> A similar thing happens with retention. A great engineer I know who was regularly creating $x0M/yr4 of additional profit for the company per year wanted to mo

> A similar thing happens with retention. A great engineer I know who was regularly creating $x0M/yr4 of additional profit for the company per year wanted to move to Portugal, so the company cut the person's cash comp by a factor of four, causing them to leave for a company that doesn't have location-based pay. This was escalated up to the director level, but that wasn't sufficient to override HR, so they left. HR didn't care that the person made the company more money than HR saves by doing location adjustments for all international employees combined because HR at the company had no notion of the value of an employee, only the cost, title, level, and location5 < This is overall a brilliant post by Dan (as usual) but in this case he is harsh on HR; there is also a cultural cost on breaking salary structure for exceptional individual contributors - everyone else gets upset and threatens to leave. HR needs to calculate this, which is more likely the motivator rather than saving a few dollars here and there on a single individuals salary. Individuals matter, but in exaggerating the point, he has neglected to consider teams / groups matter also.