years ago, that demolished the $75k claim of that paper, simply by having a different look at the same numbers.

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

#64

Post by mywittyname » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

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 over when I ended up in merge hell where I'd have the codebase drastically change while I was on my branch and I'd be reimplimenting the same feature every time I tried to submit a merge request, but all of these changes amounted to largely meaningless "refactoring."

It's kind of petty on my part, but I'm not the type that wins arguments. So I decided, despite loving the people I worked with, that I was not in the right job. Now I design and develop software mostly individually and I'm infinitely happier. Someone who is competitive and enjoys confrontation would thrive in that role though.

Point is, people have lots of different reasons for changing jobs. And something that makes one group happy may make another miserable. I also hate traveling to conferences, but that's the nature of the job sometimes.

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

#65

Post by paulcole » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

prepperpotts wrote: post #55

mrnook wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Found the study: https://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489 It was conducted in 2010, so I wonder if anything would change if it was conducted again today. The current tech industry was in its infancy 10 years ago, and a lot of high paying jobs have been created since.

True. Cost of living has spiked a lot in tech hubs, too, but devs are usually on the upper tier of the income curve.

It’s not like NYC wasn’t expensive compared to Kansas 10 years ago.

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

#66

Post by eyegor » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 4:06 PM UTC

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #9

In accordance with the standard hierarchy of needs, culture flows down from compensation. When everyone's material needs and desires are well satisfied, they interact genuinely and naturally. When people feel like good compensation is difficult to achieve, they put more effort into zero-sum internal politics, maintaining appearances, and so forth. You see this in upper management all the time; execs are friendly and…

There are many companies in our industry that disprove this. Culture can be toxic/abusive despite well paid employees. Culture certainly flows down, but it's the execs/managers who create it, not the compensation. See Tesla, Uber, Yelp, and most major video game studios.

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

#67

Post by KLVTZ » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 4:08 PM UTC

snicker7 wrote: post #25

tl;dr: Engineers prefer a "positive" work environment over competitive salaries. Couldn't disagree more. Pay me.

The article does ignore the fact that some engineers are paid below market value, and for that reason, compensation is a higher priority.

You might ask yourself these questions after compensation was not a determining factor:

What if the company I worked for offered a competitive salary that was agreeable for both parties. What other benefits am I looking for outside of monetary compensation?

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

#68

Post by nurettin » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

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…

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.

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

#69

Post by ed312 » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

vbtemp wrote: post #62

I just want a straight answer from someone who knows more than me. How come every time I switch jobs I get a 30-40% raise, but at any one company I never get more than a 1-3% raise each year, no matter the growth of productivity and responsibility. There's obviously some kind of prisoner's dilemma-like iterated game that reaches that Nash equilibrium, and I'm trying to figure out what it is exactly. I would have love…

I can tell you as a manager the salary bands are generally set by HR for the whole company. I was told point blank at a previous employer that we payed the 70th percentile. I asked how they knew what that was - apparently there are companies that aggregate this data (legally?) and sell it back to HR orgs for $xx,xxx+ a year. HR for some reason wouldn't deviate from this band for top talent (discrimination maybe?)

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

#70

Post by InfiniteRand » Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 4:10 PM UTC

"As an engineer, I experienced firsthand the dual relationship most of us have with the rest of the business. One day you’re a hero for delivering something “magical,” then the next you’re a jerk for not delivering something “so simple” in a short amount of time, or refusing to make certain “easy” changes, even if those requests carry a hidden but critical risk of destabilizing the whole software."

That part of the article really struck a cord with me. From my experience, I think that a big factor in whether engineers start looking for another job is how much the manager acts as a filter for the unrealistic expectations of the rest of the company. Engineers should not be too isolated, after all some interaction is good to get feedback and it feels good to directly see people benefit from your work, but managers have to be able to shield their engineers from the mood swings of the CEO or the pie-in-the-sky promises from marketing. I think this is a big component of a "good working environment" and is often worth more than pay or promotions.