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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

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.
  - hvidgaard 8y ago
    > As a jr employee they’ll never rise to chief architect Considering that only few people get to the top title at a big company (I think there is ~20 Technical Fellows in Microsoft world wide), I think that is a fallacy. If you work at a small company that grows, you're far more likely to become a chief architect. > Now tell me my experience would be better in a 12 person startup/shop. I dare you. Only applies to the US. EU citizens don't really have to worry about that.
    - eloisant 8y ago
      The thing is that in a big-co, you don't have to become chief architect or CTO to have a healthy career evolution. You can be "just" architect and impact a much bigger team than the 10-people startup.
    - TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
      Technical Fellow is an academic and/or research position. SMEs don't have technical fellows, although technical fellows sometimes start their own companies. Senior/Chief Architect is an engineering/production position, with limited scope for game changing R&D. In a typical 10-20 man shop the position is usually taken by the CTO, who will be usually be in it for the long haul for both financial and technical reasons. Very, very rarely a startup will turn into a unicorn with hundreds or thousands of employees. You can get some way up the ladder when that happens. But the odds are against it happening in the first place. And at the higher levels you'll still be competing with talent hired from outside.
- TheFattestNinja 8y ago
  As a junior, the switch job raise is much higher than that, especially if you decide to move to a larger / more active city (which is not that big of a deal as a junior). During my first job I got raised 12% over 2yearish, and swapping and moving to a larger metropolitan area brought an additional 30%-45% (depending on which offer you looked at). Now ofc there are other factor (higher life cost), but still that's massive.
  - tonyarkles 8y ago
    Absolutely. Fresh out of school, I job hopped twice and ended up with >50% raise. Started at $40k CAD, 18 months on jumped for $48k, and 4 months later (there were other reasons too), jumped for a greenfield project at $65k. The first job refused to match the $48k offer. I’d probably still be there if they had, a decade on. Awesome place, awesome people, but... student loans and wanting to not live in a dumpy apartment won...
  - AchieveLife 8y ago
    I was able to achieve a 264% raise in the first 2 years of my dev life by switching companies and roles. Startup -> Medium sized company I didn't have to move states. Edit: I'm a college dropout too. Rapid learner so I learned a lot on the job at the startup. Did a ton of tasks nobody else wanted to do (devops, automation, performance, tests).
eloisant 8y ago
In big-co you can change team/product to get some change in you career.
Flenser 8y ago
> (for the local market) There is no local market, at least not in the long term. Once a junior developer has acquired some skills and experience they're going to start looking at other markets where their market rate will be higher, and being less likely to have attachments that make it harder to move they will find it easier to move than more senior developers.
ksec 8y ago
Now assuming they got another three - four years of Soul Crushing big-co Life, that should be 7 years into their professional coding, turning 30s, questioning everything there is in life. Would they have rejoin their first company if they were given the same salary?

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.
- hvidgaard 8y ago
  > As a jr employee they’ll never rise to chief architect Considering that only few people get to the top title at a big company (I think there is ~20 Technical Fellows in Microsoft world wide), I think that is a fallacy. If you work at a small company that grows, you're far more likely to become a chief architect. > Now tell me my experience would be better in a 12 person startup/shop. I dare you. Only applies to the US. EU citizens don't really have to worry about that.
  - eloisant 8y ago
    The thing is that in a big-co, you don't have to become chief architect or CTO to have a healthy career evolution. You can be "just" architect and impact a much bigger team than the 10-people startup.
  - TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
    Technical Fellow is an academic and/or research position. SMEs don't have technical fellows, although technical fellows sometimes start their own companies. Senior/Chief Architect is an engineering/production position, with limited scope for game changing R&D. In a typical 10-20 man shop the position is usually taken by the CTO, who will be usually be in it for the long haul for both financial and technical reasons. Very, very rarely a startup will turn into a unicorn with hundreds or thousands of employees. You can get some way up the ladder when that happens. But the odds are against it happening in the first place. And at the higher levels you'll still be competing with talent hired from outside.
TheFattestNinja 8y ago
As a junior, the switch job raise is much higher than that, especially if you decide to move to a larger / more active city (which is not that big of a deal as a junior). During my first job I got raised 12% over 2yearish, and swapping and moving to a larger metropolitan area brought an additional 30%-45% (depending on which offer you looked at). Now ofc there are other factor (higher life cost), but still that's massive.
- tonyarkles 8y ago
  Absolutely. Fresh out of school, I job hopped twice and ended up with >50% raise. Started at $40k CAD, 18 months on jumped for $48k, and 4 months later (there were other reasons too), jumped for a greenfield project at $65k. The first job refused to match the $48k offer. I’d probably still be there if they had, a decade on. Awesome place, awesome people, but... student loans and wanting to not live in a dumpy apartment won...
- AchieveLife 8y ago
  I was able to achieve a 264% raise in the first 2 years of my dev life by switching companies and roles. Startup -> Medium sized company I didn't have to move states. Edit: I'm a college dropout too. Rapid learner so I learned a lot on the job at the startup. Did a ton of tasks nobody else wanted to do (devops, automation, performance, tests).

eloisant 8y ago

In big-co you can change team/product to get some change in you career.

Flenser 8y ago

> (for the local market) There is no local market, at least not in the long term. Once a junior developer has acquired some skills and experience they're going to start looking at other markets where their market rate will be higher, and being less likely to have attachments that make it harder to move they will find it easier to move than more senior developers.

ksec 8y ago

Now assuming they got another three - four years of Soul Crushing big-co Life, that should be 7 years into their professional coding, turning 30s, questioning everything there is in life. Would they have rejoin their first company if they were given the same salary?