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This couldn't have come at a better time, as I just navigated this last week. I kind of disagree with most of what the author is saying. Here's why. The author

This couldn't have come at a better time, as I just navigated this last week. I kind of disagree with most of what the author is saying. Here's why. The author posits that you've begun looking for a new job for a reason. There are things that you dislike about your job. That's logical, and it's the number one reason that I went on a search of my own. The problem is that there's always some level of information asymmetry. You know everything you dislike about your current job; you can't know what you'll dislike about your new job until you begin that role. However, once I was given another "great offer", it made me realize that part of every job is disliking certain aspects of it. No matter where you are, it's impossible to find a role that you like 100% of the time. When I received another job offer, it made me realize that there were a lot of things that I was taking for granted about my current job. And when I notified my current employer that I was leaving, they reminded me of how valued I was with the package that they put together. In fairness, they could've done a better job with this throughout my employment. At the end of the day, the compensation and future commitments (all of which are in writing) made it compelling to me to stay and not risk disliking my next role. Have you ever heard the saying that you should flip a coin to make important decisions, because as soon as the coin is in the air you'll know what you want anyway? Well, I went through the coin flip process and realized I had taken a lot of things for granted at my current employer. And that's why I stayed.

ryandrake 10y ago
> And when I notified my current employer that I was leaving, they reminded me of how valued I was with the package that they put together. Yea, you were so valued that they DIDN'T offer it to you until you threatened to leave. That doesn't sound like an employer that values you, it sounds like an employer who got away with a great bargain while it lasted.
- cgio 10y ago
  Every employer does that given the opportunity. Their side of the deal is paying you the least amount you will agree to in an arms length transaction. i hate it too, as an employee, but viewing your employer as a socialist daddy won't get you far. There may be some of this kind in the market, but very few.
- andrewflnr 10y ago
  > Yea, you were so valued that they DIDN'T offer it to you until you threatened to leave. That doesn't sound like an employer that values you This sounds insightful, but I don't think it's fair. It's almost always true for everyone that you don't know what you have until it's gone, or almost gone if you're lucky. Your employer is no different. Give them a break, just a tiny one.
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    That's a lot of benefit of the doubt to give. More likely is that they know exactly what they have, and have done the math. For every salary level, there is a probability P that the employee will leave. If it costs $C to replace them, then they are coming out ahead by paying you $N below market rate when N > P x C. EDIT: To be more exact, it's probably more like: N > [P(N) - P(market)] x C
    - jknoepfler 10y ago
      First, the cost of a valuable employee leaving is very, very high in terms of their salary. The inefficiency in training someone to fill their shoes is awful and risky, and good engineers are seldom fungible in any short-term meaningful sense. Second, this isn't how decisions get made on real-world software teams. In the real world, you find yourself just working with managers who need to make judgment calls with limited resources and time. Pursuing a raise for an employee is expensive to do proactively. A valued employee leaving sends a manager into crisis management mode, which expedites the process and helps them prioritize it up whatever chain they report to. The manager (+chain) make a judgment call about whether to make you a counter against a backdrop of company policy. Their failure to proactively get you a raise before you went seeking other opportunities is usually due to a failure of communication, timing, or time budgeting on both your and their part. You can't expect people to read your mind and figure out if you think you're being paid what your time is worth. Sometimes it's obvious (oh look, the last of X's stock grant just vested), but usually it's not. Your suggested envelope math might help inform general company policy, but it doesn't inform day-to-day managerial decisions in any but the vaguest way. Most management I've worked with has not been formally sophisticated; I imagine this is the case in the industry broadly. Managers do not wake up in the morning and consciously wonder "what do I need to do today... hmm... does the marginal utility of working on a raise for X exceed the marginal utility of writing this operational improvement plan?" They think "Is there a crisis? If crisis, expedite. Otherwise check shit off checklist." I told my most recent manager I was pissed off about my salary a few months ago (after a year at the company). He got it kicked up the chain, I got up-leveled at the next review session. It took him a lot of time and effort, it netted me a large salary increase. I think we're happy with each other still.
- fsloth 10y ago
  Often great packages need some political leverage to pull through. I'm sure many good managers would like to offer their subordinates top salaries but company policies/budgets do not allow it. Only when a top performer is about to leave the equation changes from "increasing costs" to "limiting costs" - it's very expensive to recruit and retrain replacements for top talent. Yes, it sucks. But I totally understand the dynamics driving this. The unfortunate conclusion is that to maximize earnings employees should test their market rate in the job market periodically.
  - st3v3r 10y ago
    I don't see how that makes things any better or more excusable.
    - infinite8s 10y ago
      What makes it inexcusable?
- archildress 10y ago
  This is a really great point that I wrestled with. I think you have to remind yourself that sometimes, everyone gets so busy and caught up doing the work that they forget these other parts. Would it have been better to do this proactively? Sure. But I think you can find some empathy when you imagine yourself on the other side of the table. And, you might be right. :)
- abandonliberty 10y ago
  HR exists to obtain resources for as little as possible. It's just business. Hate the game. In a private capitalist environment, everything exists to maximize return in investment: morality, goodwill, company culture, values, information asymmetry. Take the emotions out of it. Everything is quantifiable.
- jk563 10y ago
  This is the line my previous employer used when I notified them I'd received a counter before joining them. They then did the exact same thing when it came to me leaving and didn't offer a significant raise until I had an offer elsewhere.
morgante 10y ago
I agree that saying counter-offers are universally bad is too simplistic. Sometimes your compensation simply has fallen behind market without you or your employer realizing it. Especially at a smaller company, your manager might very well not have firm sense of what your market compensation would be. A competing offer is a great way for both you and them to get your compensation up to market. Just because you interviewed for another job does not imply you're unhappy with your current one. I try to occasionally interview just to keep a tab on the market, even when I'm entirely happy with my current job (including its compensation). In fact, the results of such interviews are often that my current job is better than anything else out there.
Gibbon1 10y ago
> it made me realize that part of every job is disliking certain aspects of it. If it didn't suck in some fundamental way it'd be a hobby not job.

ryandrake 10y ago

> And when I notified my current employer that I was leaving, they reminded me of how valued I was with the package that they put together. Yea, you were so valued that they DIDN'T offer it to you until you threatened to leave. That doesn't sound like an employer that values you, it sounds like an employer who got away with a great bargain while it lasted.

cgio 10y ago
Every employer does that given the opportunity. Their side of the deal is paying you the least amount you will agree to in an arms length transaction. i hate it too, as an employee, but viewing your employer as a socialist daddy won't get you far. There may be some of this kind in the market, but very few.
andrewflnr 10y ago
> Yea, you were so valued that they DIDN'T offer it to you until you threatened to leave. That doesn't sound like an employer that values you This sounds insightful, but I don't think it's fair. It's almost always true for everyone that you don't know what you have until it's gone, or almost gone if you're lucky. Your employer is no different. Give them a break, just a tiny one.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  That's a lot of benefit of the doubt to give. More likely is that they know exactly what they have, and have done the math. For every salary level, there is a probability P that the employee will leave. If it costs $C to replace them, then they are coming out ahead by paying you $N below market rate when N > P x C. EDIT: To be more exact, it's probably more like: N > [P(N) - P(market)] x C
  - jknoepfler 10y ago
    First, the cost of a valuable employee leaving is very, very high in terms of their salary. The inefficiency in training someone to fill their shoes is awful and risky, and good engineers are seldom fungible in any short-term meaningful sense. Second, this isn't how decisions get made on real-world software teams. In the real world, you find yourself just working with managers who need to make judgment calls with limited resources and time. Pursuing a raise for an employee is expensive to do proactively. A valued employee leaving sends a manager into crisis management mode, which expedites the process and helps them prioritize it up whatever chain they report to. The manager (+chain) make a judgment call about whether to make you a counter against a backdrop of company policy. Their failure to proactively get you a raise before you went seeking other opportunities is usually due to a failure of communication, timing, or time budgeting on both your and their part. You can't expect people to read your mind and figure out if you think you're being paid what your time is worth. Sometimes it's obvious (oh look, the last of X's stock grant just vested), but usually it's not. Your suggested envelope math might help inform general company policy, but it doesn't inform day-to-day managerial decisions in any but the vaguest way. Most management I've worked with has not been formally sophisticated; I imagine this is the case in the industry broadly. Managers do not wake up in the morning and consciously wonder "what do I need to do today... hmm... does the marginal utility of working on a raise for X exceed the marginal utility of writing this operational improvement plan?" They think "Is there a crisis? If crisis, expedite. Otherwise check shit off checklist." I told my most recent manager I was pissed off about my salary a few months ago (after a year at the company). He got it kicked up the chain, I got up-leveled at the next review session. It took him a lot of time and effort, it netted me a large salary increase. I think we're happy with each other still.
fsloth 10y ago
Often great packages need some political leverage to pull through. I'm sure many good managers would like to offer their subordinates top salaries but company policies/budgets do not allow it. Only when a top performer is about to leave the equation changes from "increasing costs" to "limiting costs" - it's very expensive to recruit and retrain replacements for top talent. Yes, it sucks. But I totally understand the dynamics driving this. The unfortunate conclusion is that to maximize earnings employees should test their market rate in the job market periodically.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  I don't see how that makes things any better or more excusable.
  - infinite8s 10y ago
    What makes it inexcusable?
archildress 10y ago
This is a really great point that I wrestled with. I think you have to remind yourself that sometimes, everyone gets so busy and caught up doing the work that they forget these other parts. Would it have been better to do this proactively? Sure. But I think you can find some empathy when you imagine yourself on the other side of the table. And, you might be right. :)
abandonliberty 10y ago
HR exists to obtain resources for as little as possible. It's just business. Hate the game. In a private capitalist environment, everything exists to maximize return in investment: morality, goodwill, company culture, values, information asymmetry. Take the emotions out of it. Everything is quantifiable.
jk563 10y ago
This is the line my previous employer used when I notified them I'd received a counter before joining them. They then did the exact same thing when it came to me leaving and didn't offer a significant raise until I had an offer elsewhere.

morgante 10y ago

I agree that saying counter-offers are universally bad is too simplistic. Sometimes your compensation simply has fallen behind market without you or your employer realizing it. Especially at a smaller company, your manager might very well not have firm sense of what your market compensation would be. A competing offer is a great way for both you and them to get your compensation up to market. Just because you interviewed for another job does not imply you're unhappy with your current one. I try to occasionally interview just to keep a tab on the market, even when I'm entirely happy with my current job (including its compensation). In fact, the results of such interviews are often that my current job is better than anything else out there.

Gibbon1 10y ago

> it made me realize that part of every job is disliking certain aspects of it. If it didn't suck in some fundamental way it'd be a hobby not job.