4 ms·

It is absolutely a counter offer and they also don't want to give their employees the idea that they sometimes do counter offers. Counter offers are discretiona

It is absolutely a counter offer and they also don't want to give their employees the idea that they sometimes do counter offers. Counter offers are discretionary and usually you only get one chance at it - it burns a chunk of trust if you've demonstrated will to walk away. A counter offer is something a manager asked for, and if you do it again, they usually won't be as willing to go bat for you a second time. If there's been turnover in managers or you've switched teams in a large corp, then you may have more luck. On the other hand, larger corps treat engineers more fungibly, and if they're looking to trim headcount via a directive from on high, they'll just let you walk out.

soco 4y ago
Burning trust on which side? That you're actually more valuable to us but we wouldn't pay you more unless threatened?
- mitthrowaway2 4y ago
  Agreed. By making a counter offer a company demonstrates that they had not already been paying as much as they were willing to.
  - WithinReason 4y ago
    Which they never do anyway, so that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.
    - mitthrowaway2 4y ago
      > Which they never do anyway In terms of this being a loss of trust, it's not uncommon for managers to say "we're already paying you as much as we can afford" or "your compensation is already the highest that our rules allow for". If they are willing to go beyond that in a counteroffer, it pretty much reveals that they were previously being dishonest with you in order to get away with paying less. This is either a loss of trust, or else trust never existed in the first place.
      - alexvoda 4y ago
        Maybe treating this as something related to trust is unhealthy. Thinking about it as trust forces you to accept the notion that "companies are people". Maybe thinking about it as leverage is better.
        lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
        Meh. Kinda reminds me of Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive series. I believe there is a culture in that world, traders of which will do their best to make sure the person they're negotiating with gets the best deal possible. The people of this fictional culture don't do business with you if you try to get the best deal possible for yourself.
        alexvoda 4y ago
        What you say is fair, but do you believe that trust is reciprocal when talking about corporations? How often are companies the ones trying to get the best deal for themselves? How often would the people of that fictional culture do business with such a corporate entity? A corporation by its very nature can not have the same values as a human.
      - barrkel 4y ago
        Or the counteroffer is to retain the person until the completion of an immediate project. It could be that the short-term loss of an individual exceeds the extra cost of a raise, but the long-term cost exceeds the benefits. More likely, it's a case of non-generalizability. Profitable companies can normally afford to counter-offer in specific cases, but if the resulting raise became a rule in like-for-like employee relationships, the collective increase in payroll would not be affordable.
- ryandvm 4y ago
  Bingo. You're leaving because you're not being treated fairly. That was the breach of trust.
alexvoda 4y ago
This is because management would like the company - employee relationship to not be a purely business one. There is some kind of fictitious betrayal involved in what you described. From the pov of the employee, they are just updating the price for their services. What if society would treat companies raising prices as betrayal?
- horsawlarway 4y ago
  > What if society would treat companies raising prices as betrayal? They often do just that. Usually through government actions that limit or cap price increases in goods, or policies that discriminate against companies based on previous behavior. Last time the US had a real run at it was the Nixon price/wage caps in the 70s, but it's definitely getting traction again when we're seeing corporate taxes at historic lows, profits at historic highs, and inflation popping up again as a real risk. This whole "trust" thing is a big fucking deal, regardless of what folks might like to think, and it absolutely does extend to the relationship corporations have with the public. I personally don't think the controls usually work the way they're intended (it's mostly bad news), but I don't mind the punishment aspect of them in regards to betrayed trust.
- barrkel 4y ago
  Thing is, companies aren't just a web of contracted individuals. Companies gain efficiencies from reduced transaction costs; this is the basic theory of the firm, the reason we have firms at all. One of the big ways transaction costs are reduced is by increased trust, trust at the human level. Interactions don't need lots of checks and guards and ass-covering because there's mutual trust, at a human level, that people are working together on a profit-making enterprise. Breaking trust affects efficiency. If someone threatens to leave, you can't make future plans that assume they're in place. People aren't cogs that can be trivially replaced; on-the-job knowledge makes people more productive and takes time to acquire. So if someone's future presence is uncertain, timelines stretch, more people need to be allocated to it to account for risk of people leaving, and so on. And this affects other trust relationships further out. A manager of a team or a product area may not be able to deliver on commitments that serve a strategic purpose of the company directed at a higher level. It's not "purely business". Businesses run on trust; companies are collections of individuals with a higher degree of mutual trust, and the more trust they have, the more they can eliminate inefficiencies caused by lacking trust. That's why companies work at all.
Redoubts 4y ago
> it burns a chunk of trust if you've demonstrated will to walk away. I still don't understand this advice. As someone who has done this a few times at the same company, I have not witnessed it. Usually the whole point of an outside offer is to convince someone outside your management chain what you're worth (HR). At that point, the question isn't about loyalty, it's about the value of the work to the company on the whole (does your org even need an expensive engineer).

soco 4y ago

Burning trust on which side? That you're actually more valuable to us but we wouldn't pay you more unless threatened?

mitthrowaway2 4y ago
Agreed. By making a counter offer a company demonstrates that they had not already been paying as much as they were willing to.
- WithinReason 4y ago
  Which they never do anyway, so that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.
  - mitthrowaway2 4y ago
    > Which they never do anyway In terms of this being a loss of trust, it's not uncommon for managers to say "we're already paying you as much as we can afford" or "your compensation is already the highest that our rules allow for". If they are willing to go beyond that in a counteroffer, it pretty much reveals that they were previously being dishonest with you in order to get away with paying less. This is either a loss of trust, or else trust never existed in the first place.
    - alexvoda 4y ago
      Maybe treating this as something related to trust is unhealthy. Thinking about it as trust forces you to accept the notion that "companies are people". Maybe thinking about it as leverage is better.
      - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
        Meh. Kinda reminds me of Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive series. I believe there is a culture in that world, traders of which will do their best to make sure the person they're negotiating with gets the best deal possible. The people of this fictional culture don't do business with you if you try to get the best deal possible for yourself.
        alexvoda 4y ago
        What you say is fair, but do you believe that trust is reciprocal when talking about corporations? How often are companies the ones trying to get the best deal for themselves? How often would the people of that fictional culture do business with such a corporate entity? A corporation by its very nature can not have the same values as a human.
    - barrkel 4y ago
      Or the counteroffer is to retain the person until the completion of an immediate project. It could be that the short-term loss of an individual exceeds the extra cost of a raise, but the long-term cost exceeds the benefits. More likely, it's a case of non-generalizability. Profitable companies can normally afford to counter-offer in specific cases, but if the resulting raise became a rule in like-for-like employee relationships, the collective increase in payroll would not be affordable.
ryandvm 4y ago
Bingo. You're leaving because you're not being treated fairly. That was the breach of trust.

alexvoda 4y ago

This is because management would like the company - employee relationship to not be a purely business one. There is some kind of fictitious betrayal involved in what you described. From the pov of the employee, they are just updating the price for their services. What if society would treat companies raising prices as betrayal?

horsawlarway 4y ago
> What if society would treat companies raising prices as betrayal? They often do just that. Usually through government actions that limit or cap price increases in goods, or policies that discriminate against companies based on previous behavior. Last time the US had a real run at it was the Nixon price/wage caps in the 70s, but it's definitely getting traction again when we're seeing corporate taxes at historic lows, profits at historic highs, and inflation popping up again as a real risk. This whole "trust" thing is a big fucking deal, regardless of what folks might like to think, and it absolutely does extend to the relationship corporations have with the public. I personally don't think the controls usually work the way they're intended (it's mostly bad news), but I don't mind the punishment aspect of them in regards to betrayed trust.
barrkel 4y ago
Thing is, companies aren't just a web of contracted individuals. Companies gain efficiencies from reduced transaction costs; this is the basic theory of the firm, the reason we have firms at all. One of the big ways transaction costs are reduced is by increased trust, trust at the human level. Interactions don't need lots of checks and guards and ass-covering because there's mutual trust, at a human level, that people are working together on a profit-making enterprise. Breaking trust affects efficiency. If someone threatens to leave, you can't make future plans that assume they're in place. People aren't cogs that can be trivially replaced; on-the-job knowledge makes people more productive and takes time to acquire. So if someone's future presence is uncertain, timelines stretch, more people need to be allocated to it to account for risk of people leaving, and so on. And this affects other trust relationships further out. A manager of a team or a product area may not be able to deliver on commitments that serve a strategic purpose of the company directed at a higher level. It's not "purely business". Businesses run on trust; companies are collections of individuals with a higher degree of mutual trust, and the more trust they have, the more they can eliminate inefficiencies caused by lacking trust. That's why companies work at all.

Redoubts 4y ago

> it burns a chunk of trust if you've demonstrated will to walk away. I still don't understand this advice. As someone who has done this a few times at the same company, I have not witnessed it. Usually the whole point of an outside offer is to convince someone outside your management chain what you're worth (HR). At that point, the question isn't about loyalty, it's about the value of the work to the company on the whole (does your org even need an expensive engineer).