6 ms·

The other replies touch on this, but I'm gonna get straight to the point: Does your friend give them actual, meaningful raises as they grow? Is he actually pay

The other replies touch on this, but I'm gonna get straight to the point: Does your friend give them actual, meaningful raises as they grow? Is he actually paying competitively to begin with? Because I think if you have this pattern that consistently, it's really likely that either you're underpaying to begin with or your raises suck or are not even present. I love working at small companies. It's by far my preference. But none of the small companies I've ever worked at offered anything like the comp and comp growth that the big corp I currently work at does. In fact, almost all of them offered me near zero compensation growth over time. And in real dollars that effectively means negative growth.

scarejunba 8y ago
It doesn't matter what his friend gives them. I can beat it _and_ for those who prefer just working on technical design and code with an experienced team, I can offer them that. No forced mentorship taking up your time. Since senior engineer mentorship is a different thing, I can easily give them a better job than the "you have to help train junior engineers" guy. Altogether, this is the best approach. The guys at two years and slightly more of experience have learned on the job from someone else and you can get them for relatively cheap vs. the huge opportunity cost of having your senior engineers mentor people if they don't want to.
- sleepychu 8y ago
  Care to disclose where you work/what your org does?
  - scarejunba 8y ago
    No, I'd rather not. Angry HNers are best kept on the other side of the online/offline divide. Pleasant HNers I hope to see in real life :) The downside is I can't recruit off this user handle but c'est la vie.
jhwang5 8y ago
One could argue that their "raises" were paid in training
- nsxwolf 8y ago
  Training was “paid for” by the low initial salary.
  - jhwang5 8y ago
    I don't think the OP indicated anything about lowness/highness of the initial salary. OP did mention that the training they provided was exceptional. That's kinda rare.
- stormbrew 8y ago
  If the only raise you give them is in training, then the only way they can turn that 'raise' into something tangible is by leaving. If this is your attitude and you're still shocked they're leaving you've missed something in your calculus.
  - jhwang5 8y ago
    Sure, but the baseline of comparison here is vs a situation where the job didn't give you raises nor good training. And yes, the employer in OP's example should reconsider providing value through training vs straight cash.
    - tomohawk 8y ago
      In a static analysis. But in a dynamic analysis, the employee has learned some things and is now in a completely different job market.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
ivan_ah 8y ago
That's the weird thing — they (because there are two cofounders) were actually paying very competitive salaries (for the local market). I was impressed to hear what some of them were making. So it's not the money. I think what's going on is that after a year at any job you start to see the problems with the code base, and it starts to get repetitive. It will be like that both in big-co and small-co, but in a different way. In small-co you can have a much more freedom, but you reach a plateau of the new things you can learn. In big-co there are bigger problems and more challenges, but you're part of a soulless machine that just wants you to do your job and not ask questions. Not having experience the soul-crushing big-co life, the brough-up-to-speed junior hires don't appreciate the deal they have, and want to explore their options. It's a rational decision, and come to think of it I'd probably do the same. The code is always greener on the other side... Who wants to be like "no I'll stay here and do 3 years of the same things that I'm really good at now and delivering value for my employer." From the employers's perspective though was it worth it? Time/energy invested to train them vs. maybe 6mo or 1 year of useful coding contributions.
- stormbrew 8y ago
  > That's the weird thing — they (because there are two cofounders) were actually paying very competitive salaries (for the local market). I was impressed to hear what some of them were making. So it's not the money. This is only half of what I asked. What about the raises? As someone in another thread chain pointed out, the expected raise from job leaping is maybe 15%. How did the raises your friend gave compare to that? I'm not saying they have to meet it, but if you're sitting there doling out 1-2% raises per year people are gonna leave when they get what they need from you. Also, small companies (frankly, especially 'web' companies) are not even remotely immune to demanding people just "do their job and not ask questions" or forcing their employees to sit in the same box for 3 years doing the same thing. Often the lack of room for career growth in perpetually small companies almost demands this.
  - ryanobjc 8y ago
    In fact in the good big companies, they crave for employee growth. Time and money for training, meaningful career growth, and pay growth, major tech switches without changing jobs. I find that small companies are often much worse in all these metrics. As a jr employee they’ll never rise to chief architect - your friend, the cofounder, has that job. And is never giving it up. Plus thanks to cash crunch, making shortcuts to deliver is common in small companies. Especially since they don’t have a reputation to protect. So quality? Well, maybe. I recently took 9 weeks off from my bigco FAANG, job to help raise my baby. After the company’s health plan was on the hook for a million in costs (baby born prematurely, spent 3 months in hospital nicu). At no point was I worried about my job or company. I’m happily back on the team in my job cranking away and being productive. Now tell me my experience would be better in a 12 person startup/shop. I dare you. Ps: in terms of impact, well I work on a small thing in a sense so only a few million people directly use my product. Big companies have big impact. Lots of guard rails which is nice to no longer make the same basic mistakes over and over.
kjjjzzzz7zg 8y ago
Maybe they simply can't afford to pay more. Big companies tend to have a bigger budget.
jimnotgym 8y ago
^THIS I have come into a job missing a particular qualification, but being the best candidate. Then I have worked my socks off, and had all the plaudits off senior management and colleagues. But still I was being paid less than the job was originally advertised at, because of a missing qualification. So I moved, yes. Pay people what they are worth to you, not what you think you can get away with.

scarejunba 8y ago

It doesn't matter what his friend gives them. I can beat it _and_ for those who prefer just working on technical design and code with an experienced team, I can offer them that. No forced mentorship taking up your time. Since senior engineer mentorship is a different thing, I can easily give them a better job than the "you have to help train junior engineers" guy. Altogether, this is the best approach. The guys at two years and slightly more of experience have learned on the job from someone else and you can get them for relatively cheap vs. the huge opportunity cost of having your senior engineers mentor people if they don't want to.

sleepychu 8y ago
Care to disclose where you work/what your org does?
- scarejunba 8y ago
  No, I'd rather not. Angry HNers are best kept on the other side of the online/offline divide. Pleasant HNers I hope to see in real life :) The downside is I can't recruit off this user handle but c'est la vie.

jhwang5 8y ago

One could argue that their "raises" were paid in training

nsxwolf 8y ago
Training was “paid for” by the low initial salary.
- jhwang5 8y ago
  I don't think the OP indicated anything about lowness/highness of the initial salary. OP did mention that the training they provided was exceptional. That's kinda rare.
stormbrew 8y ago
If the only raise you give them is in training, then the only way they can turn that 'raise' into something tangible is by leaving. If this is your attitude and you're still shocked they're leaving you've missed something in your calculus.
- jhwang5 8y ago
  Sure, but the baseline of comparison here is vs a situation where the job didn't give you raises nor good training. And yes, the employer in OP's example should reconsider providing value through training vs straight cash.
  - tomohawk 8y ago
    In a static analysis. But in a dynamic analysis, the employee has learned some things and is now in a completely different job market.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

ivan_ah 8y ago

That's the weird thing — they (because there are two cofounders) were actually paying very competitive salaries (for the local market). I was impressed to hear what some of them were making. So it's not the money. I think what's going on is that after a year at any job you start to see the problems with the code base, and it starts to get repetitive. It will be like that both in big-co and small-co, but in a different way. In small-co you can have a much more freedom, but you reach a plateau of the new things you can learn. In big-co there are bigger problems and more challenges, but you're part of a soulless machine that just wants you to do your job and not ask questions. Not having experience the soul-crushing big-co life, the brough-up-to-speed junior hires don't appreciate the deal they have, and want to explore their options. It's a rational decision, and come to think of it I'd probably do the same. The code is always greener on the other side... Who wants to be like "no I'll stay here and do 3 years of the same things that I'm really good at now and delivering value for my employer." From the employers's perspective though was it worth it? Time/energy invested to train them vs. maybe 6mo or 1 year of useful coding contributions.

stormbrew 8y ago
> That's the weird thing — they (because there are two cofounders) were actually paying very competitive salaries (for the local market). I was impressed to hear what some of them were making. So it's not the money. This is only half of what I asked. What about the raises? As someone in another thread chain pointed out, the expected raise from job leaping is maybe 15%. How did the raises your friend gave compare to that? I'm not saying they have to meet it, but if you're sitting there doling out 1-2% raises per year people are gonna leave when they get what they need from you. Also, small companies (frankly, especially 'web' companies) are not even remotely immune to demanding people just "do their job and not ask questions" or forcing their employees to sit in the same box for 3 years doing the same thing. Often the lack of room for career growth in perpetually small companies almost demands this.
- ryanobjc 8y ago
  In fact in the good big companies, they crave for employee growth. Time and money for training, meaningful career growth, and pay growth, major tech switches without changing jobs. I find that small companies are often much worse in all these metrics. As a jr employee they’ll never rise to chief architect - your friend, the cofounder, has that job. And is never giving it up. Plus thanks to cash crunch, making shortcuts to deliver is common in small companies. Especially since they don’t have a reputation to protect. So quality? Well, maybe. I recently took 9 weeks off from my bigco FAANG, job to help raise my baby. After the company’s health plan was on the hook for a million in costs (baby born prematurely, spent 3 months in hospital nicu). At no point was I worried about my job or company. I’m happily back on the team in my job cranking away and being productive. Now tell me my experience would be better in a 12 person startup/shop. I dare you. Ps: in terms of impact, well I work on a small thing in a sense so only a few million people directly use my product. Big companies have big impact. Lots of guard rails which is nice to no longer make the same basic mistakes over and over.

kjjjzzzz7zg 8y ago

Maybe they simply can't afford to pay more. Big companies tend to have a bigger budget.

jimnotgym 8y ago

^THIS I have come into a job missing a particular qualification, but being the best candidate. Then I have worked my socks off, and had all the plaudits off senior management and colleagues. But still I was being paid less than the job was originally advertised at, because of a missing qualification. So I moved, yes. Pay people what they are worth to you, not what you think you can get away with.