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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?

#81
Ah a management consultant producing arguments for lower pay for Hr/Accounting to justify cost cutting.

I am Shocked Shocked I tell you, can you smell gas :-)

Whilst pay isn't every thing people do tend to lie when asked about what important to them - the same way you slowdown when the time and motion team are monitoring you

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

#82

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.

And your boss at 121 time askes so exactly what have you delivered.

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

#83
post #74
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…

Which is part of why it's not that uncommon to see people who bounce from job to job every year or two in the Bay Area. It rapidly boosts salary. I've also seen where people leave for a top paying company, which sends their compensation right to the moon, then come back after a short stint. Netflix seems to be a rare example of a company that is proactive enough with pay raises to counter this (any Netflix folks here…

Not a Netflix employee, but one of my best friends is. He got in at a mid/upper 200ks range salary, and within a single year got a double digit percentage bump.

Netflix just seems to be an extreme outlier in terms of base (cash) compensation. I think the only companies that could beat it are some rare and elite financial firms (i.e. Jane Street) that are even tougher to get into than FAANG.

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

#84
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?)

Yep, Radford is one of those companies.

IIRC, that's the one they used. This struck me as kinda crappy and anti-competitive. Perhaps this is too idealistic, but I would prefer a more transparent and open market for talent.

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

#85
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 imagine it has to do with avoiding resentment within the team. Folk don't share their starting compensation, but they sometimes share their raise percentage. If they give one person a big raise, they have to give others a big raise too, or suffer a morale hit. Also, from a beancounter perspective, there's no reason to pay more than needed for something. As long as folk aren't quitting, they are paying you enough. I work at a company that tries to prioritize employee well being, and I have gotten very considerate compensation adjustments that track the value I add to the company. Places like that are out there, but they are a bit rare.

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

#87
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?)

Bands are usually per level - if someone is sufficiently good you bring them in as a Principal/Staff/Magic Unicorn/whatever. This leads to the same phenomenon where you need to work for 2 years to get promoted but if you jump ship your new manager will set your level in line with your salary expectations. And of course the levels are largely meaningless outside of compensation and office politics.

This exact scenario happened to me - I was a "senior manager" by HR title but I was actually just promoted to team lead in practice. I meant to illustrate the setting of compensation happened almost entirely without engineering input at a company level (in my experience, where I worked, etc.).

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

#88
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…

My understanding is that the pay schedules are designed to slow down your raises when you cross the median pay for that band. When you get hired, you can negotiate for any position in that band.

Imagine a bell curve, the system is designed to try and keep everyone in the same role towards the middle of the bell curve. When you get hired, you just have to fit within the bell curve, not near the center. Changing companies lets you reset to somewhere else under the curve, though you may get smaller YoY raises.

If we had a tech workers guild, we could push for much more transparency in all this.

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

#89
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…

It is the fault of FAANG/unicorn salaries. Engineers always aspire to have FAANG/Unicorn salaries, so no matter how much the companies try to increase it, if it doesn't match them, then the engineers will eventually move on.

Therefore companies know that their engineers will leave anyway, so they chose not to increase the salaries.

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

#90
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've always assumed its because of sticker shock. +40% is a lot, and as a salary it's right there on paper. As a rehire, the equivalent amount is hidden in several dozen smaller costs. Also if yesterday you made 14 widgets for 10 money, paying 14 money for 14 widgets is hard to justify, nevermind that when you were hired you made 10 widgets a day. The obvious solution for the dev is to go hunt for a job that reads "paying 14 money for someone with experience making 14 widgets a day".
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