Because companies have imperfect reading on worker productivity, and are also trying to balance other priorities when determining pay, high output workers are consistently underpaid, called Wage Compression (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_compression)
After getting a 2% raise in the last cycle, and knowing that my granted options were going to be worthless (a factor which is under-discussed in popular news articles), I decided that it was a particularly opportune time to jump. Like many, I was not particularly unhappy, so I had not been motivated to go through the effort for search process before.
When I got an offer, my employer quickly matched it (suggesting that I really was worth that much to them) but burning a bridge with the contact you got me the new job was not worth simply reaching parity in my current one, so they lost me. If they had preemptively gotten a few percentage points closer before I sunk effort into interviewing, I probably would not have started looking.
Accepting a match is bad, it rewards underpaying. Also, the employer might have just offered you the match to buy themselves time to look for someone cheaper.
> Also, the employer might have just offered you the match to buy themselves time to look for someone cheaper.
This is "common knowledge" but I've never seen it in real life before.
I've accepted counter offers, as has my wife and quite a few former colleagues. And none of these people were ever let go from that position.
The logic doesn't even makes sense. In large companies, the hiring manager doesn't care about salaries beyond if it fits in the budget. And firing people is a huge pain in the ass. If the company wanted to replace a person with someone cheaper, letting them go would be the best strategy. That would give the company two weeks to get documentation of the job function in place and start interviewing.
I can see this kind of vindictive behavior a very small company, where decisions are made on the whims of a mercurial owner. But you're equally as likely to get fired from a place like this for any number of mundane offenses which the owner finds insulting.
I propagate it for game theory reasons. If people can be counteroffered easily there is no incentive for employers to give raises of their own accord, they can just wait until you have another offer in hand.
I was told by a manager that HR has a difficult time figuring out salary levels for tech skills. And that an in-hand offer is very effective at convincing them, and upper management to approve a larger than normal pay increase. Worst case, they might just tell me to take it.
I suspect some of "stay is bad" also comes from the employer end... even if you match an offer, is that employee likely to keep looking? They were unhappy enough to start looking - was compensation the only thing that bothered them? Probably not. May as well let them leave on their own, on good terms, and get a replacement ASAP.
If that were the case, would they stay for the money when they already have the open door and the money at the new place? Most of the best employee's I've worked with interview regularly. If I managed such employees, I wouldn't consider it abnormal for them to do so.
I expect my employees to look and interview. But, at some point, if somebody keeps coming back for counters, maybe it's time to let them go peacefully? Not sure, never had somebody do that to me, but have seen it on other teams.
I think the idea is less that they will fire you at the first opportunity, and more that if firings need to happen, you'll be on the top of the firing list.
It just happened to me, slightly different situation than a "counter offer" but it was clear upon being let go that I was retained with a short term mindset, despite what I was pitched before deciding on whether or not to sign.
"Mercurial" owners (let's just say psychopathic, it's not really a secret anymore is it?) will respect you for ruthlessly calling their BS, and then will want to make it a life's mission to teach you to heal. So they will not fire you, just make your life hell in a very subtle but undeniable way.
They'll fire you on the spot when finally you heal though.
My employer counteroffered 15% higher or so. I was kinda unhappy there, but they also promised that I would be in a position to change things, and that has so far (2 years later) been true.
I don’t know, I don’t necessarily think my employer is perfect, but they’re certainly good to me.
This also gives the current employer the benefit of doing nothing preemptively. It puts the onus on the employee to go through all this extra effort just to get the match. I'm sure plenty of employees take it too but shouldn't.
While true, changing jobs has a cost for the employee too. Its a cost benefit analysis. I often find being in a new job provides opportunity to quickly level up by using learnings from prior jobs. But sometimes the new job is just different enough that you're investing more time in learning the ropes and making connections than getting ahead, and it can be a while before you can start to have an impact. If you're already capable and empowered at the current place (or better yet, promoted by the counter offer), it can be mutually beneficial to stay beyond monetary reasons.
Not only job security. I live just a few miles from the campus of the company I work for. I could walk to work if I really needed to. The benefits are fantastic. It is a fortune 100 company that will be around for the long term. It has amazing work life balance. I like all of my coworkers and have never had a bad, or even mediocre boss. Etc.
I tend to agree that too much accepting matches incentivizes companies to get lazy about making sure they are paying market value. However, I don't think most employees are thinking about changing the culture—they're just being mercenary and trying to get the best job they can.
When I left my last job the owner asked about a counter offer. My new wage was so much higher that I told him even if he offered me that much I would resent him for valuing me that highly and intentionally underpaying me.
Couldn’t you, as a strategy, just dress real nice once every six months and then every twelve or so, you just go to your boss and say you received an offer at 10% increased salary or something? They “match” that and you both feel like you made a good deal.
It is not fraud, it is just lying. Lying is not illegal.
Withholding the truth is also lying, by omission. In that sense, your employer is already lying to you by not compensating you according to your actual value. I realize it’s a bit of a stretch but there’s something there.
You’re right, and I didn’t know that. Fascinating law. I blame being ESL.
However, I wonder if it actually is fraud. Intent matters. The intention isn’t to defraud the employer, but rather to short-circuit the whole process of job skipping for a correct wage. So it’s actually not an unfair gain, and that is precisely why I think it’s not even immoral in this case.
Is it more immoral than withholding fair wages because your employees are unwilling to change jobs? It is fighting fire with fire to be sure, but it somehow seems justified in this context.
A person in my life changed jobs to a worse location and then changed back. Pay rise of like 20% and a better position (senior doctor). That is just not justifiable. Same employer, same hospital, same ward.
I would argue that yes, it is more immoral. The employee that you are paying is being paid under a willing buyer/willing seller standard.
It's fair to argue whether it is moral to pay people less than what you think they are worth to you. That is questioning the morality of capitalism.
In contrast, "fighting fire with fire" is justifying lying. Maybe the ends justify the means in specific cases, but I believe that generally people and particularly ethicists agree that lying for personal gain is generally considered immoral/unethical. Of course, there are cases where lying is considered justified and the moral thing to do e.g. saying no if a Nazi asks you if you're hiding Jews in your attic. But in that case, you're lying not so much for personal gain but to help others.
While from a purely theoretical point of view your perspective is admirable, once you enter the real world you realize that they, we, all want to sometimes hear certain words to justify certain actions, either in their own eyes or those of the company they work for.
For example, your manager would like to give you a raise, but company policy or unwritten "this is how it works" rules say that a raise of more than 15% can only be given when the employee has received an offer from another company. But they don't actually want to see the offer, they just want you to say it, just as your partner wants you to say "I love you" to him or her from time to time to continue receiving the benefits you have been looking forward to maintaining or increasing.
this is well understood from an traditional economics perspective. accepting salary matches is a strategy that rewards employers who underpay you. not accepting matches punishes employers who underpay you. If you want to have your employer have the right incentives, you should not reward them for underpaying you
I have a very cynical view about this sort of behavior. I feel that managers do this to make the employee lose the offer at hand and then are put on the "first to be fired" list.
Once a decision has been made to move and you inform your employer that you are leaving, it is best to leave. Even if the counter offer is higher than the new offer. It just shows how dis-honest your manager is.
It is a common view that the manager is inherently dishonest and the IC is inherently hardworking, capable and honest, which aligns with the historically common concept of "people = good" and "elite = bad."
I have been both an IC and a manager, and when I was an IC I saw managers as vampires who fed on the blood of ICs. When I was a manager, I saw ICs as a bunch of whiny, entitled cogs. I am exaggerating for illustrative purposes.
Perhaps the manager had not been informed before of the IC's financial demands; perhaps the manager could not offer a raise before the employee had received an outside offer because of company policies; perhaps the manager did not see the IC as particularly capable, but this offer from a solid company made them think they had made a mistake; or perhaps they thought it was a bluff, and now they are paying for the all-in.
It is good to be cynical and to have one's own self-interest in mind. But the caricature that sees management as incompetent, corrupt or vindictive is all too easy to present to an audience that is well receptive to these appeals. I have met many like those, sure, but I have also met many ICs for whom I could use the same adjectives.
Thanks for sharing your experience from the other side! I agree and would add that my manager gave me the impression that I was really talking to two entities: The manager (who really doesn’t want to do a candidate search) and Corporate.
People too often blame the former for constraints from the latter.
I've had several chances to switch positions for considerably more than I make now (40-50% on my current six figures), each time I've turned them down.
I am happy and content where I am at, the job has good work life balance, it is for a good cause, and I make enough to provide comfortably for me and my family, this employer is also very stable so I don't have to worry about economic uncertainty.
All in all I could make more money but I have found a level of contment and peace and it has allowed me to persue other hobbies outside of tech and serve in my local community.
So maybe I am stupid and leaving money on the table, but I have found peace for now. For those who feel they need to make more I tell them congratulations that is awesome for you. But for now I am happy.
As a 60+ geezer who is back to doing what made me happy in this business before career climbing and salary chasing took me into a bad place or two, let me commend you on realizing that contentment is what life is really all about. I truly wish I had understood this at 30 rather than finally and fully realizing it at 60.
Perhaps you can strike a balance between the 2 options of the spectrum?
I would not imagine still working in the company where I started as a Junior (and only receiving a 5% raise per year).
In the same time, after jumping a few times, my salary increased 7x and I found a place where I felt really happy working, too. (before starting my own business)
To be fair, if someone stays a junior for enough time that their hypothetical alternate universe self is able to increase comp by 7x, the problem isn't merely a matter of job hopping vs not job hopping.
In fact, it seems most of these comp growth discussions tend to fall into black-and-white thinking, when in reality there are several factors that can hugely impact comp, e.g. from retention promos and diagonal internal transfers, to company tiers (see Gergely Orosz on trimodal distribution), to international remote or full blown migration.
The thing about happiness vs job hopping risks is also a false dichotomy. You can be one of those 500k+/yr staff eng at FAANGs and do 9-5 days working on interesting problems. You could be miserable in that exact same position. The spectrum is wide and how different people feel about things varies a lot too.
> That's simply not an option in most areas of the world.
That is an option in 2nd-3rd world countries, even to a greater extent than in the US (because the market is global and local jobs usually don't pay well).
E.g. my compensation (I'm from an ex-USSR country) increased by a factor of 13 after two job changes (for the same amount of work).
Lots of European countries have very compressed salary scales throughout the society. As a consequence 2x is common, 3x perhaps still achievable, but 4x already very hard and not possible for most people.
Theoretically, except 20k would be low for an internship (I had 30k trainee position in about 2007), and 140k is squarely in CTO territory if you're not in FAANG or somesuch top tier place.
My assumption was 40k start/80k senior/120k exceptional/160k moonshot.
As always, as a disclaimer Europe is a big place. I had Central-Northern parts in mind.
My first salary as developer in a Central European country, while still in college, was 400 Euro. Now, 15 years later I’m making 8k, a 20-fold increase. Of course my country underwent significant economic development during that period
Inflation makes up a portion of that nominal increase. I started my career in 1993. From USD inflation alone, my salary would have more than doubled to now just to stay at purchasing power parity.
If I’d have been paid in INR over my career, a 7x multiple over that time would leave me less than 2% better off than when I started.
Most software devs start at 2.5k in NL unless you're severely lowballing yourself. You're lucky to get 6k before becoming a principal SE or architect. 10k is a salary you're more likely to hit self-employed.
4x is possible, but in that short of a timeframe, you're more likely moving from a Dutch company to an international one and becoming employable across the entire globe. Which given US salaries would give the ability to 5-10x anyway.
Seriously 2.5k? Like the equivalent of 2500 US dollars (since Euros are at near 1:1 parity right now)? I looked it up and apparently the average salary in the Netherlands is 36.5k Euros. How is a principal SE making 20% of the average salary in the Netherlands?
I know some countries use decimals like commas are used in the US, so maybe that's actually 25000 and 60000, which would make more sense.
They meant per month. In NL we tend to discuss salaries per month. This excludes the mandatory "vacantion bonus", which is about a months salary. 2500 * 13 makes 32500 a year. So not far off from your figures.
That still seems incredibly low for a software dev salary, or indeed any salary (the minimum wage in Australia is not far off the equivalent of 15€ an hour, which is pretty close to 2500€ a month isn't it? Accepted the cost of living is higher here but I don't remember things being that cheap in that part of the world when I was there a few years back).
Do you ever think back and wonder if maybe you did make the right decision?
After factoring in ~10x 15-20% jumps over 25 years, compounding interest and more maybe that translates to being 100% financially secure 10 years sooner. I didn't do the math but you get the idea. Basically is a temporary bad place or 2 for a year worth gaining 10 years of not having to work unless you wanted to?
I wrote this a few weeks ago, but the answer is always "what are you optimizing for?"
If you hate work for whatever reason and you want out of the system faster? Yes, stack dollars and exit. That may require sacrifice and "bad gigs" but that could enable the exit.
If you find your work engaging and rewarding? Why would you optimize to exit? (Queue the lawyers/doctors/etc that work into their 80s for the love of it.) Tech has brutal ageism but the point still stands -- figure out what you are optimizing for, and your answer will be clear.
(OP sounds like they have found the secret that money isn't everything, and happiness is rewarding and they are optimizing for that.)
> If you find your work engaging and rewarding? Why would you optimize to exit?
To mitigate the risk of losing the ability to earn income. You can always choose not to work or work a lower paying job after you attain financial security.
I feel like the risks are especially high of losing ability to earn sufficient income between ages 50 to 65 such that you are able to afford healthcare expenses to carry you until you qualify for Medicare (at age 65). So my goal is to earn everything I need to before then.
I think to the OP's point, if you are truly engaged in your work (and assuming your work carries healthcare benefits), it becomes a somewhat moot point to optimize for healthcare costs at some future age. I think your point on losing healthcare is predicated on the idea that you want to work less in the future (presumably in some job that doesn't carry those benefits).
I think part of the issue is that society in general (and tech in particular) are extremely productivity-focused which trains you to be future-biased in your thinking. Everything becomes about preparing for the next milestone rather than, as the OP advocated, optimizing for the present period of time.
> your point on losing healthcare is predicated on the idea that you want to work less in the future
No, it is predicated on the increasing probabilities of illness and injuries as one ages, as well as age discrimination resulting in more difficulty obtaining a job with sufficient pay and health insurance benefits.
To the OP's point, if you've optimized for engaging work and if you don't want to work less, you're already in a job that you want to continue working in. Your point is that you want to job-hop to get more money to pay for benefits...that you already have?
I've shared this elsewhere, but it's like the story from Oliver Burkeman's book about the NYC businessman chastising a Mexican fisherman for spending too much time on the beach drinking wine with friends instead of growing his fishing business. When the fisherman asked, "And once I have all that money from growing my business, then what should I do?" and the businessman said, "Well, then you can spend your time drinking wine on the beach with your friends."
> Your point is that you want to job-hop to get more money to pay for benefits...that you already have?
No. The goal is to be able to secure desired resources without needing a job, i.e. having enough wealth to not have to work in the event that I am unable or unwilling to work.
What am I supposed to do if my wife or I get hit with a cancer diagnosis in mid 50s?
The fisherman and NYC businessman story is missing the volatility component of life. Hence the utility of markets for futures trading, etc.
Fair enough, amend my first response to say it’s predicated on the desire for the option to work less in the future. The same concept applies, though. You’re optimizing for some future event while the OP was optimizing for something different. That is somewhat different than your post about the goal being "sufficient pay and health insurance benefits." Those you'd most likely already have without job hopping, even if your spouse gets sick.
There's probably something to be said about the systemic causes that create an environment where even tech workers are so financial insecure as to foster that mindset, but that’s a digression.
The older I get the more aware I become of the risk that I can't possibly assume the ability to make a living the way I currently do will stay around indefinitely. I could become disabled at any time, or the world or industry could change.
If you look across different professions in different countries across different times, you see that a profession that is very lucrative in one time period often isn't anymore in a subsequent one, or in another nearby society. These things come and go. There was a time when becoming an airline pilot or factory worker were lucrative options in the USA.
There are a lot of good reasons to guess that the good times will continue for the time being, but you're kidding yourself if you think it's a certainty.
This is a very serious thought. If I was _totally_ happy in my position and you told me you could increase my salary 50%, there is no way I would stay, simply based on the "wait up, this means in the long run this salary increase will take X years off my time waiting for retirement".
There is no substitute for "I can retire at 60 instead of 70".
Of course, OP said he was making 6 figures (an insane amount of money away from my position) so perhaps they are already planning to retire at 55...
It depends, what was my life like for those 60 years vs the 70?
I'd love to be financially independent, but I don't want to spend 60yrs working on projects I hate always chasing the next promotion with only the promise of retiring early. It really depends on whether that increase comes at the expense of my work life balance or not
work/life balance and work satisfaction! I find a lot of the best compensation is bundled with unhealthy organizations with dysfunctional internal relationships. I’ve worked enough on projects and tasks I don’t believe in (or flat-out disagree with) that I know it’s not worth the stress and dissatisfaction.
Of course, if you don’t find dysfunction stressful, or you don’t really enjoy working in your industry regardless, it’s worth it to max the comp. But I’m happiest with a balance of flexible work, passionate coworkers, little bureaucracy, and slightly less money than I could otherwise make.
> It really depends on whether that increase comes at the expense of my work life balance or not
Right, but the point is that apples to apples comparison you'll make a lot more money switching. There's no cost to work life balance or interesting projects or anything. It's 20%+ of your salary every year in exchange for dealing with interviewing and switching companies. It's a pretty fantastic deal.
What about "retirement" makes you think it's the better state? All the "free time to do whatever you want?" A lot of retirees I've known ended up getting bored and going back to work, even if only part-time.
Six figures isn't that insane for engineers in the US. Especially not for Silicon Valley. And $100k doesn't really go as far as it used to in the US, especially if you have a modest home, car, two dogs, a significant other, and you live somewhat near a city with tech jobs.
I'm making a decent amount over $100k, my wife also makes good money, and yet we're way, way behind on where we're supposed to be in savings for a comfortable retirement at 67 (which is apparently 3x your annual salary at the age of 40), despite me boiling the frog in increasing how much we save for it the past few years (around 20% of my paycheck now, up from 8% a few years ago).
I think the idea is to squeeze as much as you can now,... so that you can also leave something to your kids and possibly have a decent lifestyle when you're old.
They are all valid points, unfortunately.
Let's just remember some people have really bad really underpaid 40 years of work.
> Let's just remember some people have really bad really underpaid 40 years of work.
Good point.
> I think the idea is to squeeze as much as you can now,...
I really, really don't think that's healthy. Be unhappy now so you can be happy later is misguided, because you need to work on being happy now to be happy later: putting it off is self-destructive. I recommend "The Power of Having Fun" by Dave Crenshaw.
Jobs that pay more generally are worse than jobs that pay less? Given similar positions and industry, i.e. not jumping from being an engineer to sales. I've had better bosses and more respect at places that paid more.
For me it is a balance. I had opportunities to earn significantly more (~3x) but it was work I despised and I'm not sure I would be happy right now if I was retired but my life's work felt like a net negative. On the flip side, I had opportunities to work in organizations doing fascinating and world-changing work for low salary (~1/4x) and I've learned that I am not happy when money is a constant source of stress.
Maximizing happiness for me means finding the right balance between having a positive impact and making enough money. (I'm not sure I've struck the right balance, but that is my mental model.)
Is 10x 20% jumps actually remotely reasonable? After you've swapped enough times it starts to look worrisome on resumes since people see no single role for more than 2 years. And the most effective jumps are when you also get title increases, but that stops working quite quickly and companies tend to prefer promoting to leadership positions rather than external hires leveling up.
1.2^10 is also a 620% pay increase. From my starting comp this would put me at like 1.5M, which is an extremely unusual pay level.
I didn't gather that from your first comment, only that you didn't believe the distribution could increase by 620%. Which, when you start in the top ~7% of individual income in the US, is probably true for income (wealth as a whole is another matter).[0]
The key thing I'm trying to get across here is that it isn't the hopping that brings this sort of increase, it is simply working at one of the very high paying companies in a high paying region. Zero hops, one hop, and seven hops can all get you there. Telling people to focus on the seven hops is misleading, IMO.
My experience is it was way worth it at the start of my career, so by now I've brought my compensation "anchor" up with those bumps. Now I prioritize other things.
I think it depends on market conditions. If we do see a recession/depression over the next few years I'm curious to see how many of these "you're leaving money on the table" threads keep popping up on HN...
Well, that is obvious. But after the downturn, it remains to be seen if there will be yet another boom period that resembles the past decade for tech, or the dot-com bubble before it. Software is here to stay, and it will take more transformations to bring down the demand for software engineers.
We should recognize that there are universal needs for geezers and kids: we want some form of personal security. For a lot, that means home ownership.
Let’s look at data: If the geezer is 60 and paid off their loan today, they got it 30 years ago (in 1992). The median price of single family freestanding homes in LA county in 1992 was 221k. Today it’s 860k. In 1992 the median household income was 32k and in 2020 (last available data point) it’s 76k.
I understand that “the geezers” have something to teach us with a perspective of a lifetime and the needs all humans share.
At the same time, we have to acknowledge and account for the economics having totally changed.
I often listen to people older than me to learn of what they regret and what they do not. It's the closest thing to time-travel I have.
That the geezer may have paid off their mortgage can also be very enlightening. It was in fact a thought experiment involving a home loan that cemented my decision to stay in the Bay Area back in the 90's.
He makes a valid point though. Money is uninteresting when you have it, but very important if you don't. Those are two extremes, but the point stands for the shades of gray in between.
And the idea that software engineers make a lot of money and are debt free at 60 is mostly an American thing. Around here it's easy to pay more than a months net salary in mortgage payments (you need two incomes), and that's after you've payed three years salary as obligatory cash deposit.
A LOT of people I know in their 60s are still paying off their mortgage because when they get enough equity they either buy a bigger house or do cash out refinancing.
Having a paid off mortgage doesn't let you live for free - taxes+ utilities+insurance+repairs exceed what I'm paying on my mortgage (I have no escrow).
As a side comment to this I always think that a lot of developers are very lucky that we can ride the balance of making good money AND have a comfortable life. But a lot of the time the promise of even more money makes us make choices that unbalance this and we end up working for companies we don't like, building things we don't support, living in cities we don't care about. In a way not reaping the real rewards of our luck. I guess it's related to the hedonic treadmill (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill)?
There's something unique about being in a position where you could exchange that extra money for other great comforts and STILL have plenty to do alright.
I've worked at multiple companies that independently developed jokey sayings along the lines of "The quickest way to get promoted is to work somewhere else for a few years and come back"
with the exception of gaining experience working elsewhere, i just don't understand the reason why a company doesn't promote internally and pay higher, over hiring anew (even if such hires turned out to be an ex-employee).
But it's true for all anecdotal evidence and circumstances i can see. It just boggles the mind why such simple inefficiencies don't get fixed up.
In practice, it is very easy to justify a bigger salary for a new hire and very difficult to get upper management acceptance for consistent/real salary raises for internal people.
It makes no sense at all, but that’s what I experience being a somewhat new manager in a tech company.
This is exactly right, when I left my manager was pretty clear about this with me. I think he valued me as much as any potential external offer, but he has to sit in front of a compensation committee whose very goal is to regress everybody to the mean.
I think it's because they feel it's a choice between doing it once for the new hire or N times for all the existing employees. The latter is very difficult to do.
Sure, but at the same time, I don't think the maths make sense, given hiring costs, training and morale costs. It makes me really sad to conclude that it boils down to the fact that these are usually different cost centres and managers from one side won't bother generating costs to the other cost centres.
But yeah, it is a waste of time trying to find sense in the management folks.
It's the exact reason, and a natural one. Why hurt yourself with increasing wage of existing, content employees rather than using it to expand the workforce with newer, (assuming) more powerful candidates?
If you play any management games with employees you'll do it too, granted that the game doesn't have any employee happiness or resign when underpaid. But yeah, game and real world situation is not the same.
On what do you base that assumption of a new candidate being necessarily better? They could also be worse and, in most instances, will have a period of sub-productive time when they have to learn the ropes.
I just describing what higher managements are possibly thinking, and I guess I'm kinda on track for it since usually management prefer to hire new people than promoting existing employees.
In game though, usually better stats hiring are only appear mid-late game, or are expensive to hire early on that you can only get one mid-late game. Don't compare with real life though.
I've only managed about 50 people, and only in the UK, but in my experience it's extremely rare for someone to explicitly say to their manager that they want more money / a promotion.
I guess a lot of people are under the impression greed is something to be ashamed of, or feel it would be confrontational or ungrateful to ask for more money?
I've always been up front with money and/or promotions discussion. But, I've also always told my manager that I'm not a squeaky wheel. I treat it like a sports player, we talk once/year, agree, and then I'm good until next year (with some caveats like an offer doubling my salary showing up).
When I managed people in a big company, it was closer to your experience. When I was one of the owners in a small startup, people had no problem asking for more. I think it's a different type of person who works in bigco vs. small startup.
I have a backlog of nearly 1000 questions my manager literally doesn't have time to answer. Those 1000 are directly related to work tasks. I don't need the answers as I'm capable of working around the uncertainty -- also, half the questions wouldn't have concrete answers and would only provide different uncertainty
In that environment, choosing to spend my manager's time discussing my pay and not these work questions, would feel to me that I'm narcissistically putting myself ahead of my team and organization.
How in the hell am I supposed to balance my needs against the companies when we're all stressed the duck out and just trying to make it work well enough that we can have a relaxing dinner with our families.
Shouldn't it be obvious I would accept a pay raise? Another classic example of management demanding one behavior and rewarding another.
Every company that approached me with raises without my asking got A LOT more of my time than those who seemed to want me to open negotiations.
The company is looking out for itself, but it seems to me that you're not looking out for yourself. You're expecting the company, which is already over-extended, to look out for you as well.
In your situation (like many out there) it's a lot easier for you to get a new job with a much higher pay rate than to ask your current employer for that raise. They might be paying low on purpose, or they might just not realize the situation they've put themselves in. Either way, you're being undervalued and it's causing you stress which is not helping your productivity.
Sure, everyone would always accept a pay raise. But not everyone feels they deserve one at the moment, and the company can't know who feels that way until they're told.
Because a lot of good people are comfortable and complacent and won't play this game, and continue to get underpaid.
And why wouldn't they? If you're happy with your work and your team and your boss, why gamble it away by going somewhere else? A bit more money is great, but may not be worth it if the new job sucks.
When I first started in tech it was always money money money, didn't care who I worked for or the work environment was like, all I saw was dollar signs. I did this from the time I started my career about 5 years ago until I joined my current job.
With my current job I know I could go elsewhere and make $50k more, but at what cost? It really started to make me consider, how much is remote work worth to me, how much is a laid back environment worth to me. For now even though I could be making more, the value in having the control over my time like I do not is worth more than what companies have been offering.
yeah if “money money money” had been your plan for 5 years it’s totally feasible to land at a senior role at this stage. while the market definitely has shifted very drastically in the recent few months, at beginning of the year 500k for a senior that interviews well is not an uncommon offer.
I'm certainly more in this camp of not looking to switch, but in the past I've moved jobs in the 2-3 year range. Right now, I feel that I'm well compensated, at a place that offers great work-life balance, is tackling interesting problems, and just lets me do my job. Part of the reason I'm not interested in leaving is that this is the first place that really has all four of those things, and given it took me 9-ish years to land at a place like this, there's going to have to be a significant jump in salary (like an extra 25-35%) to get me to move because of factors beyond my bottom line take home pay.
That being said, I've "hopped" jobs earlier in my career, but more in the 2-3 year window rather than 6-8 months. I can only imagine what I'd be making if I was still at the first two places I worked. It'd probably be 2/3rds of what I'm making now at best.
I don't think it's as clear as "always stay" or "always hop". At a certain point in your career, hopping may be looked at as a liability, and staying in a position that's a bad fit or doesn't advance your career doesn't make sense. Ultimately a job and your career is more about numbers, and you've got to optimize for more than just that. Understand when you are leaving money on the table, and when you've got something worth sticking around for.
You're not stupid for that, you've found contentment in your life that those who perpetually seek for more may never find. They may even pay for it later when the stress impacts their health and well-being.
I was in a similar place and changed jobs for 2x the pay. It has been a bit challenging and I do miss the culture/people/role at my previous place, but let’s see where this goes. I’m hopeful still!
I feel I can always go back if it gets really bad.
Ultimately 2x pay, say from 200 to 400, makes a huge difference to me, mainly with the current house prices.
You clearly need to balance all of the benefits of a job - compensation is just one aspect.
If you're looking for work-life balance, it doesn't make much sense to jump ship for a 50% increase in comp if your work week goes from an easy 6 hours/4 days per week to 12 hours days and working on weekends.
It might make sense to make such a jump if you’re young and early in your career. Young people have fewer commitments and they also have more energy, so they can handle those types of workloads more easily. And due to the way compounding (interest) works, choosing to make more money earlier in life is not such a bad idea.
The other benefit is that early in one’s career, a high salary can be a good boost of self esteem, and set one up for even higher salaries later.
I can relate. I have turned down many roles that would pay me more and in turn would have me taking on excess responsibilities (More than a single person can take on).
Any company that allows me to define my own WLB and pursue my passions outside of it brings me tranquility. I cannot imagine the stress is worth it. It eats at you faster than you think. Then you'll be looking for another job two years later.
I know the received wisdom is to always keep moving, and never accept counter-offers. You've found happiness in staying in place. I've done both at different times. I think everybody has to make judgments based on where they are and what they're looking for, and a general rule might not apply in every case.
To broadly generalize, when I was younger I think it made more sense to move up by switching companies, and I'm not sure I really valued a stable team with great coworkers as much as I should have. When you find a really good team, that's worth staying in place.
I am happy and content where I am at
...
I have found a level of contment and peace
...
I have found peace for now
...
But for now I am happy.
Tell us you're happy and have found contentment and peace one more time just so we know you really mean it.
Joking aside, there's nothing wrong with staying with a job you like if it doesn't quite pay market, but take care not to end up getting underpaid to the point you don't have a cushion. Curious if by "several chances to switch positions" you just mean recruiters have reached out to you though, because that's not quite the same thing.
It can even be the other way round. The cheapest company will try to extract as much work from you as possible, while the company with tons of money will hire more employees so you get better work-life balance.
In my experience, the companies that paid least were also the most stressful, and the ones who paid most were a mixed bag.
This highlights really important factor in all discussions; employees can be in a very different life situation which naturally leads to different priorities. Congratulations on yours!
Give employees a decent worklife balance and guaranteed access to a home, most jobhopping would stop and the headhunter population would be an order of magnitude smaller.
That's really what's happening here, people job hopping to keep the status quo of the previous generation(s).
I'm curious about why this matter?
As an european, owning is not a goal in my life. I would love to, but for now, I still want flexibility on my wereabouts.
Owning gives you a different kind of flexibility. Renting is usually pretty restrictive in the US, and if you want to put up a fence for your dog, grow a garden, paint your walls, or whatever you usually can't.
Hey, please don't be a jerk on HN, no matter how annoying you find another comment. There are always annoying things floating around—not getting reactive to them is key to having this place function as intended.
Edit: it looks like you've unfortunately been making a habit of posting unsubstantive comments and otherwise breaking the site guidelines, and we've had to ask you more than once not to do this. Can you please fix this? I don't want to ban you, but that's what we'll end up having to do if this keeps up.
No doubt about it, switching jobs will definitely get you that immediate compensation increase. But you have to consider all the baggage that a new job comes with. First of all, its a reset on context. You'll start at 0, and you'll have to learn, wind up, and prove yourself again. And its a reset on your team, you'll get a completely new set of people you'll have to learn to work and communicate with. Experience is also valuable, if you're somewhere for a longer period of time, the more things you've likely started and finished. Often times people who switch a lot, end up getting stuck at a terminal level unable to advance further, because they can't go beyond the surface level to really deeply think about problems and see the solutions through.
Ultimately I feel like switching jobs isn't entirely about money, but more so driven by a lack of growth and fulfillment in your role.
This fear of the unknown is the reason many people stay at their company, even when they know they're being underpaid. It's the reason companies are so slow to increase compensation for loyal employees.
IMHO, once you're in the new role, it's not so scary. Sure it's a risk, but life is all about calculated risks. Of course you should do your homework. Talk to people from the company, check out their Glassdoor, get some references from the potential employer, etc. My experience is that you can find good jobs and be paid well. I just make my expectations about work-life balance clear in the interviews. I won't work longer than 40 hours a week. If the expectation is more, I'm not your man. My priority is my kids, not work. Sure it has lost me some potential roles, but I've also had some great roles.
I've switched for higher salary 3 times. First two job switches were great #3 was an absolute disaster. Now I'm definitely more cautious about switching jobs.
No, 'zuhayeer is right. For anything beyond the Scrum rent-a-jobs you should be outgrowing in your first five years, being liked is more important than being highly effective. You can be great at your job, but if you fail the politics, the best-case scenario is that you get assigned more grunt work. I don't like that it's that way, but enough people are inherently corrupt that castle intrigue outweighs competence. So, every time you change jobs, you're rolling the dice on a new set of strangers.
That doesn't mean, of course, that changing jobs is never the right move. Clearly, it often is. If there's a re-org and you're not promoted, you should probably leave--you're going to have to prove yourself to a new set of people either way, so you might as well get paid for it.
As for the comp increases, this is tricky. If you're increasing your salary but not getting promoted, you're actually putting yourself first in line for layoffs in the future, because HR people are going to see you as anomalously expensive within a band. This strategy can pay off, especially because 99% of corporates are too dumb to assess performance correctly and so often you can improve your perceived performance by becoming more expensive--but you have to be sure you're getting yourself a better position in the pecking order, or otherwise you're going to end up in a career cul-de-sac.
Also, the job-hopper stigma is real. It isn't right, but if you have three or more jobs under 18 months, people are going to assume you keep getting fired for performance or, worse yet, keep getting fired because you're disabled... neither of which they'll touch.
The last thing I want to advocate for is corporate loyalty. They aren't loyal to you, and so you should always have your eyes open and be ready to take everything that isn't nailed down (within the confines of enforceable law, of course) and jump. However, you have to be strategic. Remember that these people are a lot more skilled at screwing people like you than you are at screwing them--that's just how capitalism works.
> Honestly, most software jobs, even "tough" ones with lots of domain knowledge are bullshit.
I agree 100% with this. If you are staying long time at a big corporation, you will eventually become an expert in the domain you are covering. Now, sure you can transfer some experiences to other companies, but mostly the domain knowledge is worthless outside of the company.
It's because the increasing returns to experience cut both ways and cancel each other out. You're more valuable to your employer after you've been there a while, but the job is more valuable to you too, for the same reasons (assuming things are going well for both parties).
You'd be a lot more reluctant to risk switching to a higher paying job from a job you've only been at happily for a month than one you've been at happily for several years.
It's a good idea to stay in the same industry, then a lot of the domain knowledge will still be relevant. I think you can do very well if you are a developer and you are a domain expert in a particular industry.
Its not that hard, the core of programming is the code-debug-fix cycle.
That is something people can take with them no matter the job or the programming language. Pretty much comes down to where to put break point, print statements or how to setup traceable logging when working in multi services landscape.
Knowing this cycle well you're already effective when starting a new job.
Want to start even faster keep your tools limited and multi platform, lets just say your tool set shouldn't exceed a post-it note using big letter sizes.
The rest is domain knowledge something you will pick up over the coming months or years from colleagues and be paying attention at refinements and other meetings.
This is mostly about software development jobs/gigs, if you're doing some STEM job in nuclear reactor design etc then yeah thats a completely different story.
That's a gift and a curse. After working on the same things for years, not being responsible for any of the current woes can be very freeing. My MO early in my career was going into new positions and cleaning up the mess. It seems most like greenfield, but I like cleaning :)
You’re absolutely right, there are uncertain challenges associated with the benefit. But I am reminded of this study where people were challenged to flip a coin when making life decisions, and the random half who took the leap were (more often) happy with their call:
> First of all, its a reset on context. You'll start at 0, and you'll have to learn, wind up, and prove yourself again. And its a reset on your team, you'll get a completely new set of people you'll have to learn to work and communicate with.
I just went through this starting earlier this year, and it didn't go well. It was a smaller company and even though I knew all the parts of the tech stack ahead of time, there were just a ton of undocumented internal-isms and an overall culture of "just stay in your lane and iterate on JIRA tickets. None of us really understand how to build the software, can deploy the software, or can trace inputs and outputs throughout the system." Among other tedium.
I only lasted four months before moving on, but the new job is working out a lot better and pays more, too. So I agree it's not risk-free, but at the end of the day, I was getting paid the whole time and ended up somewhere better, so it worked out anyway.
Lots of people switch jobs to get a promotion. Its much easier to find a company that will give you a higher level and boomerang back into your original job than fight for a promotion.
For any company loyalists, this should be crystal clear - by and large, your sticking with a single company is costing you some serious salary increases. For all the talk, and verbal recognition, there's nothing that compares to an increase in the bottom line.
I started out with a start-up, the pay was poor and any benefits or 401k were very very minimal. I put up with it because the work was "interesting". Then I got a call from a recruiter in a FAANG company, and their salary range for the exact same role, started at an 80% increase in baseline salary, with nearly the same again in RSU's and benefits. Then I went into a managerial role with a non-tech company, which was a small increase again, and more lately back into another tech company which has me getting an increase yet again.
In ten years I've probably tripled my baseline salary, and total compensation is probably 5 to 10 times what it was for a similar level of effort.
> Then I went into a managerial role with a non-tech company, which was a small increase again
How did you do this? I think it would be hard for me to make the same outside of tech. Tech to managerial role outside of tech doesn't sound like an obvious or easy move.
I made a move like this in the past through a recruiting agency. I was very specific about what I was looking for, and about 4 months later they sent me an oppertunity that looked like a fit, I interviewed then took the job.
You get into a para-managerial role in tech first, then leverage the new job title to get a more purely-managerial role elsewhere, emphasizing the organizational elements of your experience.
I recently switched from tech to education by emphasizing the educational parts of my previous jobs, which were otherwise very technical.
It was surprisingly simple, even though they were non tech (utility company) they still needed data processing, scripting, and some basic ML work, especially in their marketing team. Same kind of work, however to a more credulous senior management team. Their main problem was they didn't know what could be done, let alone how to do it.
Nice one - rather than attack the argument that changing jobs increases your salary, an appeal to the masses of what "a massive amount of people" may or may not care to do.
Any argument without evidence can be summarily dismissed without evidence. So I argue that a vast majority, a massive amount if you will, of working people do want to increase their salary, basing this on my own goals and those of people I know and worked with over the last decade.
I wonder what the net effect is on worker wages in our economy as a whole given the seemingly large portion of workers that take this stance?
You are essentially relinquishing all negotiating power to the share holders of the company who are more than happy to pocket the salary that you are leaving on the table by giving them an uncompetitive monopoly on your labor.
Another poster in here bragging about giving his employer a 50% discount on his labor. Why would I give the shareholders of the company a work for a huge coupon on my life? That is just crazy to me.
I know it's hard to understand, but for a lot of people thinking about money doesn't dominate their decision making and mindset. I bet most people don't think about their job as "giving discount on their labor" but instead spend time thinking on things unrelated to money.
Sure, but not thinking about it doesn't make the dynamics it enables less relevant. Don't think about it, let them pay you less, there's less incentive to raise wages.
I don't know, take what you can while you can. If not, they will, and they usually have no loyalty towards you. Even if you don't want to use it, optimize your ability to help your loved ones. Minimize risk. Give it to charity, whatever.
I'm not arguing to be a salary-maximalist, but to insinuate it's not something a worker should always have in mind to some extent feels out of line with our economic system.
It's not about dominating your mindset. It's about recognizing that your employment is a negotiation and treating it as such. Applying to 2 or 3 other companies every other year to test the market is not the all-encompassing chore, dollar signs for pupils caricature, that it is being made out to be in this thread.
Your company is not your family. The company is loyal to you to the extent that it is contractually obligated to be. The coworker friendships that are worth maintaining longterm will survive past your time with the company.
> I bet most people don't think about their job as "giving discount on their labor"
All salaried workers would be better off if they did just that. As a reminder, Google and Apple engaged in a literal criminal conspiracy to suppress wages.
Personally I find it hard to believe that there's a company so good that it's worth leaving 50% of your salary on the table. Like if you have high autonomy and you're curing cancer or building rocket ships I can see it. But for the 99.9% of other jobs there are equivalents. Why leave all that money on the table?
Getting 50% extra quality of life. Working 30 instead of 40 hours. Waking up at 10am. Time is invaluable, money isn’t. Grinding at 75% rather than 100% makes all the difference in mental health.
I personally find it hard to ask for more or job hop because I think we tech workers overpaid. It feels greedy or unethical especially when i compare myself to similarly hard working or top performing peers in other engineering fields and other industries, who do seemingly more important work than me, but get paid less than half of what i get already.
I understand that it feels uneasy, even guilty, to be paid more compared to those outside of software engineering, or even to swe peers who are in different specializations or at different organizations. But that is an individualistic response to a systemic phenomenon. The tech industry as a whole is overpaid, not just its workers. It’s the greatest beneficiary of the near-zero percent interest rates since the Great Recession, which incentivized capital to chase ever-greater yields, funneling massive amounts of money into tech, creating jobs and raising salaries. Not to mention, tech is a massive lever (software eating the world) that leads to greater business cost savings and higher margins, driving up demand for tech workers, and their salaries.
You cannot reverse that trend by simply choosing not to participate in getting paid more. By all means, don’t be motivated in your career solely for higher compensation. But also don’t feel bad for getting paid more. The money you leave on the table will just get taken by some other overpaid engineer, manager, or VC shaving pennies off of their costs anyway. Take the money for the sake of your loved ones, donate it, pay higher taxes if you want to. There’s nothing inherently unethical about it.
I would hazard to say, the more problematic situation about the ease of job-hopping in this industry is that it deprioritizes grit and perseverance. There’s always a better-managed organization, more feasible business model, higher quality engineering team for one to jump to when the going gets rough. That’s just as important as the promise of higher pay and title- why bother toiling if there’s always a slightly less dysfunctional org on the other side? So you end up with very transitory, evanescent companies because personnel keep disappearing every couple years.
But, I’m not sure if that’s really on the individual contributor to solve either. The question of retention and of building employee loyalty is really the responsibility of management. And with all of the dumb money that’s flowed into the tech industry thanks to interest rates and software being the primer economic lever of the times, companies have less incentive to make necessary changes. They themselves benefit from a very fluid workforce. If you job hop away your boss will just swap in someone who job hopped from another company. So maybe that’s just how it’s going to be until the next recession hits.
When you are negotiating your salary in the marketplace, the people sitting across from you are Bezos, Sergey Brin, Blackstone, Andreessen, the Saudi sovereign wealth fund and a long list of hedge funds and private equity firms.
These are the (obscenely wealthy) people that you are allowing to arbitrage your salary.
I doubt other underpaid workers are celebrating the fact that your salary differential is paying for champagne on a super yacht instead of going to your kid’s college fund or more family vacations.
And I’m sure that the people/groups mentioned are pleased that they are able to pocket the difference en masse because of this economically irrational ethic.
I previously worked with a young woman who would hop jobs every 2-3y. She told me that the first thing she’d do after being at a job for 90 days is put in for her old job and see how much they’d pay to have her back.
Now, when she left us, I can assuredly say that she wouldn’t have gotten an offer to return because of pseudo-regulatory reasons and red tape, but the sheer hustle-mindedness struck me as impressive.
I’m sure she makes much more than I do now, and I clear a quarter mil doing 1099 work and have several decades of experience to sell.
In todays world and particularly in America, the game is entirely rigged for those who have money. In that regard I find it disingenuous to fault those who pursue the money therefore, being the only true security in this country.
"the game is entirely rigged for those who have money. "
I'd say the game's outcome for an individual is determined by whether or not that individual puts in the effort to grow an in-demand skillset (i.e. development of competency), followed by marketing their skillset.
I used to live in a tent. But during that time I began teaching myself software development skills. Now I make nearly $200k, 100% remotely.
The only reason my career worked out:
- I went to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and saw SWE as a top 20 fastest growing occupation, and as a field with a very high amount of job openings & among the highest pay rate. Yet requires no degree.
- While living in a tent in the US, and later got sick of living in a tent and drove into the developing country next door where I survived on a $5/day food budget (got malnourished, health declined a bit), I sat at a table and built my skills daily. Once I had decent skills, I marketed my skillset via open source projects, a web portfolio, and a linkedin presence
I literally just had a strategy which I knew was foolproof, and I knew the outcome was guaranteed because the data demonstrated such.
Now that you have earned such an amount, I’m sure you’ve put an amount of money away for safekeeping.
Let’s say something catastrophic happened. Doesn’t matter what exactly, the question is this: Is there ANY likelihood that you wouldn’t be able to secure a decent standard of living based on your in-hand capital? Can you see yourself in a tent ever again?
Once you have acquired a certain amount to provide for yourself, it’s easier to take risks. It’s easier to make moves. For people caught in wage traps with kids and debts, it’s not so easy.
I respect what you’ve done and I’m very proud for you. I know your future must be very bright if momentum counts for anything, because you’ve done wonderful work already. With that being said, it’s reductionist at best to say that your path is just freely replicable by anybody living in poverty. Particularly those who aren’t gifted towards computers. How’s a teacher supposed to make their way in America? Probably half of them are either living off food stamps or close to doing so. Should they give it up and just write Vue/React all day and take home their six figures?
This is far deeper an issue than can be discussed in HN comments anyhow. I hope you can see where I’m coming from.
Given that most of the companies/bosses are just not worth any loyalty it is the wise move to move on the 2 year limit. It's not only the salary increase -almost impossible to achieve by staying. To me more important is the job security by ensuring employability. As long as I can be hired elsewhere I know I'm still in the game. Another big plus is I can ignore a lot of the usual b..shit that I'd have to pay attention to if I was in for the long run.
Gosh. Lately I find it terribly difficult even to hit 1 yr mark. Companies and bosses whine about how difficult it is to find skilled people but they do whatever they can to drive them away on first chance.
It's become crystal clear when companies refused for remote work during covid, or being the first one to mandate wfo after even though the productivity is good or even higher.
If they don't care for me, I may as well get the most benefit in cash instead
I stuck with my employer for many years, even though they paid a "competitive" salary (read: "low"). I was also able to keep a team of experienced C++ image processing pipeline engineers on board. Any one of them could have easily left, and made more than I.
It's been my experience that people leave managers; not companies. I had good managers (for the most part). One of my old managers went on to become the Chairman of the company, so I did have "friends in high places." I always enjoyed seeing the shocked faces of the local execs, when he'd insist on coming down to visit my humble little office.
I stayed for many reasons, and compensation was not one of them.
However, as time went on, the HR of our company became more and more "American" (it is a Japanese company, but I worked for a US subsidiary). By the time I left, the company was pretty much an awful place to work; mostly because the Americans ran everything. I stayed on, knowing the team was doomed, because I wanted to be there for my team.
If you can't afford a relaxed housing, it matters very little that your manager is a 8 whereas the other one is a 6.
If you've got basic meets met, the other things matter far more.
Aside from compounding factors, that's really what's happening here. People are fighting decades of lackadaisical attitude slowly making what was the status quo unreachable, despite efficiency increasing tremendously and doubling the working population. For no good reason but "the economy says so".
Even software devs across the world aren't immune.
Across the globe this is starting to become false. "Highly-paid" compared to the average, yes, maybe. "Highly-paid" according to previous status quo, no, not at all. That's why I specifically mentioned software developers aren't immune, you need additional traits tacked on to make that claim (combination of e.g. working for international companies, in a well-paid tech hub, senior+, and/or others).
Many places, median income can't afford housing, sometimes not get past rent requirements, and more. Many of these places, developers start at-or-below median and need 5 years to comfortably get past it. Yes, they'll outearn teachers in an even worse spot. But if the argument then becomes "well at least they can afford the bottom of the RE ladder, whereas teachers can't afford anything", I'll retaliate and ask how much that society has failed to make almost the entire working populace go down several notches, given those teachers were able to live comfortably a few generations ago.
I did not realize that I was in a fight. I simply shared my own experience, relevant to the story, then made the mistake of expressing a personal observation/opinion. It did have a bit of “personal bias,” as there are several teachers in my family and circle of friends.
I wasn't trying to fight you specifically. The hypothetical situation I sketched was different from your personal anecdote because I didn't want to fight, rather show the common mantra isn't so simple outside the typical bubbles.
Does anyone have experience pursuing this strategy for tech roles in FAANG and other Bay Area companies? I definitely agree switching every two years is optimal for a lot of jobs, but I'm having trouble executing this strategy when I'm already in a FAANG.
I've been at my current (and only) FAANG for almost four years, climbing two rungs in the IC ladder over that span. Right now, I'm not sure how I'd begin my hops. My current comp is alright, which has meant that I'm having trouble finding alternatives that can offer substantially higher comps.
The only alternatives I've seen are:
1. Hop to a different FAANG, same level => Overall comp is roughly on par to what I'm getting right now.
2. Hop to a different FAANG, one level higher => Does this actually happen on a regular basis? How might one approach this?
3. Hop to a startup => Too much of the comp is based on stock options which are highly volatile. Particularly in this current economy, I want to go/stay somewhere with healthy cash flows.
4. Hop to a non-FAANG tech company => How do they match up in comp against FAANG? Is this worth pursuing?
> 2. Hop to a different FAANG, one level higher => Does this actually happen on a regular basis? How might one approach this?
That's the way to do it at the lower levels, yeah.
You apply, ideally via a referral, and at the early stages the recruiter will establish roughly how senior you currently are. They'll be keen to know your current comp, too. It's common advice not to reveal this, and I'd follow it, but that's less crucial when you're at a standardised BigCo because they'll already know what bracket you're in, as long as you're in the same geographic area.
Then you go through the rigmarole of interviewing, and if they want you, they need to offer you higher comp, usually via a higher level (or higher spine on an existing level for the companies that do it that way).
When people do this effectively they get a title increase with each switch. So even FAANG to FAANG jumps work if you're getting a "free promotion" with every one. I've seen it happen, unfortunately.
I currently work for a non-FAANG company, and it's my second time doing so. Comp has been competitive in both cases. In fact, my current job pays more than is normal for FAANG (but only due to stock appreciation - 3x in the last 2 years), but they did match my Amazon pay and then some to get me onboard.
I’ve been really on the fence about the cost/benefit of job switching. I’m currently at a FANG company and seem to be within six months to a year from staff level. Once you’re at staff level, you are considered “parallel” to the first level of the management track and can relatively easily transition into being a manager if you are interested. The comp on the manager track is the same as the comp on the individual contributor track (for the same level), but unfortunately other companies still seem to view “manager” as better and tend to make much higher offers or recruit directly for management positions. The company I’m with has a number of other great benefits besides comp (amazing health insurance, parental leave, remote work, etc.) that are not insignificant.
On the other hand, I’ve been bombarded by recruiters so much recently that I finally decided to take one of the interviews to see where I’m at. I barely missed an offer that would have been almost twice what I’m currently making, and I didn’t prep for their interview loop, so I think if I brushed up a bit on my coding I could probably get an offer around that range.
~2x comp for a remote position is hard to pass up, but a lot of companies that are reaching out to me have already had layoffs (maybe not necessarily technical staff yet) or lack the stability that FANG has. I wonder if I would join a new company just to get laid off. A few people from my team who left for other companies have already come back within months. And one of my interviewers just outright derided his own company to me in a long and strangely personal rant at the end of my interview.
So I don’t know. I think I could increase comp and career growth much more quickly by switching, but there’s a lot of risks, particularly for being a remote worker and trying to have a second child during what is possibly a massive economic crash. I think for now I may just stay and see if I can get permission to moonlight on a side project.
If you have leverage by being hard to replace with clear high $ impact and you ask your skip-level manager to make you whole, then you can negotiate a rise. For instance, I received a 45% increase this year upon an already good pay.
Tried that. I kept getting the 'we don't have the budget right now, but we'll make it up to you soon, promise'. Two years later I still didn't get more than 1.5% increases in salary, despite increases in responsibility and managing multiple offshore developers with a higher title than I had.
Put in my notice, got a call from the skip-level manager expressing surprise and how I meant so much to them, they need me, and what would it take to keep me. I said I got a significant raise in my offer (and I did, was about 60%), and asked for 30% on top of that to stay, and he just said "Wow. Well I can't do that. I was was thinking more like 20%."
And if they had given me the 20% earlier, maybe I wouldn't have gone job searching in the first place to get that 60% increase. So I guess in a perverse way I should thank them for being so stingy?
There are places where this doesn't work, you can name them conservative (instead of agile), and long term they work just fine. Switzerland is one of them.
You have on your otherwise amazing CV job switch every year or two? Well we won't even meet since such a person wouldn't be a match for our bank, as for the rest of banks. And most other industries. When employer is choosing from pool of 100-500 often good candidates (since smarter half of the world strives to get here), this is more then enough to dismiss a candidate.
I get it, I've done it in the past (elsewhere) too and its true you get higher base salary. That's the end of benefits. People who are in only to start things, not to maintain/evolve or even deliver final product are largely not interesting to stable companies. its not a rocket science neither, everybody is aware of this. And its not some automated skill all people magically have, in contrary - some of the brightest folks I've met would fail exactly at this check.
And the more senior the role the worse it looks. In fact ie some department leader switching jobs every 2 years means something is very NOK.
Off to body shop consultancies, that's a perfect match from customer point of view. Use them for 6-12 months and them move on.
I'm having a hard time believing that world's top talent in software development are fighting to get into Swiss banking. What makes you think that the brightest people are striving to get employment at your bank?
Sounds like Switzerland or Swiss banks have some sort of cultural bias against people who job hop. If companies want people who stick around, they should compensate fairly and reward people who are doing well and delivery quality work in order to retain talent. Many people have families and know that their employer views them solely as a means to an end, so why not treat the employer the same way and get the best possible deal out of them. By rejecting people who move around to gain the best possible opportunity, it creates an unfair bias against people who seek out the best possible compensation for themselves. Having worked in the banking sector myself, banks could benefit from more agile thinking but are instead stifled by bureaucratic processes that do little to promote security or create a quality product. I'm sure many of those people would love to stay and finish the product at conservative companies, but it is very hard to stick around in a suboptimal role that does not grow their skill set when they could be making 50% more money at a new firm. Many of these conservative companies as you put it only succeed because they do not complete in a free market and have unique privileges because of governmental barriers to free enterprise.
My career at one point was a 5 year job, then 3 years, then 1 year, then 3 years, then 2 years, and finally 2 years.
The first time I interviewed (and failed) with Microsoft, the final stage of the interview was with a guy who had been with Microsoft for 20+ years. He looked at my resume and grilled me about job hopping (even asking me about individual positions and why I left).
Ironically, I didn't even job hop just for salary, I did it because of layoffs or really toxic environments. However, all that job hopping was also crucial to gain different experiences I have today in different technologies, patterns, and sets of scale I would have never gotten in my original company.
While explaining this to the interviewer, he started talking about how he started in the operating systems division, then moved to security, then moved to office, now works in an Azure area. He failed to really understand that he was doing the equivalent of job hopping in order to facilitate his own technical growth, and the majority of us do not work in companies where we are able to side-load into vastly different domains without changing high level companies or losing RSUs.
I don't think this was the reason I failed the interview (I didn't interview well that time), but I do think about that.
This sounds industry specific, not country specific. There are plenty of tech companies in Switzerland which aren't as conservative as banks. I've no doubt that life-long employees of banks prefer to employ those who will stay in their role, even when they treat them and pay them poorly.
As for senior roles, you have your data backwards. Senior roles have higher turnover, including in Switzerland. They're paid more, but there is also much more risk associated with the roles. They're some of the first roles to go during strategic and structural shifts.
Do you actually live and work here? Your statements can be generally correct in many places, but they are certainly not correct about Suisse (people are generally paid well and treated even better, seniors really don't move much since they are most valuable employees and are given good conditions... this is really not SV... as written having frequent jumps hurts your career), based on my 12 years of experience here in few companies.
Conservative is the name of the game here, and its not specific to banking, whole society runs like that and you would struggle to find a company behaving differently, mostly just startups.
They simply prefer stability over bleeding edge, and job hoppers are anything but stability, that's obvious from a light year away to anybody with any experience. In fact it signals a person who is often not happy and instead of improving things they just move - one of the trademarks of juniors with big egos.
Also hiring on a perm position takes time and effort (and costs a lot), nobody is eager to waste so much resources again and again just to have potentially slightly more efficient employee.
I've been on the other side and agree with arguments generally, but this is generally their way here and they are doing just fine.
I was going to mention this - it can be a very cultural thing.
Where I'm from (Norway), job hopping every year or every two years, would look real bad. Software Engineering IS a bit more forgiving, but you're still going to get asked "why have you switched jobs five times, since you graduated in 2017?".
In fact, there's a real chance you wouldn't even land an interview. The employer is going to assume one or more of the following things
A) The person gets easily bored, and constantly needs fresh and stimulating work.
B) The person does not (easily) get along with people, or has problems with settling at a workplace.
C) The person is constantly being let go / can't hold a job.
D) The person is very salary/compensation focused, and will jump ship on the first chance.
Hopefully some of these things will be uncovered when contacting references - but there are lots and lots of former employers that will cover up for a bad hire, just to be polite. Or the bad hire is very good at picking people to use as a reference.
So you're kind of stuck with a candidate that's either job hopping because they want to "level up" as far as salary goes, or some other underlying reason they can't stay.
If tenure over 1-2 years is of no importance, then that's obviously not a big deal. There are businesses, ranging from startups to mega corps, that just need warm bodies to power the various projects - easy come, easy go. Be productive from day 1, and work them as much as they can.
But for highly specialized firms and positions, where you spend the first N years on training, job-hopping candidates could be completely unacceptable.
In the US, no one has ever asked me why I never make it 2 years at a job. I recently got a new job that gave me a senior title and 50% increase in salary.
Switzerland, and to a lesser extent Germany, are very very conservative. Switzerland's credo is that the 1950s was a good time, and things should remain exactly as they were then, with minimal changes. When did women get the vote there, again?
Is right now the best time to do it though? With more companies going into hiring freezes, layoffs regularly happening due to the fiscal years, and general sentiment to the economy.
Of course job switchers will earn more than those who stay. There is a predicament of "starting over" however. Some people can handle that well and network quickly while exceeding expectations wherever they go. Some people need to build up to that.
While I have many friends who hop jobs every 2 years, I never got a sense that they are "happy". I don't think you can put a price on happiness although its always nice to have more money.
This feels like pretty much common sense. A buddy of mine jumped to another large MNC with a 50% hike and. I also interviewed with a startup and got offered a 35% hike by a relatively smaller company.
I rejected it feeling it was too low. But my own company gave me a 20% hike in my fixed pay but reduced my bonus down by 33% roughly making my overall hike at ~5%. I had expected a 30% hike as I had worked pretty hard (my manager gave me the highest rating possible and I got an award for being a "great employee")
I suspect this too. As people skill up, they become interesting to more productive companies. Some companies pay more to new hires than old ones, but that’s just counter-productive.
> As people skill up, they become interesting to more productive companies
I don't think that's the GP comment.
I've had offers below my current pay and not switched.
Hell, I've even got 10%+ bumps and turned it down, because the h1 visa disruptions would eat up time (& complicate travel plans). Plus Hortonworks used to pay 100% of the healthcare premiums, which worked like a stealth raise YoY.
If you would only switch for a pay up, then this result is a natural result of the strategy followed by the switchers.
At best, the article is a recommendation for that strategy, if you care about money & don't know this already.
I get that corporations want to create a sense of loyalty in their workforce but why would employees feel the need to feel loyal to a corporation?
Now, obviously it's not just about money. Or at least, not all material benefits (or costs) of being at one employer vs another can be easily translated into a dollar value. But ultimately, loyalty should not be a factor at all
I agree that the corporation itself deserves no “loyalty” it really is “just business” for them and employees should feel the same. As long as both sides play fair there shouldn’t be hard feelings.
But where things get messy is that employees get emotionally attached to their coworkers and even projects and workplaces. This can be some serious baggage to deal with if it was a good place where the employee got an opportunity to grow and form relationships. It’s why folks have to overcome resignation guilt when leaving. These are totally normal feelings.
how much does that translate to in terms of pay? I guess it depends on one’s value system. As long as the employee was not exploited with low pay, it could easily be >30% if the new offer is a unique opportunity.
> emotionally attached to their coworkers and even projects and workplaces.
this is a serious problem.
I went through some of the hardest most stressful projects of my life when the COVID vaccines were coming online building systems for US state governments to manage the vaccine program and all the analytics and reporting at the same time dealing with the trauma of the pandemic personally. I handled the tech and a managing director two levels up handled the relationships. We grew so close and shared so many tears (quite literally) and high-fives that i'd follow her to the gates of hell if she asked. It would break my heart to leave her and go work for someone else.
getting emotionally attached to your job is a very real risk.
I know that this is true, yet I stay for long periods of time.
I'm not sure why that is. I know I've stayed longer than benefited everyone involved and a new job can bring new enthusiasm for the craft. Yet my mind tells me the sensible option is to stay put.
I used to be like that. The thing that really changed my mentality was spending a few years consulting. Doing that put my brain in CEO/Owner mode instead of "worker bee" mode. The paradigm shift is one you can never go back from. Now, regardless of whether I'm in regular job or a contract job I only work for myself and only make decisions related to my work for my own benefit. Now I can leave a job/contract with zero emotional baggage, even though I sometimes make friendships that live longer than the job/contract.
Even if I'm an "employee" in my mind I'm the owner of a one-man company that sells IAM/development services. Sometimes I have to dump one customer to service another that's going to pay me more money or let me work fewer hours. Work ethic and my personal reputation matters to me, but I don't care one whit if my employer goes belly up.
As they lower you into the paupers grave I'm sure your boss will deliver a moving eulogy about how you were such a asset to the business and created so much shareholder value.
Well, probably more amazing than someone who doesn't see themselves as providing a valuable service to their employer, and is just turning up to collect their paycheck.
I am similar, having been a contractor for about a third of my working life. And even when I was permanent I rarely lasted longer than 2 years with a company, due to mergers and redundancies and bad management.
I'm currently in a perm role, been here nearly 3 years and quite happy to stay for a bit longer. I've been to a couple of interviews in that time that headhunters put in front of me, but I'm not actively looking. I like my current place, but I'm not married to it.
Your job is a transaction. You're there for the money, not out of charity. If they won't pay you your market worth, they're taking advantage of you and you should leave.
Switching to a new company and leaving the familiar is a big decision to make, it's understandable. You have to get to know a whole new group of people, prove yourself again, start on things that are new and unfamiliar. It's comfortable to stay where you are, that's why companies can get away with not hiking salaries for those who do stay. So once in a while, you have to make yourself uncomfortable to know what you're worth, and what you can do in a new environment!
If you're lucky, you can go somewhere new where you know a couple people. And then you can bring others with you to form a group you trust. And build it over time.
On top of that, there is the potential for the new place to not be so good. Maybe they hired you on with a part of your salary being paid in bonus (and your last job was too), but unlike the last job that paid a bonus every year for the last decade, this new one cut bonuses after 2 years due to "market conditions".
There is also the potential that if the new place is paying you more than they are others on your new team (that have been there for a while), they will expect a lot more from you than what may even be practical. I've experienced both of these in the past. At this point I make well at the upper end for my job specification (although I end up wearing quite a few more hats), and although I can get a 10 - 15% bump that isn't worth as much in my current tax bracket.
Initial 1-3 months can (and should) be trial period. It’s better to cut off early than to waste everyone’s time. Also it’s always a good idea to reach out to the current and previous employees to get some of their feedback.
There is a trade-off. Starting a new job is a roll of the dice. You might not get along with your new team, their codebase could be a mess, your manager an asshole, their business model a disaster. You might not spot red flags during the interview process because they'll be putting up their best front and Glassdoor is gamed these days. The higher salary reflects the risk that you might end up in a situation where you go from a secure job to one where you get fired because you're not a good fit.
You would think that it would be beneficial for everyone to have people stick in a job role for a long time, gain lots of experience, become very good at it, and maybe even become comfortable. But just keeping things going isn't good enough in this world.
Not necessarily. Job hoppers help spread industry knowledge, which can be beneficial to everyone. That's part of what makes new employees valuable: they bring outside knowledge.
while it's true that a new employee brings in outside knowledge, it is also true that a new-comer tend to propose solutions to problems that seem obvious at first, but is then stuck with some organizational quirk or problem that prevents nice solutions from working (and find out that years ago, someone else has already proposed something very similar and it either failed or didn't work).
Old tribal knowledge is as important as new perspective.
> You would think that it would be beneficial for everyone to have people stick in a job role for a long time, gain lots of experience, become very good at it
The most standard analysis would tell you that this will cause whatever work they're doing to be done better.
But that's only beneficial if that's the most valuable thing for them to be doing. Having worthless work done well is not obviously better than having valuable work done poorly.
I get paid a decent salary with room to grow in the government. I am not on the GS scale though so my pay increases are much higher than someone on it. I have a strict 40 hour work week, currently get 20 annual leave days and 13 sick days a year, TSP with matching contributions, and FEHB. I've always considered leaving to make more money but the thing that always holds me back is the guaranteed pension if I stay in until my minimum retirement age. I always decided that stability was better for me because I watched my parents struggle when things weren't stable for them.
You could estimate the pension as a risk free asset, paying approximately 4% a year. That would give you a comparison between what you need to save in industry vs. the government. For example of the pension is 200k a year, you would need to have saved 5 million in industry for the equivalent.
If I don't go into management, and assuming there are absolutely no more cost of living adjustments or changes to how much my pay scale pays, my salary will cap out around 150k a year.
If I go into management, whether it's technical leadership or as a normal manager, then I could cap out around 176k a year.
I don't recall off the top of my head how much that translates to per month with pension.
Imagine a flower that could produce enough nectar to completely satiate a bee. A bee could visit one flower and return to its hive full. Would that be a successful flower?
I have never understood why the "employer"/"employee" dichotomy is assumed to be so well-defined. If you have any equity you are somewhat the employer. Conversely if you technically own a small company with a few clients, you may feel like the owner but you're kind of the employee of your clients. The employer/employee is a spectrum and I don't think many of us are as well-defined on that spectrum as we think we are.
How about - as an employee - using external offer to get a raise and stay at current job? Is that always a bad idea?
Many usually mention that the company will be bad to you if you stay, which means a bit of a childish approach. I mean, there is a cost balance to be made from the company side, given the cost involved in hiring and training.
I am at that exact point right now, working at the biggest, very well known British tech company.
You can only really do it once is one problem, so you want to use it for a _big_ raise if not a promotion. HR won't care and your line manager won't care, assuming you do it once. If you do it again you're the boy who called wolf. Also, you need to be prepared to walk if they don't give you the raise. Finally, you actually need to interview and get another offer. They don't just fall out of the sky! Remember that declining the offer from another company to stay in your current role is likely to make them reconsider hiring you.
If you're comfortable with the above, go get some leverage!
As a manager, I agree with this. Although, I would suggest setting the stage sooner by expressing some discontent of compensation. Your manager may not have a clue, and may have 50 other fires. You need to speak up so that your concerns are on their radar. I've had managers come through in big ways, and I've had managers completely fail either of their own fault or because of limitations of the company.
Right - walking into a 1:1 and dumping this on the table is a recipe for disaster. You don't need to treat your manager as your friend, but treating them with respect is a prerequisite for this going well. Here's two possible conversations:
a) "I'm unhappy here with my compensation and I think I deserve a promotion. I went and interviewed with <insert company name here> and they've offered me $X, as a <TITLE> and I'm going to take it."
b) "The last few times we spoke I told you that I thought I was deserving of a promotion. Since last month's meeting, I was contacted by a recruiter from <insert company name here>, and they've made me an offer for $X as a <TITLE>. I think I can keep providing value here as <TITLE> and I'd like you to help me make that happen".
As a manager, I would probably tell a) to take it, and try to promote b)
> How about - as an employee - using external offer to get a raise and stay at current job? Is that always a bad idea?
I'm too lazy to look it up and verify but IIRC the majority of employees who ask for a raise with another job offer on the table end up leaving within about 6 months even if they get the raise. So yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if doing that basically puts a red flag beside your name for management. You also probably don't want to go that route unless you are actually prepared to leave... there's no guarantee that they will agree to give you a raise. I left a company this spring after ~4 years and thought I was in a very good position to get a counter offer. I was lead for one of their most important projects and was slated to move into an architect role to oversee a major revamp and expansion of that project. When I turned in my notice I told them (truthfully) that I wasn't necessarily look to leave if they were willing to make a counter offer, but the answer unfortunately was that they couldn't go that high for my role.
it's definitely a gamble. I'm of the mindset that once you choose to leave then you should never look back and not even open the counteroffer email. However, i know a couple coworkers that have accepted the counter offer and are now in a better place than they were both in terms of comp and work life.
If there’s a shortage of good candidates, and you interview reasonably well, I don’t think there’s a limit. We recently made an offer to a candidate who had about 7 different positions in 10 years (lots of startups), but was great in the interview, only to lose out to Google whose offer was unbelievably higher.
My experience with those people (and being one of them), is they push as far as they reasonably can within a year or two and then move to something else. There's something about people who stay at companies for a long time (not denigrating it at all) that I don't have. At some point I say, I have reached my natural conclusion here and will now do something else.
2 years is exactly the time I expect for employees, as a founder, especially if it’s their first job. Anything above is a godsend, but it limits the employee’s skill variety, so it must be duly compensated.
Anecdotally, I changed jobs four times in four years right after I graduated college - same reason. Got bored, looked for something new. This was the late 90's, when it was really easy to find something new. I didn't think much of it at the time, but I hit a soft limit after job change #4 - all of a sudden, after having gotten bored and looking for something new, every interviewer started saying, "you've changed jobs four times in four years... why would I want to hire you if you'll be gone in a year?" I've slowed my roll quite a bit since then and made a point of hanging in there for at least three years, usually longer.
What does "every 2 years" mean when you're a junior? Once?
Staying at a company longer can help build particular skills like leadership and working in an organization. They are less relevant at junior-mid, but become increasing important at senior+.
It's funny I had a senior title before but I screwed up my tech interview at current job (was interviewing for level 2). I can't really be choosy in my situation and this was the first offer I got after looking/doing interview process with 3 companies in a month. Anyway I ended up getting a level 1 position but it still paid more than previous so I was like alright.
The thing with the two years is I still haven't found my lifelong calling, it could be in robotics but I don't have the academic background for it, so it might be something I work on, on the side until it can become its own company.
The worst part is we all know these people and they're almost never the people providing the most value to the company. They're just good at selling themselves. They come in, spend 6 months onboarding, do 18 months of acceptable work (and make sure to use all the benefits, of course) and then they're gone. You'll hear from them on LinkedIn, with some inflated title making 3x what you make and still not being an expert in anything.
Some people, when they progress in their career, are rewarded with extra money, others with a sense of smug self-satisfaction in knowing that they are an expert. Different people like different things and optimize accordingly.
Who says being an expert in a field is the meaning of life?
I was a phone systems expert with a previous job, mostly because I stayed at the job way longer than my coworkers. I gladly gave that up for a 60% bump in pay and not having to be oncall for 4-6 hours in the middle of the night whenever there was a network issue, which happened a couple times a month at that job. I hope I never have to deal with phone systems ever again.
This is what the industry wants and rewards right now. Even average engineer tenure at FAANG is only a couple of years. Some of this is employee career-driven, but it’s also caused by employers churning their workforce with dissatisfying conditions.
Interesting.. I'm not sure I could accept an offer to work there, ethically. It would be like working at a tobacco company. Certainly wouldn't sleep well if I did. Granted, they're not exactly throwing offers at me so maybe it's mutual.
Google is a force for advertisement proliferation, data collection, centralization, and a driving force behind much of the movement to ad-driven maximum engagement rage-driven clickbait media. These are all, I would argue, some of the currently worst evils of our time.
Massive surveillance, fraudulent restrictions such as requiring that Location be turned on in order to use GPS on your phone, would be 2 I can think of off the bat.
All the more reason to leave the goog and go work in the biomed or space industries. You're not pressured by money, so why build ad platforms for tech monopolies?
