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The company's thinking works like this. Your good engineer might have been worth a $15k raise. But once it gets out you can get a 15k raise by just getting a
by JamesBarney 8y ago
The company's thinking works like this. Your good engineer might have been worth a $15k raise. But once it gets out you can get a 15k raise by just getting a new offer then another 3-4 people will go get offers and asks for raises. This ends up costing the company an extra $60k-$70k to retain your good engineer, and he might not be worth that to the company.
- Ultimatt 8y agoRight... but the engineer who leaves still made that extra money with a good offer. They just had to follow through on leaving. So what happens is everyone immediately finds and accepts a better offer. This is quite literally what happened in a startup I was with. When people talk about "churn" Im not sure they have witnessed entire disgruntled teams paid like 60% market rate (at best) just drop tools because the "mission" of the company wasn't enough anymore.
- jdreyfuss 8y agoBut on the other hand, churn sparks more churn. So you don't pay your "good engineer" and she leaves. Other engineers start wondering why, and start looking around the market. Another one leaves, and then all of a sudden you have a ripple effect where several people follow suit and leave in a short time.
- issa 8y agoI would say that an engineer leaving can cost a company much more than the $60-70k you think the company would spend to keep them. You have to: 1) Hire a new person (this comes with costs!) 2) Train the new person (this takes time to do AND takes time away from the team for other tasks) 3) Pay the new person the going rate salary anyway