126 replies
23h5m
Employers don't reward long-term employees because they don't need to. Even though everyone knows you make more by job-hopping, companies are following a rational strategy because too few people "walk the walk" despite wanting more salary. Arguably unethical, but rational.
At the cost of losing a minority of job-hoppers they retain the cheap majority that:
- finds job interviews exhausting, or is anxious about being rejected
- dislikes conflict or negotiation
- has good relationships with colleagues they don't want to lose
- has a comfortable commute or WFH arrangement they don't want to change
- is proud of becoming an expert / go-to-person in some part of the business and doesn't want to lose that source of social capital
- is proud of product or service they have made a big contribution to and wants to "see it through to the end"
- believes leaving would place an unfair burden on other team-members or would be disloyal to a manager they consider a friend
- (US only) cannot risk losing healthcare
It's the same reason why your phone/insurance/whatever provider puts up the prices year-after-year: although some people leave, enough people simply put up with it that they make more money this way. "Do nothing" is an easy choice and companies are banking on enough people making that choice.
My observations suggest that this applies far more to lower performing employees than higher performing ones since the barrier to change jobs is lower for top tier talent.
In effect this means that while companies that give paltry pay bumps that don't keep up with the market may successfully hold on to lower performing employees, they'll be continually churning through top performers.
why not do both? thats what I see.
Firms give paltry pay bumps as default, but will fight with competitive salaries to retain top performers.
Top performers get completive raises by going to their boss with an offer letter from a competitor.
In my businesses, I've had employees do this a couple of times. Both times my response was "you should take that offer". Also both times, if they'd asked for a pay increase equal to what the offer represented, they probably would have gotten it.
Coming to me with an offer letter in an attempt to get a pay raise is a thing that I think speaks very poorly of the person. It's an attempt to extort me, their current employer, and it's showing great disrespect for the company they got the offer letter from (because the employee is basically just using that employer and wasting their time).
This is so shortshighted, it's not about 'respect', its about market value. By bringing an offer your employees are proving their market value, and you don't want to match it, so they will leave.
It's about treating people decently, in my view. It's not necessary to try to set up a bidding war in order to demonstrate market value. The disrespect that rankles me is the treatment of the company that made the offer, honestly.
I just choose not to play that game. It's unnecessary. If an employee can't just come to me and be straight about their compensation requirements, that's a problem.
That's exactly what they are doing, but with evidence to boot so you are on the same page.
But it's not evidence of anything other than than a company has valued that potential employee at a particular rate. What an employee is worth to an employer is pretty subjective. Someone that is worth 7 figures to one company may only be worth 6 or 5 to another.
Having an offer in hand is valuable to the employee, certainly! There's nothing wrong with getting an offer, then asking your current employer for a raise that would meet or exceed that offer. The issue I have is actually communicating that offer to the current employer.
Now, don't get me wrong -- I'd certainly never punish or fire anyone who did that. I'm just not going to give in to what I perceive as extortion, and what I perceive as being unfair to the employer who made the offer.
How often can they ask you for a pay increase (the price discovery you approve of) without making you start thinking some other negative thing?
I don't understand this question. What negative thing would I think?
If someone asked me for a pay raise and I turned it down, I'd also explain exact why I turned it down. (This is hypothetical as I've not turned down a pay raise). I wouldn't think poorly of anyone for just asking for a raise, but I suppose I'd start to get annoyed if they did it daily when the reason that I turned them down was still true.
The balance of power is still vastly in favor of the company that made the offer. Meaning, they could rescind the offer at any time for any reason and possibly ruin the potential employees life. Whereas the reverse case of the potential employee rejecting an offer is much less likely to have a material impact on the company. For this reason I don't think the company deserves that much concern.
Leaving is exactly what JohnFen actually recommended to these employees.
You admit to intentionallu underpaying your employees, and then insinuate moral failing on their part for proving their worth to after you told them your underestimate of it? Good for them that they left, and left you poorer for it.
Not at all. I've never intentionally underpaid anyone.
Also not at all. Presenting an offer letter from someone is not "proving their worth". My objection is the manipulation they're engaging in rather than just asking for what they think they should be getting.
Only one of them left, and I was not left poorer for it at all.
I'm not sure why you seem so hostile here. I never dealt with anyone in bad faith, even a little.
I think I see your point but it definitely feels shady to me.
First, personally I’ve never asked my employer to match an offer. I just leave.
I do think the thought process makes some sense though.
If I feel I’m underpaid I’m going to look around to confirm before talking to anyone.
If I get confirmation I’m being underpaid then I’m going to wonder why. Here’s where I have a choice… I either assume it’s because you’re intentionally underpaying because you think you can, or it’s because you don’t understand what you’re doing.
I know companies understand compensation because I’ve worked in management and on compensation planning software, that’s why I don’t talk about it.
More naive people might give you the benefit of the doubt, i.e. think you just don’t know what’s fair. Those people give you a chance to fix it, and only then learn that you’re intentionally underpaying them.
It does speak badly of the person but only in the sense that they’re naive and think you “mean well” in some sense.
There are other explanations as well: for instance, just because an employee is worth a given rate to one company in no way means that the same employee is worth the same amount in another company.
I appreciate your honesty here. I would argue, you should appreciate your employee's honesty as well.
If you have a market based salary view of the world, and an employee says they're actually worth more than what your merit/market system is paying them (and has proof), you should probably respect that.
The fact they're coming to you first is a risk in and of itself.
We are in total agreement here!
You said:
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate your honesty here, But I don't think that's fair, and probably why you're getting push-back in this thread.
The part that gives me pause isn't that the employee is agitating for their own interest. That's good and expected. It's the method by which they're doing it.
It's OK if you and others don't think it's fair. We just disagree on that aspect. I don't think it's fair for an employee to use that particular method. To me, it comes off as a kind of extortion to the current employer, and mistreats the employer who made the offer.
Others can, of course, have a different opinion. Nothing wrong with that. We simply disagree.
To make a little meta-comment: I am genuinely surprised at the negative reaction I've gotten from a few people here. I really didn't think I was saying anything all that controversial. Live and learn, I guess!
That's strange to me. Why is it extortion? They're doing you a favor by giving a chance to compete. Seems like honest communication to me.
It is no different than giving customers a notice of price increase or giving contractors an option to bid.
It smells of extortion to me because the reason for doing it is to use the offer as a threat.
Extortion is honest communication, too. The existence of an offer doesn't do anything to help me decide whether or not I can go along with a pay increase. It only communicates that the employee wants to threaten me into agreeing to one.
In my opinion, the better way is to ask for the pay raise without mentioning the offer. If they I don't give them the raise and it's that important to them, then they should just take the offer.
I think it's very different from that, actually. You can require a raise as a condition to stay at the company without trying to use another offer as a weapon.
I guess to me, extortion or threat imply taking or degrading something you are entitled to. It doesn't seem like you think you are entitled to the work of the employee, so I'm honestly confused by the reaction.
At first I thought it was simply because it is presented as an ultimatum, but it seems like you have no problem being given conditions. Saying I want X to keep working here is acceptable, but the same exact statement with an offer weaponizes it.
If they have an offer they don't tell you about but have an otherwise identical request, is that less of a threat?
Would you really bring your boss an offer letter? Even as top performer it seems like a bad idea to take any counter offer.
Yes! I've done it several times. It's one of the best and most reliable ways to get a raise.
It's "business." Your manager isn't going to make a counteroffer, then wait a month and fire you. I mean, they might if they're a total D.bag, but I've not yet had that experience. And if I had, I'd already proven to myself and my manager that I could get a higher-paying job elsewhere. It'd be a minor annoyance on my side.
I don't want to give away specifics, so take these numbers with a lump of salt; the ratios are correct:
Went from $50k/yr [1]-> $80k/yr [2]-> $120k/yr [3]-> $205k/yr
[1] The company wanted me to stay and raised my pay to match the competing offers.
[2] The company wanted me to stay and raised my pay to match the competing offers.
[3] The company didn't want to pay that much, so I put in my two weeks and moved to a different company.
From my experience, I've found that requesting a raise without a competing offer often leads to a small or no increase in pay. However, when I've approached my manager with a better offer in hand, it has consistently resulted in substantial pay raises.
I'd feel bad wasting the time of the other company just because my current one doesn't value me.
Why? You proved you're competent to the potential suitor by obtaining an offer. They got some valuable quality candidate interviewing experience which can be difficult to achieve, and you got a rock solid tangible improvement in your work QoL, even if the target ultimately didn't achieve their hopeful hire. Possibly they got some data that (to them) implies they should have offered more money. Win win. I would say a win for all of us because "more money".
Sure, I guess you could play it back and forth like your sibling comment implies, that seems risky though (you might end up with no offers).
Also why do I want to stay with the cheap people? They proved to be unable to deliver market rates for my efforts unless I make a big scene about it. I don't like to do business with people like that.
If you want to get the best deal, you always have to shop around and negotiate.
No employers going to give you the maximum that they can afford without negotiation or a reason to. It's not being cheap, it's common business sense.
Why? Everything is a negotiation and you're not wasting their time.
It's no different than price shopping between mechanics. You can do that while being clear on your intentions and not making any promises you can't keep
They're always welcome to offer more money.
That is literally how I got my last promotion. I set up a meeting and told them I had an offer I intended to take. They had a 20% raise and promotion approved within 24 hours.
I also routinely get asked by managers for promo recommendations for coworkers thinking about leaving. IF they refuse to counter, then you should be asking yourself why you are staying.
You cant pull this maneuver more than once or twice, but it lets them know you are serious and wont just whine and accept token raises in future negotiations.
What company is that?
It depends on the counter offer and your situation. I would have agreed with you, but a couple years ago I told my employer that I had a job offer kind of land in my lap (I wasn't actively looking), that it was good and I was inclined to take it. I wasn't unhappy at my current job, but the change in title/seniority and compensation of the job offer was definitely worth it. They didn't want me to leave, so they countered with a very strong offer, which I decided to take and stay with the company. If you want to leave because you're unhappy with other aspects of your job, then I agree that accepting a counter offer doesn't seem like a great choice.
If you're a reasonably well-performing IC at US big tech, your "boss" is often also a grunt with little real control over your salary. Just a different flavor grunt from you. In my experience, these managers are often happy to throw money at you but don't have much latitude to do so. Having a competing offer gives THEM leverage to try to convince those guarding the money hose to open the faucet a little.
General consensus among my colleagues and bosses are that anyone who comes to a routine salary negotiation with a competing offer is encouraged to take it. If you've been eyeing a different opportunity, then you're not going to find your current role engaging. The money is rarely enough to keep you for long.
I live in Sweden, but very early on in my career I was told that showing a competing offer would simply be viewed as "blackmailing" and you would not become very popular. I never used that tactic, instead just switching jobs.
Now the jobmarket is nothing that can be compared to the Bay area, for sure. For example many places more or less use the standard increases brokered by the union, even if you or the workplace is not unionized, with some skewing for being a high performer.
The same effect might even be partially responsible for the OP observation. I.e. the cause and effect might not be "job-hopping gets you paid more" but it might instead be "having a lot of skill gets you paid more and also enables you to job-hop more confidently".
Or maybe people who are better and more confident at negotiation and interviewing are also more confident at hopping jobs. But those skills may or may not correlate with the skills you care about.
Just because you are a good software engineer doesn't mean you are good at finding a new job.
But is this actually a problem for a company? I think most companies can only afford second rate talent with the top tier talent going to FAANG companies anyway.
What most companies are really looking for is undervalued high performers. And there's probably a lot of those still that haven't moved to the bay area.
I think MBA's these days have decided that they'll hold labor costs low by not rewarding high performers, and then hire whoever they can to fit their budget, but then have a yearly 5% layoff to hold their employee's feet to the fire.
And then those same MBA's get a bonus for keeping costs low, meanwhile enjoying their beach houses on the weekends.
Granted it sucks to be an individual contributor, but if you're a manager, you have incentives for cutting costs to the bone.
I'm not sure about that, since very smart people often tend to be, well, "a little bit difficult to handle", in particular by bosses who got to their position by office politics instead of merits (as many do).
If companies were really looking for high performers, they'd create an environment where high performers can really flourish. Because in my observation there exist quite a lot of high performers who are "held down" by their current work environment, this would attract quite some potential high performers, including undervalued ones.
I think talent and the capability to market/self-promote oneself (I believe only for the latter capability, the barrier to change jobs is much lower) are mostly uncorrelated.
EDIT: Grrr! This comment meant for the GP, sorry.
I think there is an unstated underlying assumption in this comment that "higher performing" implies "drop-in transferable technical/social skills" legible to the target interviewing entity. Maybe for software but for wide swaths of actually engineering (double graduate engineers in this family) I doubt that rather strongly.
The default 2 weeks vacation for the decades experienced new hire is a pretty strong tell.
Job performance doesn’t really matter in tech. It’s all about interview skills and leetcode
Remote vs. non-remote seems like a huge factor here.
Sure, many people when they're young are geographically flexible. But that's less true as you age and are tied down by a house, spouse's job, kid's school, daycare, etc.
If you have to come into work, then all those details depend on your job location. You can't just change job locations. Again, this works for some single young people who rent apartments in NYC or SF. But that will always be a subset of job candidates.
This is why the trend towards remote seems inevitable. There are just too many incentives for too much of the workforce to require it. Long term that
Of course these things have always been true, but since remote work became prevalent I think people have realized how shitty of a situation it is - especially when you're not compensated for it. In fact you are actually compensated LESS since you arent job hopping.
>This is why the trend towards remote seems inevitable.
I wish, but not in my country. Remote here means 2-3 days/week WFH tops and that's it. Nobody offers more. Meaning you're still tied to the location of your employer as you have to come regularly in the office.
It boggles my mind that employers don't see the advantage of employing people remotely nation-wide as that gives them access to a wider talent pool outside their area making it a win-win. But no, old-school boomer MBA managers want to see buts in seats in the office, otherwise to them it means people are slacking off as they can't possibly imagine motivating people to work if they're not within physical reach.
We also need to post pictures of the employees pretending to have fun at barbecues, teambuilding events and sitting in cramped open space offices on yoga balls wearing headphones with coffee mugs with nerdy memes on them. But it's ok, there's a weekly fruit basked, employee organized sports events and you can bring your dog to work. Totally worth spending 2h per day on commuting.
I just don't get it, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Is it me the one being unreasonable, or "is it the children who are wrong"?
What country is it you are living in?
Austria.
I’ll give you the startupper’s sad side. See, if we want to hire, then a team of Matrix people in full remote isn’t going tk be sexy. We need young faces on the pictures, and we need to make every day an event worth instagramming. First hire for a team of developers should be a community manager. The scene is as stupid as it sounds.
I’ve walked the path. Developers won’t develop anything good for $200k, but they will if you give them attention, care, events, and hope. I literally have to refrain myself from giving higher raises, because I’ve made people rich in the past and they’ve stopped being motivated. The more you pay them, the more they have the thrill to play competition.
(Please watch me if I don’t give them fat equity for the exit event, God, they deserve it).
That seems to be the Silicon Valley investment paradigm. Needed for attracting VC money. Otherwise, the users never gave a sh*t about those, they still don't. The rest of the tech world did not operate under such a paradigm either. I also suspect that it will also end in SV as the zero interest economy ended and the investment landscape changed. Now profitability is being valued instead of unprofitable infinite growth that may or may not be profitable in the future.
Lots and lots of companies have completely embraced remote work. You are not hearing from them because once they embraced it they found people better than you [1] who'll work for a tenth of the price. In other words, offshore.
Put another way, you're only seeing Office-work positions, because once they grasp that the job can be done remotely, they grasp that you're expensive.
I know, I know, soooo many reasons they should pay more to get you. On the other hand the entire manufacturing industry figured out "remote manufacturing" means cheap labor...
[1] obviously I'm speaking generally because I don't know you. But statistically it's likely to be true.
>You are not hearing from them because once they embraced it they found people better than you [1] who'll work for a tenth of the price. In other words, offshore.
I know the companies in my country, they don't offshore because offshoring has additional overhead and costs they can't afford(small and medium companies), so they mostly prefer local workers they can tap on shoulder, and preferably German speaking.
And those few companies who do offshore(mostly banks and other large enterprises) already had offices abroad, no need for the pandemic to convince them.
Also when a family has/needs two parents working, Spouse A's next job becomes limited to locations that do not require Spouse B to also quit, and vice-versa.
I have a pet theory that dual-incomes are one cause of movement to urban locations: The family needs to be in a location with enough overlapping opportunities in each person's role/field.
Urban area crime reduction starting around the 90s led to most movement back. The dual income job requirements just make it stickier and create a feedback system of higher housing prices. (which require more dual incomes...)
As soon as that dual income want kids and can afford it on a signal income in suburbia, they'll take it most of the time.
Just my .02
When I graduated grad school in the late 80s, almost no one I knew went to live in an urban core other than a fair number of NYC finance folks--and few of the non-finance jobs were in a city proper. Even the New Yorkers, almost everyone migrated out to suburbs over time. I think I knew maybe one couple who stayed in Manhattan.
You have it backwards. In remote areas, it can get lonely and hard to find a partner. Think about people who's only social interaction for the most part is coworkers. Moving to where other people are increases your chances of finding others you click with.
That sounds less like "backwards" and more like "separate contributing factor".
That's long been a problem with relatively rural universities. If one spouse gets a tenured or tenure-track position, in a lot of cases there aren't great options for the partner.
Note that these are all lifestyle choices which agree with OP. If you really care about money you will be open to moving. If you value the location stability more then you won’t
Based on my experience, I assume disabled people also job hop less often.
I often wonder if my lower pay is because I don't job hop, because of my disability, or if I'm just a piece of shit.
Depressed people get paid less. I'm guessing that's the dissability. Apropos the larger context, job hopping correlates with over-confidence. It's all related.
I'm not sure if you are joking or not. This doesn't really make sense to me. Can you explain?
Less assertive, less ambitious, less risk taking, less confident.
More passive, more avoidant, low confidence.
Depression undermines basically everything that helps initiate complete a negotiation. This is on top of any impact to actual work product.
Autistic. Research out of the UK shows a pay gap of 70 cents on the dollar. This seems to track in the US too.
I don't know you, but I know you aren't a piece of shit. Nobody is.
I had to deal with many pieces of shit when I was a child. Maybe you aren't looking hard enough?
Same, but with age and also being on the "piece of shit" side a few too many times -- I've realized most of it just circumstance and the more-often-than-not conclusion of a series of unfortunate life events.
I don't know. I try to maintain empathy, even for the most despicable -- but that doesn't mean their actions need to be tolerated.
My dad is definitely a piece of shit.
Why not both? Just kidding! It is almost certainly the lack of "flight risk". I've been on the management side long enough to know that you reward the most useful folks who "could go anywhere".
As GP said, it's a rational strategy for them. I personally have lowered my expectations of salary growth over the years, and would be happy with some of those other benefits GP listed in the mean-time.
I'd be happy if I were successful in my job and maybe had another promotion. It's been a struggle just to keep a Dev 2 job. No chance of promotion based on how "inconsistent" I am. I'm hoping not to get PIP'd.
If anything, I have found my own disability to be a huge plus when looking for a new job. I'm one of these job hoppers and it's been almost 10 years since I have stayed over 3 years within the same company. Coincidentally, I was diagnosed with some condition that I won't name here about 10 years ago.
Now, this is solely based on my own experience, which of course might not apply to your specific field of work and disability type.
What I mean is, most large companies have a voluntary self-identification form at the end of their job application. And I tend to get a lot more responses when applying for roles where I am invited to disclose my disability.
On a funny note, recruiters always want to confirm that I indeed have a disability, but they can't just reach out and ask "hey dude you sure you didn't click on that button by mistake?".
Instead, they always send this very P.C. email that reads like "Here at [insert company name] we pride ourselves on bein inclusive and bla bla bla. You informed us that you had disability, and we want to make sure that we can accommodate you and make you feel welcome. If you need any special arrangement, please let us know".
To which my response is always "Yes I do have this thing, and no I'm fine thanks".
My disability has fucked up a lot of things in my life, but it's boosted my career.
Good for you, but that's the opposite of most people's experiences.
I think one thing that disability highlights, is tolerance. Some people find other job perks attractive, like stability, hours, access...
For me having a shit boss, or a company who is crappy in a million other ways isnt a big deal. I can be flexible, in where and when and how in a way others cant.
IF having a good boss or sane hours matter to you, changing jobs is a risk.
I'm in that basket. I can't reliably commute due to a neurological disability that prevents me from driving. I've been WFH since 2015. It's harder to find WFH jobs that pay as well. I also rely on expensive drugs to manage the condition. I absolutely cannot take the risk of being without health insurance. It definitely makes it a lot harder. I can't really tell prospective employers about the disability, it will just scare them off.
I agree and healthcare (US) is a major factor. However, companies push the envelop too far. The cost of filling replacements, lost domain knowledge, decreased velocity during ramp up, etc. are far more costly that leadership admits. The main reason they just don't try to keep up even a little bit is because most leadership sees employees as replaceable resources that are all identical (not themselves though!). The thing is that people would stay forever in most cases if they gave a fraction of what they end up hiring replacements for.
People don't quit jobs, they quit bosses.
Not as much since Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) became law over ten years ago. Anyone can get minimum essential coverage, with a subsidy if income is low enough (as it would be when out of a job), regardless of pre-existing conditions.
If you go without a job for a while and you don't want Medicaid [edit -- not even an option: and you don't want to submit to an invasive examination of your finances], you are paying out of pocket for individual marketplace plans. While they run a lot cheaper than COBRA, they are still hefty (ca. $500/mo for 2 people at minimum coverage).
Maybe it was worse before the ACA but it sure isn't a picnic after.
Can you clarify on the "invasive examination of your finances"?
In my experience, when you apply on healthcare.gov, you simply enter your estimated income for the year you're applying - that's it, and you get the subsidy. Then when you file your taxes for that year, you either get more subsidy as a credit, or pay some back depending on whether you came in above or below the estimate you provided on the application.
I was wrong. My estimated income for the year was $0, so the only choice was Medicaid or full out of pocket.
You did it wrong. Just always estimate just above the Medicaid threshold (assuming you legitimately don’t think you’ll make much in the year). Then you get the maximum subsidy, which might even make a Bronze plan completely free. If you end up making less at the end of the year, and really should have been on Medicaid, nothing gets clawed back. If you end up making more than estimated, you just have to pay back some of the subsidy.
Well, there's six grand I'll never get back. At least I know for the future.
The househpold income is voluntarily self-reported.
You're right. I misremembered; no amount of information would have helped. The option was Medicaid or full out of pocket.
While I have done this, problem is most people don’t view health insurance as a cost they should cover in any capacity.
Most employers aren’t really providing much “healthcare value” when compared to simply going on the exchange directly.
Even Medicare--with various add-ons--is not exactly cheap.
Excessive job hopping simply does not look good on a resume! I want to work with engineers and PMs who build lasting monuments, seeing them through to completion, dealing with both the fun and the unfun bits.
Yeah but IMO most people learn 90% the stack in a year, smart people usually get bored after two years. I say that as someone who’s been at the same job for 12 years now. I never met a dev who worked at the same place for more than 4 years that was actually worth the money.
Well, I was at my last job for 10 years :)
To be honest, none of the stuff I've worked on I've gotten comfortable within a year. At Oxide I feel like I understand maybe 30-40% of the stack at the moment after 18 months?
Well oxide isn't exactly a simple crud app, is it.
“Place” should be team or project. Same company can mean many teams or projects. For example I’ve been at a company 5 years but worked on 3 diff teams.
You claim to want it. Do you pay for what you want?
Ironically, the value of employees tend to go up the longer they stay as they grow more familiar with the people and systems at the company.
This is an interesting fact and brings up a paradox I've seen at the last two major companies I've worked for.
Both saw a limit on the time someone could be at the company and still be promoted. The C-Suite people really felt if people were at the company for more than 5 years, they were no longer viable candidates to move up because they had become to "accustomed" to the corporate culture and would develop a sense of apathy with pushing their departments or employees to greater success. They have now opted to hire outside executives or managers to try and keep the ideas and approaches fresh so to speak.
I remember my director at the time wanting very much to move up into an executive position and had been at the company some 15 years. He had been a director for some 7 years and had already been passed over twice before for an executive position. He recruited me for a senior dev role and had stood up an entire cloud computing team to take on specific work the company was having a hard time getting done quickly.
6 months in and he pulls me into his office after our 1:1. He tells me he's putting in his two weeks and loved working with me and wanted me to come with him to his new company once he gets set up there. He told me his bosses boss told him she knew his aspirations of moving into an executive position, but it wasn't going to happen here. She told him in no uncertain terms he had reached his ceiling at this company and should move on if he really wanted to be an executive.
Same thing happened at another company. The VP of the company had been in that role for some 10 years and had been passed over at least three times for the CEO position which he wanted very badly. Many of the managers had told me he has just accepted he wouldn't get any higher than VP, but had no aspirations of leaving the company. This unfortunately created a huge choke point in the company because now managers would be at the company for a certain amount of time, and then know that's as high as they were going and leave.
While I agree with your point, I feel like there is some amount of time threshold you can cross where the corporate apathy can take hold and your value starts to decline. It seems that way the higher up the ladder you go.
this is called "up or out", maybe 10-15 years ago my little sister had this same setup at Mckinsey but she's not there anymore. The idea iirc was if you haven't been promoted in 2-3 years then you're better off leaving and trying somewhere else so you get let go. I haven't heard of that setup in a long time.
Tech companies usually have terminal levels. Meaning "up or out" exists, but once you reach Senior or Staff then it is ok to stay at that level indefinitely.
As I understand it, it's mostly a reflection of partnership structures at big law firms and consultants. At some point, you become a partner and bring in new clients or... there's a limited need for super-senior associates that mostly do billable hours and expect increasing salaries.
And it takes less effort to do the usual.
In a sense, it’s trading convenience and stability for compensation.
There is no stability. Maybe in government jobs. Any stability is just luck.
I'm sure you mean no _guarantee_ of stability, but clearly remaining in a current position is more "stable" than actively leaving it (by definition).
Only because you've chosen a certain definition of stability. For most people, I'd bet leaving a job voluntarily for a new opportunity yields a higher sense of stability than enduring getting laid off, having your teammates get laid off, or having your org structure drastically change.
“Probability of job loss is strongly monotonically declining in tenure,” with job-loss probability falling from 15% for first-year private sector employees to 5.8% after twenty years [1].
(If you’ve ever had to do lay-offs, you know that it’s easier to lay off the new guy than someone with deep ties to the team.)
[1] https://www.princeton.edu/~ceps/workingpapers/171farber.pdf page 31, Figure 16
Employees are also giving up compensation for lower risk and fewer unknowns.
A risk adverse person, or even rational one, may avoid still avoid positive EV gambles.
This does not match my experience where the average retention duration for employees across all the companies I've worked for or have known has bee around 2.5 to 3 years.
In what way does this not match your experience? You’ve mentioned one variable (retention) but not the other (salary increase over time), so your comment as it stands doesn’t refute the claim of the person you’re replying to. Are you implying that you know that these people have received raises year after year that are comparable to the pay increase they could have if they took a new job?
It refutes the claim in the sense that employees leave at about the optimum time (close to two years) as per the study.
If 80% of employees stay each year, then the expected tenure would be about 3 years.
Ambitious employees "know" that switching jobs will give them the pay they're looking for, because they see those numbers right on the job postings. What's less obvious is that a current employer might really value an employee's skills, and would be willing to match or exceed the competition - if they just open up the conversation.
IME it's not even (always) any kind of rational decision on behalf of management to "stiff" people. If you have a happy employee making a wage they're satisfied with (+ annual COL), then these conversations about TC may not even come up at all. It's easy to just turn on autopilot here.
If you like your job, but you're not happy with your TC, make sure you're letting management know. It could be that everybody could end up happy. Even a good manager might not be doing this for you until/unless you advocate on your own behalf.
You're describing the fake breakup. Where you tell your girlfriend/boyfriend you want a break, then let them talk you back into the relationship. This is just a bad relationship move. Now they don't trust you and you have a needy or untrusting partner now.
I've had 50% pay raises that were nearly matched by the current employer. My last manager literally said the words, "What if we offered you a big bag of money to stay?". I left.
Now I work at a place where people stay literally until the die, 10, 15, 25 year tenures. My coworkers are mediocre. I'd say it's a mixture of laziness and sometimes maybe just incompetence.
It's a two fold problem. Employees that stay this long do not progress in their careers or learn new skills. I've learned next to nothing in my 5 years here. Employers that don't create churn in their workers create numerous problems. If we didn't hold a monopoly in our field, I'm sure we would have been bought out and had mass layoffs by now.
Oh no, you tell them before you start looking that you feel like your TC is too low based on your contribution. You don't threaten to shop around, you just tell them your skillet has value beyond what they're offering.
It goes like this: either they come back with something to make you happy and everybody is satisfied, or they don't and you start applying.
But people don't always give employers this chance and just start applying first. Then when they go to leave things get weird with counter offers.
If you think your job sucks and you're ready to move on, there's no reason to bother with this approach. But if the only reason you're thinking of moving on is to increase your pay, it never hurts to ask first.
I've tried having that conversation a couple times in my career, and it never works. At my current job, I am the top performer on a mediocre team, and it seems to be impossible to convert from contract to full-time. I also demanded something resembling a cost of living pay raise (been here 3 years), and eventually got the agency to give me about 6%.
Two more:
The first point sounds insane.
In my vicinity the trend seems completely opposite - HR is trying to get a smoother rehiring experience for employees they lost due to their high turnover.
This might be because the talent pool of people willing and able to do IT jobs in my country is very small, so you run into the same people over and over again in this field.
From what I've been told, Intel allows 2 so you can go try to start a company. I once worked at a startup founded by a whole group from Intel doing this (including one of the original architects of 8086!). Several were on their last attempt. Every one of them went right back to intel, after it didn't work out.
And, from what I've been told about Apple, the idea is that if you can't find something within Apple (since they literally do everything, even textiles!), then Apple probably just isn't a good fit, especially since it is possible to spin up a team to make something new internally.
I'm pretty convinced that, eventually for most of us, job hopping breaks down when you reach an age where you no longer fit in or lack of new skillset and you can't find a job. Then you wind up as one who stays at one place for more than two years for security--if you can find one.
I haven't noticed that, personally.
Job-hopping is a powerful way of ensuring that your skillset remains current. That's 80% of why I do it.
Except if an employee knows they provide more value to their employer than they receive, then an employee has every reason to stop working hard and start coasting off the social-capital / past-accomplishments / strong-relationships.
Job hopping works till you hit the ceiling. At some point you are at the relative max of your skillset and then other variables become more important.
In a recent org-wide all-hands a member from senior leadership (C-suite) did explicitly say that they always have a much higher budget for new hires than the budget for rewarding/retaining existing talent; and that this is by-design. This was an eye-opener to me :-|
I left a job due to almost entirely for poor pay. Entire department got an immediate 10% raise to stop more people from leaving.
Also, I'd add
Holy crap, this list nails it.
- there is friction for an employee with established systems for dealing with childcare/k-12 school to potentially have to start all over again figuring out those systems.
You could subsume all of these points into "moving house is hard", but the details matter. We moved across the country for a job for the money and even with an empty nest it was dauntingly difficult, the hardest thing we have ever done over 4 decades, and we didn't have to worry about money!
Nailed it, exactly. Not an endorsement but that's how it is.
I just struggled through this list for years. First, internally - then I announced my intent to leave.
People raised some of the points in a caring way. I have so many trust issues I don't know if I was being gaslit or if they truly believed it. I started to wonder who it served when I saw the patterns.
Anyway, don't believe the bastards. If you're willing to work, good people will teach you what you need. Find them.
Don't waste your time places where you aren't happy and valued
Ramping up at a new company also costs employees time, so even though the employer has to pay this fee more, so does the employee. So the employer can play chicken on this and eat the cost more statistically than the employee.
You forgot this one, might be more common than you think:
I've been in several places where this leads to a death spiral of "comfortable" employees doing a lot less (or rather, the bare minimum) and the people that compensate for it leaving after 1-2 years of this supposed social capital of being the go-to person (and sometimes the only competent person / person who cares around) killing all joy they had for the job. They were the (large) IT department of a (large) retailer though, and they tend to have meh hiring standards to begin with.
One day my boss "forgot" to bring up a very small raise I had negotiated with the CEO (who signed off on all raises personally), failed to see any urgency in fixing the situation to restore trust and gambled on me being one of those people that don't find another job. He seemed very surprised to be wrong.
My raise from switching jobs was about 50% - and I got to work with people who hadn't given up on improving things half a decade ago.