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Realizing this is important for retention. It's damaging when upper management falsely thinks people are interchangeble, which is a common view among non-techni
by csee 5y ago
Realizing this is important for retention. It's damaging when upper management falsely thinks people are interchangeble, which is a common view among non-technical types and HR. This leads to 10x people feeling underappreciated and resentful, ultimately causing them to resign for higher compensation and more appreciation elsewhere. It can literally destroy small companies if an individual's unique contribution isn't properly understood and valued.
Managers should err away from language about "the group", "the team" or "collective" and really drill down to the level of individuals as much as is practical. This is the correct resolution for most decision making. "The team" is just an abstraction that's useful to a small extent for a certain class of decision making, but not beyond that.
- 908B64B197 5y ago> It can literally destroy small companies if an individual's unique contribution isn't properly understood and valued. It's generally cheaper to poach engineers than to buy a company. Just food for thoughts.
- throwawaygh 5y agoIs this really true for small companies? A senior at FAANG is worth sometimes well north of 500K/yr. There are plenty of folks strewn about small software companies that do similar work to a senior or even staff/principal at a faang at wildly huge discounts. It's hard to find numbers for the value of small software businesses (OP's quote), but this article [1] puts the number at $667k. If that's true, the engineer is SUBSTANTIALLY more expensive than the business (you're not just renting the business for a year). [1] In the period between 2013 and 2016, the average sale was $667,000. While some sales were obviously much higher, and some were actually a bit lower, this must be an encouraging figure for a business owner to see.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago> A senior at FAANG is worth sometimes well north of 500K/yr. There are plenty of folks strewn about small software companies that do similar work to a senior or even staff/principal at a faang at wildly huge discounts. Those discounts are why it's easier to poach the employees. If a company has 10 engineers earning $200K/year, why would you buy the company for $667K per person and then pay the employees on top of that? Just offer the employees $500K/year and they'll stream right over.
- big_big_data 5y agoNot everything is just about the salary
- Jensson 5y agoSalary is per year, buying a company is a one time cost. Retention agreements are a part of the purchase so they know the employees they got will be forced to stick around if the purchase goes through.
- throwawaygh 5y agoOh, I misinterpreted GP. Yes, agreed: for small software shops, the key senior ICs are probably worth more than the company itself.
- 908B64B197 5y agoAnd when acquiring an existing company, the buyer is typically interested in keeping a lot of the engineering staff. I've only seen a few acquisitions where there was no interest in keeping the engineering staff (North comes to mind; this one was strictly for Google to get its hands on the patent the company had acquired from Intel).
- quickthrower2 5y agoThere are only so many $500k spots available. If every engineer in the world said “I’m moving to SF and applying to Google” and assuming visa allowed that you’d see Google paying a lot less for talent! Which means that while some people earning 200k are underpaid, they can’t all be underpaid.
- pm90 5y agoBig Tech and most established companies make billions in profits off software products developed by engineers. Engineering Software Products is a highly specialized skill and absolutely isn’t compensated to the same degree as its impact; Silicon Valley was the first to realize and reward this somewhat adequately (IMO still not enough). It’s really great for management types that they’ve managed to restrict the median compensation at fairly low levels; this is also the case for software outside of the well known tech hubs.
- philipswood 5y agoGelled teams are an actual thing though. A good team can be better at something than all it's seperate members.
- Jensson 5y agoAnd a bad team can be worse at something than all it's separate members.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- hinkley 5y agoWhat I've experienced at companies on a death spiral is that there are a few people everyone can agree are useless, and beyond that you start picking people based on your poor understanding of how the sausage is actually made. Once someone really useful has been let go, you have the sudden realization that your situation isn't that different than theirs. If management can misunderstand Tim's value, they sure as hell can misunderstand yours. At which point everyone's productivity is compromised by existential dread, and the wheels just start coming off faster.
- quickthrower2 5y agoYeah been there, and instaquit. That company seems to be a shell now.
- hinkley 5y agoThis experience contributed greatly to How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Severance Check.