19 ms·

How Much Should You Pay Your Engineers to Ensure They Stick Around?

200 points by engineertorque 6y ago

exabrial 6y ago
It's only about 50% about pay for STEM fields. They have to be engaged, feel like they have a voice or influence in the culture/business decisions, have great equipment to use, and flexible time off.
- throwaway4666 6y ago
  All of it can be dispensed with if you pay even more
  - tennisacademy 6y ago
    ^ this
  - iso1631 6y ago
    Indeed, pay me $1m a day and I'll stare at a wall for you. Probably wouldn't do it for long, the first day would be amazing - that buys a great house. The rest of the week and I'm set for a very comfortable retirement.
    - cdumler 6y ago
      For a few days. My experience is that high pay will A) keep bad people around for much, much longer and B) keep good people around until they get too fed up with the bad people.
      - iso1631 6y ago
        I guess that's where high bonus low pay comes into it - if you are a "good person" you get the high bonus so you stay, if you are a "bad person" you don't, so you leave. The problem then comes down to defining good person vs bad person, which in the real world is very tricky.
    - nthj 6y ago
      This is part of why stock options are so valuable to organizations as an incentive: the retention power of high pay without the calculus of “do I have enough?” from liquid compensation
      - _jal 6y ago
        Huh? Everyone I've ever known who had significant options knew exactly what they were worth. I knew someone who changed their bash prompt to (price * unvested count / days left). He said at the time it was the only thing that kept him from quitting or punching his manager.
        pjc50 6y ago
        Long ago companies only bothered issuing options when the stock was illiquid; certainly my startup share options never had a meaningful market value from founding to acquisition. Publicly-quoted companies issuing options is just a weird form of deferred bonus with a favourable tax treatment.
        ghaff 6y ago
        Well, they also come with the hope that they'll increase in value prior to vesting. But, yes, RSUs in public companies are certainly more like getting bonuses that vest over time than a stock market lottery ticket.
        secondcoming 6y ago
        How do they know the price unless the company has IPO'd already?
        _jal 6y ago
        The particular case I mentioned with the bash prompt happened at Netscape, his tenure straddled the IPO.
  - madsbuch 6y ago
    Only for a limited amount of time.
  - exabrial 6y ago
    This is true, but it's a temporary solution. Eventually intellectuals get bored.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - delecti 6y ago
    It's still a balance between compensation, interesting challenges, and good work environment. You can provide less of one if you provide more of the others, or less of two if you provide much more of the other.
- draw_down 6y ago
  Well, 50% is a lot. And it’s a lot easier to alter and cut back on those other things than pay, because pay is written in the contract.
- scrooched_moose 6y ago
  Yep. I'm a MechE and my pay is decent (not amazing) for the area but I was fine with it due to a lot of other factors. In the last year or so, my company has had a culture shift leading to down-to-the minute micromanagement and I've lost all autonomy - every decision requires approval of multiple managers. There's no realistic engineering salary they could pay me to continue putting up with this and I can't get out quick enough. Covid has made that a bit tough though.
  - tartoran 6y ago
    Less autonomy also means less responsibility which affects growth in a bad way, but there is a small bright side to this, it reduces the cognitive workload and one can have leftover energy for side projects and hobbies. For the ones who have absolutely no taste to bureaucracy/red tape/stupid hierarchies of command, this could be soul sucking though
    - hedora 6y ago
      It doesn’t reduce cognitive workload for high performers. With my previous boss, I spent 90% of my intellectual effort managing up. Despite his best efforts, the project was delivered above spec and on time (saving his ass), but I burnt so many political bridges making it happen that I ended up moving teams.
      - tartoran 6y ago
        My point was exactly to take your high performance outside the organization you’re working for if they don’t offer the conditions necessary such as some autonomy and agency. It’s not worth proving anything, too few people would notice of care
- ghaff 6y ago
  It's probably only "50% about pay" where pay is fairly competitive. For many (of course not all), 25-50% lower comp is going to be a tough sell even if the company is at the top of "great places to work" lists.
- tehjoker 6y ago
  The next level of consciousness is that these other 50% applies to every other person in the world, not just people within our in-group.
awat 6y ago
Not directly a compensation component but organizations can make sure they have a technical leader supporting software organizations. Consulting with companies on productivity I can’t express how much devs not feeling like they have representation/a voice at the exec level negates comp effectiveness.
- ponker 6y ago
  Is it better to work at companies where the CEO is a programmer? Like Epic Games or Microsoft when Gates ran it?
  - awat 6y ago
    I don’t now that it’s specifically better to have a CEO that was an engineer. It probably is based on my experience. What I’m referring to is that period where engineers want to stay vs being heavily comp’d to stay. You can see people throughout this thread saying pay me a large amount and I’ll stare at a wall. If you want engineers not to fully optimize comp (read as $$$$$) against the market they need to feel represented and like they have a say in day to day decisions in the company.
- thanatropism 6y ago
  Question is, can this be faked? What we're saying is that coders are often willing to pay for "a seat at the table". But maybe management can sell them a placebo. It's not clear-cut that management ignoring coders will always turn out for the worse, even though management that always ignores coders probably has, historically. Maybe sometimes their voice matters and sometimes not.
  - awat 6y ago
    Oh it definitely can be faked. But so many orgs don’t even attempt to show they’re faking it.
  - rkangel 6y ago
    It can be faked to the engineers, it can't be faked to reality. Companies for whom engineering is key need to (at least to some extent) organise themselves around engineering. The strategic decisions need to take into account the needs and capabilities of engineering and engineers. If they don't then they won't be good at it. They'll be staffed with mediocre people who generate mediocre output very slowly.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
thanatropism 6y ago
An interesting question is whether paying enough (imagining an unlimited budget) won't end up selecting for coders who care more about the money than the work. A further question is whether these coders are actually better for the org -- the Henry Ford efficiency wage-type incentive may keep them at consistent pace and quality, whereas rockstars with physics PhD may have parallel agendas to make the project more fun to work with.
- Kinrany 6y ago
  Consistent quality requires accurate measurement. If you can't accurately measure quality and there's only external motivation, you get Goodhart's law.
  - thanatropism 6y ago
    But Goodhart's law applies to anything that's measured at all (it originates from the world monetary policy), even if it can be measured vey accurately. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law OTOH maybe quality exists as a qualitative concept but can't be measured -- then you just do pass/fail (like colleges have dropped letter-grades during the Zoomdemic). What I'm saying is that "shallower" coders, who are motivated by the extra pay, may be more willing to align their concept of quality with the interests of the organization, while self-motivated coders will have their idiosyncratic or fashionable ideas. When shopping around for a team to make a web app for my startup -- no technical requirements, we were feeling the market for price first -- we got a $$$ proposal for using PHP and Laravel, and a $ proposal for using AngularJS. I regret that decision; it cost us at least a year of time-to-market. The original team quit (they worked for a trusted friend of our "business cofounder") because they weren't really experienced in web dev and their opportunity cost was off the roof - they were crack coders that did all kinds of different projects. Then we decided to hire someone (with good references) as a consultant and manage him ourselves. Dude was apparently capable but couldn't be screamed into using off-the-shelf components rather than rewriting and refactoring constantly. He eventually flaked on us, got too many projects and we weren't fun anymore I guess. Finally we found a small company online. By all appearances the new team hates being around computers but can be managed by Trello and feature branches. Web dev is a bore, but it's a living, and not everyone manages to make a living out of their surfing passion.
xkcd-sucks 6y ago
In accordance with the standard hierarchy of needs, culture flows down from compensation. When everyone's material needs and desires are well satisfied, they interact genuinely and naturally. When people feel like good compensation is difficult to achieve, they put more effort into zero-sum internal politics, maintaining appearances, and so forth. You see this in upper management all the time; execs are friendly and graceful with each other because their material success is guaranteed, and promoting collegiality among execs is usually an orgizational goal.
- prepperpotts 6y ago
  Definitely agree with the latter part here about execs, but I feel like anxiety around compensation doesn't tie back to material needs as much as to the extent to which people measure their self-worth by compensation. Years ago, these studies were going around saying that people are happier when they make more money up to about $70k, at which point more money doesn't make you happier anymore. I'm sure that has to be adjusted for inflation etc by now, but very few devs make less money than they need to live comfortably by most people's standards.
  - mrnook 6y ago
    Found the study: https://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489 https://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489 It was conducted in 2010, so I wonder if anything would change if it was conducted again today. The current tech industry was in its infancy 10 years ago, and a lot of high paying jobs have been created since.
    - prepperpotts 6y ago
      True. Cost of living has spiked a lot in tech hubs, too, but devs are usually on the upper tier of the income curve.
      - paulcole 6y ago
        It’s not like NYC wasn’t expensive compared to Kansas 10 years ago.
cableshaft 6y ago
Keep them too stressed out and busy with work that they don't have the time and energy to really look for something new and grind dozens of LeetCode problems to get them through the grueling technical interview gauntlet? Seems to be working with my company to keep me there, at least.
wuliwong 6y ago
I changed jobs in the past year and only received a slight pay increase. For the first time in my engineering career, I really enjoy my job. There are a lot of factors but the thing that stands out the most is the senior leadership here. They actively seek to engage the entire organization in strategy and planning and are really working towards a more transparent and realistic process of growth and advancement. My experience previous to this had been leadership only paying lip service to these ideas at best. I am not sure what increase in compensation would be required for me to leave and I honestly hope I don't find out.
paxys 6y ago
100% agree with this article, but would also caution against any kind of generalization. Different people want different things. For the first ~7-10 years of my career I strongly believed that everything was about salary. I picked jobs solely based on the comp package, and the work I did was motivated by bonuses and promotions. I'm sure that's still the case for a large chunk of engineers, but for me, with more experience under my belt, I now think more and more about stuff like fulfillment, ownership, real world impact of my work etc.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Also, for many people, their salary out of school isn't "enough" for the lifestyle they want to live, they have student loans, need to buy a car, etc. So even relatively modest salary differences can seem like a big deal. While not true of everyone, people in tech fields tend to have a more comfortable financial cushion as they get older, and at least modest differences in pay don't matter as much as other factors.
- bonestamp2 6y ago
  Agreed. I think what happens for many of us is that when we're first out of college we just need money more than most other things to get our life in order (ex. buy a house/condo, kickstart retirement savings, a car in some cases, start a family, etc). So, we'll spend a lot of effort increasing our salary as quickly as possible to get to an income where we can afford to buy and sustain those things. Most "things" are not fulfilling however. So, once our income satisfies all of those wants, then we feel more comfortable. When our income far exceeds our basic needs, we have the luxury to work (or hobby work) for things beyond paying the bills... fulfillment, positive change for self/family/community/world, achieving non-monetary goals, health, etc.
- cellularmitosis 6y ago
  Indeed! "Autonomy, mastery, and purpose" in terms of dev opportunities: mastery is somewhat common, autonomy is rare, and purpose is ultra rare. I have straight-up told managers that I'd be willing to take a pay cut in exchange for more autonomy. Haven't found a taker yet :) It is so frustrating to repeatedly demonstrate value, endlessly repeat the story about how "gmail was the result of 20% time", yet be forever told "nah, we just need you to stick to grinding tickets". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive:_The_Surprising_Truth_About_What_Motivates_Us https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive:_The_Surprising_Truth_Ab...
chapium 6y ago
When I worked somewhere 100% for the money, my motivation declined and I ended up in such a rut I was one of the worst performers on the team. Compensation is important but if they are golden handcuffs, your organization (and employee) will suffer.
Invictus0 6y ago
The trick to retaining engineers, besides paying them fairly, is to hire good managers that understand engineering. A huge component of workplace satisfaction can be traced back to how much an employee likes their boss.
mishftw 6y ago
Pay is not everything. But it also depends on the engineer as well. I've taken pay cuts to work on interesting and engaging work in the past. But then again my lifestyle is pretty simple and minimalistic and for me the trade-off was worth it.
the_jeremy 6y ago
IMO, the only reason above-market pay doesn't raise retention as much as people want is that it's possible to have above-market pay and a job people enjoy doing. And on the other hand, you can offer enough above-market and people will do any job, as evidenced by the other thread I saw yesterday where people were making crazy salaries to implement unethical, deceptive practices against their users.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
  Link the thread?
the_arun 6y ago
* functional requirements - great pay * non-functional requirements - great culture. "great" - is a variable here. People define it to their own understanding and advantage.
j45 6y ago
Money alone doesn't keep many problem solvers around. Problem solving is as important as the compensation. A great environment to solve problems, and to be able to work with other smart, conscientious people, while pursuing new levels of mastery is a really good sell. People who are driven solely, or primarily by money can't be paid enough and will on that mindset, tend to move on.
snicker7 6y ago
tl;dr: Engineers prefer a "positive" work environment over competitive salaries. Couldn't disagree more. Pay me.
- KLVTZ 6y ago
  The article does ignore the fact that some engineers are paid below market value, and for that reason, compensation is a higher priority. You might ask yourself these questions after compensation was not a determining factor: What if the company I worked for offered a competitive salary that was agreeable for both parties. What other benefits am I looking for outside of monetary compensation?
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  I agree... and I don't. I work primarily for money, but not totally. My job probably doesn't pay me absolutely the maximum that I could make anywhere. If the work environment turns sour, I can hopefully make an approximately lateral move - not significantly more or less money, but a better environment. I once worked for a medical device manufacturer. We failed an FDA audit. As a result, our procedures became much more stringent, and life turned into a huge amount of paperwork. I couldn't take it. It didn't take a raise to get me out of there.
  - Aperocky 6y ago
    The problem with a stressful job is that part of that stress invariably become intertwined with the prospect of losing the said job, hence an expected loss of salary. This means that even if you primarily work for money you'd have priced in the positive environment. Anecdotally, the place where people are uncertain of their future are highly stressful, even when the work is not heavy.
centimeter 6y ago
> When it comes to engineers, the key to employee retention isn't just about pay. Maybe I’m atypical, but at a certain point all the other factors just don’t cut it. If you’re trying to pay me $400k/yr total comp and I can get $600k/yr elsewhere, the disparities in culture or whatever have to be pretty significant to dominate.
- ghaff 6y ago
  At those levels, you're probably talking about at least some stock-based comp and that's harder to factor in. But that aside, a lot of people would care less about the delta between $400K and $600K than the delta between $50K and $75K.
  - iabacu 6y ago
    400K to 600K is still qualitatively significant. For example, it can mean whether your spouse has the option to stay home to spend more quality time with the children, without having to sacrifice expenses due to income reduction; or it can mean how well (or not) you can take care of aging parents.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Of course. And I don't mean to imply it isn't. $200K is a lot of money to most people and may be enough to make a significant lifestyle choice that wouldn't otherwise be possible. But in general percentage salary increments affect lifestyle more at the low end than they do at the high end. (And, of course, the absolute differences matter far more at the low end.
mrnook 6y ago
If you pay me a lot but my job makes me miserable, I'll just use that salary as leverage to negotiate a high salary at a company I want to work for.
_zachs 6y ago
My experience is very anecdotal, but there's a point where the pay/stock options are definitely enough to keep people around. I have a few friends in this exact position now, where the golden handcuffs are too sweet for them to walk.
zffr 6y ago
The article's title is pure click-bait. It would be more accurate if it were "How to Keep Your Engineers Interested in Sticking Around" Very little of the article says anything about how much to pay engineers. I only found 2 paragraphs about engineering compensation: > The most comprehensive study, though, is Daniel H. Pink’s Drive, which is summarized in this animation from the RSA. Pink suggests that money isn’t the main driver for highly skilled workers who choose to stay in their jobs. Instead, he identifies a combination of three factors: the ability to be self-directed, getting better at the job, and having a purpose in one’s endeavors. In other words, once a person’s basic financial needs are met, money starts to become less and less relevant as a criterion for job satisfaction, especially compared to purpose, self-improvement and self-direction. > Unsurprisingly, this conclusion mostly matches my own experience with engineers. Whether companies pay at market level or 20%-30% above market makes very little impact on staff retention. You might stretch retention slightly in the latter case, but the investment is often not worth the net result. Keeping your engineers engaged and motivated makes a much more substantial difference, so that’s what we’re going to look at next. Even these paragraphs are primarily about how money is not the primary way to keep engineers engaged and motivated.
- js8 6y ago
  Be careful though. For example, I don't really care that much about money, but I do care very strongly about fairness. So if you try to cheat me by paying me unfairly (for example, compared to coworkers), even if I would be happy with the money all things considered, I could be unhappy just because you're being unfair.
  - Pfhreak 6y ago
    I'll even add that engineers should understand the value they bring to the company and adjust their concept of fair not just against their peers but against what the company is earning from their labor.
    - clairity 6y ago
      not just engineers, everyone. that's the unfair advantage that companies especially have over lower wage workers. we need fairer, more transparent and liquid labor markets everywhere, not just in the upper echelons.
kemitchell 6y ago
Ask them.
neilwilson 6y ago
In Herzberg's theory, Money is merely a hygiene factor, not a motivating factor. Generally by the time engineers start thinking about money you've already lost them. My rule of thumb has always been that when I start thinking "I'm not getting paid enough to put up with this", it's time to move on whatever happens.
- losten 6y ago
  I am a big fan of Herzberg's dual factor theory. I find it much more practical and actionable than the ubiqitous Maslow's hierarchy. In one of my previous jobs, I asked people in my team to make a survey to identify their motivational and hygienic factors. The surprising result for me was how much variation there was among different people. (e. g. for somebody salary was a motivational factor, for anybody hygienic one). Anyway, understanding these factors for individual team members made me much more effective manager.
DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
It probably depends quite a bit on the engineer's life outside of work. For much of my career, I was the only income earner in a family of 6. Making ends meet was sometimes a challenge, which made me very salary-sensitive and averse to the risk of income disruption. My family finances have somewhat improved in recent years, letting me unclinch a little regarding money. This lets me put more weight on other factors relating to job satisfaction and feeling of purpose.
- tj0 6y ago
  "Making ends meet was sometimes a challenge, which made me very salary-sensitive and averse to the risk of income disruption." This. I think a large chunk of society forgets that after you get past 25 and actually have a life and responsibilities, that a meager $100k in a particular region is barely enough to cover base expenses, childcare, car/home loans, etc. Out of curiosity, how long were you the sole earner before getting to a better state of financial security?
  - DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
    A little over 20 years.
mylons 6y ago
For whatever reason this is making me think about the narrative from a lot of VC’s, Paul Graham, Tyler Cowen, and many more that remote work will commoditize software engineering and destroy wages there. And articles like this make me think about institutional knowledge and how there are no standards what so ever in software, and so long as new frameworks, languages, and not invented here syndrome persist there will always be a need to keep your engineering staff around. /end ramble thoughts
gdsdfe 6y ago
Well let's flip it around : you! yes you reading this, why are you staying in your current position ?
- TimD1 6y ago
  Because my pay as a grad student is just too good! /s
- sk0g 6y ago
  Pay is probably pretty good (especially if current rise materialises) for my level of experience, and I have lots of autonomy in how I do things, as I'm the main technical decision maker on non-frontend tasks. I'm also doing uni part time, and taking half a day off every week is a tough proposition for employees. Despite the chaos, I do like the work I do, and as it's a Greenfield project, I want to see it reach some level of exposure to core clients before I can consider it a job well done. What about you?
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
  Frankly, no better options at this time.
iso1631 6y ago
The large UK broadcaster I work for is having to make large amounts of savings. They've decided that they don't like paying for slack (for £10 per user per month), and instead are going to force everyone to use MS Teams. Since 95% of people have been working from home (and no plans for most to go back this year), they won't allow people to take unused monitors back because they might end up lost. These are £80 monitors. It's these pathetic nickle-and-diming that is far more likely to make me look for another job than not paying a £200 a year pay rise. Someone sees "£80 times 20,000 staff, that's over £1m, we can't risk that!"
- dijit 6y ago
  I see this sentiment a lot. from what I hear of our management Slack's enterprise sales folk are a bit shit w.r.t working out deals and the like. 10 quid per person, for context, is roughly the price of all the MS software stack if you're a decent size. So for 10-bob you get email, word, excel, teams and exchange/AzureAD -- or a chat app. So that's the context that they're dealing with; but I fucking hate teams with white hot passion. So I still get annoyed. And yes, these nickle and dime tactics are rife everywhere, we buy 3k computers for people but our budget for a monitor is 70gbp and it is supposed to last 6 years. :|
  - iso1631 6y ago
    > So for 10-bob you get email, word, excel, teams and exchange/AzureAD -- or a chat app. And the people making these decisions use word, excel, teams and exchange a hell of a lot in ways to try to work out how to save some money. I for one don't need that. I need jira, confluence, slack.
    - dijit 6y ago
      Yeah, but this is how network effects works. Accounting uses excel so everyone who interacts with accounting needs excel. Then those who interact with accounting (HR, Purchasing) use excel so everyone they come into contact with needs excel. There's is a metric which is called "Cost per head" used in my company, and it goes like; 1 Person: * 1 Windows license * 1 Office license * 1 Visio license * 1 Swarm license * 1 Perforce license * 1 Jetbrains license (optional) * 1 Slack license * 1 jira license * 1 confluence license * 1 gitlab license * 1 Terraform Enterprise license (optional) * 1 headcount in some HR software and that's just what I can remember. Controversial hot-take from one of our IT directors: <user> Just wondering why can't we just use slack and not use Teams at all :thinking_face: Slack seems so much better. <itDirector> So, just to put this out there, I started this Slack originally. So it's a topic close to my heart. <itDirector> But ultimately right now, Teams is eating the fuck out of Slack's lunch. <itDirector> Teams is included within our M365 license, for all users, at a fraction of the price of Slack. <itDirector> Likewise, all of the integrations, SSO, features, etc., come bundled in the existing license. <itDirector> For Slack, they continue to push Enterprise Grid licensing costs of over 300 USD per user per year <itDirector> Additionally, there are more people now starting to push us to formally drop Slack than Teams. Some studios are mandating the usage of Teams over Slack, as well as some projects. <itDirector> Personally, I see several features still missing before such a conversation can hold weight. Teams will have private channels added in November, and I'm hoping they address file permissions, non-threaded channel chat and lifting of the 250 user limit in individual chats. <itDirector> But once that happens, it's going to be extremely difficult for Slack to compete. <itDirector> So, to manage expectations - I would not anticipate a future where Slack is chosen over Teams. It's probably best to start acclimating to that reality now.
droobles 6y ago
At my company, I think engineers are more concerned with feeling comfortable and having the flexibility to take care of the demands of their lives and families over high pay. Midwest company so YMMV.
TheRealPomax 6y ago
Enough to take the issue of money off the table, given how much life costs wherever they live. And not by applying a "rent index" or "cost of living" factor to whatever people get paid in SF.
nisten 6y ago
I find the reasoning of this article pretty obnoxious to be honest. They start off with a valid argument, that if you treat engineers better than everyone else it creates resentment in other parts of the company and that makes sense. If that weren’t enough, all of this “special treatment” towards engineers can create resentment throughout the rest of the company. Such negativity hurts performance and retention in other business units where employees might feel that they’re treated unfairly. I've actually experienced this myself as the new guy, even within the engineering department. Then 5 paragraphs later this is what they write: Maybe instead of offering free lunches on Fridays, you can provide funding to attend Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC, once that’s hosted in real life again) or a Coursera subscription. If you’re in the mobile apps space, you might offer to buy the newest iPhone or Android device for your engineers annually on a “yours to keep” basis. I'm sorry for the negativity, I just don't think I can trust the judgement of the author on this issue after reading that. Also as a mobile developer, shouldn't you be aiming for your app to perform well on low to midrange devices first, thus targeting the largest ammount of potential users? If you're styling for the iphone x/11 notch you're gonna be doing that in the simulator first regardless.
mjayhn 6y ago
There's a style of management I encounter still that is very unsupportive of it's employees. Untrusting, thinking they're always out to leave just to make more money. It's interesting because the engineers I know tend to be pretty altruistic people and I won't say they don't care about money but it's not their leading factor in employment (I definitely know the other spectrum as well so don't think I'm ignoring that). I've worked at places specifically didn't want to send employees to conferences because they think everyone uses them as farming tools (whether that's true or not, some engineers just want to go learn and it's pretty upsetting if you have a SME in some subject and don't allow them to attend a con while plenty of other $leaders go). I've also worked for tech places where a boss would come in and fire you on Monday then call you up and offer you $1k to return on Tuesday, me being about 21 at my first sysadmin job kept me around for that abuse. It's really, really not a good feeling to feel untrusted or like you're constantly being tested by your employer.
- geoka9 6y ago
  SME == Subject Matter Expert
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
  Hah. Seems like this is not as uncommon as I thought. My senior had her convention request denied by company while multiple leadership folk were flown over there. She got pissed and paid for her own access/flight. She clearly met a lot of people there. Maybe that is what management is most scared of. She already almost left once.
  - mjayhn 6y ago
    It's very common if you're not at some big FAANG or group that is in all the partner groups (CNCF, etc) and pays to get tickets every year. I do this a lot for a few foss projects I contribute to because even though I'm always hired as the SME for my niche leadership will only give me tickets/flights to conferences if they have extras and none of their drinking buddies want to go. Typically what happens is I'll start at a company, ask about going to $mybigcon when a training budget is brought up, that training budget is always slashed, not real or goes somewhere else then I'll never ask again and I'll find my own way to get tickets (from conf partners, etc). The funny thing, when I have to do this not only am I really bothered that my company wouldn't spend the $1000 ($200 plane, $800 ticket) but I go out of my way to not focus on ANYTHING that will benefit my company but instead I have a good time and learn things I'm interested in and mingle with every other company/partner I can. I've actually had companies expect me to get tickets myself from the projects or from gold partners that I know. I don't have that much clout by any means and even asking partners for tickets makes me feel terrible because they're limited too.
vbtemp 6y ago
I just want a straight answer from someone who knows more than me. How come every time I switch jobs I get a 30-40% raise, but at any one company I never get more than a 1-3% raise each year, no matter the growth of productivity and responsibility. There's obviously some kind of prisoner's dilemma-like iterated game that reaches that Nash equilibrium, and I'm trying to figure out what it is exactly. I would have loved to stay at my first organization. Interesting work and research. I was PI and PM for interesting projects by the time I left. Now I make almost double. The thing is, my current salary at my original organization isn't unheard of for that level of responsibility at all, the problem is that getting that kind of adjustment is impossible. It's possible to be hired in at that salary, though. I've noticed this is true for most organizations I've worked at.
- ed312 6y ago
  I can tell you as a manager the salary bands are generally set by HR for the whole company. I was told point blank at a previous employer that we payed the 70th percentile. I asked how they knew what that was - apparently there are companies that aggregate this data (legally?) and sell it back to HR orgs for $xx,xxx+ a year. HR for some reason wouldn't deviate from this band for top talent (discrimination maybe?)
  - t3rabytes 6y ago
    Yep, Radford is one of those companies.
    - ed312 6y ago
      IIRC, that's the one they used. This struck me as kinda crappy and anti-competitive. Perhaps this is too idealistic, but I would prefer a more transparent and open market for talent.
      - ghaff 6y ago
        OTOH the sectors where compensation is probably most open and transparent in the US such as public sector tend not to be the best-paying.
mywittyname 6y ago
I left a job which paid in the 95+ percentile of my area for one that paid right about the median wage (maybe a little less). My reason: I like to own the software I write. We had an influx of people on our team who began to rewrite sections of stuff I wrote a long time ago for no real reason. Basically, some of them didn't like promise chains and decided to rewrite every one they encountered. Things finally bubbled over when I ended up in merge hell where I'd have the codebase drastically change while I was on my branch and I'd be reimplimenting the same feature every time I tried to submit a merge request, but all of these changes amounted to largely meaningless "refactoring." It's kind of petty on my part, but I'm not the type that wins arguments. So I decided, despite loving the people I worked with, that I was not in the right job. Now I design and develop software mostly individually and I'm infinitely happier. Someone who is competitive and enjoys confrontation would thrive in that role though. Point is, people have lots of different reasons for changing jobs. And something that makes one group happy may make another miserable. I also hate traveling to conferences, but that's the nature of the job sometimes.
- nurettin 6y ago
  I would've changed your code from promise chains to await statements (after warning you, of course) because they just look awful. And I would then have expected you to buy me a beer for getting rid of all that ugly code.
  - C1sc0cat 6y ago
    And your boss at 121 time askes so exactly what have you delivered.
    - ipnon 6y ago
      Git activity is the most praised metric at my company. Refactoring and commenting is highly rewarded. The utility of this metric is dubious.
      - nurettin 6y ago
InfiniteRand 6y ago
"As an engineer, I experienced firsthand the dual relationship most of us have with the rest of the business. One day you’re a hero for delivering something “magical,” then the next you’re a jerk for not delivering something “so simple” in a short amount of time, or refusing to make certain “easy” changes, even if those requests carry a hidden but critical risk of destabilizing the whole software." That part of the article really struck a cord with me. From my experience, I think that a big factor in whether engineers start looking for another job is how much the manager acts as a filter for the unrealistic expectations of the rest of the company. Engineers should not be too isolated, after all some interaction is good to get feedback and it feels good to directly see people benefit from your work, but managers have to be able to shield their engineers from the mood swings of the CEO or the pie-in-the-sky promises from marketing. I think this is a big component of a "good working environment" and is often worth more than pay or promotions.
laurentdc 6y ago
A nice, laid-back, zero-bs team is all I need. I value that much much higher than money. I have no interest in workplace drama. I've always considered career and competition to be quite pointless: if I had a good idea I'd build the product myself and keep all the margins in my pocket. It's computer stuff afterall. Often I have no interest in the work itself either, but if the team is good I'm happy. They could make us shovel snow all day, I'd still come to work.
travisgriggs 6y ago
Pay me enough so I can feed my family and have comfortable shelter. Don't create a culture where I am a doer but not allowed to be a decider. I will eventually walk away from asymmetric power structures. If you don't/can't trust me, I probably won't trust you. I prefer relationships of trust. I want to learn and improve. Use your extra money to do that and act is if it matters to you. If you must use pay as your sole means of appeasing me, pay me LOTS. So very much that I'm willing to put up with the bureaucratic shitshow that is your company, spending all my drone-ish non-innovative 9 to 5 day thinking about the rush I'm going to experience doing cool things with all of the excess cash you're giving me.
enriquto 6y ago
I hope sooner than later there will be some kind of union of engineers and salaries will be public and standarized (and the median value of the salary for each position will be higher than today, due to the power of collective bargaining). It is shameful that some senior software engineers earn so much less than others, due to out-of-band reasons.
C1sc0cat 6y ago
Ah a management consultant producing arguments for lower pay for Hr/Accounting to justify cost cutting. I am Shocked Shocked I tell you, can you smell gas :-) Whilst pay isn't every thing people do tend to lie when asked about what important to them - the same way you slowdown when the time and motion team are monitoring you
mcgrathpm11 6y ago
I worked at Netflix for several years, where they actively practice paying ‘top of market.’ This is an oft misunderstood tactic, but in action means: 1) Yearly, employees are asked to seek evidence for their top of market compensation. 2) employees do two things as a follow up - They either interview elsewhere to get competing offers to establish ‘top of market,’ or they feel fairly paid and do nothing. Having worked at a few large tech companies that practice the typical equity grant and vesting structure designed to maximize retention, Ive never seen a more effective tactic to completely remove the concern of ‘am I paid enough’ from the employee. As a result: 1) The really high impact people are paid extremely well, as Netflix always overbids. 2) The average performers either go elsewhere or retain without jockeying for greater comp and ownership. The proactive seeking top of market is a good feedback loop to pay for/reward impact and to build trust with your team, and is something I still practice with my teams outside of Netflix. This was back in 2015, so some things may have changed. Regardless, the net to the business has compounding returns. At an average company: 1) Most employees do not pay for their salary in business impact. 2) Top performers drive outsized impact relative to their compensation. If you find a way to mitigate 1), you can pass the savings into 2), protecting and retaining your highest value employees. While other factors do obviously matter, and comp isn’t everything - removing comp from the hierarchy of needs entirely dramatically changes the mindset towards ownership of work and outcome.
- mitmfrida 6y ago
  I've had this same practice with a team of two that has moved with me to different orgs over time. Had no idea it's a norm and followed by big companies. My motive was exactly this. If you remove the "am i paid enough" concern, it allows talented engineers to focus at the job at hand and deliver really impactful outcomes
- jacques_chester 6y ago
  I'm probably taking the wrong lesson away here, because from an outside perspective the message seems to be "don't waste time interviewing someone who currently works for Netflix". You'll either waste your time, or get buyer's remorse. Very little upside.
flerchin 6y ago
You should pay them market rates to replace them (ie, much higher than you currently are). Yes, you should also foster their need for growth and learning, but that's because it's an investment in their productivity. Investing in engineer's productivity, and paying them what they're worth, turns out that's all it takes.
sys_64738 6y ago
Needs V Wants. I need shelter but it only costs so much to full-fill need. Then if I'm get paid sufficient salary to cover all my needs then wants decides the utility of the next marginal dollar. If the value doesn't align with my want then I don't care. As you get older you realize your time is finite and you want to enjoy what you do if you have the opportunity to make such a decision. So if a job pays 20% more but requires more overtime or more stress then I'll pass.
motohagiography 6y ago
Good article on an important topic. I would like to address what I perceive as assumptions in the perspective. We really need to get away from this idea that salaries are these paternalistic expressions of fairness. We earn money from providing value. If you want people to stay, your options are to give them money, prestige, or stability. - Money includes salary, bonus, commissions and contingent comp, stock options and perks and even vacation time. - Prestige is conferences, publications, exposure to high profile brand clients and stakeholders, airline points hotel and travel rewards, charity sponsorship and matching, committee memberships, media and public facing representation, and leadership options. - Stability includes things like investing in training, giving them headcount, bringing them into the strategic fold, partnerships, responsibility for key client or stakeholder relationships, etc. Evaluate your total comp using the triad of Money, Stability, Prestige. Chances are you are weighted toward one, and there is a role out there with a different balance. I think HR salary bands are a wishfull opposite of market rates, and personally I think they're stupid for any company that is still growing and not just optimizing an established long term revenue stream. If you are a bank or institution, sure, but your entire business is an optimization problem not a growth problem. If there is any upside volatility in your revenue and you are making something new that people want, pay for value, because I'd argue you can't afford not to. I've watched companies lose key engineers that delayed major product releases over a $10-20k salary bump while flying their marginalized director of special projects around in business class, and my conclusion is that compensation is arbitrary and a negotiations power game. Don't spend too much time reasoning about it. The companies that retain people are the ones who figure out the Stability and Prestige elements of the triad.
phtevus 6y ago
If the matter of pay is the only thing keeping the engineers there, this feels more like a problem with the business model or company culture.
pascalxus 6y ago
I've worked for about 7 different companies over 15 years and at each of those places I've seen a ton of engineers come and go. Most of the time, the reason they leave is one of three things: got fired, got laid off, or was pushed out. So, if you want your engineers to stick around, you gotta find out why so many of them are being laid off or pushed out and prevent that from happening. That's where you'll get the most bang for your buck. Engineers don't just leave for no reason. They leave because they're either forced out or there's something that really sucks about the company: most of the time it's the work life balance that really sucks.
leonardteo 6y ago
Honestly I have given up trying to “keep” engineers because it’s a losing battle. It’s impossible to compete with big tech. From the offers I’ve seen, if FAANG/Big Tech really wants one of your team members, they will get them and there is nothing you can do. My employees stay because they want to. They enjoy the work, domain, colleagues. The salary is competitive and fair. They can thrive in this environment. But I am under no illusions about creating some special environment that can prevent them from getting poached. You can throw cash, stocks, options all you want but if Big Tech wants them, they will outbid you. Just assume that at any moment they can and will get poached and ensure that the business can continue if people leave. Keep the stack simple, stick to standards, minimize NIH etc.
- jlokier 6y ago
  > From the offers I’ve seen, if FAANG/Big Tech really wants one of your team members, they will get them and there is nothing you can do. True, but your team members aren't getting any offers from FAANG/Big Tech unless the team members put in some effort. At least, they have to do a series of interviews. FAANG positions are notoriously coveted, at least here on HN, and most people have to work hard, including preparation, to get into them. So the question comes, what does it take to make your engineers comfortable enough they don't think it's worth going through the process to get those other offers.
ebgraham 6y ago
Our industry's asinine interview practices keep people from job seeking and getting their fair value. The sooner engineers refuse to give leetcode interviews, the sooner we'll see a natural bump in average engineering salary, and we'll have more power in the job market to demand better working conditions.
KoftaBob 6y ago
This question would be much easier to answer if salary transparency from employers was the norm, or even required. If every job listing on Indeed had a salary/compensation range, it would be very straightforward to see what the going rate is for that particular skillset, and it would push employers to be competitive on salary.
tidenly 6y ago
My job gives me no bonus or raise after a year and a half, despite obvious vast increases in my responsibilities and the assumption of another engineer who lefts' tasks too.. I just don't know how to approach asking because I hate confrontation and those kinds of situations. I basically always change jobs because of this reason - I'm just avoiding a conversation I don't want to have and the raise is bigger by quitting haha
- edmundsauto 6y ago
  If you'd like some unsolicited advice - the job hunt is tricky, because you should be optimizing for the best outcome for yourself. However, if you think of it as materializing your leverage -- just go out and get an offer that is better than what you have. Use that to approach your boss, it won't be a confrontation if you approach it with "I like it here, but it's clear that I'm underpaid. Can you help me find a way where it makes sense for me to stay?"
mrtweetyhack 6y ago
Pay them what competitors are willing to pay them
danbmil99 6y ago
Pay them with the experience of building a product somebody wants to use
dang 6y ago
We've banned this site for using sockpuppet accounts, voting rings, and astroturfed comments. Such abuses are extremely not ok, and this was an egregious and repeated case. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

It's only about 50% about pay for STEM fields. They have to be engaged, feel like they have a voice or influence in the culture/business decisions, have great equipment to use, and flexible time off.

throwaway4666 6y ago
All of it can be dispensed with if you pay even more
- tennisacademy 6y ago
  ^ this
- iso1631 6y ago
  Indeed, pay me $1m a day and I'll stare at a wall for you. Probably wouldn't do it for long, the first day would be amazing - that buys a great house. The rest of the week and I'm set for a very comfortable retirement.
  - cdumler 6y ago
    For a few days. My experience is that high pay will A) keep bad people around for much, much longer and B) keep good people around until they get too fed up with the bad people.
    - iso1631 6y ago
      I guess that's where high bonus low pay comes into it - if you are a "good person" you get the high bonus so you stay, if you are a "bad person" you don't, so you leave. The problem then comes down to defining good person vs bad person, which in the real world is very tricky.
  - nthj 6y ago
    This is part of why stock options are so valuable to organizations as an incentive: the retention power of high pay without the calculus of “do I have enough?” from liquid compensation
    - _jal 6y ago
      Huh? Everyone I've ever known who had significant options knew exactly what they were worth. I knew someone who changed their bash prompt to (price * unvested count / days left). He said at the time it was the only thing that kept him from quitting or punching his manager.
      - pjc50 6y ago
        Long ago companies only bothered issuing options when the stock was illiquid; certainly my startup share options never had a meaningful market value from founding to acquisition. Publicly-quoted companies issuing options is just a weird form of deferred bonus with a favourable tax treatment.
        ghaff 6y ago
        Well, they also come with the hope that they'll increase in value prior to vesting. But, yes, RSUs in public companies are certainly more like getting bonuses that vest over time than a stock market lottery ticket.
      - secondcoming 6y ago
        How do they know the price unless the company has IPO'd already?
        _jal 6y ago
        The particular case I mentioned with the bash prompt happened at Netscape, his tenure straddled the IPO.
- madsbuch 6y ago
  Only for a limited amount of time.
- exabrial 6y ago
  This is true, but it's a temporary solution. Eventually intellectuals get bored.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- delecti 6y ago
  It's still a balance between compensation, interesting challenges, and good work environment. You can provide less of one if you provide more of the others, or less of two if you provide much more of the other.
draw_down 6y ago
Well, 50% is a lot. And it’s a lot easier to alter and cut back on those other things than pay, because pay is written in the contract.
scrooched_moose 6y ago
Yep. I'm a MechE and my pay is decent (not amazing) for the area but I was fine with it due to a lot of other factors. In the last year or so, my company has had a culture shift leading to down-to-the minute micromanagement and I've lost all autonomy - every decision requires approval of multiple managers. There's no realistic engineering salary they could pay me to continue putting up with this and I can't get out quick enough. Covid has made that a bit tough though.
- tartoran 6y ago
  Less autonomy also means less responsibility which affects growth in a bad way, but there is a small bright side to this, it reduces the cognitive workload and one can have leftover energy for side projects and hobbies. For the ones who have absolutely no taste to bureaucracy/red tape/stupid hierarchies of command, this could be soul sucking though
  - hedora 6y ago
    It doesn’t reduce cognitive workload for high performers. With my previous boss, I spent 90% of my intellectual effort managing up. Despite his best efforts, the project was delivered above spec and on time (saving his ass), but I burnt so many political bridges making it happen that I ended up moving teams.
    - tartoran 6y ago
      My point was exactly to take your high performance outside the organization you’re working for if they don’t offer the conditions necessary such as some autonomy and agency. It’s not worth proving anything, too few people would notice of care
ghaff 6y ago
It's probably only "50% about pay" where pay is fairly competitive. For many (of course not all), 25-50% lower comp is going to be a tough sell even if the company is at the top of "great places to work" lists.
tehjoker 6y ago
The next level of consciousness is that these other 50% applies to every other person in the world, not just people within our in-group.

awat 6y ago

Not directly a compensation component but organizations can make sure they have a technical leader supporting software organizations. Consulting with companies on productivity I can’t express how much devs not feeling like they have representation/a voice at the exec level negates comp effectiveness.

ponker 6y ago
Is it better to work at companies where the CEO is a programmer? Like Epic Games or Microsoft when Gates ran it?
- awat 6y ago
  I don’t now that it’s specifically better to have a CEO that was an engineer. It probably is based on my experience. What I’m referring to is that period where engineers want to stay vs being heavily comp’d to stay. You can see people throughout this thread saying pay me a large amount and I’ll stare at a wall. If you want engineers not to fully optimize comp (read as $$$$$) against the market they need to feel represented and like they have a say in day to day decisions in the company.
thanatropism 6y ago
Question is, can this be faked? What we're saying is that coders are often willing to pay for "a seat at the table". But maybe management can sell them a placebo. It's not clear-cut that management ignoring coders will always turn out for the worse, even though management that always ignores coders probably has, historically. Maybe sometimes their voice matters and sometimes not.
- awat 6y ago
  Oh it definitely can be faked. But so many orgs don’t even attempt to show they’re faking it.
- rkangel 6y ago
  It can be faked to the engineers, it can't be faked to reality. Companies for whom engineering is key need to (at least to some extent) organise themselves around engineering. The strategic decisions need to take into account the needs and capabilities of engineering and engineers. If they don't then they won't be good at it. They'll be staffed with mediocre people who generate mediocre output very slowly.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

thanatropism 6y ago

An interesting question is whether paying enough (imagining an unlimited budget) won't end up selecting for coders who care more about the money than the work. A further question is whether these coders are actually better for the org -- the Henry Ford efficiency wage-type incentive may keep them at consistent pace and quality, whereas rockstars with physics PhD may have parallel agendas to make the project more fun to work with.

Kinrany 6y ago
Consistent quality requires accurate measurement. If you can't accurately measure quality and there's only external motivation, you get Goodhart's law.
- thanatropism 6y ago
  But Goodhart's law applies to anything that's measured at all (it originates from the world monetary policy), even if it can be measured vey accurately. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law OTOH maybe quality exists as a qualitative concept but can't be measured -- then you just do pass/fail (like colleges have dropped letter-grades during the Zoomdemic). What I'm saying is that "shallower" coders, who are motivated by the extra pay, may be more willing to align their concept of quality with the interests of the organization, while self-motivated coders will have their idiosyncratic or fashionable ideas. When shopping around for a team to make a web app for my startup -- no technical requirements, we were feeling the market for price first -- we got a $$$ proposal for using PHP and Laravel, and a $ proposal for using AngularJS. I regret that decision; it cost us at least a year of time-to-market. The original team quit (they worked for a trusted friend of our "business cofounder") because they weren't really experienced in web dev and their opportunity cost was off the roof - they were crack coders that did all kinds of different projects. Then we decided to hire someone (with good references) as a consultant and manage him ourselves. Dude was apparently capable but couldn't be screamed into using off-the-shelf components rather than rewriting and refactoring constantly. He eventually flaked on us, got too many projects and we weren't fun anymore I guess. Finally we found a small company online. By all appearances the new team hates being around computers but can be managed by Trello and feature branches. Web dev is a bore, but it's a living, and not everyone manages to make a living out of their surfing passion.

xkcd-sucks 6y ago

In accordance with the standard hierarchy of needs, culture flows down from compensation. When everyone's material needs and desires are well satisfied, they interact genuinely and naturally. When people feel like good compensation is difficult to achieve, they put more effort into zero-sum internal politics, maintaining appearances, and so forth. You see this in upper management all the time; execs are friendly and graceful with each other because their material success is guaranteed, and promoting collegiality among execs is usually an orgizational goal.

prepperpotts 6y ago
Definitely agree with the latter part here about execs, but I feel like anxiety around compensation doesn't tie back to material needs as much as to the extent to which people measure their self-worth by compensation. Years ago, these studies were going around saying that people are happier when they make more money up to about $70k, at which point more money doesn't make you happier anymore. I'm sure that has to be adjusted for inflation etc by now, but very few devs make less money than they need to live comfortably by most people's standards.
- mrnook 6y ago
  Found the study: https://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489 https://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489 It was conducted in 2010, so I wonder if anything would change if it was conducted again today. The current tech industry was in its infancy 10 years ago, and a lot of high paying jobs have been created since.
  - prepperpotts 6y ago
    True. Cost of living has spiked a lot in tech hubs, too, but devs are usually on the upper tier of the income curve.
    - paulcole 6y ago
      It’s not like NYC wasn’t expensive compared to Kansas 10 years ago.

cableshaft 6y ago

Keep them too stressed out and busy with work that they don't have the time and energy to really look for something new and grind dozens of LeetCode problems to get them through the grueling technical interview gauntlet? Seems to be working with my company to keep me there, at least.

wuliwong 6y ago

I changed jobs in the past year and only received a slight pay increase. For the first time in my engineering career, I really enjoy my job. There are a lot of factors but the thing that stands out the most is the senior leadership here. They actively seek to engage the entire organization in strategy and planning and are really working towards a more transparent and realistic process of growth and advancement. My experience previous to this had been leadership only paying lip service to these ideas at best. I am not sure what increase in compensation would be required for me to leave and I honestly hope I don't find out.

paxys 6y ago

100% agree with this article, but would also caution against any kind of generalization. Different people want different things. For the first ~7-10 years of my career I strongly believed that everything was about salary. I picked jobs solely based on the comp package, and the work I did was motivated by bonuses and promotions. I'm sure that's still the case for a large chunk of engineers, but for me, with more experience under my belt, I now think more and more about stuff like fulfillment, ownership, real world impact of my work etc.

ghaff 6y ago
Also, for many people, their salary out of school isn't "enough" for the lifestyle they want to live, they have student loans, need to buy a car, etc. So even relatively modest salary differences can seem like a big deal. While not true of everyone, people in tech fields tend to have a more comfortable financial cushion as they get older, and at least modest differences in pay don't matter as much as other factors.
bonestamp2 6y ago
Agreed. I think what happens for many of us is that when we're first out of college we just need money more than most other things to get our life in order (ex. buy a house/condo, kickstart retirement savings, a car in some cases, start a family, etc). So, we'll spend a lot of effort increasing our salary as quickly as possible to get to an income where we can afford to buy and sustain those things. Most "things" are not fulfilling however. So, once our income satisfies all of those wants, then we feel more comfortable. When our income far exceeds our basic needs, we have the luxury to work (or hobby work) for things beyond paying the bills... fulfillment, positive change for self/family/community/world, achieving non-monetary goals, health, etc.
cellularmitosis 6y ago
Indeed! "Autonomy, mastery, and purpose" in terms of dev opportunities: mastery is somewhat common, autonomy is rare, and purpose is ultra rare. I have straight-up told managers that I'd be willing to take a pay cut in exchange for more autonomy. Haven't found a taker yet :) It is so frustrating to repeatedly demonstrate value, endlessly repeat the story about how "gmail was the result of 20% time", yet be forever told "nah, we just need you to stick to grinding tickets". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive:_The_Surprising_Truth_About_What_Motivates_Us https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive:_The_Surprising_Truth_Ab...

chapium 6y ago

When I worked somewhere 100% for the money, my motivation declined and I ended up in such a rut I was one of the worst performers on the team. Compensation is important but if they are golden handcuffs, your organization (and employee) will suffer.

Invictus0 6y ago

The trick to retaining engineers, besides paying them fairly, is to hire good managers that understand engineering. A huge component of workplace satisfaction can be traced back to how much an employee likes their boss.

mishftw 6y ago

Pay is not everything. But it also depends on the engineer as well. I've taken pay cuts to work on interesting and engaging work in the past. But then again my lifestyle is pretty simple and minimalistic and for me the trade-off was worth it.

the_jeremy 6y ago

IMO, the only reason above-market pay doesn't raise retention as much as people want is that it's possible to have above-market pay and a job people enjoy doing. And on the other hand, you can offer enough above-market and people will do any job, as evidenced by the other thread I saw yesterday where people were making crazy salaries to implement unethical, deceptive practices against their users.

WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
Link the thread?

the_arun 6y ago

* functional requirements - great pay * non-functional requirements - great culture. "great" - is a variable here. People define it to their own understanding and advantage.

j45 6y ago

Money alone doesn't keep many problem solvers around. Problem solving is as important as the compensation. A great environment to solve problems, and to be able to work with other smart, conscientious people, while pursuing new levels of mastery is a really good sell. People who are driven solely, or primarily by money can't be paid enough and will on that mindset, tend to move on.

snicker7 6y ago

tl;dr: Engineers prefer a "positive" work environment over competitive salaries. Couldn't disagree more. Pay me.

KLVTZ 6y ago
The article does ignore the fact that some engineers are paid below market value, and for that reason, compensation is a higher priority. You might ask yourself these questions after compensation was not a determining factor: What if the company I worked for offered a competitive salary that was agreeable for both parties. What other benefits am I looking for outside of monetary compensation?
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
I agree... and I don't. I work primarily for money, but not totally. My job probably doesn't pay me absolutely the maximum that I could make anywhere. If the work environment turns sour, I can hopefully make an approximately lateral move - not significantly more or less money, but a better environment. I once worked for a medical device manufacturer. We failed an FDA audit. As a result, our procedures became much more stringent, and life turned into a huge amount of paperwork. I couldn't take it. It didn't take a raise to get me out of there.
- Aperocky 6y ago
  The problem with a stressful job is that part of that stress invariably become intertwined with the prospect of losing the said job, hence an expected loss of salary. This means that even if you primarily work for money you'd have priced in the positive environment. Anecdotally, the place where people are uncertain of their future are highly stressful, even when the work is not heavy.

centimeter 6y ago

> When it comes to engineers, the key to employee retention isn't just about pay. Maybe I’m atypical, but at a certain point all the other factors just don’t cut it. If you’re trying to pay me $400k/yr total comp and I can get $600k/yr elsewhere, the disparities in culture or whatever have to be pretty significant to dominate.

ghaff 6y ago
At those levels, you're probably talking about at least some stock-based comp and that's harder to factor in. But that aside, a lot of people would care less about the delta between $400K and $600K than the delta between $50K and $75K.
- iabacu 6y ago
  400K to 600K is still qualitatively significant. For example, it can mean whether your spouse has the option to stay home to spend more quality time with the children, without having to sacrifice expenses due to income reduction; or it can mean how well (or not) you can take care of aging parents.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Of course. And I don't mean to imply it isn't. $200K is a lot of money to most people and may be enough to make a significant lifestyle choice that wouldn't otherwise be possible. But in general percentage salary increments affect lifestyle more at the low end than they do at the high end. (And, of course, the absolute differences matter far more at the low end.

mrnook 6y ago

If you pay me a lot but my job makes me miserable, I'll just use that salary as leverage to negotiate a high salary at a company I want to work for.

_zachs 6y ago

My experience is very anecdotal, but there's a point where the pay/stock options are definitely enough to keep people around. I have a few friends in this exact position now, where the golden handcuffs are too sweet for them to walk.

zffr 6y ago

The article's title is pure click-bait. It would be more accurate if it were "How to Keep Your Engineers Interested in Sticking Around" Very little of the article says anything about how much to pay engineers. I only found 2 paragraphs about engineering compensation: > The most comprehensive study, though, is Daniel H. Pink’s Drive, which is summarized in this animation from the RSA. Pink suggests that money isn’t the main driver for highly skilled workers who choose to stay in their jobs. Instead, he identifies a combination of three factors: the ability to be self-directed, getting better at the job, and having a purpose in one’s endeavors. In other words, once a person’s basic financial needs are met, money starts to become less and less relevant as a criterion for job satisfaction, especially compared to purpose, self-improvement and self-direction. > Unsurprisingly, this conclusion mostly matches my own experience with engineers. Whether companies pay at market level or 20%-30% above market makes very little impact on staff retention. You might stretch retention slightly in the latter case, but the investment is often not worth the net result. Keeping your engineers engaged and motivated makes a much more substantial difference, so that’s what we’re going to look at next. Even these paragraphs are primarily about how money is not the primary way to keep engineers engaged and motivated.

js8 6y ago
Be careful though. For example, I don't really care that much about money, but I do care very strongly about fairness. So if you try to cheat me by paying me unfairly (for example, compared to coworkers), even if I would be happy with the money all things considered, I could be unhappy just because you're being unfair.
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  I'll even add that engineers should understand the value they bring to the company and adjust their concept of fair not just against their peers but against what the company is earning from their labor.
  - clairity 6y ago
    not just engineers, everyone. that's the unfair advantage that companies especially have over lower wage workers. we need fairer, more transparent and liquid labor markets everywhere, not just in the upper echelons.

kemitchell 6y ago

Ask them.

neilwilson 6y ago

In Herzberg's theory, Money is merely a hygiene factor, not a motivating factor. Generally by the time engineers start thinking about money you've already lost them. My rule of thumb has always been that when I start thinking "I'm not getting paid enough to put up with this", it's time to move on whatever happens.

losten 6y ago
I am a big fan of Herzberg's dual factor theory. I find it much more practical and actionable than the ubiqitous Maslow's hierarchy. In one of my previous jobs, I asked people in my team to make a survey to identify their motivational and hygienic factors. The surprising result for me was how much variation there was among different people. (e. g. for somebody salary was a motivational factor, for anybody hygienic one). Anyway, understanding these factors for individual team members made me much more effective manager.

DoofusOfDeath 6y ago

It probably depends quite a bit on the engineer's life outside of work. For much of my career, I was the only income earner in a family of 6. Making ends meet was sometimes a challenge, which made me very salary-sensitive and averse to the risk of income disruption. My family finances have somewhat improved in recent years, letting me unclinch a little regarding money. This lets me put more weight on other factors relating to job satisfaction and feeling of purpose.

tj0 6y ago
"Making ends meet was sometimes a challenge, which made me very salary-sensitive and averse to the risk of income disruption." This. I think a large chunk of society forgets that after you get past 25 and actually have a life and responsibilities, that a meager $100k in a particular region is barely enough to cover base expenses, childcare, car/home loans, etc. Out of curiosity, how long were you the sole earner before getting to a better state of financial security?
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  A little over 20 years.

mylons 6y ago

For whatever reason this is making me think about the narrative from a lot of VC’s, Paul Graham, Tyler Cowen, and many more that remote work will commoditize software engineering and destroy wages there. And articles like this make me think about institutional knowledge and how there are no standards what so ever in software, and so long as new frameworks, languages, and not invented here syndrome persist there will always be a need to keep your engineering staff around. /end ramble thoughts

gdsdfe 6y ago

Well let's flip it around : you! yes you reading this, why are you staying in your current position ?

TimD1 6y ago
Because my pay as a grad student is just too good! /s
sk0g 6y ago
Pay is probably pretty good (especially if current rise materialises) for my level of experience, and I have lots of autonomy in how I do things, as I'm the main technical decision maker on non-frontend tasks. I'm also doing uni part time, and taking half a day off every week is a tough proposition for employees. Despite the chaos, I do like the work I do, and as it's a Greenfield project, I want to see it reach some level of exposure to core clients before I can consider it a job well done. What about you?
A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
Frankly, no better options at this time.

iso1631 6y ago

The large UK broadcaster I work for is having to make large amounts of savings. They've decided that they don't like paying for slack (for £10 per user per month), and instead are going to force everyone to use MS Teams. Since 95% of people have been working from home (and no plans for most to go back this year), they won't allow people to take unused monitors back because they might end up lost. These are £80 monitors. It's these pathetic nickle-and-diming that is far more likely to make me look for another job than not paying a £200 a year pay rise. Someone sees "£80 times 20,000 staff, that's over £1m, we can't risk that!"

dijit 6y ago
I see this sentiment a lot. from what I hear of our management Slack's enterprise sales folk are a bit shit w.r.t working out deals and the like. 10 quid per person, for context, is roughly the price of all the MS software stack if you're a decent size. So for 10-bob you get email, word, excel, teams and exchange/AzureAD -- or a chat app. So that's the context that they're dealing with; but I fucking hate teams with white hot passion. So I still get annoyed. And yes, these nickle and dime tactics are rife everywhere, we buy 3k computers for people but our budget for a monitor is 70gbp and it is supposed to last 6 years. :|
- iso1631 6y ago
  > So for 10-bob you get email, word, excel, teams and exchange/AzureAD -- or a chat app. And the people making these decisions use word, excel, teams and exchange a hell of a lot in ways to try to work out how to save some money. I for one don't need that. I need jira, confluence, slack.
  - dijit 6y ago
    Yeah, but this is how network effects works. Accounting uses excel so everyone who interacts with accounting needs excel. Then those who interact with accounting (HR, Purchasing) use excel so everyone they come into contact with needs excel. There's is a metric which is called "Cost per head" used in my company, and it goes like; 1 Person: * 1 Windows license * 1 Office license * 1 Visio license * 1 Swarm license * 1 Perforce license * 1 Jetbrains license (optional) * 1 Slack license * 1 jira license * 1 confluence license * 1 gitlab license * 1 Terraform Enterprise license (optional) * 1 headcount in some HR software and that's just what I can remember. Controversial hot-take from one of our IT directors: <user> Just wondering why can't we just use slack and not use Teams at all :thinking_face: Slack seems so much better. <itDirector> So, just to put this out there, I started this Slack originally. So it's a topic close to my heart. <itDirector> But ultimately right now, Teams is eating the fuck out of Slack's lunch. <itDirector> Teams is included within our M365 license, for all users, at a fraction of the price of Slack. <itDirector> Likewise, all of the integrations, SSO, features, etc., come bundled in the existing license. <itDirector> For Slack, they continue to push Enterprise Grid licensing costs of over 300 USD per user per year <itDirector> Additionally, there are more people now starting to push us to formally drop Slack than Teams. Some studios are mandating the usage of Teams over Slack, as well as some projects. <itDirector> Personally, I see several features still missing before such a conversation can hold weight. Teams will have private channels added in November, and I'm hoping they address file permissions, non-threaded channel chat and lifting of the 250 user limit in individual chats. <itDirector> But once that happens, it's going to be extremely difficult for Slack to compete. <itDirector> So, to manage expectations - I would not anticipate a future where Slack is chosen over Teams. It's probably best to start acclimating to that reality now.

droobles 6y ago

At my company, I think engineers are more concerned with feeling comfortable and having the flexibility to take care of the demands of their lives and families over high pay. Midwest company so YMMV.

TheRealPomax 6y ago

Enough to take the issue of money off the table, given how much life costs wherever they live. And not by applying a "rent index" or "cost of living" factor to whatever people get paid in SF.

nisten 6y ago

I find the reasoning of this article pretty obnoxious to be honest. They start off with a valid argument, that if you treat engineers better than everyone else it creates resentment in other parts of the company and that makes sense. If that weren’t enough, all of this “special treatment” towards engineers can create resentment throughout the rest of the company. Such negativity hurts performance and retention in other business units where employees might feel that they’re treated unfairly. I've actually experienced this myself as the new guy, even within the engineering department. Then 5 paragraphs later this is what they write: Maybe instead of offering free lunches on Fridays, you can provide funding to attend Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC, once that’s hosted in real life again) or a Coursera subscription. If you’re in the mobile apps space, you might offer to buy the newest iPhone or Android device for your engineers annually on a “yours to keep” basis. I'm sorry for the negativity, I just don't think I can trust the judgement of the author on this issue after reading that. Also as a mobile developer, shouldn't you be aiming for your app to perform well on low to midrange devices first, thus targeting the largest ammount of potential users? If you're styling for the iphone x/11 notch you're gonna be doing that in the simulator first regardless.

mjayhn 6y ago

There's a style of management I encounter still that is very unsupportive of it's employees. Untrusting, thinking they're always out to leave just to make more money. It's interesting because the engineers I know tend to be pretty altruistic people and I won't say they don't care about money but it's not their leading factor in employment (I definitely know the other spectrum as well so don't think I'm ignoring that). I've worked at places specifically didn't want to send employees to conferences because they think everyone uses them as farming tools (whether that's true or not, some engineers just want to go learn and it's pretty upsetting if you have a SME in some subject and don't allow them to attend a con while plenty of other $leaders go). I've also worked for tech places where a boss would come in and fire you on Monday then call you up and offer you $1k to return on Tuesday, me being about 21 at my first sysadmin job kept me around for that abuse. It's really, really not a good feeling to feel untrusted or like you're constantly being tested by your employer.

geoka9 6y ago
SME == Subject Matter Expert
A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
Hah. Seems like this is not as uncommon as I thought. My senior had her convention request denied by company while multiple leadership folk were flown over there. She got pissed and paid for her own access/flight. She clearly met a lot of people there. Maybe that is what management is most scared of. She already almost left once.
- mjayhn 6y ago
  It's very common if you're not at some big FAANG or group that is in all the partner groups (CNCF, etc) and pays to get tickets every year. I do this a lot for a few foss projects I contribute to because even though I'm always hired as the SME for my niche leadership will only give me tickets/flights to conferences if they have extras and none of their drinking buddies want to go. Typically what happens is I'll start at a company, ask about going to $mybigcon when a training budget is brought up, that training budget is always slashed, not real or goes somewhere else then I'll never ask again and I'll find my own way to get tickets (from conf partners, etc). The funny thing, when I have to do this not only am I really bothered that my company wouldn't spend the $1000 ($200 plane, $800 ticket) but I go out of my way to not focus on ANYTHING that will benefit my company but instead I have a good time and learn things I'm interested in and mingle with every other company/partner I can. I've actually had companies expect me to get tickets myself from the projects or from gold partners that I know. I don't have that much clout by any means and even asking partners for tickets makes me feel terrible because they're limited too.

vbtemp 6y ago

I just want a straight answer from someone who knows more than me. How come every time I switch jobs I get a 30-40% raise, but at any one company I never get more than a 1-3% raise each year, no matter the growth of productivity and responsibility. There's obviously some kind of prisoner's dilemma-like iterated game that reaches that Nash equilibrium, and I'm trying to figure out what it is exactly. I would have loved to stay at my first organization. Interesting work and research. I was PI and PM for interesting projects by the time I left. Now I make almost double. The thing is, my current salary at my original organization isn't unheard of for that level of responsibility at all, the problem is that getting that kind of adjustment is impossible. It's possible to be hired in at that salary, though. I've noticed this is true for most organizations I've worked at.

ed312 6y ago
I can tell you as a manager the salary bands are generally set by HR for the whole company. I was told point blank at a previous employer that we payed the 70th percentile. I asked how they knew what that was - apparently there are companies that aggregate this data (legally?) and sell it back to HR orgs for $xx,xxx+ a year. HR for some reason wouldn't deviate from this band for top talent (discrimination maybe?)
- t3rabytes 6y ago
  Yep, Radford is one of those companies.
  - ed312 6y ago
    IIRC, that's the one they used. This struck me as kinda crappy and anti-competitive. Perhaps this is too idealistic, but I would prefer a more transparent and open market for talent.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      OTOH the sectors where compensation is probably most open and transparent in the US such as public sector tend not to be the best-paying.

mywittyname 6y ago

I left a job which paid in the 95+ percentile of my area for one that paid right about the median wage (maybe a little less). My reason: I like to own the software I write. We had an influx of people on our team who began to rewrite sections of stuff I wrote a long time ago for no real reason. Basically, some of them didn't like promise chains and decided to rewrite every one they encountered. Things finally bubbled over when I ended up in merge hell where I'd have the codebase drastically change while I was on my branch and I'd be reimplimenting the same feature every time I tried to submit a merge request, but all of these changes amounted to largely meaningless "refactoring." It's kind of petty on my part, but I'm not the type that wins arguments. So I decided, despite loving the people I worked with, that I was not in the right job. Now I design and develop software mostly individually and I'm infinitely happier. Someone who is competitive and enjoys confrontation would thrive in that role though. Point is, people have lots of different reasons for changing jobs. And something that makes one group happy may make another miserable. I also hate traveling to conferences, but that's the nature of the job sometimes.

nurettin 6y ago
I would've changed your code from promise chains to await statements (after warning you, of course) because they just look awful. And I would then have expected you to buy me a beer for getting rid of all that ugly code.
- C1sc0cat 6y ago
  And your boss at 121 time askes so exactly what have you delivered.
  - ipnon 6y ago
    Git activity is the most praised metric at my company. Refactoring and commenting is highly rewarded. The utility of this metric is dubious.
    - nurettin 6y ago

InfiniteRand 6y ago

"As an engineer, I experienced firsthand the dual relationship most of us have with the rest of the business. One day you’re a hero for delivering something “magical,” then the next you’re a jerk for not delivering something “so simple” in a short amount of time, or refusing to make certain “easy” changes, even if those requests carry a hidden but critical risk of destabilizing the whole software." That part of the article really struck a cord with me. From my experience, I think that a big factor in whether engineers start looking for another job is how much the manager acts as a filter for the unrealistic expectations of the rest of the company. Engineers should not be too isolated, after all some interaction is good to get feedback and it feels good to directly see people benefit from your work, but managers have to be able to shield their engineers from the mood swings of the CEO or the pie-in-the-sky promises from marketing. I think this is a big component of a "good working environment" and is often worth more than pay or promotions.

laurentdc 6y ago

A nice, laid-back, zero-bs team is all I need. I value that much much higher than money. I have no interest in workplace drama. I've always considered career and competition to be quite pointless: if I had a good idea I'd build the product myself and keep all the margins in my pocket. It's computer stuff afterall. Often I have no interest in the work itself either, but if the team is good I'm happy. They could make us shovel snow all day, I'd still come to work.

travisgriggs 6y ago

Pay me enough so I can feed my family and have comfortable shelter. Don't create a culture where I am a doer but not allowed to be a decider. I will eventually walk away from asymmetric power structures. If you don't/can't trust me, I probably won't trust you. I prefer relationships of trust. I want to learn and improve. Use your extra money to do that and act is if it matters to you. If you must use pay as your sole means of appeasing me, pay me LOTS. So very much that I'm willing to put up with the bureaucratic shitshow that is your company, spending all my drone-ish non-innovative 9 to 5 day thinking about the rush I'm going to experience doing cool things with all of the excess cash you're giving me.

enriquto 6y ago

I hope sooner than later there will be some kind of union of engineers and salaries will be public and standarized (and the median value of the salary for each position will be higher than today, due to the power of collective bargaining). It is shameful that some senior software engineers earn so much less than others, due to out-of-band reasons.

C1sc0cat 6y ago

Ah a management consultant producing arguments for lower pay for Hr/Accounting to justify cost cutting. I am Shocked Shocked I tell you, can you smell gas :-) Whilst pay isn't every thing people do tend to lie when asked about what important to them - the same way you slowdown when the time and motion team are monitoring you

mcgrathpm11 6y ago

I worked at Netflix for several years, where they actively practice paying ‘top of market.’ This is an oft misunderstood tactic, but in action means: 1) Yearly, employees are asked to seek evidence for their top of market compensation. 2) employees do two things as a follow up - They either interview elsewhere to get competing offers to establish ‘top of market,’ or they feel fairly paid and do nothing. Having worked at a few large tech companies that practice the typical equity grant and vesting structure designed to maximize retention, Ive never seen a more effective tactic to completely remove the concern of ‘am I paid enough’ from the employee. As a result: 1) The really high impact people are paid extremely well, as Netflix always overbids. 2) The average performers either go elsewhere or retain without jockeying for greater comp and ownership. The proactive seeking top of market is a good feedback loop to pay for/reward impact and to build trust with your team, and is something I still practice with my teams outside of Netflix. This was back in 2015, so some things may have changed. Regardless, the net to the business has compounding returns. At an average company: 1) Most employees do not pay for their salary in business impact. 2) Top performers drive outsized impact relative to their compensation. If you find a way to mitigate 1), you can pass the savings into 2), protecting and retaining your highest value employees. While other factors do obviously matter, and comp isn’t everything - removing comp from the hierarchy of needs entirely dramatically changes the mindset towards ownership of work and outcome.

mitmfrida 6y ago
I've had this same practice with a team of two that has moved with me to different orgs over time. Had no idea it's a norm and followed by big companies. My motive was exactly this. If you remove the "am i paid enough" concern, it allows talented engineers to focus at the job at hand and deliver really impactful outcomes
jacques_chester 6y ago
I'm probably taking the wrong lesson away here, because from an outside perspective the message seems to be "don't waste time interviewing someone who currently works for Netflix". You'll either waste your time, or get buyer's remorse. Very little upside.

flerchin 6y ago

You should pay them market rates to replace them (ie, much higher than you currently are). Yes, you should also foster their need for growth and learning, but that's because it's an investment in their productivity. Investing in engineer's productivity, and paying them what they're worth, turns out that's all it takes.

sys_64738 6y ago

Needs V Wants. I need shelter but it only costs so much to full-fill need. Then if I'm get paid sufficient salary to cover all my needs then wants decides the utility of the next marginal dollar. If the value doesn't align with my want then I don't care. As you get older you realize your time is finite and you want to enjoy what you do if you have the opportunity to make such a decision. So if a job pays 20% more but requires more overtime or more stress then I'll pass.

motohagiography 6y ago

Good article on an important topic. I would like to address what I perceive as assumptions in the perspective. We really need to get away from this idea that salaries are these paternalistic expressions of fairness. We earn money from providing value. If you want people to stay, your options are to give them money, prestige, or stability. - Money includes salary, bonus, commissions and contingent comp, stock options and perks and even vacation time. - Prestige is conferences, publications, exposure to high profile brand clients and stakeholders, airline points hotel and travel rewards, charity sponsorship and matching, committee memberships, media and public facing representation, and leadership options. - Stability includes things like investing in training, giving them headcount, bringing them into the strategic fold, partnerships, responsibility for key client or stakeholder relationships, etc. Evaluate your total comp using the triad of Money, Stability, Prestige. Chances are you are weighted toward one, and there is a role out there with a different balance. I think HR salary bands are a wishfull opposite of market rates, and personally I think they're stupid for any company that is still growing and not just optimizing an established long term revenue stream. If you are a bank or institution, sure, but your entire business is an optimization problem not a growth problem. If there is any upside volatility in your revenue and you are making something new that people want, pay for value, because I'd argue you can't afford not to. I've watched companies lose key engineers that delayed major product releases over a $10-20k salary bump while flying their marginalized director of special projects around in business class, and my conclusion is that compensation is arbitrary and a negotiations power game. Don't spend too much time reasoning about it. The companies that retain people are the ones who figure out the Stability and Prestige elements of the triad.

phtevus 6y ago

If the matter of pay is the only thing keeping the engineers there, this feels more like a problem with the business model or company culture.

pascalxus 6y ago

I've worked for about 7 different companies over 15 years and at each of those places I've seen a ton of engineers come and go. Most of the time, the reason they leave is one of three things: got fired, got laid off, or was pushed out. So, if you want your engineers to stick around, you gotta find out why so many of them are being laid off or pushed out and prevent that from happening. That's where you'll get the most bang for your buck. Engineers don't just leave for no reason. They leave because they're either forced out or there's something that really sucks about the company: most of the time it's the work life balance that really sucks.

leonardteo 6y ago

Honestly I have given up trying to “keep” engineers because it’s a losing battle. It’s impossible to compete with big tech. From the offers I’ve seen, if FAANG/Big Tech really wants one of your team members, they will get them and there is nothing you can do. My employees stay because they want to. They enjoy the work, domain, colleagues. The salary is competitive and fair. They can thrive in this environment. But I am under no illusions about creating some special environment that can prevent them from getting poached. You can throw cash, stocks, options all you want but if Big Tech wants them, they will outbid you. Just assume that at any moment they can and will get poached and ensure that the business can continue if people leave. Keep the stack simple, stick to standards, minimize NIH etc.

jlokier 6y ago
> From the offers I’ve seen, if FAANG/Big Tech really wants one of your team members, they will get them and there is nothing you can do. True, but your team members aren't getting any offers from FAANG/Big Tech unless the team members put in some effort. At least, they have to do a series of interviews. FAANG positions are notoriously coveted, at least here on HN, and most people have to work hard, including preparation, to get into them. So the question comes, what does it take to make your engineers comfortable enough they don't think it's worth going through the process to get those other offers.

ebgraham 6y ago

Our industry's asinine interview practices keep people from job seeking and getting their fair value. The sooner engineers refuse to give leetcode interviews, the sooner we'll see a natural bump in average engineering salary, and we'll have more power in the job market to demand better working conditions.

KoftaBob 6y ago

This question would be much easier to answer if salary transparency from employers was the norm, or even required. If every job listing on Indeed had a salary/compensation range, it would be very straightforward to see what the going rate is for that particular skillset, and it would push employers to be competitive on salary.

tidenly 6y ago

My job gives me no bonus or raise after a year and a half, despite obvious vast increases in my responsibilities and the assumption of another engineer who lefts' tasks too.. I just don't know how to approach asking because I hate confrontation and those kinds of situations. I basically always change jobs because of this reason - I'm just avoiding a conversation I don't want to have and the raise is bigger by quitting haha

edmundsauto 6y ago
If you'd like some unsolicited advice - the job hunt is tricky, because you should be optimizing for the best outcome for yourself. However, if you think of it as materializing your leverage -- just go out and get an offer that is better than what you have. Use that to approach your boss, it won't be a confrontation if you approach it with "I like it here, but it's clear that I'm underpaid. Can you help me find a way where it makes sense for me to stay?"

mrtweetyhack 6y ago

Pay them what competitors are willing to pay them

danbmil99 6y ago

Pay them with the experience of building a product somebody wants to use

dang 6y ago

We've banned this site for using sockpuppet accounts, voting rings, and astroturfed comments. Such abuses are extremely not ok, and this was an egregious and repeated case. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html