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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?

#91

Post by sk0g »

gdsdfe wrote: post #42

Well let's flip it around : you! yes you reading this, why are you staying in your current position ?

Pay is probably pretty good (especially if current rise materialises) for my level of experience, and I have lots of autonomy in how I do things, as I'm the main technical decision maker on non-frontend tasks.

I'm also doing uni part time, and taking half a day off every week is a tough proposition for employees. Despite the chaos, I do like the work I do, and as it's a Greenfield project, I want to see it reach some level of exposure to core clients before I can consider it a job well done.

What about you?

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

#92

Post by vbtemp »

blahbhthrow3748 wrote: post #78
ed312 wrote: 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.

I've noticed this exactly.

At my original company I was performing Senior-level work (like, literally according to the staff level formalism from HR). But I was told by my manager that to be classified as a Senior-level staff, you have to have been performing Senior-staff level work for at least a year. Therefore being promoted within the organization is a long process. Moreover, with the usual 1-3% raise, you're still in the (low-end) of the pay band for Senior staff, so from management's point of view there's no real problem.

.. and then of course, if you're hired in, you just have a few phone calls, couple of interviews, discussion with the hiring manager and you're at a pay-level and job-level far ahead of existing employees even with identical experience.

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

#93

Post by blahbhthrow3748 »

decafninja wrote: post #83
Reedx wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Netflix philosophy is basically that the job sucks and they will drain the life out of you but they pay above market. YMMV

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

#94

Post by CobrastanJorji »

ed312 wrote: post #69
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?)

I remember many, many years ago my boss at IBM explaining that I did not qualify for a raise because I was just over the industry median pay for my band. Honestly, if they had just kept giving me 3% raises every year, it might never have occurred to me to wonder whether I could be making more elsewhere.

The weird thing about paying at the 50% line is that it means that your policy is, in effect, "we do not want any above average programmers."

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

#95

Post by sys_64738 »

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…

Why didn't code review catch this? If the review worked the way it's supposed to then you'd be one of the reviewers as you were the original author.

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

#96

Post by AnimalMuppet »

snicker7 wrote: post #25

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

I agree... and I don't. I work primarily for money, but not totally.

My job probably doesn't pay me absolutely the maximum that I could make anywhere. If the work environment turns sour, I can hopefully make an approximately lateral move - not significantly more or less money, but a better environment.

I once worked for a medical device manufacturer. We failed an FDA audit. As a result, our procedures became much more stringent, and life turned into a huge amount of paperwork. I couldn't take it. It didn't take a raise to get me out of there.

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

#97

Post by Pfhreak »

sgtnoodle wrote: post #85
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 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…

Plenty of folks these days are sharing both their starting and current compensations, both internally and externally. I (personally) believe it's super healthy to do.

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

#98

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#99

Post by dlp211 »

tidepod12 wrote: post #51
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…

This is demonstrably incorrect if you look at some of the highest paying companies in SV. FAANG are of course well known for paying way way above what is necessary to satisfy "everyone's material needs and desires", and yet they are well known for still being ruthless political cultures and backstabbing. Execs might be congenial because at that level, congenial is just how you play the game. It's still cutthroat, but…

> FAANG are of course well known for paying way way above what is necessary to satisfy "everyone's material needs and desires"

Do they though? Quality of Life is not just how much you make, it's relative to what you have to spend. You can't realistically afford a home -even for most of the engineers- with a decent school with a sub 30 minute commute anywhere around one of these companies unless you want to be house poor or you are a dual earning family.

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

#100

Post by foldr »

nurettin wrote: post #68
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.

Refactoring a large JS codebase is like painting the proverbial Forth Bridge. By the time you've finished, fashions have changed and it's time to rewrite it all again.

You don't sound fun to work with.

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