

Year Five - lkrubner
http://blog.jayfields.com/2013/04/year-five.html

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nhashem
For software engineers, it's extremely likely that whatever company you
started working for in Year 1 will be completely different in Year 5. Google
wasn't the same company in 1999 that it was in 2004, which wasn't the same
company that it was in 2009, which won't be the same company that it will be
in 2014. Leadership, culture, technology, teams, products -- these all can
change, and you may not be happy with that outcome of that change.

Likewise, unless you're a completely static individual, your own preferences
will change. You might not mind a completely chaotic startup environment at
age 26, but you might be over it by age 31. So given all that, over a five
year period, what's the likelihood that you and and your company will evolve
into being as good of a fit in Year 1 as it was in Year 5? Pretty damn
unlikely.

Given this paradigm, the two errors most companies make are:

1) Treating this phenomenon as "disloyalty." For a lot of companies, it's not
acceptable to say, "the company went one direction, I went another, let's stop
dating and just be friends." Good companies understand this happens, treat
their former employees like _alumni,_ and a lot of good things can come out of
"just being friends" (e.g. that former employee recommending to others they
work at the company). Bad companies act butthurt and whine that Generation X/Y
are a bunch of ungrateful 'job hoppers.'

2) Having stupid policies for those that continue to be a good fit through
Year 5 and beyond. If a former employee ever says of a previous employer, "I
liked it there, I just got a way bigger salary increase at my new company" or
"I liked it there, but after I was promoted to Senior Engineer, the only real
way to advance was through management/business," then that company lost a
software engineer over something completely controllable. I see so many
companies locking themselves into 2.7% annual cost of living raises for their
current employees while they offer 20% more to new hires, and then complain
"it's so hard to find good engineers." Well, no shit.

The OP has essentially managed to set parameters with his current employer
where he's essentially in control on how his job will evolves, so he can
ensure it evolves organically with his preferences, which is probably why he
likes working there so much. But in lieu of having every engineer negotiate
such a framework with their employers, it'd probably be a lot more effective
for those employers to recognize that this "Year 5" phenomenon happens, and
adjust accordingly (ie. not holding it against employees who no longer feel
like a good fit, and compensating those who continue to be a good fit and
produce)

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louthy
I think this is the same for all roles and isn't related to programmers or
programming (IMHO). If you want your pay to rise at a faster rate you move.

If you do it too often then your CV looks bad, if you don't do it enough then
your pay tends to rise slower than you would like.

3-4 years is that middle ground.

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michaelochurch
The average job in general lasts 4.4 years at this point, so this isn't just
an issue for programmers. That's just the nature of things. At most jobs, you
hit a ceiling pretty quickly, or you get grunt work that doesn't help your
career, or you get laid off, or the people you like move away, something else
happens that makes it a good idea to roll the dice again.

Typically, I can figure out in 6 months whether a job is going to lead to real
membership in the effort and, if not, then I look for something else. Why
shouldn't I? It's my life. Why am I some sociopathic "job hopper" for leaving?

Also, this guy seems pretty solid in general, but this...

 _There's always someone willing to pay you more than you're worth. After
several years with a company it's likely that they're going to pay you what
you're worth, but not what some other company thinks you're worth._

is total loser thinking. No, actually. The company you're with is going to pay
you _less_ than you're worth, knowing that most people are averse to change.
That's also why landlords almost always raise rent in the first year.

To get anything even close to what you're worth (a half-decent programmer is
worth $500k+ easily) you need to job hop to a degree that (a) most people
can't stand, and (b) those who can stand it are unusual enough that regular
society thinks there is something wrong with them.

Actually, the only way workers could get what they are actually worth would be
for society to implement a basic income-- then no one would need to work, and
companies would pay something resembling the actual value of the work
furnished to them-- but I wouldn't hold my breath for that.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
>>There's always someone willing to pay you more than you're worth. After
several years with a company it's likely that they're going to pay you what
you're worth, but not what some other company thinks you're worth.

>is total loser thinking. No, actually.

When I finally quit my employee-day-job, I told them I'd do more work for them
as a consultant. At 2x my previous hourly rate. They said yes, and I've gotten
that rate several times since then as well from unrelated companies.

>a half-decent programmer is worth $500k+ easily

I would argue about what "half-decent" means, but generally think you're right
that $500k for a _good_ programmer would be a reasonable value. And by good I
mean close to the 10x-25x end of the spectrum. [1]

I would describe someone in the 2-5x range as "half-decent" myself, and
someone in that range is probably worth closer to $160k/year, tops. Someone at
the top end of the productivity scale is faster, yes, but also produces better
code, can debug that code more quickly, and can solve some problems that a
"half-decent" programmer will simply never complete adequately.

[1] [http://www.devtopics.com/programmer-productivity-the-
tenfini...](http://www.devtopics.com/programmer-productivity-the-tenfinity-
factor/)

~~~
nostrademons
"I'd do more work for them as a consultant. At 2x my previous hourly rate."

Well, this is largely because overhead for employee positions can often run 2x
salary. As an employee, you get benefits, health insurance, perks, job
security (of sorts), and you're not "on the clock" the whole time - most
companies do not expect that employees are actively working 8 hours a day,
they expect they're getting 4-5 hours of focused useful work and the rest is
lunch breaks, watercooler talk, impromptu discussions, administrative stuff
like e-mail, and idle diversions like Hacker News and Facebook. As a
consultant, you're only supposed to bill for the time you're _actively_
working, and all the rest is your own time. It's quite possible that as a
consultant with 2x your hourly rate you're costing the company less than you
did as an employee.

When I've had friends that have converted from consultant to employee at the
same company, the rule of thumb is 1000x hourly for annual salary, even though
there're 2000 hours in a work-year. The difference is because of overhead, and
the differing accounting for time.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
Very true. But under the new regime, I was able to also work on my own
personal projects the rest of the time. A big win for me.

~~~
nostrademons
Then it's not really that they were paying you less than you were worth, it's
that there was an alternate business arrangement that was a win-win for
everybody. :-)

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SeoxyS
I'm pretty sure that it's not completely random. 4-year vesting schedules are
common in the industry amongst companies that provide stock or stock options
as compensation. Considering that that form of compensation ends on your
fourth anniversary, it would make sense that engineers would at that point
move on.

~~~
eliben
Isn't this only true for companies that provide a grant at signing and no
other grants afterwards?

------
jluxenberg
_I'm surprised that more companies don't pay (the employees they want to keep)
what their "flawless market value" would be_

The only company I'm aware of that does this (paying "flawless market value")
is Netflix.

~~~
michaelochurch
How do they assess it?

I'm not convinced that anyone can even measure what an individual programmer
is worth, especially because project/person fit is always a contributing
factor but huge at the upper levels. So I'm curious as to how they would do
this.

------
ttrreeww
Enjoy your below average salary with thinking like that...

~~~
tikhonj
I'm guessing that a programmer at one of the top proprietary trading firms
does not get a below-average salary.

~~~
ttrreeww
Depends, if others are making 5m a year while he is making 500k...

Of course, by his thinking, the others are being paid above their worth! While
he is by definition correctly compensated!

