4 ms·

> Instead, 2 years is a pretty common stretch before turnover in white collar jobs, especially for younger folk. Employees become better off from firm-hopping,

by sidlls 9y ago

> Instead, 2 years is a pretty common stretch before turnover in white collar jobs, especially for younger folk. Employees become better off from firm-hopping, and employers have no reason to offer long-ROI incentives such as paid masters' programs. I'd have gladly stayed at my third job for much longer than the ~21 months I did had there been training, retirement, reasonable pay increases, and career development offered. The same for my forth job. Some number of jobs later and my current one is also my longest tenure to date. Not coincidentally I have had and continue to have a clear path of career development, non-trivial pay increases and bonuses that aren't tiny. I've given up on employer-provided proper retirement plans and education/training. "Firm hopping" exists, in my opinion, precisely because companies tend to either not recognize the role they must play in supporting long term tenures or else simply don't value them enough to allocate resources to the support.

pm90 9y ago
A lot of this can be mitigated by managers having genuine conversations with their employees. The ideal manager I would work with (I've seen some managers come close but never hit all the right notes) would first and foremost be genuinely interested in my career progress as an employee. Different employees have different ambitions and expectations and there is just no way for a manager to know all of this just by observing someone; they really need to actively communicate and find out, to have a genuine conversation about how much raise they can provide or why they can't, what future they see for the employee. Especially if the employee is performing below expectations... that conversation can be tough, but I think one of the qualities of being a good manager is to convey this information in a way which makes the employee try to remedy the situation rather than just disparage them.
- wyc 9y ago
  One on ones are important to me, and have been among the most enjoyable interactions in my professional life. My favorite point on this was by Andy Grove, who suggested that there's a limit to the number of your direct reports because you owe each of them about half a day per week to properly manage and support them.
- VLM 9y ago
  That would imply the hiring process didn't select a perfect match 100% of the time, which is a slap in the face of a large budget item, that's not going to happen. The fiction must be maintained at all costs that the employee was the perfect fit at hiring time; neither overqualified aka too expensive or underqualified aka the manager screwed up.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
    Not at all. People change, companies change, the business changes. The person you needed when you hired him might not be the exact person you'll need in a year, but a good manager will first see if that person can grow into a new role instead of firing him and hiring someone else.
- ryandrake 9y ago
  I firmly believe part of this conversation needs to be clear, measurable goals. At most places I've worked it's "Your performance is good, but you're not getting a raise/bonus. In order to get a raise, you need to do subjectively better in some vaguely described area or in some other nebulous way that I cannot articulate. Good luck--you won't know if you've done it until next review time!" A better conversation would be: "In order to get raise X% you need to do A, B, and C. In order to get raise Y% you also need to do D and E. We will checkpoint 4 times per year on progress, and you'll know well in advance if you've made it." Where A-E are things the employee has direct control over, i.e. not dependent on things like overall team success or company stock price.
mcguire 9y ago
My longest jobs both lasted around 8 years. In both cases, I stayed because I liked my coworkers and the environment. As a result, my salary history is well below average for my location and experience. Further, since I was paid less than my less experienced (and less capable) coworkers, my input was usually ignored and I was basically sidelined except when something went badly wrong and I spent much of my time cleaning up others' mistakes. Keep an eye on those pay increases and the IEEE salary survey in your region.
- sidlls 9y ago
  At this point in my career I've reached a salary plateau for the technical track. Short of landing a high-profile project at one of the major tech firms the ~6%-7% raises I've had the last couple of years are about the max of what I might expect from a "hop." Instead I'm looking to both exit this industry completely and, while I build the cushion necessary to do so, switch to management (which has ample support, currently).
  - tmat 9y ago
    This happened to me as well, the only way I was able to get above that plateau was to go freelance and start my own thing. Charging a fair market value for my time. Best decision I ever made.
    - mcguire 9y ago
      That's about what I've decided, but all the freelance work I've seen available has been web development---the kind of thing I'm trying to escape. Freelancing for a systems programmer has a "I can't get there from here" problem, particularly since I'm crap-tastic at networking.
      - spinlock 9y ago
        I feel like there's a market for independent contract sales. I would love to pay 15% of a contract to someone who could source and close contracts for me. Unfortunately, I think there's no way to escape the need to network. But, it's a learnable skill so you just have to put in the time and effort.
kerkeslager 9y ago
Exactly. I've never worked somewhere that gave >5% raises, yet simply switching jobs has gotten me a >8% raise every time. I've stayed beyond what pay would incentivize at almost every company I've worked at because I liked the culture/coworkers/etc., but workplaces are fragile ecosystems, and culture/coworkers/etc. can drastically change with surprising speed.
dsparkman 9y ago
I learned in the late 90s that the best fit for myself was to hop and hop often. I tended to stay with a company for about 12-18 months and would use each hop to increase my salary. Among my friends, the basic catch phrase was "want a 10k pay raise, get another job". This worked well on 2 fronts, your pay kept going up, and you tended to stay at the firm long enough to extract any real value to yourself in terms of interesting projects, learning a new industry etc. That just made you more attractive to the next company.
- aetherson 9y ago
  A cautionary note here: companies are not blind to this behavior. The job market for programmers is very hot right now and employers to some degree just have to suck it up and deal with job hopping employees, but if the market cools, a resume full of one year stints may become a liability.
  - true_religion 9y ago
    Maybe, but if you have 10 years of 1-year stints... companies aren't foolish either. They know you only survived that tactic because you're extremely good (and gosh hopefully well recommended by your colleagues from 10 jobs). They also know that they are now 'lucky' enough the market is cold, and you'll be trapped with them for the next 5+ years out of fear.

by sidlls 9y ago

pm90 9y ago

A lot of this can be mitigated by managers having genuine conversations with their employees. The ideal manager I would work with (I've seen some managers come close but never hit all the right notes) would first and foremost be genuinely interested in my career progress as an employee. Different employees have different ambitions and expectations and there is just no way for a manager to know all of this just by observing someone; they really need to actively communicate and find out, to have a genuine conversation about how much raise they can provide or why they can't, what future they see for the employee. Especially if the employee is performing below expectations... that conversation can be tough, but I think one of the qualities of being a good manager is to convey this information in a way which makes the employee try to remedy the situation rather than just disparage them.

wyc 9y ago
One on ones are important to me, and have been among the most enjoyable interactions in my professional life. My favorite point on this was by Andy Grove, who suggested that there's a limit to the number of your direct reports because you owe each of them about half a day per week to properly manage and support them.
VLM 9y ago
That would imply the hiring process didn't select a perfect match 100% of the time, which is a slap in the face of a large budget item, that's not going to happen. The fiction must be maintained at all costs that the employee was the perfect fit at hiring time; neither overqualified aka too expensive or underqualified aka the manager screwed up.
- HeyLaughingBoy 9y ago
  Not at all. People change, companies change, the business changes. The person you needed when you hired him might not be the exact person you'll need in a year, but a good manager will first see if that person can grow into a new role instead of firing him and hiring someone else.
ryandrake 9y ago
I firmly believe part of this conversation needs to be clear, measurable goals. At most places I've worked it's "Your performance is good, but you're not getting a raise/bonus. In order to get a raise, you need to do subjectively better in some vaguely described area or in some other nebulous way that I cannot articulate. Good luck--you won't know if you've done it until next review time!" A better conversation would be: "In order to get raise X% you need to do A, B, and C. In order to get raise Y% you also need to do D and E. We will checkpoint 4 times per year on progress, and you'll know well in advance if you've made it." Where A-E are things the employee has direct control over, i.e. not dependent on things like overall team success or company stock price.

mcguire 9y ago

My longest jobs both lasted around 8 years. In both cases, I stayed because I liked my coworkers and the environment. As a result, my salary history is well below average for my location and experience. Further, since I was paid less than my less experienced (and less capable) coworkers, my input was usually ignored and I was basically sidelined except when something went badly wrong and I spent much of my time cleaning up others' mistakes. Keep an eye on those pay increases and the IEEE salary survey in your region.

sidlls 9y ago
At this point in my career I've reached a salary plateau for the technical track. Short of landing a high-profile project at one of the major tech firms the ~6%-7% raises I've had the last couple of years are about the max of what I might expect from a "hop." Instead I'm looking to both exit this industry completely and, while I build the cushion necessary to do so, switch to management (which has ample support, currently).
- tmat 9y ago
  This happened to me as well, the only way I was able to get above that plateau was to go freelance and start my own thing. Charging a fair market value for my time. Best decision I ever made.
  - mcguire 9y ago
    That's about what I've decided, but all the freelance work I've seen available has been web development---the kind of thing I'm trying to escape. Freelancing for a systems programmer has a "I can't get there from here" problem, particularly since I'm crap-tastic at networking.
    - spinlock 9y ago
      I feel like there's a market for independent contract sales. I would love to pay 15% of a contract to someone who could source and close contracts for me. Unfortunately, I think there's no way to escape the need to network. But, it's a learnable skill so you just have to put in the time and effort.

kerkeslager 9y ago

Exactly. I've never worked somewhere that gave >5% raises, yet simply switching jobs has gotten me a >8% raise every time. I've stayed beyond what pay would incentivize at almost every company I've worked at because I liked the culture/coworkers/etc., but workplaces are fragile ecosystems, and culture/coworkers/etc. can drastically change with surprising speed.

dsparkman 9y ago

I learned in the late 90s that the best fit for myself was to hop and hop often. I tended to stay with a company for about 12-18 months and would use each hop to increase my salary. Among my friends, the basic catch phrase was "want a 10k pay raise, get another job". This worked well on 2 fronts, your pay kept going up, and you tended to stay at the firm long enough to extract any real value to yourself in terms of interesting projects, learning a new industry etc. That just made you more attractive to the next company.

aetherson 9y ago
A cautionary note here: companies are not blind to this behavior. The job market for programmers is very hot right now and employers to some degree just have to suck it up and deal with job hopping employees, but if the market cools, a resume full of one year stints may become a liability.
- true_religion 9y ago
  Maybe, but if you have 10 years of 1-year stints... companies aren't foolish either. They know you only survived that tactic because you're extremely good (and gosh hopefully well recommended by your colleagues from 10 jobs). They also know that they are now 'lucky' enough the market is cold, and you'll be trapped with them for the next 5+ years out of fear.