
67% of workers earning over $100k see themselves quitting in the next 6 months - DoreenMichele
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/19/67percent-of-workers-earning-over-100000-plan-to-quit-in-the-next-6-months.html
======
icotyl
The last time I made my case for a promotion, the director said "Sorry, no
promotions right now, there's nothing I can do."

A couple months later, a coworker gets a job offer elsewhere and threatens to
leave, and he's immediately promoted. He happens to be the least experienced
engineer, and now he's leading the team.

This sends everybody scrambling for job offers, since that's what gets
rewarded. Half the engineers have left already, and with any luck, I'll be
next out the door.

~~~
AllegedAlec
As Dilbert said: the company policy is to reward disloyalty.

[http://dilbert.com/strip/1997-06-29](http://dilbert.com/strip/1997-06-29)

~~~
tinus_hn
Dilbert was such a great strip before the writer went all in on politics

~~~
Shaanie
His strips don't seem to contain much politics, though?

~~~
paulddraper
I don't necessarily share the commenter's criticism, but one of the characters
was made "officially gay" in response to current political events.

[http://dilbert.com/strip/2014-02-07](http://dilbert.com/strip/2014-02-07)

[http://dilbert.com/strip/2014-02-08](http://dilbert.com/strip/2014-02-08)

~~~
brokenmachine
That second one was very weird.

------
physcab
I think there’s also something else at play. Most of my friends also don’t
believe for a second that a corporation has their best interests at heart.
It’s not just promotions — it’s work life balance, it’s top-down decision
making and political empire building, re-orgs every 4-6 months. The growth at
all costs style of building companies chews employees up and spits them out.

~~~
stephengillie
If a salaried worker doesn't get overtime, then every hour they work past 40
reduces their effective pay by 2.5%.

~~~
siquick
Can you explain the logic behind this?

~~~
guu
If you work overtime in a week and aren’t paid for it then you have taken a
pay cut for that week.

You worked more hours but made the same amount of money. Therefore the amount
you made per hour is lower than your usual amount.

~~~
Bombthecat
Bingo. That's what a lot of people don't get with there high salaries. On
paper they sound amazing.

But if you calculate hours worked and salaries. More often then not. There
promotion for example made them earn less and less per hour.

But as someone wrote on hackernews: if your company is using the emotional
path they don't have anything to offer on the rational level.

tl;DR: calculate your income per hour, not monthly salary!

~~~
toomuchtodo
> if your company is using the emotional path they don't have anything to
> offer on the rational level.

Stealing this for my “don’t work for a startup” site!

~~~
Bombthecat
It is not from me either :)

------
aresant
Fixed: “67% of workers earning over $100k see themselves “changing jobs for
better pay due to strong labor market” in the next 6 months.”

~~~
Pfhreak
This is totally it. Engineers, in particular understand that they have
options, they are highly in demand, and they have __strong __negotiating
positions when they interview.

It's not uncommon for an engineer to get a boost of 10-25% when changing
companies, and other than prepping for the grueling interview process, there
really isn't a downside to feeling out what's out there.

Especially when your compensation isn't keeping up with the median due to
lackluster annual increases.

~~~
hellogoodbyeeee
Does this work for your entire career or does it only work until you hit some
kind of "salary cap" for your local market? I've had a few good raises in a
short period of time, but I'm scared I can realistically only get one or two
more in before I reach the top of the market.

~~~
sk1pper
I’ve hit that in my market - or a soft cap, at least, meaning if I want to
earn more, I’m going to have to make 2-3x as much effort than I did before.

Through working my ass off, and pretty great luck, (working on lots of side
projects didn’t hurt either), I recently did some looking just to feel the
market out and I’m making like $20k more than I “should” be.

Part of this is because my company is based out of Bethesda, MD and I live in
Denver, CO - cost of living differences. My company pays really well which
allows them to compete with Silicon Valley and everywhere else for the best
engineers.

No complaints here. I’m making double what I thought I would be making at this
point in my career.

Anyway, yes, anecdotally, it caps out, but I also like to think that if I
really hustled, I could keep raising it. But I’m pretty happy where I’m at and
would rather spend my free time doing stuff other than coding and hustling
right now.

~~~
molsongolden
Were your feelers all in Denver? Denver seems to have surprisingly low
salaries, especially when accounting for the housing boom of the past 5-6
years.

~~~
iopuy
What would be considered surprisingly low? A level 3 software engineer making
$100K? Genuinely curious.

~~~
azemetre
That seems absurdly low. For reference, I work for a major ISP and we pay our
new college grads between $85-110K across our regions of operations.

~~~
Latteland
110k nationwide is pretty good. In seattle we pay at least 120k for new
college hires.

------
jameslk
One of the reasons I choose contracting over employment (I've been contracting
for 4.5 years and was employed prior) is that moving from contract to contract
is expected and usually comes with an income increase. If I were to change
jobs as frequently as I change contracts, this would look bad on my resume.

This makes the contract market much more liquid than the job market, which has
the consequence of arriving at my current valuation quicker.

~~~
mandeepj
Consulting is like building a castle and giving it away to someone else to
rule and enjoy the fruits. I refuse to do it now. With each new contract, you
start from scratch, again. After a while, you'll realize - you are just
hitting a reset switch on your career, with each new contract that you pick
up.

I'm glad I share my thoughts with this very smart man -
[https://youtu.be/Gk-9Fd2mEnI?t=908](https://youtu.be/Gk-9Fd2mEnI?t=908)

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
Is there any room for income growth in contracting outside of building an
agency?

A couple of years ago, my career seemed to be dead in the water, so I thought
about contracting. It's not clear to me what changed, but in the course of a
year, I got two huge promotions and am now making double. I'm currently
interviewing for a huge step up that might bump my salary another 25% more.

I imagine if I went the contracting route, short term, I could've made much
more money per hour, since I am/was pretty productive. But I /really/ doubt
I'd get to where I am now on an annual basis (especially considering benefits
and vacation). I also seems to have a clear path toward being a VP, CTO
doesn't seem unrealstic in a few years, if I want to continue down the career
path (I don't, rather start my own business, but nice to have a solid backup).

I know there's a lot of money to be made running an agency, but I don't think
that's a natural skillset for the vast majority of engineers. Also it seems
like a really competitive space.

I'd love to hear more from some contractors about this.

~~~
blihp
Contracting is effectively going mercenary. It's straight up 'I've got the
expertise, you've got money... let's get together for a while.' There's no
career path for you as far as the client is concerned but the pay is better.
The understanding going in is that you will likely not be together for more
than about a year. In addition to the bump in pay, since you know it's not a
long-term situation, you typically get to avoid much of the office politics
and organizational dysfunction and focus on what you're there to do.

It's not an ideal terminal position: either you use it as a stepping stone to
something better (i.e. starting your own agency, getting into consulting,
starting some other kind of business etc.) or you use it as a way to test
drive companies without committing (i.e. If you like the place, convert to an
employee if it's offered. If not, move on ASAP)

There are people who do contracting for the same company indefinitely. That's
usually a career mistake as you're not getting valuable new experiences which
will prepare you for something better and your hourly rate will get stuck in
the mud. After 2-3 years it will have often been better to have converted to
an employee. (i.e. more relaxed relationship, benefits/paid time off,
stock/bonus programs etc.) Many larger companies _love_ it when contractors
stay long term: for them it's all of the upside of having an employee with
none of the downside. (it's also legally problematic but that doesn't stop
most of them)

------
booleandilemma
It’s simply the best way to get a pay raise if you’re a programmer in today’s
job market. Want to make 30-50k more? Quit your job and find another.

You could ask your current manager for that kind of pay raise but if they do
give you the increase, they’re going to expect you to work harder to “earn”
it.

Of course, all this money being thrown around attracts frauds, and that’s why
we have absurd technical interviews.

~~~
commandlinefan
> Quit your job and find another.

Not necessarily in that order, though...

------
Maro
I've had 3 jobs in the past 6 years (5 in 10). So I spend about 2 years/gig on
average. Reasons:

1\. Learning. I find that I learn 80-90% of what I will learn at a company in
the first 12-18 months. Staying at a job for too long is risky because I will
miss out on new things happening in my area. In the long term this is the most
important, because this is what will get me more money, and make me
competitive/valuable. Example: it's hard for people in traditional data roles
to do ML/DL without switching jobs.

2\. I prefer dynamic equilibrium over static equilibrium. I very strongly
prefer being able to go out and get a good job at any time over having a "cozy
job". The only way to be good at getting a job is having practice at it.

3\. Impact. I find that I deliver most of my impact on the job in the first 2
years, after that it levels off and I tend to do more maintenance stuff of all
the things I've built (both systems and teams).

4\. More money. This is almost a side-effect of 1-3. But also in itself: if I
want to get more money in my current job, it's partially up to me, but it's
also up to my manager and the company/culture. If I get unlucky with my
manager/company, I'm not going to get it. Also, sometimes I hit a glass
ceiling, and there's simply nowhere to go (eg. I'm already the Head/Director
whatever, but the company isn't that successful and/or/but pay levels aren't
that high). On the other hand, switching jobs is entirely up to me: if I am
good at what I do and have a good track record to prove it, practice
interviewing to be good at it, and play the numbers game (apply to lots of
companies), I will succeed at finding a higher paying job.

Overall:

1\. I have to be ruthless and watch out for my own interests. Nobody else
will. The world doesn't owe me anything, I have to go out, work for it, make
smart decisions and then pluck the rewards myself.

2\. I don't think this is unfair towards companies. If a company/org is badly
run, people leaving is valuable feedback. Assuming a company can hire good new
people, those will deliver new impact, bring new knowledge, etc.

Having said that, there are companies where you can work and make more and
more money (usually stock options play a big role here), and keep learn more
and more (because the company is growing like crazy). These are the startups
that are run well and are rocket ships (the FAANGs were like this).

~~~
notyouravgdoge
Does switching jobs so often raise any red flags when you interview?

~~~
commandlinefan
Not OP, but - I graduated in '95 and started working right away. Back then,
the market and demand for developers was insane, and I ended up switching jobs
- for 10-20% more every time - four times in four years. Then, right around
2000, the market crashed and I started interviewing again, and suddenly I had
a really tough time finding anything: they brought up my short tenure at all
my past jobs very negatively. I did finally find something, and have slowed
down my job-hopping a bit (averaging 5 years per job now), but the "four jobs
in four years, back in the late 90's" thing came up just last year during an
interview - for a job that I didn't end up getting. In short - be careful,
they're watching.

~~~
bootsz
Personally I feel like an employer who is overly concerned with something like
that (especially when it was so long ago) is a huge red flag.

People evaluate others based on their own experiences and ideas of success. If
they feel that staying at one job for a long time is the utmost important
factor above all else, what does that tell me about the kind of person they
are and the kind of company they’re running? It tells me it’s probably a run
of the mill mediocrity-factory full of people mostly just punching the clock
every day. I’ve ignored these signs in the past and learned the hard way.

IMO places that have strong engineering cultures that are run by smart and
driven people understand that your technical skill is what matters and aren’t
going to hold it against you if you’ve hopped jobs to maintain your career
growth, because they’ve most likely done the same thing themselves. Ambition
recognizes ambition, and ambitious people HATE to stagnate.

------
filmgirlcw
In the past, giant stock grants could convince people to stay sans a
raise/promotion, but with vesting periods increasing or being staggered and an
understandable uncertainty in sustained stock growth (you could do really well
or not, depending on when your shares are purchased), it’s totally
understandable that someone would leave for another company to get a pay raise
or promotion.

Boomerang employment is super common too (you don’t get your promotion/level
bump so you go to competitor X who hires you at s higher level and salary. You
do your 2 years and then return to company Y at a higher level/better salary,
in less time than it would take to earn a promotion using the system.).

I don’t know if this is sustainable — but I don’t fault anyone who does this
or thinks about it. And because it’s so common, it’s not like it looks bad on
a resume, because loyalty isn’t valued the same way anyway.

------
captain_perl
"The reason people are quitting today is because the labor market is so
competitive that the only way they can get a significant increase in income is
by quitting and going to another job."

Well, no, the opposite is true. Employees have to quit because companies
stubbornly refuse to be competitive on salary.

The reason for that is mismanagement - managers and HR would be personally
criticized for "being soft" if they offered raises, regardless of the benefits
to the company of doing so.

~~~
kraftman
I've seen this so much now that I feel like I must be missing a piece of the
puzzle.

You work for a company for X amount of time, and you gain domain knowledge of
the company, and general industry experience. Some other company looks at your
CV, and without knowing you, and probably without caring about your specific
company domain knowledge, decides you are worth say 20% more than you are
earning. You then go to your current company, and say 'my general skills are
worth 20% more on the market, you know how well I work, and you know I have
extra domain knowledge specific to this role, I would like more money' \- and
the company refuses.

They then spend time and money finding someone with similar skills to what you
have, but without your domain knowledge, and probably at a similar amount you
asked for since that's the market rate.

How is it not in the companies best interests to just keep you on and give you
a raise? How do they justify all that wasted time and money every time? Do
they just not measure it?

~~~
gjm11
Suppose salaries are going up, and the average person at FooCorp could get 10%
more by changing jobs. You are more underpaid than most; you establish that
you could get 20% more by moving, and say to your manager at FooCorp that
you'd like a 20% pay rise.

Suppose they say yes. What happens next: other people hear about it and go to
their managers saying "I think I'm underpaid; give me a 20% pay rise". If the
answer is yes, then FooCorp is paying 20% more in salaries for the same work
as before. If the answer is no, then those people have a concrete motivation
to go and interview elsewhere, and probably a bunch of them will then leave
even if they get counteroffers at FooCorp once they've demonstrated that they
could earn more elsewhere.

Suppose they say no. What happens next: most likely you leave for that better-
paid job; others at FooCorp hear about this and understand that they aren't
going to get paid more at FooCorp even with a job offer in hand. Some of them
will decide to move, but maybe fewer than in the first scenario (because they
haven't had the specific motivating experience of asking for more money and
getting turned down, and because they don't feel like they have the lower-risk
option of interviewing elsewhere, getting a counteroffer, and thus _being paid
more without having to move jobs_ ). And the ones who don't move can go on
being paid less.

It's not obvious to me that the first of those scenarios is better for FooCorp
than the second, if all they care about is maximizing their profits.

~~~
kraftman
In the first case, if you think the person deserves the extra money and give
it to them, you keep your best people. If other staff ask for the same, you
can either give it to them if you think they deserve it, or risk losing them
to elsewhere. The end result is you always keep your best staff, and
potentially lose your worst staff.

The second scenario, you always keep your worst staff and you potentially lose
your best staff.

~~~
tomp
Maybe from company perspective, there’s no such thing as “10x engineers”, but
only “1.02x engineers” at most.

------
GreeniFi
My sister works in the advertising industry, where it seems few people spend
more than 2-3 years [edit] in a firm before moving on. The big advertising
firms tend to be in public ownership and and have apparently systemised the
creation of advertising and marketing content, such that it doesn’t matter who
is in the job or how long they are there for. I was pretty surprised by that -
managers are well paid and grind creativity out of younger employees. Maybe I
shouldn’t be surprised - maybe those are just well run businesses, but I’m
helluva glad I don’t work for one!

~~~
shostack
The average tenure of someone, particularly a junior person, at an ad or media
agency is around 1.5 years.

The reality is that there's always opportunities at other agencies where
they'll pay you a bit more than you're currently making (which is still less
than paying someone there already more) and give you an inflated title.

Due in part to the nature of the industry, tasks are made to not be dependent
on a given individual, and people float around because agency teams are never
at equilibrium. They either have too few clients for the team and need to let
people go, or too many/too big clients and need to staff up.

Source: worked agency side for most of my career and managed a bunch of
people. I'm brand side now at a company with a significant percentage of
employees at or over the 10yr mark. There's a reason I left the agency world.

------
samspenc
"Quitting" -> quitting to move to another job. But this isn't clear until
three paragraphs into the article.

~~~
dlhavema
Right.. kinda clickbaity?

One way to try to get a raise at a current job that I've done in the past is
get an interview and see if you can get offers for a higher paid job and then
use that as leverage for a counter offer.

I know there are already many threads about taking counter offers, but its not
always a bad thing... in my experience, the manager just needed better
justification for the higher ups. It was too large a company for him to just
give me a bump.

------
mrhappyunhappy
I was working in e-commerce when my company for acquired by a larger one.
Since I was 100% remote and had zero face time with anyone I was one of the
people to get canned. Actually, most of our company got canned.

At first I was furious and a bit depressed and that's when I said enough is
enough, I will never let anyone else in a position over me, I'm done being an
employee, I will never be let go ever again.

A year later I was working insane hours as a freelancer, just learning the
ropes with enough pay to get by on. Fast forward to year 3 and I am a
consultant making more than I did at the ecommerce company. I am my own boss.
I can fire my clients instead of the other way around. Pay is great, hours are
insanely good - I work just a couple of hours per week with occasional bursts
of power sessions exceeding 3-4 hours. I get to spend most of my time with my
kid.

The downside is having to always have business lined up but I have been
fortunate to never really have any downtime. I'm slowly building out my
marketing channels and once everything is in place I can pick and choose
really carefully who I work with. Oh, and if I want a raise I just increase my
weekly retainer.

~~~
lurcio
"Fast forward to year 3..." May I ask: are you e-commerce consulting? Your
comment suggests that you repositioned yourself purposefully, rather than the
outcome simply eventuated. If so, was this based on a discovery you made in
the market or client demand while you were freelancing? Did this result in you
"niching down" from a broader "catch all" offering as a freelancer? Are you
clients higher ticket/larger SME's compared to freelancing (which is often
outsourced agency work)?

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
I started as a freelance designer, then quickly niched down to UX designer and
then again to CRO consultant. I only work with companies that will see direct
ROI impact from my work. While I still design UIs, the whole process starts
with discovery and an audit. It's a data based approach with no guessing
involved. The process involves understanding customer pain points, their
language and behavior. Clients vary in size from 10 person teams to larger
e-commerce operations with maybe 30-40 employees. I do all of the work myself
and expect full cooperation from the client or we don't go forward. I've
definitely made every mistake in the book but I've learned a lot along the
way. I'm sure there are consultants 2 tiers ahead of me though with
productized services or just products. My ultimate goal is to have a product
(who's isn't, right).

To answer your first question, I do consult in e-commerce, but not limited to
it (though that may be a good idea). Most of my leads come through dribbble or
LinkedIn. The client typically expects grunt work but after my initial email
and call, they are quickly educated on my process and most see clearly that
the way they thought of approaching their problems is backwards.

~~~
pacomerh
"The client typically expects grunt work but after my initial email and call,
they are quickly educated "

That's the part that makes me hesitate jumping into consulting. How do you
advertise yourself in a way that you can avoid the wrong clients, which seems
you'll always gonna get.

------
nunobrito
The only way to get a proper raise is changing companies.

Promotions tend to take years and are often more political than technical.
I've seen often that a company prefers to hire someone techie from the outside
rather than promoting internally. It is just the way it is.

When the already hired engineers see this kind of thing, it is not surprising
that morale gets low and churn gets high.

------
wordpressdev
Most companies in my part of the world opt to hire a new employee on higher
salary than given raise to existing person. Can't fathom the logic.

------
hateful
It's so sad this is the case, but it is the case. In a job I've always gotten
1.5-3% raises, and 10% for promotions. Switching jobs I've gotten up to a 75%
increase each time.

------
rogerdickey
So the implication is that 2/3 of workers at this pay level will turn over
2x/year? Why publish these “survey” results when that is obviously false?

~~~
Gustomaximus
The wording is workers 'who see themself quitting'. The reality is 1 or 2 in 5
(my guess) will actually do it. People always say this but fewer are willing
to fight the inertia

------
eecsninja
So what happens when you stay at your current job because you've just stopped
caring for any of the software work out there? It's easier just to stay with
your current company than to have to incur the costs of changing to a new
environment and having to learn a new way of doing things.

I'm not sure if at this point in my career, it really makes a difference in
the big picture of my life to get a 20% raise.

------
Gravityloss
A cynic would assume it's just companies that produce low value, have low
value (compared to cost) employees but are VC money pumped. This cycle will
continue until there's an economic down turn and a large portion of those
companies will go bankrupt.

~~~
menor
Nailed it ;)

------
austincheney
The big problem I have is that it’s rare to find a combination of strong
leadership with fast stressful work in the corporate world. Historically
either my work is slow and easy or my leadership is extremely weak.

The only times I have seen strong leadership and fast work is in
agency/consultancy work and military.

~~~
Pfhreak
I throw in strong peers as my third axis. One point in my career I've had
strong leadership, strong peers, and challenging fast work.

It was amazing. Then we re-org'd, and I'm still looking for that combination
somewhere.

------
baby23
Having worked at a large corporation I can say that I found the reward system
completely random. It’s really difficult, if your not part of the team to
figure out how much work and value people are adding. It makes it ripe for
gaming the system.

------
Dowwie
Don't accept the counter offer.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
care to explain why?

~~~
ddebernardy
I'm not the OP, but can offer two reasons:

1\. You'll be labeled as disloyal. Which is euphemism for: someone at HR is
already looking into replacing you.

2\. Whatever problems prompted you to want to go away are still there.

Similarly, never offer a counter-offer as a manager. Because:

1\. You don't want to send the message to others that it's a valid way to get
a raise.

2\. Whatever problems prompted them to want to go away are still there.

There reportedly are exceptions when things work out on both sides of the
fence. But in almost 20 years, I've yet to see one first hand.

~~~
commandlinefan
> someone at HR is already looking into replacing you.

Well, not that I disagree that accepting a counter offer is a bad idea, I'm
pretty sure that someone at HR is always looking into replacing you, all the
time.

~~~
Latteland
I don't think that hr is looking to replace people, because it's way too hard
to hire. At my company every new hire looks like a magical lucky serendipitous
event. Hiring is just that hard. HR grudlingly matches people's other offers.
They are too exhausted to look for someone to replace their existing
employees.

------
dawhizkid
I feel like I've reached a point where I've moved jobs a little too often (avg
1.5 yrs last 3 jobs)

~~~
Latteland
2 years seems to be the minimum, and it's almost how linked in computes it
that matters. In west cost tech companies, 2 years raises no red flags. so if
you can get your average to that, or at a minimum your current job is at least
2 years no one will car.

