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>To follow the author's analogy, by mentoring someone, we're effectively "adding a fish" to the pond, and if someone else "catches" the fish, that effort is lar

>To follow the author's analogy, by mentoring someone, we're effectively "adding a fish" to the pond, and if someone else "catches" the fish, that effort is largely wasted. Even more curious is that IT culture is basically that if you want to get paid what you're worth, you have to quit and go to another company. So these companies put all this effort into raising a better developer, and then refuse to pay them what they're now worth and basically force them to go elsewhere. It's not "what if they go elsewhere" under that situation, it's "when". I'd argue that you don't even have to "pay more than everyone around you". Simply coming close to parity is enough to stop most people from going through the pain of a job search. But these companies don't even get that close. The last time I switched jobs, I got a 40% pay increase. That's ridiculous. I even told the company I was underpaid and they asked if I could wait a year for a raise. I didn't even answer the question. I just walked away and started looking for a job. They weren't surprised when I found one and quit. And a couple weeks before I left, they put in a job ad for 7 developers, offering what I was making at my new job for each of them. I've been at this new job as a senior developer for 8 years now. Could I make more? Almost certainly. But they gave me decent raises and have a good culture (almost zero overtime in 8 years) and benefits, and I don't feel like leaving.

stcredzero 8y ago
It's not "what if they go elsewhere" under that situation, it's "when". This is gold. It's just a specific application of, "You shouldn't fight market forces, if you can help it." Simply coming close to parody parity Though, this started me thinking on what "parody bits" would be.
- wccrawford 8y ago
  Ugh. I swear it was "parity" in my head. I have no idea how I managed to mis-type that. Wow.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    I keep looking back on past comments and finding stuff like that. I wonder if someone has come up with a homophone/typo mistake filter? Being able to turn that on for opponents one would like to discredit would be really insidious and evil. What if some evil genius at Google has come up with a hidden way to do this in Chrome? Would we ever know? Maybe not, if the frequency was kept low enough.
    - r_smart 8y ago
      The number of times I screw up there/their or hear/here is infuriating. I know the goddamn difference, but these idiot fingers keep getting it wrong!
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  wccrawford could be correct. I have seen companies come close to parody...
salarycommenter 8y ago
Currently switching jobs for a personal record 57% increase in total compensation. And I was NOT poorly compensated before. I was already in the 99th percentile for individual income. The harder I push on comp the more I get each time. I am not going to lie and say that it didn't take years to build to this point in terms of skill, work record, professional network, and interview ability. It took three FAANG companies bidding against each other. Meanwhile I get offered nothing in terms of growth from every employer I have ever worked for ever. Literally never happened my entire career. Just this time after I already had an undisclosed offer in hand I got a promotion with no meaningful compensation increase. It was the first promotion of my 15 year career! Sure they were willing to match, but who wants to try and soak blood from a stone.
- dfrage 8y ago
  > Sure they were willing to match, but who wants to try and soak blood from a stone. I've never tried it myself, but it's supposed to be common knowledge that perhaps more than half the time a company is forced into granting you a raise to match an offer you have in hand, they're only doing it long enough to arrange replacing you. There are certainly many reported exceptions to this, but why take a chance with a company that's already shown they don't respect you?
  - salarycommenter 8y ago
    I am very wary of making this about respect or the individuals in the company who didn't grant you better compensation. It's toxic for yourself and if other people find out you think that way it can spoil relationships. Never underestimate how the people you work with at your old jobs can end up being stepping stones to bigger and better things later on. I believe no one in my management chain could have done significantly better. They had their budget and even if they had moved things around in my favor it would have just been a different level of inadequate. Structurally the entire industry is biased towards preventing you from achieving what I call equilibrium. Equilibrium is where you can't leave your current job for a >10% raise. I believe it's just a cost saving measure (assuming the ability to pay exists which it may not) and the industry has decided that the average wage suppression is more valuable then the cost of the turn over it creates. I'm not going to pass judgement on whether they are right or wrong. Ability to pay is a big factor. Most of my prior employers could only offer a fraction of what I currently make.
onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
I think the problem is largely isolated to companies in decline or stagnant -- which unfortunately is most companies. At a growing company, if you're a growing individual, there's room for you to rise. At a stagnant or declining company, if you're outperforming your boss, there's a strong incentive for your boss to want to keep you down to keep his/her job. In a growing company, your boss might be happy to get your promoted to his/her level. Instead of subordinate, now you're a potential ally on the same level. I think in a healthy environment almost anyone would see that as appealing. In a stagnant company, that could be mean your boss loses the job. Almost anyone would see that as unappealing.
- GVIrish 8y ago
  > I think the problem is largely isolated to companies in decline or stagnant -- which unfortunately is most companies. I don't think that's the case at all. I think it's just that typical corporate culture (in the US at least) is not accustomed to giving large internal raises to employees based on increases in that employee's market value. Most companies base their annual compensation on giving people a few percentage points for cost of living adjustment, then a few more percentage points based on performance. They standardize those numbers so they can say, 'you did average, you get 4%' 'you did great this year, you get 6.5%'. Many, many companies don't factor in at all that employee value on the market can increase much, much faster than 2-8% per year. Even companies making money hand over fist. The usual way of approaching annual raises is wildly unsuited for compensating talent that is in high demand.
- hinkley 8y ago
  Allies versus competitors. I just made the same observation up thread. Only once has this gone badly for me, but it went really bad. Tried to mentor a guy, two years later he’s our boss and everybody hates him. Like we go out for coffee to talk about how much we hate him. Ladder climber extraordinaire. Gotta learn to watch out for those, but in this case he only connived in private and nobody caught on but one and he left.
rhizome 8y ago
And a couple weeks before I left, they put in a job ad for 7 developers All "Senior X," right?
skookumchuck 8y ago
> Even more curious is that IT culture is basically that if you want to get paid what you're worth, you have to quit and go to another company. There's nothing curious or special about the IT industry. It's the same effect as you getting gas at the local gas station rather than driving a few miles to the cheaper station.
mamon 8y ago
My personal best was a 100% pay increase, when I went from being young and naive to "know your worth and negotiate aggresively" attitude :) That was almost 8 years ago, I changed the jobs few times since then, for additional aggregate 50% increase in salary.
wwweston 8y ago
> The last time I switched jobs, I got a 40% pay increase. That's ridiculous. I even told the company I was underpaid and they asked if I could wait a year for a raise. As far as I can tell, management that can see beyond the idea that your current payscale is what you should be payed is pretty rare. There's just something about anchoring on a price once it's negotiated.
hinkley 8y ago
My experience is that one of the reasons people will leave is feeling trapped. If they feel like they can easily leave they will stay longer. Not a lot longer, maybe six to eight months. But that’s still up to 20% longer.
dba7dba 8y ago
> Even more curious is that IT culture is basically that if you want to get paid what you're worth, you have to quit and go to another company. From what I've noticed, companies really want to avoid raising salary of an employee in a meaningful way, because it means they will have to increase pay of others also So 10% increase of salary of 1 employee would eventually equal 10% in crease for the whole team or company, which gets expensive. This seems to be why they really really hate giving out meaningful raise. They'd rather lose an employee and suffer the consequences, than give 10% raise to one and inevitably end up raising salary for the entire team/company. And yet, they want to higher senior devs, who obviously left old company to seek higher pay.
- NullPrefix 8y ago
  Unrelated to the topic at hand, but have you used speech to text to write this ?
  - dba7dba 8y ago
    No. :)
reading-at-work 8y ago
> Even more curious is that IT culture is basically that if you want to get paid what you're worth, you have to quit and go to another company. Can confirm. I just got a 54% raise by switching companies. It's absurd. I think a lot of companies just get complacent and don't keep up with the pace of developer salaries, then start leaking talent until it becomes a problem.
ukoki 8y ago
> Even more curious is that IT culture is basically that if you want to get paid what you're worth, you have to quit and go to another company. This is not just IT, this is the entire job market. The reason is because jobs are "sticky" — it's a pain to apply for jobs, arrange interviews, deal with the possibility of getting rejected. If you're successful you also have to deal with possibility of leaving colleagues that may be friends, the risk that the new position is less stimulating, or having to move house or deal with a new commute. There is a very real salary range between "low enough that I'll think about applying for other jobs" and "so low I'll actually start applying for jobs". Employers are aware of this and are paying salaries accordingly. It sucks for everyone in that salary band but — ethics and long-term viability aside — it's still the rational economic choice for employers. Every now and again someone will quit and get their deserved 40% increase, but many will delay leaving for years, or simply put up with it indefinitely. edit: Side-note: if you happen to find interviewing and changing jobs more tolerable than most then congratulations! — You've won the job-market pain-of-change-vs-salary arbitrage game and will enjoy above-average year-on-year salary increases.
wolfgke 8y ago
> Even more curious is that IT culture is basically that if you want to get paid what you're worth, you have to quit and go to another company. This is a very US-centric perspective. At least in Germany, the situation is somehwat different. Here, changing companies too regularly, often bears a social stigma.

stcredzero 8y ago

It's not "what if they go elsewhere" under that situation, it's "when". This is gold. It's just a specific application of, "You shouldn't fight market forces, if you can help it." Simply coming close to parody parity Though, this started me thinking on what "parody bits" would be.

wccrawford 8y ago
Ugh. I swear it was "parity" in my head. I have no idea how I managed to mis-type that. Wow.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  I keep looking back on past comments and finding stuff like that. I wonder if someone has come up with a homophone/typo mistake filter? Being able to turn that on for opponents one would like to discredit would be really insidious and evil. What if some evil genius at Google has come up with a hidden way to do this in Chrome? Would we ever know? Maybe not, if the frequency was kept low enough.
  - r_smart 8y ago
    The number of times I screw up there/their or hear/here is infuriating. I know the goddamn difference, but these idiot fingers keep getting it wrong!
AnimalMuppet 8y ago
wccrawford could be correct. I have seen companies come close to parody...

salarycommenter 8y ago

Currently switching jobs for a personal record 57% increase in total compensation. And I was NOT poorly compensated before. I was already in the 99th percentile for individual income. The harder I push on comp the more I get each time. I am not going to lie and say that it didn't take years to build to this point in terms of skill, work record, professional network, and interview ability. It took three FAANG companies bidding against each other. Meanwhile I get offered nothing in terms of growth from every employer I have ever worked for ever. Literally never happened my entire career. Just this time after I already had an undisclosed offer in hand I got a promotion with no meaningful compensation increase. It was the first promotion of my 15 year career! Sure they were willing to match, but who wants to try and soak blood from a stone.

dfrage 8y ago
> Sure they were willing to match, but who wants to try and soak blood from a stone. I've never tried it myself, but it's supposed to be common knowledge that perhaps more than half the time a company is forced into granting you a raise to match an offer you have in hand, they're only doing it long enough to arrange replacing you. There are certainly many reported exceptions to this, but why take a chance with a company that's already shown they don't respect you?
- salarycommenter 8y ago
  I am very wary of making this about respect or the individuals in the company who didn't grant you better compensation. It's toxic for yourself and if other people find out you think that way it can spoil relationships. Never underestimate how the people you work with at your old jobs can end up being stepping stones to bigger and better things later on. I believe no one in my management chain could have done significantly better. They had their budget and even if they had moved things around in my favor it would have just been a different level of inadequate. Structurally the entire industry is biased towards preventing you from achieving what I call equilibrium. Equilibrium is where you can't leave your current job for a >10% raise. I believe it's just a cost saving measure (assuming the ability to pay exists which it may not) and the industry has decided that the average wage suppression is more valuable then the cost of the turn over it creates. I'm not going to pass judgement on whether they are right or wrong. Ability to pay is a big factor. Most of my prior employers could only offer a fraction of what I currently make.

onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago

I think the problem is largely isolated to companies in decline or stagnant -- which unfortunately is most companies. At a growing company, if you're a growing individual, there's room for you to rise. At a stagnant or declining company, if you're outperforming your boss, there's a strong incentive for your boss to want to keep you down to keep his/her job. In a growing company, your boss might be happy to get your promoted to his/her level. Instead of subordinate, now you're a potential ally on the same level. I think in a healthy environment almost anyone would see that as appealing. In a stagnant company, that could be mean your boss loses the job. Almost anyone would see that as unappealing.

GVIrish 8y ago
> I think the problem is largely isolated to companies in decline or stagnant -- which unfortunately is most companies. I don't think that's the case at all. I think it's just that typical corporate culture (in the US at least) is not accustomed to giving large internal raises to employees based on increases in that employee's market value. Most companies base their annual compensation on giving people a few percentage points for cost of living adjustment, then a few more percentage points based on performance. They standardize those numbers so they can say, 'you did average, you get 4%' 'you did great this year, you get 6.5%'. Many, many companies don't factor in at all that employee value on the market can increase much, much faster than 2-8% per year. Even companies making money hand over fist. The usual way of approaching annual raises is wildly unsuited for compensating talent that is in high demand.
hinkley 8y ago
Allies versus competitors. I just made the same observation up thread. Only once has this gone badly for me, but it went really bad. Tried to mentor a guy, two years later he’s our boss and everybody hates him. Like we go out for coffee to talk about how much we hate him. Ladder climber extraordinaire. Gotta learn to watch out for those, but in this case he only connived in private and nobody caught on but one and he left.

rhizome 8y ago

And a couple weeks before I left, they put in a job ad for 7 developers All "Senior X," right?

skookumchuck 8y ago

> Even more curious is that IT culture is basically that if you want to get paid what you're worth, you have to quit and go to another company. There's nothing curious or special about the IT industry. It's the same effect as you getting gas at the local gas station rather than driving a few miles to the cheaper station.

mamon 8y ago

My personal best was a 100% pay increase, when I went from being young and naive to "know your worth and negotiate aggresively" attitude :) That was almost 8 years ago, I changed the jobs few times since then, for additional aggregate 50% increase in salary.

wwweston 8y ago

> The last time I switched jobs, I got a 40% pay increase. That's ridiculous. I even told the company I was underpaid and they asked if I could wait a year for a raise. As far as I can tell, management that can see beyond the idea that your current payscale is what you should be payed is pretty rare. There's just something about anchoring on a price once it's negotiated.

hinkley 8y ago

My experience is that one of the reasons people will leave is feeling trapped. If they feel like they can easily leave they will stay longer. Not a lot longer, maybe six to eight months. But that’s still up to 20% longer.

dba7dba 8y ago

> Even more curious is that IT culture is basically that if you want to get paid what you're worth, you have to quit and go to another company. From what I've noticed, companies really want to avoid raising salary of an employee in a meaningful way, because it means they will have to increase pay of others also So 10% increase of salary of 1 employee would eventually equal 10% in crease for the whole team or company, which gets expensive. This seems to be why they really really hate giving out meaningful raise. They'd rather lose an employee and suffer the consequences, than give 10% raise to one and inevitably end up raising salary for the entire team/company. And yet, they want to higher senior devs, who obviously left old company to seek higher pay.

NullPrefix 8y ago
Unrelated to the topic at hand, but have you used speech to text to write this ?
- dba7dba 8y ago
  No. :)

reading-at-work 8y ago

> Even more curious is that IT culture is basically that if you want to get paid what you're worth, you have to quit and go to another company. Can confirm. I just got a 54% raise by switching companies. It's absurd. I think a lot of companies just get complacent and don't keep up with the pace of developer salaries, then start leaking talent until it becomes a problem.

ukoki 8y ago

> Even more curious is that IT culture is basically that if you want to get paid what you're worth, you have to quit and go to another company. This is not just IT, this is the entire job market. The reason is because jobs are "sticky" — it's a pain to apply for jobs, arrange interviews, deal with the possibility of getting rejected. If you're successful you also have to deal with possibility of leaving colleagues that may be friends, the risk that the new position is less stimulating, or having to move house or deal with a new commute. There is a very real salary range between "low enough that I'll think about applying for other jobs" and "so low I'll actually start applying for jobs". Employers are aware of this and are paying salaries accordingly. It sucks for everyone in that salary band but — ethics and long-term viability aside — it's still the rational economic choice for employers. Every now and again someone will quit and get their deserved 40% increase, but many will delay leaving for years, or simply put up with it indefinitely. edit: Side-note: if you happen to find interviewing and changing jobs more tolerable than most then congratulations! — You've won the job-market pain-of-change-vs-salary arbitrage game and will enjoy above-average year-on-year salary increases.

wolfgke 8y ago

> Even more curious is that IT culture is basically that if you want to get paid what you're worth, you have to quit and go to another company. This is a very US-centric perspective. At least in Germany, the situation is somehwat different. Here, changing companies too regularly, often bears a social stigma.