The primary reason for having an employer in your life at all is for them to pay you, so the primary measure of a good employer is good pay. Yes, there are other factors, but many of those factors (read: benefits) have known monetary values which are effectively equivalent to pay.
There is no such thing as a good employer who doesn't pay their workers competitively.
While this may not be your intent, your post sounds a lot like a manager narrative that "sure, our pay and benefits leave bit to be desired, but we have a great culture and we're well managed". That's not a thing. A great culture is one where everyone is paid enough to live comfortably, and when the company does well financially, workers do well financially. The primary measure of managing well is paying your workers well.
The things management does besides paying their workers simply do not have enough impact on workers' lives that they can "manage" well enough to make more difference in an employee's life than a 20% increase in pay, let alone a 50% increase in pay as you describe. Beyond behaving at all in an appropriate manner, i.e. not verbally, sexually, or physically abusing your employees, your actions as a manager simply don't impact workers' lives as much as that much money does.
And in fact, other attributes of management are correlated with pay in my experience. The company you describe, that pays well but is otherwise terribly managed, is not one I have experienced. In most cases, a company that pays well is great to work for in other ways, and a company that pays worse is terrible to work for in other ways. The management mindset that is stingy toward workers doesn't stop at pay.
I never suggested that there are good employers who don't pay their workers competitively.
I instead suggested that there are bad employers who pay above market rates as a way to compensate for problems with employee retention. Sure, they'll run out of money doing that eventually, but you'd be surprised how long a business can cover up their mistakes with such a strategy, especially with the right funding partners behind them.
If you have not had the misfortune of working for such a business, that's great, but I believe there are plenty of comments here on HN to support the notion that such businesses not only exist but are fairly common in any industry touched by Venture Capital or Private Equity, and I have seen many even suggest that their higher financial compensation ends up not being worth it in light of the added psychological and physiological toll.
> I never suggested that there are good employers who don't pay their workers competitively.
Agreed. I don't think I accused you of saying that--I just think that what you did say is easily twisted to support that narrative.
> I instead suggested that there are bad employers who pay above market rates as a way to compensate for problems with employee retention. Sure, they'll run out of money doing that eventually, but you'd be surprised how long a business can cover up their mistakes with such a strategy, especially with the right funding partners behind them.
> If you have not had the misfortune of working for such a business, that's great, but I believe there are plenty of comments here on HN to support the notion that such businesses not only exist but are fairly common in any industry touched by Venture Capital or Private Equity, and I have seen many even suggest that their higher financial compensation ends up not being worth it in light of the added psychological and physiological toll.
I'm not saying this situation doesn't exist. I'm saying it's far less common than the situation where you find a job that pays better because your current job is underpaying you.
A friend of mine did work for such a company. He stayed there for 9 months, and then quit without a job lined up, and it took him 4 months to find a job (partly because he was being much more selective about jobs). He a) still made more money in 9 months than in the previous year, and b) leveraged the higher pay history to obtain higher pay at all companies he worked for in the rest of his career. Having talked to him extensively about it at the time (and advising him to quit) I think he'd maybe work there a shorter period, but it doesn't seem like he regrets doing it.
So sure, these companies exist, but working for one is not necessarily a critical mistake as long as you keep your option to quit open (which I think is critical in any job, no matter how good--the ability of either party to walk away from the table is a key component of any free transaction in a free market).
There is no such thing as a good employer who doesn't pay their workers competitively.
While this may not be your intent, your post sounds a lot like a manager narrative that "sure, our pay and benefits leave bit to be desired, but we have a great culture and we're well managed". That's not a thing. A great culture is one where everyone is paid enough to live comfortably, and when the company does well financially, workers do well financially. The primary measure of managing well is paying your workers well.
The things management does besides paying their workers simply do not have enough impact on workers' lives that they can "manage" well enough to make more difference in an employee's life than a 20% increase in pay, let alone a 50% increase in pay as you describe. Beyond behaving at all in an appropriate manner, i.e. not verbally, sexually, or physically abusing your employees, your actions as a manager simply don't impact workers' lives as much as that much money does.
And in fact, other attributes of management are correlated with pay in my experience. The company you describe, that pays well but is otherwise terribly managed, is not one I have experienced. In most cases, a company that pays well is great to work for in other ways, and a company that pays worse is terrible to work for in other ways. The management mindset that is stingy toward workers doesn't stop at pay.