4 ms·

Sure it's a weakness, but they (management) don't care. If the developer leaves, they'll hire another and in the mean time the remaining devs get to pick up the

Sure it's a weakness, but they (management) don't care. If the developer leaves, they'll hire another and in the mean time the remaining devs get to pick up the slack. It's actually a convenient excuse for the schedule slipping; they blame it on the developer who left because he "wasn't a team player", even though management knows the real reason is because they simply don't ... know ... how ... to ... manage.

dwightgunning 10y ago
The type of company and management I'd recommend people strive to work with prefers to retain good staff rather than hire fresh.
- cormacrelf 10y ago
  Hiring itself and losses from going without are very expensive, I find it weird that any company wouldn't rather retain. I wouldn't ever be surprised that hiring cost $10k all up.
  - Taylor_OD 10y ago
    If a company only used external recruiters for any position above 100K it's going to cost them 15K+. More likely 25K. Now if they try on their own as well by posting jobs, hiring internal recruiters, network... Hiring is expensive.
  - rezistik 10y ago
    Recruiters take up to 20% of first year salary or more plus the time to retrain, a 10k dev is a cheap one.
    - jabzd 10y ago
      In Chicago, some recruiters have started asking for 30%. I've refused to work with these companies but rates are definitely going up.
      - user5994461 10y ago
        London here. Thought it was 10-20% I asked a recruiter that placed me and he said he's usually taking 20-35% :D
lgas 10y ago
Great, that's win. The company gets another interchangeable cog that they value equally and the developer that leaves gets to work someplace better.
jimbokun 10y ago
I notice you don't mention increasing revenue or cutting costs anywhere in your analysis. Which is exactly why any developer in that situation needs to get out as soon as they can find a better position. Such a company is obviously not going to prosper in the long run.
conanbatt 10y ago
Replace-ability is actually a solid negotiation tactic, but that's not the same as intransigence regarding budget. The characterization of management as incompetents backastabbers is as childish as the one that says employees are lazy bums who should be grateful of their salary.
- dasil003 10y ago
  A million times this. The insidious part is that if you come up in that kind of management culture, it destroys your motivation and ethics to where you actually become a bad employee. You will then be less hirable by good companies, and hence the vicious cycle. It's really a type of abusive relationship.
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  You're correct. But it has been cultivated from seeing too many good engineers laid off due to bad management. Bad management who get to keep their jobs.
kasey_junk 10y ago
I can assure you as a (reluctant) manager I definitely care. Its literally the only reason I'm management. I'm also constantly having discussions with the people who generally make these kind of broad decisions about how unrealistic their decision making processes are. I tend to start those conversations with some variant on "it doesn't matter what you say the raise limits are for a person, the market sets those things and the market right now says you're wrong". It turns out that deciding what a software developer is worth is a very challenging proposition because deciding which ones are good is an open problem. Probably the central open problem in our industry today. But salary conversations are largely not about that. In sufficiently large organizations they are about how well you, or your manager if they are good, play the game, and in smaller ones its about having the cash flow to back up outstanding liabilities. In any case, I think its fair to characterize these approaches as a tactic, whether its a negotiation tactic or a real cost limitation varies from organization to organization but its not the employees job to worry about that. If you are in a good organization they are constantly making the value proposition to the company make sense, if not they aren't and you shouldn't feel guilty about either asking for more pay or leaving if it isn't provided.
- hvidgaard 10y ago
  > it doesn't matter what you say the raise limits are for a person, the market sets those things and the market right now says you're wrong This is very common. They often justify it with "In this company we're not paying as much, but we have greater freedom/cooler tech/<other benefit>". Well good for you. We have already established that we're a good fit, but I'm not working for 20% less than I can across the street.
  - kasey_junk 10y ago
    I don't think there is anything wrong with justifying a lower pay rate that way. I have definitely taken lower paying jobs for those very reasons. When you are making that value proposition you accept that some potential employees you'll miss out on because the money is not there. The problematic behavior is when the people setting the pay bands get the value proposition wrong or they think they are paying market when they are not.

dwightgunning 10y ago

The type of company and management I'd recommend people strive to work with prefers to retain good staff rather than hire fresh.

cormacrelf 10y ago
Hiring itself and losses from going without are very expensive, I find it weird that any company wouldn't rather retain. I wouldn't ever be surprised that hiring cost $10k all up.
- Taylor_OD 10y ago
  If a company only used external recruiters for any position above 100K it's going to cost them 15K+. More likely 25K. Now if they try on their own as well by posting jobs, hiring internal recruiters, network... Hiring is expensive.
- rezistik 10y ago
  Recruiters take up to 20% of first year salary or more plus the time to retrain, a 10k dev is a cheap one.
  - jabzd 10y ago
    In Chicago, some recruiters have started asking for 30%. I've refused to work with these companies but rates are definitely going up.
    - user5994461 10y ago
      London here. Thought it was 10-20% I asked a recruiter that placed me and he said he's usually taking 20-35% :D

lgas 10y ago

Great, that's win. The company gets another interchangeable cog that they value equally and the developer that leaves gets to work someplace better.

jimbokun 10y ago

I notice you don't mention increasing revenue or cutting costs anywhere in your analysis. Which is exactly why any developer in that situation needs to get out as soon as they can find a better position. Such a company is obviously not going to prosper in the long run.

conanbatt 10y ago

Replace-ability is actually a solid negotiation tactic, but that's not the same as intransigence regarding budget. The characterization of management as incompetents backastabbers is as childish as the one that says employees are lazy bums who should be grateful of their salary.

dasil003 10y ago
A million times this. The insidious part is that if you come up in that kind of management culture, it destroys your motivation and ethics to where you actually become a bad employee. You will then be less hirable by good companies, and hence the vicious cycle. It's really a type of abusive relationship.
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
You're correct. But it has been cultivated from seeing too many good engineers laid off due to bad management. Bad management who get to keep their jobs.

kasey_junk 10y ago

I can assure you as a (reluctant) manager I definitely care. Its literally the only reason I'm management. I'm also constantly having discussions with the people who generally make these kind of broad decisions about how unrealistic their decision making processes are. I tend to start those conversations with some variant on "it doesn't matter what you say the raise limits are for a person, the market sets those things and the market right now says you're wrong". It turns out that deciding what a software developer is worth is a very challenging proposition because deciding which ones are good is an open problem. Probably the central open problem in our industry today. But salary conversations are largely not about that. In sufficiently large organizations they are about how well you, or your manager if they are good, play the game, and in smaller ones its about having the cash flow to back up outstanding liabilities. In any case, I think its fair to characterize these approaches as a tactic, whether its a negotiation tactic or a real cost limitation varies from organization to organization but its not the employees job to worry about that. If you are in a good organization they are constantly making the value proposition to the company make sense, if not they aren't and you shouldn't feel guilty about either asking for more pay or leaving if it isn't provided.

hvidgaard 10y ago
> it doesn't matter what you say the raise limits are for a person, the market sets those things and the market right now says you're wrong This is very common. They often justify it with "In this company we're not paying as much, but we have greater freedom/cooler tech/<other benefit>". Well good for you. We have already established that we're a good fit, but I'm not working for 20% less than I can across the street.
- kasey_junk 10y ago
  I don't think there is anything wrong with justifying a lower pay rate that way. I have definitely taken lower paying jobs for those very reasons. When you are making that value proposition you accept that some potential employees you'll miss out on because the money is not there. The problematic behavior is when the people setting the pay bands get the value proposition wrong or they think they are paying market when they are not.