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I've seen this so much now that I feel like I must be missing a piece of the puzzle. You work for a company for X amount of time, and you gain domain knowledge

I've seen this so much now that I feel like I must be missing a piece of the puzzle. You work for a company for X amount of time, and you gain domain knowledge of the company, and general industry experience. Some other company looks at your CV, and without knowing you, and probably without caring about your specific company domain knowledge, decides you are worth say 20% more than you are earning. You then go to your current company, and say 'my general skills are worth 20% more on the market, you know how well I work, and you know I have extra domain knowledge specific to this role, I would like more money' - and the company refuses. They then spend time and money finding someone with similar skills to what you have, but without your domain knowledge, and probably at a similar amount you asked for since that's the market rate. How is it not in the companies best interests to just keep you on and give you a raise? How do they justify all that wasted time and money every time? Do they just not measure it?

Alex3917 8y ago
> How is it not in the companies best interests to just keep you on and give you a raise? Better to be less profitable than bankrupt due to lack of cashflow. Mark Zuckerberg would have been a great hire for any company even at a salary of a billion dollars a year, but any startup that hired him for that salary would immediately go bankrupt.
- kraftman 8y ago
  This is assuming that they hire someone else to replace you, which is usually the case, so they're only saving a couple of months of salary, but now they have less staff developing the product, the staff they have are busy doing interviews, and they then have to pay a recruiter fee.
gjm11 8y ago
Suppose salaries are going up, and the average person at FooCorp could get 10% more by changing jobs. You are more underpaid than most; you establish that you could get 20% more by moving, and say to your manager at FooCorp that you'd like a 20% pay rise. Suppose they say yes. What happens next: other people hear about it and go to their managers saying "I think I'm underpaid; give me a 20% pay rise". If the answer is yes, then FooCorp is paying 20% more in salaries for the same work as before. If the answer is no, then those people have a concrete motivation to go and interview elsewhere, and probably a bunch of them will then leave even if they get counteroffers at FooCorp once they've demonstrated that they could earn more elsewhere. Suppose they say no. What happens next: most likely you leave for that better-paid job; others at FooCorp hear about this and understand that they aren't going to get paid more at FooCorp even with a job offer in hand. Some of them will decide to move, but maybe fewer than in the first scenario (because they haven't had the specific motivating experience of asking for more money and getting turned down, and because they don't feel like they have the lower-risk option of interviewing elsewhere, getting a counteroffer, and thus being paid more without having to move jobs). And the ones who don't move can go on being paid less. It's not obvious to me that the first of those scenarios is better for FooCorp than the second, if all they care about is maximizing their profits.
- kraftman 8y ago
  In the first case, if you think the person deserves the extra money and give it to them, you keep your best people. If other staff ask for the same, you can either give it to them if you think they deserve it, or risk losing them to elsewhere. The end result is you always keep your best staff, and potentially lose your worst staff. The second scenario, you always keep your worst staff and you potentially lose your best staff.
  - tomp 8y ago
    Maybe from company perspective, there’s no such thing as “10x engineers”, but only “1.02x engineers” at most.
- pnathan 8y ago
  Managers need to evaluate the strength of the claim of the experienced person - are they really underpaid? Has the person done their homework? I've had those conversations and they've worked out positively for me, but I've spent time building rappour with management, along with very carefully gathering data sources, cost of living shifts, and current income. If I just rolled up and asked for money, I expect I'd be shot down, and laughed at after I left the room...
  - Pfhreak 8y ago
    As a software manager who has both approved and turned down raises, pnathan pretty much nails it -- you need to bring data to the table. Are you underpaid? What's your target? Why now (what work have you completed that helps me sell this upwards?) Expect it to be a conversation, but it's a healthy conversation to have with a good manager -- we can't help meet your expectations if you do not communicate them to us!
    - patagonia 8y ago
      Companies rarely hesitate to pile on more work or responsibility often with zero conversion. If I can provide data and examples of work I’ve recently finished to support my request for a raise, the flip side of that is the company is already getting that value, and is happy to continue receiving that value without paying for it. It’s absurd that companies try to justify not giving out raises because the employee is not making their case. If a company gives me more work and responsibility, they have already made my case for me. Plain and simple. It’s the asymmetry of power in the relationship that is causing all this. The power dynamic is in the employers favor and the employer exploits that. Historically. Currently. Systematically.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
usrusr 8y ago
One missing puzzle piece perhaps: the importance of HR departments grows with a rising number of open positions.
- gaius 8y ago
  Another missing piece: HR people don’t get big raises for moving jobs and they don’t see why anyone else should either
  - xauronx 8y ago
    And the older middle managers get salty because they had to work for 20 years to make $120k so why should you get it “so young”?
  - pmiller2 8y ago
    Is this actually true?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - nil_pointer 8y ago
    I don't think this is true
gaius 8y ago
and you know I have extra domain knowledge specific to this role Funny story, at a previous employer people who had been there 10+ years, would always say, it takes 3 years to really hit your stride in this company. They meant the time taken to have made the contacts and established the reputation that you could really be effective, be trusted with important decisions, and so on. It was a vast company and operated on multi-year cycles was a large part of the reason. But the average tenure of an engineer at this company was 2.5 years...

Alex3917 8y ago

> How is it not in the companies best interests to just keep you on and give you a raise? Better to be less profitable than bankrupt due to lack of cashflow. Mark Zuckerberg would have been a great hire for any company even at a salary of a billion dollars a year, but any startup that hired him for that salary would immediately go bankrupt.

kraftman 8y ago
This is assuming that they hire someone else to replace you, which is usually the case, so they're only saving a couple of months of salary, but now they have less staff developing the product, the staff they have are busy doing interviews, and they then have to pay a recruiter fee.

gjm11 8y ago

Suppose salaries are going up, and the average person at FooCorp could get 10% more by changing jobs. You are more underpaid than most; you establish that you could get 20% more by moving, and say to your manager at FooCorp that you'd like a 20% pay rise. Suppose they say yes. What happens next: other people hear about it and go to their managers saying "I think I'm underpaid; give me a 20% pay rise". If the answer is yes, then FooCorp is paying 20% more in salaries for the same work as before. If the answer is no, then those people have a concrete motivation to go and interview elsewhere, and probably a bunch of them will then leave even if they get counteroffers at FooCorp once they've demonstrated that they could earn more elsewhere. Suppose they say no. What happens next: most likely you leave for that better-paid job; others at FooCorp hear about this and understand that they aren't going to get paid more at FooCorp even with a job offer in hand. Some of them will decide to move, but maybe fewer than in the first scenario (because they haven't had the specific motivating experience of asking for more money and getting turned down, and because they don't feel like they have the lower-risk option of interviewing elsewhere, getting a counteroffer, and thus being paid more without having to move jobs). And the ones who don't move can go on being paid less. It's not obvious to me that the first of those scenarios is better for FooCorp than the second, if all they care about is maximizing their profits.

kraftman 8y ago
In the first case, if you think the person deserves the extra money and give it to them, you keep your best people. If other staff ask for the same, you can either give it to them if you think they deserve it, or risk losing them to elsewhere. The end result is you always keep your best staff, and potentially lose your worst staff. The second scenario, you always keep your worst staff and you potentially lose your best staff.
- tomp 8y ago
  Maybe from company perspective, there’s no such thing as “10x engineers”, but only “1.02x engineers” at most.
pnathan 8y ago
Managers need to evaluate the strength of the claim of the experienced person - are they really underpaid? Has the person done their homework? I've had those conversations and they've worked out positively for me, but I've spent time building rappour with management, along with very carefully gathering data sources, cost of living shifts, and current income. If I just rolled up and asked for money, I expect I'd be shot down, and laughed at after I left the room...
- Pfhreak 8y ago
  As a software manager who has both approved and turned down raises, pnathan pretty much nails it -- you need to bring data to the table. Are you underpaid? What's your target? Why now (what work have you completed that helps me sell this upwards?) Expect it to be a conversation, but it's a healthy conversation to have with a good manager -- we can't help meet your expectations if you do not communicate them to us!
  - patagonia 8y ago
    Companies rarely hesitate to pile on more work or responsibility often with zero conversion. If I can provide data and examples of work I’ve recently finished to support my request for a raise, the flip side of that is the company is already getting that value, and is happy to continue receiving that value without paying for it. It’s absurd that companies try to justify not giving out raises because the employee is not making their case. If a company gives me more work and responsibility, they have already made my case for me. Plain and simple. It’s the asymmetry of power in the relationship that is causing all this. The power dynamic is in the employers favor and the employer exploits that. Historically. Currently. Systematically.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

usrusr 8y ago

One missing puzzle piece perhaps: the importance of HR departments grows with a rising number of open positions.

gaius 8y ago
Another missing piece: HR people don’t get big raises for moving jobs and they don’t see why anyone else should either
- xauronx 8y ago
  And the older middle managers get salty because they had to work for 20 years to make $120k so why should you get it “so young”?
- pmiller2 8y ago
  Is this actually true?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- nil_pointer 8y ago
  I don't think this is true

gaius 8y ago

and you know I have extra domain knowledge specific to this role Funny story, at a previous employer people who had been there 10+ years, would always say, it takes 3 years to really hit your stride in this company. They meant the time taken to have made the contacts and established the reputation that you could really be effective, be trusted with important decisions, and so on. It was a vast company and operated on multi-year cycles was a large part of the reason. But the average tenure of an engineer at this company was 2.5 years...