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Might work somewhere else. I always felt blackmailed in a situation like this and wished the employee all the best with his new job. [Edit] To clarify the blac

Might work somewhere else. I always felt blackmailed in a situation like this and wished the employee all the best with his new job. [Edit] To clarify the blackmail note: It's better to talk in the weekly 1:1 about salary expectations, changing markets or during people development focus, than to pull up a competing offer out of your hat while not talking about your dissatisfaction with pay during weekly 1:1s. 1. If the employee is only motivated by money, he will be gone rather sooner than later as there is always a higher offer around. 2. If you give in once to this, the employee will come back 6 months later with demanding the next pay rise. 3. You might have done something wrong in the past. An employee who can envision herself in the company in some years in a different role with personal development and fair pay rises (see 4.) does not leave. 4. You might also have no transparent pay rise process in place and clear guide lines why people have which salary. You might also have a wide band of salaries, which will bite you sooner or later. 5. Your salaries might also be too low and not working in the local market. This often happens when startups grow (or employee markets change) and salaries are not adjusted properly. Earlier employees - or employees before a VC round - often have too low salaries in this case. Fight for a budget rise to get every salary up in line again. 6. This might also happen if you agree to too low salaries when hiring. This often happens when you hire women, but also happens otherwise. You should always pay what the employee is worth, not what he is demanding (often too low). Don't feel happy if you hire below budget, this is a mistake. As a manager the easiest pay rise you can get for your team is during hiring.

DrJaws 9y ago
1. money is what people work for. Unless you are doing something truly great for the humanity there is not much more than money or great work conditions google style to motivate people. 2. Of course, because he wants to be paid like the market is paying people in his position, not to be the only idiot with a worthless salary. Because, you know, they are asking you to offer them the same the competence is able to give. What you want is an underpaid worker who never ask for a raise and have his mouth shut up for everything, hell you would take a slave if you could
lordCarbonFiber 9y ago
To me if I can get a better offer (ie over 10% salary increase) that's just a signal that the current employer is trying to take advantage of me. I'm with you in that I'd never go back and negotiate, I'd just leave. Especially early in your career, there is 0 reason to stick around with someone that won't pay you what you're worth. Underpaying is going to directly correlate with retention problems, and limited career growth so it's best to get out early and often.
- slantyyz 9y ago
  >> To me if I can get a better offer (ie over 10% salary increase) that's just a signal that the current employer is trying to take advantage of me. It's more likely ignorance of your specific market price than malice. First, the employer isn't even going to know your outside market price if you don't get an offer in the first place. For you to prove that you're worth the 10% salary increase, you would have to be vetted by a prospective employer as having met their requirements to be hired at some price. Secondly, your current employer needs to agree that you're worth that 10% salary increase. Their perception of your value may simply not match your own perception of your value.
  - justrobert 9y ago
    The point is, when someone has offers from other companies for 10% increase (which imo is pretty low usually it is 20% or more), the employee finally realizes their value. In these situations often the employee is getting raises that do not even cover inflation. So the employee now sees their market value and would like to continue working for the company, but they have realized they could take on risk for a 20-50% raise instead. I mean the risk equation is simple, with such a raise you can save enough cash to justify the risk even if it doesn't work out. I always ended up taking the offer from the more generous company, and they tended to increase my pay to offset more than inflation and then a bonus to justify staying.
    - slantyyz 9y ago
      I'm not disputing the realization of value, I'm only disputing the characterization that the employer "trying to take advantage of me", because it's unlikely to be true.
joshklein 9y ago
I think it's important to take both of the posts above this one seriously and not dismiss them as "not in my experience." If you want leverage in any negotiating situation, you need to be able to walk away from the negotiation if the final terms are undesirable. The party with the best "next-best option" is usually the one most willing to stand their ground on terms, or walk. That means you need to be prepared to lose your job when you discuss changing its terms, which implies BOTH that you should have other offers AND that you should know your boss might fire you on the spot (or worse, talk you into rejecting the other offers and also quietly stop considering you for advancement in your current role).
- mseebach 9y ago
  There's something to be said for communication style. You can do essentially what top-GP suggests, but without the high-conflict ultimatum -- basically, communicate your worry about your salary in a series of low-drama conversations, in which you can calmly suggest that your research implies that you'd be able to make $X in a similar job elsewhere, but really enjoy your current job, etc. The key, of course, is always to understand your BATNA: Are you actually willing to leave? You can play a significantly more daring game if you're prepared to lose, rather than accept status quo or a modest improvement.
  - foo101 9y ago
    Have you tried what you are suggesting in practice? I have never succeeded in getting any raise unless I had a concrete actionable BATNA, i.e. a competing offer.
    - mseebach 9y ago
      I have actually, but I understand that it's rare. Please note that I do encourage doing "research" - it doesn't have to go all the way to an offer, but what I mean is to build confidence that you can indeed get one at the given salary. This is your BATNA, but because you're not giving an ultimatum, you don't have to walk away to a new job immediately - you can just start looking.
coldtea 9y ago
>1. If the employee is only motivated by money, he will be gone rather sooner than later as there is always a higher offer around. What else would they be motivated by? It's not their hobby. This doesn't mean they are also not into programming and coding challenges -- but those are constants that they can find in another employer too. if they like the programming, it's not that they can't find a programming job elsewhere. >2. If you give in once to this, the employee will come back 6 months later with demanding the next pay rise. Sounds like the slippery slope fallacy. Even if they do, you can deal with it (and e.g. let them go) then.
- _Codemonkeyism 9y ago
  Pay is for many not a motivation but a hygienic factor. So I do not dispute that people go to work for the money. I do.
- magnetic 9y ago
  > What else would they be motivated by? The actual work (what is being done), the mission of the company (are you helping kids send pictures that disappear after 10 seconds or are you working on finding a cure to hearing loss?), the team, the location (do I have to spend 2h commuting?), the opportunities to learn, the opportunities to grow, etc. We each value different things, but if money is your only consideration, you will be treated as a "disposable mercenary" because that's exactly what you are. You will never be trusted, because your loyalty is directed at whoever shows more $$ to you. Companies value more than just pure technical skills: loyalty, teamwork, communication skills, attitude, ethics, drive, independence, etc... If you only play in that one dimension, the game becomes very rough for both sides. I've never seen that work well, except for very short term assignments.
  - JakeTheAndroid 9y ago
    If they value those things, then they should be happy to compensate employees that have shown those traits at above market value. Then you retain the talent, and you likely do not run into compensation issues moving forward. Generally you see stagnation in pay, or the company expects you're willing to make well below market rate because it's a product you care about. At the end of the day I care about survival and feeding my family.
LostCharacter 9y ago
If an employee is coming to you with those offers instead of just leaving for the other job, shouldn't that indicate to you that they WANT to stay, but they also want to keep their career moving forward and earn more money? Why is that unreasonable? You're sending people out the door that want to continue working for your company just because they're telling you they have better opportunities and giving you a chance to give them one, too.
- _Codemonkeyism 9y ago
  For the reasons stated, I would not give in. This is a slippery slope. Raising the pay of one employee out of band will usually lead to group behavior, meaning others do the same for the same reasons. I was also mostly budget constrained in the past and could not raise budget to significantly (say 20%) pay raise several employees. If the employee for whatever reasons earns say 10% below average of the other employees, I would get her a pay raise.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - muh_gradle 9y ago
    A lot of employees would gladly choose to stay at their current company if the pay raise was fair. It's not easy for people to uproot their lives every 2 years. But there has to be an actual incentive (financial) to staying at a company long term.
    - lwhalen 9y ago
      Why would they have to uproot every 2 years? Many (the majority of?) tech workers are close-ish to big cities with healthy tech scenes, and remote work is very much 'a thing' these days too. Live in Seattle, get paid for work done in LA, SFO, Portland, etc.
      - muh_gradle 9y ago
JoeAltmaier 9y ago
Blackmailed by what? The market? Some of those points are excuses for doing nothing. #2 especially - what, they'll find a better and better job every six months? Not likely. If somebody can show you how they'd be paid better somewhere else, deal with it. Denial gets you nowhere. #3 is exactly what the above remark addresses. If I can show my boss I'd be treated properly elsewhere, the boss sure better get on board and start doing those things.
- troyvit 9y ago
  People always equate being treated properly with a higher salary, but from what I've seen there's a lot more to a job than pay. I watched several people leave a department for "better" jobs (meaning: higher pay) only to be miserable a year later for reasons unrelated to salary.
- _Codemonkeyism 9y ago
  > #3 is exactly what the above remark addresses. If I can show my boss I'd be treated properly elsewhere, the boss sure better get on board and start doing those things. If you feel you are treated better elsewhere, as a manager I'd help you transition to that elsewhere. If that is what you really want and think is best for you, I would make it as easy for you as possible. If you think money is most important to your current situation (house, wife, kids, debt, ...) and you're skill set is beyond my budget, than this is fine with me. I'm more interested in people-relationships than job-relationships as I have met many of my employees in other companies and we're still friends - and most of them left for a different job with probably more money. Some of them told me years later they should not have left because I usually invest a lot into people development and money is only one parameter to job satisfaction.
  - Tomis02 9y ago
    > I would make it as easy for you as possible. I'm pretty sure you're an exception.
    - _Codemonkeyism 9y ago
kelukelugames 9y ago
Management feels blackmailed? Hmmmm, I wonder how employees feel when management knows they can get away with paying them less...Especially when 5 & 6 sound like problems for management to fix.
dclowd9901 9y ago
"Might work somewhere else. I always felt blackmailed in a situation like this" Are you fucking stupid? Your employee is giving you a chance to retain them. They want to work for you, but can't make it work financially, and you're turning your nose up at them? For what reason? It's probably going to cost you the money to hire someone new that it would've taken you to retain them! I will never understand this line of thinking. And, no, I don't buy the line that companies can't find the money for their payroll. Not when corporate savings are at an all time high. > 1. If the employee is only motivated by money, he will be gone rather sooner than later as there is always a higher offer around. So? What have you lost then? You upped their pay for a short period of time and now they're gone. Big deal. You've lost an employee who didn't want to work for you anyway. Seems like a fine outcome. > 2. If you give in once to this, the employee will come back 6 months later with demanding the next pay rise. OK, and if it's unreasonable, they're probably going to have a hard time getting it. Or you won't be able to retain good talent. I'd say if it's the latter, you might want to restructure your exec bonus structure. > 3. You might have done something wrong in the past. An employee who can envision herself in the company in some years in a different role with personal development and fair pay rises (see 4.) does not leave. First off, I like that you say "her" as though you're not part of the problem in the .75/$1 shortchanging for women (hint: it comes absolutely from companies being tight gripped on their payroll and playing hardball in salary negotiations). That aside, I'm not sure I get your point here. You're saying you wouldn't provide a pay increase, and here you're saying that your employee's perception of that being the case might be a problem. Gee, I wonder how they would've gotten that perception... > 4. You might also have no transparent pay rise process in place and clear guide lines why people have which salary. You might also have a wide band of salaries, which will bite you sooner or later. Yet again, not sure how this affects the instance where an employee comes to you asking for a pay rise commensurate with offers they're receiving. Seems like a good time to get your pay structure under control. 5 and 6 seem to be tips all of a sudden on how to be a worthwhile compensator, so I'll ignore those.
- cobythedog 9y ago
  Come on... """ Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." """
novembermike 9y ago
> 1. If the employee is only motivated by money, he will be gone rather sooner than later as there is always a higher offer around. Do you have a lot of millionaires trying to join your startup as an employee? If you don't, then money is probably a major motivating factor for all of your employees.
s73ver 9y ago
"If the employee is only motivated by money" One thing employers need to realize is that this is 95% of jobs. I'm not a developer solely for money. But I am a developer at your company mainly because of money. I would have to imagine that the vast majority of people are in the jobs they're in because of the money.
johnward 9y ago
> If the employee is only motivated by money, Is there any other type of employee? You think it's a bad thing that people work for money? I'm not spending 40 hours a week out of charity. I only do it because I need money. I'm tired of people trying to make employees feel bad because they want more compensation.
mikeash 9y ago
It's hard for an individual employee to know what they're really worth. The best way to find out is go out and ask companies what they'll pay. By saying that you'd rather they talk to you about salary directly instead of getting competing offers, you're essentially saying that you'd prefer them to be uninformed about their true market worth when having the discussion. You probably don't mean that, but that's the result.
marcosdumay 9y ago
From the employee POV it never made sense for me either. It may not feel all the way as blackmail, but it's not some nice conversation either. Besides: 1. If the company is not paying you well now, it will also not give you timely raises or promotions, so you will have to do it again and again. 2. If there's a great team there, and the only problem is with the money, unless it is a temporary thing with known causes, odds are the entire team will leave soon. So it's not something to consider. 3. It's very likely that your employer will work towards replacing you and will let you go on their schedule. It's always best to leave on your schedule than getting it forced onto you.
foo101 9y ago
> [Edit] To clarify the blackmail note: It's better to talk in the weekly 1:1 about salary expectations, changing markets or during people development focus, than to pull up a competing offer out of your hat while not talking about your dissatisfaction with pay during weekly 1:1s. Talking about my dissatisfaction with pay during 1:1s has never got me a raise. Getting a competing offer has. > 1. If the employee is only motivated by money, he will be gone rather sooner than later as there is always a higher offer around. I may not be motivated only by money but money is a motivation. I am selling my skills in exchange for money, so it is in my interest to sell my skills to the highest bidder that matches my other requirements such as good role, autonomy at work, etc. > 2. If you give in once to this, the employee will come back 6 months later with demanding the next pay rise. Only if you are paying him below the market rate. If the pay is at par with market rate, it is not going to be so easy to come back 6 months later with another significant pay rise that is hard for you to afford.
malcolmgreaves 9y ago
This kind of emotional management is precisely why people quit to advance their careers.
_Codemonkeyism 9y ago
I would emphasize "do not deviate" concerning (4.) from "Build strict processes for potentially political issues and do not deviate—Certain activities attract political behavior. These activities include: Performance evaluation and compensation [...]" https://a16z.com/2010/08/24/how-to-minimize-politics-in-your-company/ https://a16z.com/2010/08/24/how-to-minimize-politics-in-your...
mmcnl 9y ago
A wonderful list of excuses to pay your employees as little as possible. Kudos.

DrJaws 9y ago

1. money is what people work for. Unless you are doing something truly great for the humanity there is not much more than money or great work conditions google style to motivate people. 2. Of course, because he wants to be paid like the market is paying people in his position, not to be the only idiot with a worthless salary. Because, you know, they are asking you to offer them the same the competence is able to give. What you want is an underpaid worker who never ask for a raise and have his mouth shut up for everything, hell you would take a slave if you could

lordCarbonFiber 9y ago

To me if I can get a better offer (ie over 10% salary increase) that's just a signal that the current employer is trying to take advantage of me. I'm with you in that I'd never go back and negotiate, I'd just leave. Especially early in your career, there is 0 reason to stick around with someone that won't pay you what you're worth. Underpaying is going to directly correlate with retention problems, and limited career growth so it's best to get out early and often.

slantyyz 9y ago
>> To me if I can get a better offer (ie over 10% salary increase) that's just a signal that the current employer is trying to take advantage of me. It's more likely ignorance of your specific market price than malice. First, the employer isn't even going to know your outside market price if you don't get an offer in the first place. For you to prove that you're worth the 10% salary increase, you would have to be vetted by a prospective employer as having met their requirements to be hired at some price. Secondly, your current employer needs to agree that you're worth that 10% salary increase. Their perception of your value may simply not match your own perception of your value.
- justrobert 9y ago
  The point is, when someone has offers from other companies for 10% increase (which imo is pretty low usually it is 20% or more), the employee finally realizes their value. In these situations often the employee is getting raises that do not even cover inflation. So the employee now sees their market value and would like to continue working for the company, but they have realized they could take on risk for a 20-50% raise instead. I mean the risk equation is simple, with such a raise you can save enough cash to justify the risk even if it doesn't work out. I always ended up taking the offer from the more generous company, and they tended to increase my pay to offset more than inflation and then a bonus to justify staying.
  - slantyyz 9y ago
    I'm not disputing the realization of value, I'm only disputing the characterization that the employer "trying to take advantage of me", because it's unlikely to be true.

joshklein 9y ago

I think it's important to take both of the posts above this one seriously and not dismiss them as "not in my experience." If you want leverage in any negotiating situation, you need to be able to walk away from the negotiation if the final terms are undesirable. The party with the best "next-best option" is usually the one most willing to stand their ground on terms, or walk. That means you need to be prepared to lose your job when you discuss changing its terms, which implies BOTH that you should have other offers AND that you should know your boss might fire you on the spot (or worse, talk you into rejecting the other offers and also quietly stop considering you for advancement in your current role).

mseebach 9y ago
There's something to be said for communication style. You can do essentially what top-GP suggests, but without the high-conflict ultimatum -- basically, communicate your worry about your salary in a series of low-drama conversations, in which you can calmly suggest that your research implies that you'd be able to make $X in a similar job elsewhere, but really enjoy your current job, etc. The key, of course, is always to understand your BATNA: Are you actually willing to leave? You can play a significantly more daring game if you're prepared to lose, rather than accept status quo or a modest improvement.
- foo101 9y ago
  Have you tried what you are suggesting in practice? I have never succeeded in getting any raise unless I had a concrete actionable BATNA, i.e. a competing offer.
  - mseebach 9y ago
    I have actually, but I understand that it's rare. Please note that I do encourage doing "research" - it doesn't have to go all the way to an offer, but what I mean is to build confidence that you can indeed get one at the given salary. This is your BATNA, but because you're not giving an ultimatum, you don't have to walk away to a new job immediately - you can just start looking.

coldtea 9y ago

>1. If the employee is only motivated by money, he will be gone rather sooner than later as there is always a higher offer around. What else would they be motivated by? It's not their hobby. This doesn't mean they are also not into programming and coding challenges -- but those are constants that they can find in another employer too. if they like the programming, it's not that they can't find a programming job elsewhere. >2. If you give in once to this, the employee will come back 6 months later with demanding the next pay rise. Sounds like the slippery slope fallacy. Even if they do, you can deal with it (and e.g. let them go) then.

_Codemonkeyism 9y ago
Pay is for many not a motivation but a hygienic factor. So I do not dispute that people go to work for the money. I do.
magnetic 9y ago
> What else would they be motivated by? The actual work (what is being done), the mission of the company (are you helping kids send pictures that disappear after 10 seconds or are you working on finding a cure to hearing loss?), the team, the location (do I have to spend 2h commuting?), the opportunities to learn, the opportunities to grow, etc. We each value different things, but if money is your only consideration, you will be treated as a "disposable mercenary" because that's exactly what you are. You will never be trusted, because your loyalty is directed at whoever shows more $$ to you. Companies value more than just pure technical skills: loyalty, teamwork, communication skills, attitude, ethics, drive, independence, etc... If you only play in that one dimension, the game becomes very rough for both sides. I've never seen that work well, except for very short term assignments.
- JakeTheAndroid 9y ago
  If they value those things, then they should be happy to compensate employees that have shown those traits at above market value. Then you retain the talent, and you likely do not run into compensation issues moving forward. Generally you see stagnation in pay, or the company expects you're willing to make well below market rate because it's a product you care about. At the end of the day I care about survival and feeding my family.

LostCharacter 9y ago

If an employee is coming to you with those offers instead of just leaving for the other job, shouldn't that indicate to you that they WANT to stay, but they also want to keep their career moving forward and earn more money? Why is that unreasonable? You're sending people out the door that want to continue working for your company just because they're telling you they have better opportunities and giving you a chance to give them one, too.

_Codemonkeyism 9y ago
For the reasons stated, I would not give in. This is a slippery slope. Raising the pay of one employee out of band will usually lead to group behavior, meaning others do the same for the same reasons. I was also mostly budget constrained in the past and could not raise budget to significantly (say 20%) pay raise several employees. If the employee for whatever reasons earns say 10% below average of the other employees, I would get her a pay raise.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- muh_gradle 9y ago
  A lot of employees would gladly choose to stay at their current company if the pay raise was fair. It's not easy for people to uproot their lives every 2 years. But there has to be an actual incentive (financial) to staying at a company long term.
  - lwhalen 9y ago
    Why would they have to uproot every 2 years? Many (the majority of?) tech workers are close-ish to big cities with healthy tech scenes, and remote work is very much 'a thing' these days too. Live in Seattle, get paid for work done in LA, SFO, Portland, etc.
    - muh_gradle 9y ago

JoeAltmaier 9y ago

Blackmailed by what? The market? Some of those points are excuses for doing nothing. #2 especially - what, they'll find a better and better job every six months? Not likely. If somebody can show you how they'd be paid better somewhere else, deal with it. Denial gets you nowhere. #3 is exactly what the above remark addresses. If I can show my boss I'd be treated properly elsewhere, the boss sure better get on board and start doing those things.

troyvit 9y ago
People always equate being treated properly with a higher salary, but from what I've seen there's a lot more to a job than pay. I watched several people leave a department for "better" jobs (meaning: higher pay) only to be miserable a year later for reasons unrelated to salary.
_Codemonkeyism 9y ago
> #3 is exactly what the above remark addresses. If I can show my boss I'd be treated properly elsewhere, the boss sure better get on board and start doing those things. If you feel you are treated better elsewhere, as a manager I'd help you transition to that elsewhere. If that is what you really want and think is best for you, I would make it as easy for you as possible. If you think money is most important to your current situation (house, wife, kids, debt, ...) and you're skill set is beyond my budget, than this is fine with me. I'm more interested in people-relationships than job-relationships as I have met many of my employees in other companies and we're still friends - and most of them left for a different job with probably more money. Some of them told me years later they should not have left because I usually invest a lot into people development and money is only one parameter to job satisfaction.
- Tomis02 9y ago
  > I would make it as easy for you as possible. I'm pretty sure you're an exception.
  - _Codemonkeyism 9y ago

kelukelugames 9y ago

Management feels blackmailed? Hmmmm, I wonder how employees feel when management knows they can get away with paying them less...Especially when 5 & 6 sound like problems for management to fix.

dclowd9901 9y ago

"Might work somewhere else. I always felt blackmailed in a situation like this" Are you fucking stupid? Your employee is giving you a chance to retain them. They want to work for you, but can't make it work financially, and you're turning your nose up at them? For what reason? It's probably going to cost you the money to hire someone new that it would've taken you to retain them! I will never understand this line of thinking. And, no, I don't buy the line that companies can't find the money for their payroll. Not when corporate savings are at an all time high. > 1. If the employee is only motivated by money, he will be gone rather sooner than later as there is always a higher offer around. So? What have you lost then? You upped their pay for a short period of time and now they're gone. Big deal. You've lost an employee who didn't want to work for you anyway. Seems like a fine outcome. > 2. If you give in once to this, the employee will come back 6 months later with demanding the next pay rise. OK, and if it's unreasonable, they're probably going to have a hard time getting it. Or you won't be able to retain good talent. I'd say if it's the latter, you might want to restructure your exec bonus structure. > 3. You might have done something wrong in the past. An employee who can envision herself in the company in some years in a different role with personal development and fair pay rises (see 4.) does not leave. First off, I like that you say "her" as though you're not part of the problem in the .75/$1 shortchanging for women (hint: it comes absolutely from companies being tight gripped on their payroll and playing hardball in salary negotiations). That aside, I'm not sure I get your point here. You're saying you wouldn't provide a pay increase, and here you're saying that your employee's perception of that being the case might be a problem. Gee, I wonder how they would've gotten that perception... > 4. You might also have no transparent pay rise process in place and clear guide lines why people have which salary. You might also have a wide band of salaries, which will bite you sooner or later. Yet again, not sure how this affects the instance where an employee comes to you asking for a pay rise commensurate with offers they're receiving. Seems like a good time to get your pay structure under control. 5 and 6 seem to be tips all of a sudden on how to be a worthwhile compensator, so I'll ignore those.

cobythedog 9y ago
Come on... """ Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." """

novembermike 9y ago

> 1. If the employee is only motivated by money, he will be gone rather sooner than later as there is always a higher offer around. Do you have a lot of millionaires trying to join your startup as an employee? If you don't, then money is probably a major motivating factor for all of your employees.

s73ver 9y ago

"If the employee is only motivated by money" One thing employers need to realize is that this is 95% of jobs. I'm not a developer solely for money. But I am a developer at your company mainly because of money. I would have to imagine that the vast majority of people are in the jobs they're in because of the money.

johnward 9y ago

> If the employee is only motivated by money, Is there any other type of employee? You think it's a bad thing that people work for money? I'm not spending 40 hours a week out of charity. I only do it because I need money. I'm tired of people trying to make employees feel bad because they want more compensation.

mikeash 9y ago

It's hard for an individual employee to know what they're really worth. The best way to find out is go out and ask companies what they'll pay. By saying that you'd rather they talk to you about salary directly instead of getting competing offers, you're essentially saying that you'd prefer them to be uninformed about their true market worth when having the discussion. You probably don't mean that, but that's the result.

marcosdumay 9y ago

From the employee POV it never made sense for me either. It may not feel all the way as blackmail, but it's not some nice conversation either. Besides: 1. If the company is not paying you well now, it will also not give you timely raises or promotions, so you will have to do it again and again. 2. If there's a great team there, and the only problem is with the money, unless it is a temporary thing with known causes, odds are the entire team will leave soon. So it's not something to consider. 3. It's very likely that your employer will work towards replacing you and will let you go on their schedule. It's always best to leave on your schedule than getting it forced onto you.

foo101 9y ago

> [Edit] To clarify the blackmail note: It's better to talk in the weekly 1:1 about salary expectations, changing markets or during people development focus, than to pull up a competing offer out of your hat while not talking about your dissatisfaction with pay during weekly 1:1s. Talking about my dissatisfaction with pay during 1:1s has never got me a raise. Getting a competing offer has. > 1. If the employee is only motivated by money, he will be gone rather sooner than later as there is always a higher offer around. I may not be motivated only by money but money is a motivation. I am selling my skills in exchange for money, so it is in my interest to sell my skills to the highest bidder that matches my other requirements such as good role, autonomy at work, etc. > 2. If you give in once to this, the employee will come back 6 months later with demanding the next pay rise. Only if you are paying him below the market rate. If the pay is at par with market rate, it is not going to be so easy to come back 6 months later with another significant pay rise that is hard for you to afford.

malcolmgreaves 9y ago

This kind of emotional management is precisely why people quit to advance their careers.

_Codemonkeyism 9y ago

I would emphasize "do not deviate" concerning (4.) from "Build strict processes for potentially political issues and do not deviate—Certain activities attract political behavior. These activities include: Performance evaluation and compensation [...]" https://a16z.com/2010/08/24/how-to-minimize-politics-in-your-company/ https://a16z.com/2010/08/24/how-to-minimize-politics-in-your...

mmcnl 9y ago

A wonderful list of excuses to pay your employees as little as possible. Kudos.