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I just had a very valuable teammate quit this week from lack of salary progression. New-ish grads are making more than him for much lesser jobs. The business re

I just had a very valuable teammate quit this week from lack of salary progression. New-ish grads are making more than him for much lesser jobs. The business refused to do even a token salary increase because of the ‘economic climate’ Now a critical project won’t happen on time, which will cost the company many magnitudes more in revenue than it would have cost them with a token increase. Oops.

bell-cot 3y ago
But, viewed on a small-enough scale, the managers did get their way. And "small" is usually quite descriptive of managers.
tayo42 3y ago
Are you all extremely underpaid or something? Or how are new grads getting so much in a down market? I'm decently experienced saw lots of relatively low paying jobs in general
- Zambyte 3y ago
  What market is down?
  - suzakus 3y ago
    The regular software engineering market is very rough to get jobs in right now, particularly at lower levels of experience
    - mooreds 3y ago
      Agreed. This is in line with experience of friends (Metro Denver, USA). Even senior folks are having a harder time than in the past few years.
  - vundercind 3y ago
    Low to mid experience and trying to land FAANG-alike or finance jobs, I think. The “merely” 1.5-3x median household income comp range sure seems to have remained healthy, even for newbies.
- dragon-hn 3y ago
  The company puts A LOT of effort into its program for hiring new grads. But is horribly inept when it comes to providing a career path for individual contributors. So unless you manage to get a promotion to a senior IC position (like me), your compensation stagnates.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago
  Apparently I'm underpaid lol, someone upthread says "Friend getting paid $200k more than me" and I've never been paid $200k in my life
  - vundercind 3y ago
    Only a very small proportion of developers make enough that they can be making what must have been north of $200k and still have another $200k difference in comp vs a peer. Low side of single-digit percentage. And I’m talking the US only, not globally.
rybosworld 3y ago
This is easily fixed by giving management attrition targets. Some companies (Amazon) say "you need to let go of ~6% of your headcount every year." Others will flip this and say: "you need to retain 94% of your headcount every year." The effect on salaries is more or less the same. If you know you need to keep employees, you give salary increases to the one's most at risk of leaving. If you know you need to let go of employees, you don't provide salary increases to the one's you want to get rid of. Many companies don't have an attrition target at all, though.
- xyproto 3y ago
  Teams start to battle to have low performers on their team in a climate like that, though, as an insurance from being let go. It's absurd.
  - xethos 3y ago
    But a rank stack is cause for insurance because somebody is being let go. Needing to keep at least 94% of headcount, with no penalty to management for being above (and possibly a bonus for staying above the minimum) sounds like the opposite.
newaccount7hhhf 3y ago
What do you mean “cost them money” I legitimately can’t think of situation where releasing a product behind deadline would cost a business money? Obviously they just allocated resources more efficiently because they have fewer people. Likely they made more money because of increased demand.
- dragon-hn 3y ago
  It is fairly obvious. If it is expected that a product or set of features will drive X revenue per month, and you are late by Y months, then a decision that directly contributes to that delay just cost the company money.
- jedberg 3y ago
  I have a product that can bring in $10,000 in profit each week. If I launch it four weeks late, I just lost $40,000. Or I have a product that relies on certain hardware. I've already bought/leased that hardware, so I'm now paying depreciation/lease payments for that hardware. Every week I delay the launch I'm losing money on those payments because the hardware is sitting unused.
- compiler-guy 3y ago
  In addition to the other good answers here: If your product isn't ready and your competitor's is, you lose contracts and possibly life time customers.
- LeifCarrotson 3y ago
  Different businesses have different meanings to deadlines and timelines. If it's v6.8 of your internal software product, no, the deadline doesn't usually matter that much. Maybe you are a bit behind your competition, but the only problem with just being at the 6.7 feature set a little longer is a small percentage of customers not sticking around. Your manager probably overpromised and underestimated, but aside from a bit of abuse and panic, you're right, it doesn't really matter. But if you're one of 120 companies building parts for the 2025 F150 and your part isn't ready and the other 119 companies are ready, whether it's your supplier or you or your customer who is behind, you'd better believe that they've got you over a barrel in the contract. Like, the contract has a line that reads "for every minute of downtime after [date] you owe $25k". Your PM hopefully underpromised with an aim to overdeliver, but missed really bad. And all the checks and balances failed. If you've got adequate financials you can survive a miss once in a great while, but two or three in a row and even big shops will go under. It's often important to understand the consequences of missed deadlines that your coworkers, vendors, or especially customers are accustomed to, people have wildly disparate experiences in this area.
slifin 3y ago
In my experience, this kind of thing might not even register with most companies There's a meta-game that most sociopaths/narcs are playing like their lives depend on it to get their supply and climb the internal ladder, that's taking up so much energy/time/resources of the company, falling upwards That there's nothing left to care about this sort of thing
hobs 3y ago
I've seen this before so many times, and recommend people quit and sometimes even apply back at their same company. I got my friend a 30% raise after he quit, worked at a new place for two months, it blocked implementation of key projects and the CEO started freaking out. I asked him how much he would pay to fix the problem, and he gave me a number. I said if we paid that as the new salary to my friend we could have him working there in a week. The CEO made the call in front of me lol.
- andruby 3y ago
  That’s a great tactic. I’d love to use that, but I’m afraid a lot of leaders are not rational enough (or have to big of ego’s) to hire the person back
  - hobs 3y ago
    It really takes a big desperation for money to allow such ego death, absolutely.
andruby 3y ago
I hate this shortsightedness of business leaders. I’ve seen similar problems. Not wanting to give a raise to a critical person, and then having to replace them with 3 people. Not wanting to pay 10% more and ending up paying 300% more…
- Hammershaft 3y ago
  And that's 3 people onboarding & increasing the amount that needs to be communicated over that 1 person.

bell-cot 3y ago

But, viewed on a small-enough scale, the managers did get their way. And "small" is usually quite descriptive of managers.

tayo42 3y ago

Are you all extremely underpaid or something? Or how are new grads getting so much in a down market? I'm decently experienced saw lots of relatively low paying jobs in general

Zambyte 3y ago
What market is down?
- suzakus 3y ago
  The regular software engineering market is very rough to get jobs in right now, particularly at lower levels of experience
  - mooreds 3y ago
    Agreed. This is in line with experience of friends (Metro Denver, USA). Even senior folks are having a harder time than in the past few years.
- vundercind 3y ago
  Low to mid experience and trying to land FAANG-alike or finance jobs, I think. The “merely” 1.5-3x median household income comp range sure seems to have remained healthy, even for newbies.
dragon-hn 3y ago
The company puts A LOT of effort into its program for hiring new grads. But is horribly inept when it comes to providing a career path for individual contributors. So unless you manage to get a promotion to a senior IC position (like me), your compensation stagnates.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago
Apparently I'm underpaid lol, someone upthread says "Friend getting paid $200k more than me" and I've never been paid $200k in my life
- vundercind 3y ago
  Only a very small proportion of developers make enough that they can be making what must have been north of $200k and still have another $200k difference in comp vs a peer. Low side of single-digit percentage. And I’m talking the US only, not globally.

rybosworld 3y ago

This is easily fixed by giving management attrition targets. Some companies (Amazon) say "you need to let go of ~6% of your headcount every year." Others will flip this and say: "you need to retain 94% of your headcount every year." The effect on salaries is more or less the same. If you know you need to keep employees, you give salary increases to the one's most at risk of leaving. If you know you need to let go of employees, you don't provide salary increases to the one's you want to get rid of. Many companies don't have an attrition target at all, though.

xyproto 3y ago
Teams start to battle to have low performers on their team in a climate like that, though, as an insurance from being let go. It's absurd.
- xethos 3y ago
  But a rank stack is cause for insurance because somebody is being let go. Needing to keep at least 94% of headcount, with no penalty to management for being above (and possibly a bonus for staying above the minimum) sounds like the opposite.

newaccount7hhhf 3y ago

What do you mean “cost them money” I legitimately can’t think of situation where releasing a product behind deadline would cost a business money? Obviously they just allocated resources more efficiently because they have fewer people. Likely they made more money because of increased demand.

dragon-hn 3y ago
It is fairly obvious. If it is expected that a product or set of features will drive X revenue per month, and you are late by Y months, then a decision that directly contributes to that delay just cost the company money.
jedberg 3y ago
I have a product that can bring in $10,000 in profit each week. If I launch it four weeks late, I just lost $40,000. Or I have a product that relies on certain hardware. I've already bought/leased that hardware, so I'm now paying depreciation/lease payments for that hardware. Every week I delay the launch I'm losing money on those payments because the hardware is sitting unused.
compiler-guy 3y ago
In addition to the other good answers here: If your product isn't ready and your competitor's is, you lose contracts and possibly life time customers.
LeifCarrotson 3y ago
Different businesses have different meanings to deadlines and timelines. If it's v6.8 of your internal software product, no, the deadline doesn't usually matter that much. Maybe you are a bit behind your competition, but the only problem with just being at the 6.7 feature set a little longer is a small percentage of customers not sticking around. Your manager probably overpromised and underestimated, but aside from a bit of abuse and panic, you're right, it doesn't really matter. But if you're one of 120 companies building parts for the 2025 F150 and your part isn't ready and the other 119 companies are ready, whether it's your supplier or you or your customer who is behind, you'd better believe that they've got you over a barrel in the contract. Like, the contract has a line that reads "for every minute of downtime after [date] you owe $25k". Your PM hopefully underpromised with an aim to overdeliver, but missed really bad. And all the checks and balances failed. If you've got adequate financials you can survive a miss once in a great while, but two or three in a row and even big shops will go under. It's often important to understand the consequences of missed deadlines that your coworkers, vendors, or especially customers are accustomed to, people have wildly disparate experiences in this area.

slifin 3y ago

In my experience, this kind of thing might not even register with most companies There's a meta-game that most sociopaths/narcs are playing like their lives depend on it to get their supply and climb the internal ladder, that's taking up so much energy/time/resources of the company, falling upwards That there's nothing left to care about this sort of thing

hobs 3y ago

I've seen this before so many times, and recommend people quit and sometimes even apply back at their same company. I got my friend a 30% raise after he quit, worked at a new place for two months, it blocked implementation of key projects and the CEO started freaking out. I asked him how much he would pay to fix the problem, and he gave me a number. I said if we paid that as the new salary to my friend we could have him working there in a week. The CEO made the call in front of me lol.

andruby 3y ago
That’s a great tactic. I’d love to use that, but I’m afraid a lot of leaders are not rational enough (or have to big of ego’s) to hire the person back
- hobs 3y ago
  It really takes a big desperation for money to allow such ego death, absolutely.

andruby 3y ago

I hate this shortsightedness of business leaders. I’ve seen similar problems. Not wanting to give a raise to a critical person, and then having to replace them with 3 people. Not wanting to pay 10% more and ending up paying 300% more…

Hammershaft 3y ago
And that's 3 people onboarding & increasing the amount that needs to be communicated over that 1 person.