
Employees Who Stay in Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less - askafriend
https://www.forbes.com/sites/cameronkeng/2014/06/22/employees-that-stay-in-companies-longer-than-2-years-get-paid-50-less/
======
elnygren
Best way to increase salary at current workplace? Get offers from other
companies & ask for a meeting with your boss (or whoever decides your pay, so
HR etc.).

Bring up the offers, discuss what you'd get from there and also go through the
potential career you could build at those companies. For example: Consultancy
X would pay me $k/mo and every 6months it will go up the ladder if I perform
well.

With this kind of discussion you should be able to get a raise that brings
your pay even above the competing offers.

Treat your current as one of the options you can make that day; make your
employer fight for you every 6-12 months. And remember it's not personal, it's
just business. Your employer would let you go and throw you under the bus if
it made business sense.

tldr; don't get too emotionally attached to job; that's when they get you.

~~~
scaryclam
I imagine this is good advice in some places, but as a line manager, if you
pull this on me I'm more than likely to shake your hand and wish you luck in
your new job.

In a lot of places, having a talk with your manager about your salary before
going off and actively looking for other offers is going to go down a _lot_
better. Most line managers worth working for, value their teams and will fight
for them if they are unhappy, without the threats.

And TBH, if your company has to make cutbacks in the future and you've shown
you're willing to up and leave at the drop of a hat, you're name's likely to
get further up the redundancy list than you'd probably like.

~~~
djslakor
> but as a line manager, if you pull this on me I'm more than likely to shake
> your hand and wish you luck in your new job.

"Pull this on you"? You sound like a real joy to work for.

This is expressly why I choose gigs where I'm working directly for an owner if
at all possible. If you've created value, owners know how important you are
and will take your request seriously as long as it's reasonable.

In my career, I have received 100% of the raises I've requested ... at least a
half dozen times. I've never once received a no or even negative push back.
Owners were eager to retain me.

Even if your intention as a "line manager" is to not give the raise, the right
move is to at least feign consideration for a few days and show the employee
his request at least matters enough to think about.

Letting everyone know they'll immediately be shown the door if they dare
request an increase would create a terrible culture. Clueless management.

~~~
crusso
_Letting everyone know they 'll immediately be shown the door if they dare
request an increase would create a terrible culture_

The person to whom you're responding explicitly drew a distinction between
discussing a raise with your boss vs going to your boss with another offer
that you have secured.

I can see the importance of that distinction. To put the relationship in a
different context: Imagine the difference between a girlfriend who says, "Hey,
we need to discuss the amount of time you spend playing video games. I'd like
you to pay more attention to me." vs "Hey, I don't like the amount of time you
spend playing video games, so I've been talking to this new guy about being my
boyfriend. Your move."

~~~
JCharante
I know it doesn't add anything of value to the thread, but that's a really
good analogy.

~~~
corobo
Not really. Business is business and personal is personal. If you look at them
both the same you'll end up stuck in a job you hate for 8 years thinking
you're being super loyal and that raise is just around the corner.

Spouses are loyal back, businesses are not.

~~~
crusso
That's not true at all in my experience. Both as a manager to others, I've
always tried to be loyal to employees who invested in the employer/employee
relationship - and as an employee who benefitted from having an
employer/managers look out for me when inevitable bumps in the road occurred
in my personal life.

Outside of my own direct experience, I can also recall many other co-workers'
experiences where the companies I've worked for went above and beyond in their
commitment to their employees. One time that meant making many extraordinary
allowances for an employee suffering from a mental breakdown. At times it has
meant extending the employment of someone who was looking for a life/career
change, but the company kept on paying a salary until the employee found
somewhere new to land - way beyond where the employment had any real benefit
to the company. There are many others.

By all means, takes some precautions. By all means, stand up for yourself. By
all means, make sure that you're being fairly compensated... but if you go
into every relationship, personal or business, with your shields raised and
phasers set to kill - you will reap what you sow.

~~~
brandonhsiao
Loyalty on a large scale requires threat-backed enforcement. Mafia members
were loyal to each other not just because family was sacred but because they'd
be killed otherwise. Big megacorps of the 20th century basically worked by
vesting your payout over your lifetime; leave halfway, and you'd miss out. No
such threat exists in America today, so while it's possible for individual
managers and employees to choose to behave in the loyal manner you described,
when giving general advice, it's wise to treat business as business.

------
nilkn
I think it's important to understand that there's a significant amount of
selection bias possible here. In general, folks who switch jobs every two
years are the folks who are not getting offered big raises by their current
companies. The ones who are getting offered big raises may still choose to
leave due to other reasons, but they often will choose to stay instead. And
they won't be making a big fuss about it online.

There's another phenomenon here. Almost by definition, average developers are
not going to get big raises. They'll get average raises. The average developer
raise is probably 3-5%, which is not big but it's more than the average raise
across all professions, at least in the US.

This leads to an interesting question: why can the average developer get a big
raise by switching jobs? I think at least part of the answer is that companies
simply have more information about employees who've been around for at least a
few years than they do about potential hires still on the market. It's a lot
easier for a company to realize an employee is about average once that person
has been on the job for 12+ months than it is during the interview phase,
where the questions are heavily sandboxed and generally focused on basic
problem solving ability rather than the candidate's ability to convert that
into business value.

Finally, in general people who are average but think they're above average
really do _not_ like to confront the fact that they're average. So average
developers with big egos being offered average raises will often very
vehemently argue that the problem is all with the companies they've worked at
and never with themselves.

\---

Another point worth focusing on here is that raises are really determined by
the business value that you're producing, not your raw intelligence or passion
for coding. Very smart coders may or may not be any good at converting that
talent into lots of value for the company. It may even be that sometimes a
less talented coder gets offered a much bigger raise because other skills
allowed them to create significant value.

I think this explains why so many folks are average but think they're above
average. It's because they might indeed be above average in some metrics, but
not the metrics that matter to their employer.

~~~
willvarfar
> selection bias possible here. In general, folks who switch jobs every two
> years are the folks who are not getting offered big raises by their current
> companies.

The article is saying that those who stay don't get offered big raises. The
article says that if you stay you get 3% or less. There's even a pretty chart
to make this point.

Employees aren't paid what they are worth, they are paid as little as the
company can get away with. The delta is profit to the company, which is the
whole purpose of the company's existence. Employees who stay are demonstrating
they can put up with flatter wage development, and they are being taken
advantage of by the employers.

~~~
deepGem
This is true even when a company is hiring someone. They will try to hire you
at the lowest possible tier. Of course there are exceptions to this.

~~~
nf05papsjfVbc
The negotiating situation is different when hiring someone vs when offering a
raise.

------
sidlls
There is a plateau as one reaches senior positions.

As I went from "no" experience to my current position my job switches (every
~2 years) always were for 10%-25% (in one case, 100%, but that was Midwest to
Bay Area so other factors are at play). I never got more than 5% merit
increases otherwise.

Most of my friends who have been at the same place for >10 years in
engineering (not software) are just now reaching parity with my base salary
(CoL-adjusted) and they didn't spend 6 years in academia before transitioning
to industry.

Two year tenures isn't job hopping. It's a reflection of how this industry
works. Very few companies offer sufficient breadth and depth of product
complexity, career advancement, or other similar things to make it worthwhile.
I'd say the sweet spot is 2-4 years, except at very large companies (e.g.
Google) (EDIT:) or companies which are developing complicated products with
physical engineering or regulatory factors complicating development. Anything
longer, especially if there is a lot of long-term stasis on a resume (e.g.
"tech lead on product X" for more than a year or two), is an indication to me
of someone who either isn't capable of stretching himself or doesn't want to.
Anything less, especially if more than one project per job exists, indicates
an inability to see a project through to maintenance or someone who is easily
bored.

~~~
methodover
> Anything longer, especially if there is a lot of long-term stasis on a
> resume (e.g. "tech lead on product X" for more than a year or two), is an
> indication to me of someone who either isn't capable of stretching himself
> or doesn't want to.

That's insane. Someone who is the technical leader of a project for more than
two years doesn't "stretch himself"? I see no reason to believe that's true.
If anything, it takes years for you to realize design flaws in components of
the earliest-developed systems. The extent to which you can learn about how to
design well-designed systems is going to be quite limited if just peace out
after a year or two, as you suggest.

~~~
nikanj
According to the modern thinking, in two years you're supposed to switch
stacks twice, and rewrite the whole thing five times. With that much churn,
there's no value in seniority.

~~~
gaius
The recent expansion of the industry mean that people with little or no
experience massively out-vote those with lots.

------
manicdee
My contrary opinion is that people who job hop every two years are the ones
who come in, make enough progress that management thinknthey are pretty nifty,
then leave before they have to domany maintenance on the technical debt they
left behind.

Sure, it is good to be highly paid, but the situation just reinforces the idea
that people who wear suits are paid far too much.

Though I find myself i the situation of wanting to earn more, so I am
seriously considering switching to SAP. Sell my soul, buy a house, live with
my conscience formthe rest of my life?

~~~
flukus
What about people that job hop because of that left behind technical debt?
Often it's the long term employees that don't realize how much technical debt
and other craziness they have, it's a kind of stockholm syndrome. The can also
be woefully out of date on the industry and have likely reinvented many wheels
out of ignorance.

~~~
ryanbrunner
If you've done this once or twice, sure, I think it's reasonable that the
companies you worked for were exceptionally bad at keeping up with the times
and ignoring technical debt.

By the fourth or fifth time that you've moved jobs for this reason though, I
start to question your judgement. Every company is going to have some degree
of technical debt, and the speed that trends come and go in this industry
means that any company older than a few years is going to have some technology
that isn't the latest and greatest.

A skilled developer isn't someone who refuses to accept any technical debt
whatsoever, it's someone who knows how to manage it appropriately and balance
it with the ability to execute.

~~~
flukus
Problem is that the companies with the biggest issues are the one that need to
hire the most and the ones hiring you are often the most oblivious to it
because they've stuck around so long. You don't find out how bad the code is
until you start the job and you don't find out how the company really intends
to handle it for some time, possibly months.

What we really need is corporate code reviews when interviewing. They give me
code tests for my competence, I should be able to do the same for the hiring
organisation. Then I could at least ask about specific issues and ask how and
when they intend to deal with them.

------
fizl
This is a really poor article, and I'm surprised Forbes would publish it. As
far as I can tell, there's absolutely no data behind any of the assertions in
the article, and the title is just conjecture by the author based on a whole
lot of assumptions.

~~~
usmannk
> I'm surprised Forbes would publish it

Unfortunately much of Forbes has become nothing but a fancy blog, very much
akin to Business Insider. With the amount of "contributors" posting to the
site nowadays the Forbes name in the URL isn't exactly a positive indicator,
if not a warning sign.

~~~
josephjrobison
Was Forbes ever a respectable publication though? I ask with all sincerity. It
seems their volume is super high and that's about it, so they get name
recognition from repetition, not sure what else from.

~~~
PacketPaul
Yes. Like the Bruno Mars song says "I want to be on the cover of Forbes
magazine...". At one time that was a big deal.

~~~
lr4444lr
You're charitable. I had always chalked that up to Bruno Mars not know what
the hell he was talking about.

------
jondubois
Yes that never made sense to me. Employees who have been around for a couple
of years are much more efficient and know their way around - They are worth
more, and yet they always get paid much less than 3-month or 6-month
contractors or even new full-time employees in many cases.

Also if they say that they want to leave a company, usually employers let them
go relatively easily without making any significant counter-offer. It means
that employers don't even see the value there; they actually think that every
employee is 100% replaceable and don't account for the massive efficiency loss
incurred.

~~~
Xylakant
> yet they always get paid much less than 3-month or 6-month contractors

I'd be careful comparing the salaries of fixed employees to contractors. The
math works significantly different for contractors: They need to spend time on
job acquisition, billing, ... etc. They don't get any of the benefits that an
employee gets - PTO, potentially health insurance, retirement plan, whatever,
... They're also the first to let go when things turn sour.

~~~
jondubois
Not really, there are plenty of 12-months and indefinite rolling contracts.

I've met a few engineers who made $800 USD per day for several years and many
(including myself) who earned at least $650 per day doing rolling contracts...
You can stay as long as you want - The main problem is boredom that kicks in
after 3 to 6 months.

I don't usually have any gap between jobs. On two occasions, companies offered
me to work for them for two weeks because I had a 2-week gap before starting
at a different company. If you plan correctly, have a broad enough skillset
and you know your value, there should be no gap; on the contrary, there should
be a queue.

~~~
mdpopescu
> companies offered me to work for them for two weeks

Damn. I haven't yet found something like this, most companies want a six-month
minimum. I would love to take a two-week contract in Australia, just so I can
delete "visit Australia" from my bucket list :)

~~~
jondubois
In one case, a digital agency had one of their developers going on holiday and
the deadline for the project was two weeks away. So they needed a quick
replacement.

If you know some good recruiters and you let them know about your situation,
they can get very creative.

------
jurassic
Maybe I'm more conservative than others here, but anything less than 2 years
tenure at a company seems suspicious to me. The people I've known who bounced
after ~18 months or less were often the ones I would've wanted to quit anyway,
who weren't cutting the mustard and weren't on track for promotion. For them,
talking a big game at interview time every two years probably is income-
maximizing because the longer they stick in the same job without promotions
the more obvious their stagnancy is on the resume.

~~~
therealdrag0
You only have my word for it, but I've had the highest marks from both co-
workers and managers at reviews and have gotten higher than average raises.

But my last job was for a consulting company and we finished the job in 10
months and it wasn't that clear what other gig I would be moved to so I
accepted a job with someone who I had worked with before and was now a
technical manager (another point that I'm not someone you wouldn't want to
work with). My job before that I finished a project in 18 months and was
transitioning into maintenance mode. I was bored and under paid, so I took
another job offer also with someone I had worked with before. Each of these
were 10-15% raises, so that was incentive too.

So your intuition might fit some cases, but definitely not all.

------
southphillyman
Never understood why companies will refuse to give valuable employees
reasonable raises but when turn around and pay an unproven new hire even more
money to replace them. So you refuse to give me a 10% increase because "never
negotiate with terrorists" but will gladly pay the 20% increase that I'm
getting at my new job to my replacement (because that's the market). Just
seems so short sighted.

~~~
Tomis02
Because it's easy to say "the employee is just doing the job they're paid to
do, why give them a raise?". Also, "we need to give an extra 20% to convince
this person to come aboard, whereas we already own these employees".

~~~
nojvek
Sure, what about training costs for the new employee?

~~~
Tomis02
If that question somehow arises, management will probably say the new employee
will pay for themselves very quickly by generating loads of value. There's
always a rationalization available for justifying irrational decisions.

------
sverhagen
Sad, I am. I think I'm perfectly capable to sell myself to the next job. But I
like what I'm doing, I like the goals that are still ahead and being worked
towards, great team, all good. And whether you read the article with a bit (or
a lot) of skepticism, it seems common knowledge that the biggest steps in
salary are made when going to that next job. So... where's the silver lining
for loyal dogs? Should I just pick up a book on negotiating, and take it up
with my VP of People?

~~~
therealdrag0
It doesn't hurt to ask! It can be nerve racking but I've done it and it went
over well. It can be a simple conversation, plenty of articles on how to do it
genially.

------
dsmithatx
I keep seeing articles like this that fail to point out an important fact. The
economy has been strong for a long time and it is a workers market. Once there
is another downturn it will be an employers market. Job hoppers will be lucky
to land interviews, much less command high salaries. That is unless you are in
the top % of your skill level or have some skill like Oracle DBA that is
highly sought after.

I worry about younger people shaping their world view and career around the
last 10 years. I did that an in 2002 when I was laid off it was a painful few
years of realization not finding work.

~~~
jazzyk
Two points:

\- 2% GDP growth is not exactly what I would call "strong economy":
[http://www.multpl.com/us-real-gdp-growth-rate](http://www.multpl.com/us-real-
gdp-growth-rate)

\- it is not a workers market - if it had been, incomes would not have
stagnated

I do agree with the rest of your post, though. Things will get even tougher.

~~~
s73ver
"\- it is not a workers market - if it had been, incomes would not have
stagnated"

In general, no. But in terms of software engineering, it very much is.

~~~
jazzyk
There are a few pockets of good markets, I am sure.

But the whole shortage myth is created by companies (often startups) posting
"Magician" ads.

Example of a "Magician" ad:

"Looking for a PhD + min 10 years of experience in a very narrow domain we are
trying to provide a solution for (Big Data experience in Scala required). The
hire will need to do his/her magic to get us out of the s... we are in,
because we don't quite know what we are doing. We pay $60K/year in Boston."

------
zelos
Yet large companies still launch investigations into why retention is so bad
and have employees fill out surveys to try to figure out why people are
leaving. Multiple-choice surveys, of course, with no questions about
compensation.

~~~
stephengillie
They do this amongst mergers and spin-offs and contingency staffing plans, oh
my!

------
johan_larson
It's a bit strange that this sort of job-hopping isn't a red flag to
employers. You'd think managers would be reluctant to hire an employee who has
jumped ship many times before, just as they were becoming useful.

~~~
foobarian
With how thin the job market is, any time I interview a good candidate the
situation is that they have competing offers and the hiring team/our whole
company is the one applying to have the candidate.

In my experience, good candidates ramp up very quickly (<1 month) and having
them on board for 2 years is plenty of time.

~~~
mikegerwitz
Certain places place high value on domain-specific knowledge and trained
employees.

I work at a wholesale insurance company (middleman); we have over a hundred
individual systems, some simple, some quite complex. Some of those systems can
be maintained by any programmer that comes in. Others really shouldn't be
maintained by someone who doesn't have good experience in writing maintainable
code.

But many projects require domain-specific knowledge---and not just to specific
parts of and companies within the insurance industry, but _our specific
company_.

For a few years, we hired less experienced candidates with the hope of
training them, because the talent in Buffalo NY is hard to come by (which
could also be an outreach problem, but our last three hires were from out of
state). Our team's consensus is that it takes approximately two years of
experience with our systems to have a good, balanced grasp on them. Because of
the small team size (five at our highest, two right now), we place great value
on team members who have been around long enough to know the systems, the
rationale and design decisions, history, etc.

This relates directly to Peter Naur's concept of Theory Building.[0]

We've had the past four candidates leave in ~2, <2, <1, and ~3 years. Because
of the upfront training cost and distraction from the more experienced
programmers (the two that remain at the company today), and in some cases the
degree of maintenance problems ("technical debt") introduced, I consider three
of them to be a wash: we're no better off having hired them than we would have
been not hiring them. Possibly worse off.

Because we have the tendency to lose employees at around two years, I'm no
longer in favor of hiring more "junior" candidates---having to train in both
domain knowledge _and_ general programming is too risky and hasn't panned out
well. So hopefully we can hire programmers that can immediately get into the
code from a general programming perspective, but it's going to take them quite
some time to really understand what the systems are all about.

I've been there for over eight years, and the last programmer that remains
with me has been there for six months longer than me. One of our programmers
transitioned to technical director, and has been there for over ten years. My
supervisor dropped programming for project management responsibilities, and he
has been at the company for nearly ten. Our sysadmin has been there for over
ten. We just lost an employee that was there over ten years. We're a close
group. Would I be making more money job hopping? Probably, yes. My point here
is that the company I work for---the team I work with---values experience with
the company, and so long-term employment history is attractive.

[0]:
[http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/Naur.pdf](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/Naur.pdf)

~~~
lovich
If you could have made more money by job hopping, and your other programmers
left for more money presumably, is your company really valuing experience?

It's very easy to say you value experience, but if you wont allocate resources
towards employees with experience then your company is signalling that they
don't actually value it.

~~~
mikegerwitz
There's an unfortunate difference between value at a company level and value
at a team level---we have the hiring decisions as a team, and we won't hire
without certain criteria we value.

The other programmers didn't leave for more money, though.

------
Steeeve
Job hopping works. But the more you do it, the more you can expect to see
skepticism from hiring managers.

Software development is a little bit different because right now there is more
demand for workers than there are good developers. It hasn't always been that
way and it won't always be that way.

When you're working for the right employer at the right salary, an extra
25-50% isn't going to be enough to lure you away. That and at some places
stock options are worth something and vesting schedules actually play into the
decision process.

~~~
UK-AL
"extra 25-50%" \- That's really bad financial mangament on the employees part.
20-50% per annum extra, invested and compounded is A LOT of money. Literally
for some people that could be an extra million at retirement.

~~~
Steeeve
Working for the right people has benefits beyond monetary ones. Knowing the
right person can be helpful to getting your kid in the right school, or in to
see the right doctor. Being vocally appreciated in a field where that is not
particularly common helps you sleep better at night. Being given a certain
level of autonomy can be more rewarding for some people, being given a
constant stream of tasks can be more rewarding for others.

Money is a big factor with employment. It's not the only one.

------
bitexploder
This article flies in the face of what I have been reading for years. This
article is taking some simple data "employees that change jobs get X% raise"
and extrapolating it to a whole lot of wrong. It does vary by organization.

For example if you are at an organization where you are basically the most
senior employee already and you can take on a new role at a larger
organization with new responsibilities or skill growth a job change can make
sense. If you are just bouncing around between say Amazon, Google, and
Facebook this can often be a dud strategy in the long term.

Take this with a grain of salt, since I don't have time to dig up citations,
but I have read that the long term compensation is actually higher for
individuals that don't switch jobs so often. I guess the career employee is a
bit of a legend in IT these days so we could have a lively discussion about
the selection and difference in a big tech firm and a more traditional F500,
but I think in the long run these things will normalize because they are basic
human nature and organizational structure problems and nothing is
intrinsically special about technology companies. They are the special
darlings of the era, so they get to break the rules a bit. Maybe it really
will foment a long term change in "the rules" or always be a bit of a bubble
in terms of how the organizations operate.

------
jryan49
If the article was even based on actual facts and figures, wouldn't
survivorship bias be a huge factor here? Maybe the bottom of the barrel are
bringing the average down because they are stuck with jobs with no mobility
and aren't valuable enough to get the raises.

------
animex
Ha, this is funny. I rarely ever stay longer than 2 years at a company and
every time I jumped, my salary went up significantly i.e. >10%+ HOWEVER, I've
seen guys who have stayed with a company earning less for years, ending up as
the VP/Presdient of the company eventually and their pay going way up.

~~~
eeZah7Ux
Survivor bias much? Obviously SOME people will become VP/President by sticking
to the company. 99% of long-term employees will not.

------
epynonymous
a few comments, this article seems to want to incite people to jump ship which
is fine, but fwiw, i have been with the same company for about 14 years and i
dont think i'm getting paid less than my peers, rather i think i'm way above
most with similar experience and titles. part of it maybe that this article
generalizes and doesnt segment the different industries, i work in software
and my company has done a lot to make certain that they're competitive and do
not lose key people. i met a guy at google, he has been there since 2004, i
doubt he's making less than his peers, there are certainly benefits, say
restricted stocks (please look at goog from 5 years ago and you'll
understand). this article is probably grouping everyone who works the counter
at mcdonalds to investment bankers, nice work forbes.

also, i think working for the same company does give you more opportunites to
understand different parts of a company that you certainly would miss out on
if you jumped ship every two years.

also note that as a hiring manager, i look down on candidates that jump ship
too frequently, no matter how strong his/her skill.

------
nfriedly
I wonder how strongly this holds after you're into the higher end of the
salary range?

My best increase ever was going from my highschool/college web dev job to
freelance, where I more than tripped my hourly rate from $12.50/hr to $45/hr.
(It probably wasn't quite 3x after accounting for taxes and healthcare and
such, but it was still a good jump, and brought more flexible hours too.)

Since then, I've gotten 20-25% increases a couple of times, topping out at
$120k.

I was switching more like every 3-5 years, so a 5%/year raise actually ends up
being in the same ballpark, if not slightly better. Every two years might be
better from a pure cash perspective, but I didn't feel like I was "done" with
my roles until the 3-5 year mark - I think I learned more delivered more
value, and achieved a better sense of accomplishment doing it my way.

I also live in Ohio, with the exception of one year I spent in SF. I imagine I
could double my current salary moving back to SF or over to NYC, but I'm
happier here. (And $100k+ goes a bit farther here...)

~~~
theandrewbailey
> I also live in Ohio, with the exception of one year I spent in SF. I imagine
> I could double my current salary moving back to SF or over to NYC, but I'm
> happier here.

I once joked to a recruiter in SF that California dollars aren't worth much.
He understood.

Have you tried/considered charging SF/NYC rates to companies that are based
there?

~~~
nfriedly
> Have you tried/considered charging SF/NYC rates to companies that are based
> there?

Yep, that's basically what I do :D

Moving to SF and then moving back was one of the biggest boosts - both in the
immediate pay raise, and in giving me the sense of self-worth to ask for more
in future roles.

I'm now at $126k base + bonuses and retirement and such. I know that's on the
low end for SF/NYC, but I've definitely seen jobs there offer less. I lease a
small office that's a 6-min bike ride from home for $250/month and work from
there most days. All told, I'm pretty happy.

($60-80k is upper end around here. Elsevier once offered me $100k to work on
site in Dayton - apparently they have trouble finding smart people who don't
hate them - but I was already up to $120k and working from home at the time.)

My rate when I quit freelancing full-time was $125/hr, mostly working for
companies in bigger cities. I'd charge more than that today, and probably
switch to a daily or weekly rate.

------
hughperkins
Correlation != causation.

Seems perfectly plausible to me that the more confident candidates are more
likely to be poached by other companies, for example.

~~~
sonium
I was thinking the same. An attractive offer that leads to a change of
employer is usually rounded off with a sallary boost.

------
nextstep
From 2014, but still relevant. Unfortunately, the best negotiating tactic is
to bring a competing offer and essentially threaten to quit. Or just switch
firms every ~18 months like the post suggests.

~~~
mahyarm
For software I feel like you will start to max out from switching alone once
you reach sr software engineer from FAAMG. Past that you have to make real
changes such as improving your skills to become something worthy of staff or
become some sort of manager.

~~~
chrisbennet
FAAMG?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google

~~~
santaclaus
> Apple, Amazon

I was under the impression that Apple and Amazon tended to fall lower on the
compensation scales.

~~~
pinewurst
Amazon has a fairly low cash salary cap if you're not upper management. They
make it up (nominally anyway) with an initial cash bonus and stock options.
Don't count on any raise after getting hired though. Plus the average stay
there is far less than the vest period for either bonus or stock, because
Amazon is pretty much the hellmouth.

~~~
grogenaut
Bonus is amortized over the non stock first 2 years paid per paycheck so
there's basically ko vesting on it now. Hasn't been for several years. Eg if
you get 30 stock over yet 3&4.. you'll get 30k / 24 (Amazon is monthly pay)
for the first 24 paychecks for 60k non salary pay.

Source: offers.

------
abalashov
I have been self-employed since age 22, but from 18 to 22 I had 6 jobs at 5
companies in 3.5 years. I started out in tech support at a small local ISP,
hopped, came back as a sysadmin, then became primary sysadmin, and really cut
my early career teeth there (and am ever grateful for the experience!). But it
was a small college-town operation that ran on student-type labour; at my
peak, I think I topped out at $16/hr. The next job hop was a move to Atlanta,
where I commanded a $55k salary (about double my peak hourly earnings at
NEGIA) and ultimately reached $70k at 21 — not terrible for a 21 year-old in
Atlanta in 2007.

It's easy to place big gains when moving up from entry level, especially if
you entered into an employment bargain that presumed being paid vastly below
market for doing fairly sophisticated and diverse things in exchange for
having a diamond-in-the-rough skill set. I learned more at the small company
than I have ever learned in my life, and more quickly, and was able to
effectively parlay that into big-boy corporate jobs in Atlanta.

In one sense, this validates the thesis. But it's important to remember that
it does plateau. When moving up from entry level and early-career pay, you're
flying close to the ground and it feels like you're going fast. The ground
rushes past you, and it's intoxicating. Minimum-wage checkout clerk to full-
time salaried assistant store manager? Zoom!

The momentum doesn't last. Had I continued in W-2 employment, I would have
likely hit low to low-mid $100k by now, after ten years, but no more.

------
syntaxing
I wish these studies would incorporate the value of benefits. Benefits are a
huge reason (especially for people with families) why people stay at jobs.
Imagine having a job for $60K with four weeks of vacation and good 401K
matching compared with $80k with one week vacation and horrible health
insurance.

~~~
apexalpha
I wonder if it would be the same in Europe since most benefits are mandatory
and at big companies salaries and yearly increase are negotiated collectively
between employees and employers.

But if this proofs anything you should keep your options open and, even if you
don't want to change companies, use outside offers as ammo for your yearly
negotiation.

------
conanbatt
The single most important change that should happen to change things like this
is having salaries being public.

The day that happens, salaries statistics will very likely take a huge jump.

~~~
a_lifters_life
I believe they already are? Glassdoor

~~~
conanbatt
Hardly. Glassdoor shows that people really want to consume that information,
but the one glassdoor provides has bias, is insufficient, and lacks precision.

------
hdi
That's been my experience as well.

But it didn't happen because I was on the lookout for a fat paycheck. It
happened because the companies I worked at the time couldn't provide the
stimulation, technical capabilities, working environment and personal
development I was looking for.

Then I realised very few of them do where I am, so now I do 6-12 month
contracts and it's helped with saving a bit of my soul and getting paid a bit
more.

------
usmannk
I'm reluctant to apply this mindset to the tech, or at least SV tech,
industry. While it's common practice to hop jobs every 2-5 years, it seems to
be more for new or different opportunities (Different sized company, a new
domain, new technical challenges, etc.) than it is for a more competitive
offer. Internal promotion, both in compensation and position, seems to be the
relative norm.

~~~
angersock
_> Internal promotion, both in compensation and position, seems to be the
relative norm._

My experience and observation suggests exactly the opposite. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

------
richardknop
This is unfortunately true in our industry, from my experience. The only way
to make substantial raise for top performers is to have a new job offer with
+20-30%. Otherwise the HR department will give you X reasons why you asking
for such big raise is inappropriate.

This is part of free market economy, companies are trying to minimize their
costs and maximize profits so it makes sense not to waste money giving big
raises. This is why you need to play the free market game and force their
hand.

Once you get a much better competing offer, your current employer will
probably offer to match it. But at that time why stay anyways if you had to
force them to consider a substantial raise by going for interviews and getting
a better offer?

Also, there is an old advice which says to never accept a counter offer.

I do think there is a ceiling for this approach. You can probably do it 4-5
times and get to quite high salary (150-200k). After that this tactic does not
work as well anymore so staying at one place for a long time and earning an
internal promotion becomes better option.

------
EADGBE
When I started in this industry, my father, who also works in this industry
gave me this advice. Something along the lines of "if you want a raise, go
somewhere else, that's the only way to move up quickly". He was right, three
times in the last 4-5 years.

------
k__
Sure, I mean who gives you more than a 20% raise?

When you change jobs, you can renegotiate everything. More money, more
holidays, less hours, etc.

Last time I changed jobs, I worked less hours and got 20% more money, my last
boss would have laughed at me if I wanted this.

~~~
Sleeep
Um... I've gotten a 20%+ raise before, I also have several weeks more vacation
than I started with. If you prove yourself as valuable and ask for
compensation to match, your employer may be more flexible than you realize.
You can renegotiate your current employment at any time as well.

You have to actually prove yourself as valuable first though.

------
castratikron
I'm not sure why companies prefer that someone leave and take all of their
institutional knowledge with them, then hire someone new at a higher wage that
would have kept the first person at the company. They are not taking into
account the value of knowledge. If your domain knowledge increases 20% within
a year, then you should be getting a 20% raise.

With the elimination of pensions, the only vesting time that most people have
is for their 401k, which is usually only a couple of years. Not sure what
employers are expecting to happen or why they're surprised when their hot
college grad employees decide to leave for a big pay bump.

------
known
Employees != IT Employees

------
Pogba666
went thru many comments here and despite lots disagreement between people, I
believe one thing people will all agree with is: in this game, individuals are
much weaker than companies and much more vulnerable regardless.

company can never go bankrupt because of loosing one super star, but a worker
and his/her family can be in a bad situation if company decides to do
something to him/her. So the whatever negotiation between company and works
can never be a fair game at any point.

------
sergers
Depending on size of company, there may be some distinct departments.

I stayed on the same team, 6 years, but multiple promotions. Only 20+k in
salary different. Jumped teams twice in next 3 years, +20k.

Now I have doubled my salary I started with. Been with company 10 years. The
only thing I regret is not jumping teams earliar.. a few years max. Great
learning experience through different roles on my original department... But
didn't help me financially

------
pm24601
Thoughts:

1\. A company can be underpaying for the employee's experience but paying
correctly for the skills the company needs.

2\. It should not be a bad thing for an employee to leave a company to advance
their career - the current company may not offer the needed opportunities.

3\. Managers should be proactively asking the question of the employee: "Let's
talk about recognizing when you SHOULD move to a new position at XYZ or some
place else?"

------
methodin
What makes the most sense to me is making moves early on in your career then
hopefully finding a company/CEO/team you really like and settle in for a
while. You aren't going to learn some of the valuable lessons if you swap jobs
too often as you will never really become an expert at what you're doing.

Certainly valid you are underpaid and don't particularly enjoy your job.

~~~
mseebach
Not bad advice, but be careful to calibrate "like" correctly, which can be
difficult. In the land of the blind, a one-eyed man is king. It's easy to get
comfortable in a group of nice people that just aren't very good developers,
and believe that you're becoming an expert at something, and then by the time
you get slapped in the face by reality, it might be too late. Switching jobs
every few years ensures exposure to a much wider range of people, skills and
group dynamics.

Every time I've switched jobs, I've had my eyes opened to some things that we
did at my previous jobs that might not have been helpful.

------
georgeburdell
How much does this apply to senior employees? I have a PhD, started out at the
"Senior" level as a new grad, and I just recently got my first promotion to
"Staff" Engineer, which represents roughly the 85th-90th percentile for pay in
my company.

------
johnward
I often refer to this gem on salary negotiation:
[http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-
negotiation/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/)

------
trentmb
I just hit my two year mark. Guess it's time to start job hunting.

My current employer 401k contributions vest at 3.5 years- would I be out of
line insisting that my 'next' employer make a one time contribution equal to
what I sacrifice?

~~~
peripitea
Absolutely not, and I think you should. They may still say no, but it can be a
valuable tool in your salary negotiation. I've done this before when switching
jobs -- "you want me to start in March, but I have $X in options that vest in
July; to switch I would need you to add $X to my signing bonus". Both times
they've agreed to do so. Recruiters seem to generally have more leeway with
signing bonuses than salaries. (And of course on top of this you should be
aggressively negotiating your salary etc.)

------
g9yuayon
As I often told my friends, go to a company like Netflix. Netflix actually
tries very hard to make money not a concern to its employees, and they do hell
of a great job.

------
blazespin
This might be corrupted because people who switch are willing to move
geographically.

------
mcguire
" _It’s a fact that employees are underpaid._ "

Forbes?

------
pc86
(2014)

------
needlessly
I don't get people who say, "Well I would never hire someone who has never
worked more than 5 years at a single place!!!"

I would never have increased my from $68k to $115k in 5 years.I probably
would've been somewhere at like $80k right now at best if I was didn't switch
jobs twice.

If it means some hiring manager is going say some snarky opinion, then yes
I'll take my extra money.

~~~
mikekchar
On the other hand, look at it from a hiring manager's perspective: people who
have stayed in a job long enough to see how things go wrong are _also_ less
expensive. I'll be honest, if I'm looking at a CV for someone with 10 years of
experience and they have changed jobs every year or two, I will suspect that
they are missing some pretty important experience as a senior developer.

Everybody makes serious mistakes that don't show themselves for years. Those
who don't stick around usually assume that any mistakes they find in their new
company were due to incompetence. Similarly, people who have not stuck around
for years have never been instrumental in doing difficult culture
transformations, or fixing long term architectural problems.

It's truly unfortunate that the industry rewards those who don't tackle these
kinds of difficult problems. The legacy is an industry where the problems are
ubiquitous: flavour of the month architecture, my way or the highway bullying,
either process of the month or "pragmatic" (aka ad hoc) processes, absolute
disrespect for coworkers (I'm the only one with an ounce of sense).

Yep, I'm happy to take the discount on the developer who is humble, knows how
to navigate political mine fields, knows how to recover from mistakes, knows
how to refine techniques and processes, etc, etc. I'm also happy to take the
odd "rock star" if they are actually good enough, but I'd never build an
entire team of them (willingly).

~~~
sokoloff
> if I'm looking at a CV for someone with 10 years of experience and they have
> changed jobs every year or two, I will suspect that they are missing some
> pretty important experience as a senior developer.

I call this the "one year of experience, ten times" phenomenon.

~~~
UK-AL
Ironically I find the developers, who have stayed at company for 10 years the
worst for this. They've been maintaining the same product, for similar
requests for the past years. Doing the exact same thing.

Moving to different employers means you get a wider experience of different
technologies.

~~~
restalis
There may also be a big project that takes years of development, with each
completed part serving as a prerequisite for a new one. It's hard to judge
one's career from a face value unless the CV explicitly states details like "X
years sunk in product maintenance".

------
anon4728
There's this management mythology that:

\- Worker bees will stay because they're clueless and don't have the
initiative to keep moving.

\- Pressure from on high to fudge performance reviews downwards to "save the
company money." (At where my mom worked, a middle manager blanket reduced all
subordinate reviews down because BS: "people are overly generous.")

If you want least turnover / most morale / most productivity, pick people whom
can grow the most and grow them until they no longer can keep up or find
something else. Develop people (training, mentoring, promotions, bonuses,
raises, perks, etc.), don't just consume them as static widgets to fill a
hole.

------
vacri
> _Jessica Derkis started her career earning $8 per hour ($16,640 annual
> salary) as the YMCA’s marketing manager. Over 10 years, she’s changed
> employers five times to ultimately earn $72,000 per year at her most recent
> marketing position._

Amazing, thanks Forbes. I never knew that if you started out on minimum wage
and then moved into a mundane professional role, you'd earn considerably more!

~~~
cakedoggie
Why the hostility? Are people not allowed to talk about events happening now?

I mean, do you make a similar comment on all the articles you read?

"Oh thanks a lot ENCODE for telling us that 80 percent of the genome had a
biochemical function. I didn't know we were going to repeat stuff that
everybody new in 2012."??

~~~
vacri
The hostility is because it's _ridiculously obvious_ that moving from a
minimum-wage job to a run-of-the-mill professional job is going to net you an
incredible percentage increase in salary, especially in the US where the
minimum wage is a joke.

And where is the 'events happening now' in what I said? Job-hopping? Not
exactly a new thing.

> _I mean, do you make a similar comment on all the articles you read?_

So... I can't be rhetorical to call out bad behaviour, but it's okay for you
to do so. Nice work.

~~~
jpatokal
The person was working as a marketing manager in her first job, so it was a "a
run-of-the-mill professional job" from day one, and she's still in marketing,
only with 5x more salary.

Then again, her first job was at YMCA, and non-profits tend to have low
salaries.

~~~
vacri
Since when is an $8/hour professional job 'run-of-the-mill'? Are you seriously
saying that that is a typical example of a professional?

------
mustafabisic1
Also a great way to increase your salary is to Take the lowest pay possible at
first. Here is what I mean [https://medium.com/the-mission/take-the-lowest-
pay-possible-...](https://medium.com/the-mission/take-the-lowest-pay-possible-
af59a0d4bd7a) And this is not my article and I don't have any affiliations
with it :)

~~~
Djvacto
Correct me if I'm wrong (I read the article, but am a little confused), but
shouldn't the message of that article be "Take the lower pay, assuming that
also corresponds with a higher level of [Job Satisfaction, Growth Potential,
Work-Life Balance, etc]"?

I don't have much experience, but my initial instinct is that some of that
article is not universally true.

~~~
mustafabisic1
I agree that you should choose your job wisely. The author claims that it's
best to be open to a lower pay in the first 10 years of your career. It's
similar to everything actually. You gain your reference experiences and build
up your image within your world and then expect higher pay. Nobody will give
it to you just like that.

