23 ms·

Employees who stay in companies longer than two years get paid 50% less (2014)

379 points by AlgoRitmo 2y ago

tnel77 2y ago
I wonder how stock options play into this. Assuming you have generous stock options in a thriving company, wouldn’t it be worth it to stick out 3-4 years for a majority of that equity?
- fishpen0 2y ago
  Gambling vs Guarantee. I've lost options or unvested RSU 3 times to companies suddenly rolling over, getting acquired, or doing layoffs. Of the two times I've hit it and actually had them pay out, one payed out at only 1/3 of the original valuation of the equity and one only paid out for two quarters before we were acquired. Take the pay increase vs the equity every time. Plus by changing 5 times, I diversified my equity on more companies and ensured something hit at least a little.
  - sashank_1509 2y ago
    RSU’s most of the time are not gambling. You’re talking about gambling in startups (or small companies ) that can get acquired, run out of funds etc. Tech layoffs, people don’t realize that after the dot com crash this might be the first time layoffs happened at big tech companies (even then Apple and NVIDIA didn’t layoff). Not taking RSU’s in these tech companies is a very bad idea financially, I like to think of it as equivalent cash. You can always sell your RSU immediately to get cash. But another advantage is when you individually invest in stocks, you rarely have a large fund into 1 stock, you probably diversify into index funds. This gives you consistent returns but leaves no shot at making a fortune. In my experience RSU’s as by default are fully invested into the 1 company you’re working for, give you that outsized return opportunity. Just ask employees at snowflake, NVIDIA, Tesla. Heck even MSFT RSU’s have doubled in value every couple of years and Amazon had insane growth from 2010 to 2022, where if you had gotten equivalent in cash you would be more than 10 times poorer than someone who just held Amazon RSU’s. Yes putting large amounts in 1 stock is risky, but not nearly as risky as you make it sound to be.
    - fishpen0 2y ago
      > You can always sell your RSU immediately to get cash. This is not true at all. My current company is privately held and has RSUs. Over the last two years there has been a single buyback and it was at a fixed closed market price and we were limited to selling 10% of our vested RSUs. Lots of startups flipped to RSUs with no plan to go public or be bought out in the last few years. Additionally, even if your company is stable RSUs are frought with issues like what happened two orgs ago where a blackout period started and our stock went into a 30% free fall during the blackout and never recovered. We ended up getting a tender offer, the company sold to private equity and unvested shares were clawed back
      - sashank_1509 2y ago
        Private company RSU’s are a different ballgame entirely. They are essentially paper money and I would classify them under startups. Yeah I’d agree for a more risky venture, cash is better (unless you are in a gambling mood), I’d disagree that being true for FAANG or any of the 100 billion + tech companies (Airbnb, Uber, snowflake, Palo Alto networks etc)
- paholg 2y ago
  With options, there's always a risk that they will be worth nothing, or very little. I would rather have some options in several companies than a lot of options in one to increase the chance that some of them will be valuable. That approach does require you to buy the options, whereas staying at one company means you can delay the purchase
  - irrational 2y ago
    Seriously. My brother received $1 million in Tesla stock options when they recruited him. They certainly aren’t worth that much anymore. Does he stay and hope the Musk will stop tanking the stock or jump ship?
    - seattle_spring 2y ago
      Tesla is giving options instead of RSUs still? Usually big public companies grant RSUs except to the top-most senior leadership team.
      - sashank_1509 2y ago
        Known from a friend, he could choose RSU’s, options or cash from Tesla. (You would get more options than RSU’s to compensate for risk). Also Tesla stock price 10xed in the year 2020, even after all the hits , it’s still like 6x from pre 2020. Your brother had to join after 2020, which is unlucky I guess.
  - philsnow 2y ago
    Strategy 1: Stay for four years and vest your entire initial grant. Strategy 2: Stay 1-2 years and vest 25%-50% of your initial grant, and repeat 3x-1x. If all the companies you work for have similar likelihood of doing exceptionally well, you've paid 4 years and gotten either one lottery ticket worth X (strategy 1) or 2-4 lottery tickets each worth 50%-25% of X. When you don't already have "enough" money, 25% of X is still life-changing, and if you can get 2-4 shots at it instead of 1, that can be a very workable strategy.
- dentemple 2y ago
  The number of people who meet the conditions of having "generous" stock options (that aren't just pretend money) in a company thriving enough for them to overcome a -50% salary deficient are probably a very, very small minority.
- bluGill 2y ago
  Most companies don't offer options. If you work for the rare one that does (generally a startup) it might be - but you better watch the books: most of them are not worth much if anything. Never put your savings into the stock of the company you work for. If (as happens) the company goes bankrupt you can be out of a job and all your savings at the same time. The only exception is if you have reason to believe you will be CXX - at that level (or one below in some cases) your stock owners is published to shareholders and they look for high levels to show you have your personal wealth on the line for the company - and you also have enough power to do something about it. (most of us don't have enough power for anyone to care what we think). Stock options are the same as any other stock: don't put your net worth into it. I have long ago learned that until the money is in my bank account it isn't mine. Sometimes the promised $$$ arrives, sometimes it does not. But always I want to see the money.
shinryuu 2y ago
Though at some point it feels like you reach a ceiling even if you change jobs.
- giancarlostoro 2y ago
  At which point your only options is (unless you're in the) FAANG or making your own business if you're in tech (or relatable ish businesses). Or moving to a low cost of living state / city. I feel like the ceiling for me is awful, since in Florida the cost of everything is going up, but companies aren't willing to pay competitive salary, despite boasting about it, they all seem to pay standard / average pay.
  - dumbo-octopus 2y ago
    Therein lies the trick: if nobody is competitive, everybody is competitive. FWIW I'm actually coming out of a 3 year hiatus making 50% more than the FAANG position I left in 2021.
    - giancarlostoro 2y ago
      I assume you don't live in Florida? I don't know anyone here making insane amounts of cash doing the kind of work I do, unless you're doing mainframe programming, then you're just guaranteed some paychecks.
- whateveracct 2y ago
  I've run into this. I work at a place that claims they pay top market rate. I've poked around other options and it seems like they're right about that! Back in 2014 when this article was posted, it was probably more true. Lots of money frothing around and salaries were growing and growing faster than employers were willing to keep up with for existing employees (although even then, I had a job that gave me a substantial raise just to keep up with the market.)
  - op00to 2y ago
    I am in the same position where the company I work for tends to pay near the top of the market. I account for this by trying to save as much as possible and not having a lifestyle that requires this top of the market salary. I’m under no illusion that the gravy train can run out at any time and my next role may be a step down or step up in salary.
asaph 2y ago
This article is nearly 10 years old. Is this still true?
- dmitrygr 2y ago
  yes
- giancarlostoro 2y ago
  Certainly feels like it.
- yumraj 2y ago
  This concept is timeless. Numbers might vary though..
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  I assume it will always be true outside of employees who are exceptionally VIP or employees selling to union/government roles that are compensated strictly according to length of tenure. The employer gets labor at a lower price, and the employee gets lower volatility. If you want the best price, you have to do the work to keep buying and you have to do the work to keep selling, only way any market can work.
  - eschneider 2y ago
    Except the employee isn't guaranteed lower volatility. At. All.
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      There is volatility due to the buyer changing the terms of deal (including ending the deal), and there is also volatility due to the seller choosing to sell to different buyers, such as working in a different location or getting along with new colleagues, etc. The former is not controllable from the perspective of a labor seller, but the latter is. Whether or not the tradeoff is worth it is dependent on the seller and always in flux. I would say the tradeoff is usually not worth it.
fsckboy 2y ago
this whole thing is sus. why isn't this a better explanation: High performing, "desirable" or "skilled" employees get enticed (i.e. rewarded) for jumping to a new employer. Average schlubs do not. explanation from TFA: Why are people who jump ship rewarded, when loyal employees are punished for their dedication? The answer is simple. Recessions allow businesses to freeze their payroll and decrease salaries of the newly hired based on “market trends.” These reactions to the recession are understandable, but the problem is that these reactions were meant to be “temporary.”
- mr_00ff00 2y ago
  They mentioned “average” vs best employee, and the raises each can expect. So that at least seems to imply that they adjust for that. Specially the line where you can get a 1% raise or a 10% new offer.
- PhasmaFelis 2y ago
  A lot of people fucking hate having to switch jobs. This has little to do with their skills and a lot to do with all the stress and uncertainty that comes a major life change. Some people enjoy making big changes and shaking themselves up, and that's fine too, but don't confuse that with some sort of inherent superiority.
  - fsckboy 2y ago
    5 factor personality model, one of the factors is "neuroticism" (the others being openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, and agreeableness; the mnemonic OCEAN) neuroticism measures "the tendency toward negative emotion". Stress in the face of uncertainty is a good example of a negative emotion that can be exaggerated in some people. Negative emotions also correlate to less success in social and job situations.
    - PhasmaFelis 2y ago
      This seems like a lot of justification to say that people who enjoy changing jobs frequently are objectively better than people who don't. I'm guessing you're in that first group?
sed3 2y ago
Quitting just because you are not paid enough is so 2014. I will gladly take 50% less, if you keep me!
- dakiol 2y ago
  I guess it depends on the region. Recently, I have quit a job to get a 15% increase (I know, it’s not a huge increase but I am already hitting this glass ceiling around here in Europe for senior developers)
  - giantg2 2y ago
    15% is a huge increase for most. I've never seen a 15% increase at one time.
    - justsocrateasin 2y ago
      I got a 20% increase the other year. But only because I threatened to quit aggressively and got promoted in the same year and was valuable to my small team of ~4 engineers.
- kagakuninja 2y ago
  Take 50% less, until you get a better offer. The job market will pick up again. There is no guarantee that your current stable job will not suddenly come to an end for many reasons. Outside of a few rare companies, there is absolutely no reason to stay, if they are not paying you market rate.
hehdhdjehehegwv 2y ago
And it’s getting worse. Somebody told me their team at Big Tech used to have a mini cupcake party when people hit a tenure milestone like 5 year, 10, etc. Along with layoffs the company killed the cupcake budget. (Mind you the stock is sky high and they’re raking in cash.) If a company doesn’t think your decade of commitment to making them money merits a fucking cupcake, it goes without saying you’ll get screwed on comp.
ApolloFortyNine 2y ago
Odd to see skepticism here, I thought this was well known. I've seen it first hand just a couple years ago where a large company was offering new hires a 20% bump, and yet when I told them I was leaving the counter offer was only a 3~% bump.
- paxys 2y ago
  Yeah I'm surprised that people are still surprised by this. It is a pretty well known practice at large companies. If you have been at a company for a few years getting promos and stock refreshers is always a struggle due to limited budgets and internal politics. On the other hand if you "boomerang" (quit and come back after a year or so) you will automatically get a higher title and a fresh new hire stock grant.
- francisofascii 2y ago
  I think people are skeptical of the 50% figure. New employees joining a firm might make more than the current employees at the same level, but do they make 50% more?
  - iends 2y ago
    The article is talking in aggregate over a workers lifetime.
    - jvanderbot 2y ago
      Indeed, taking 20% boost, factoring in 3% raise / year, for 30 years is in fact 49% higher.
  - neogodless 2y ago
    Probably depends on a lot of factors, but here's a simple example. My first job I was an entry level developer. If I had stayed there for 25 years earning 3% raises each year... my salary would have finally doubled last year. In real life, I left there after ~2.5 years, and left the next job after 2.5 years, at which point my salary had already doubled. Of course staying in the same company, I'd likely have moved up some and gotten some promotions with meaningful raises along the way. That company was pretty small but... I know that a lot of colleagues at that time stuck around and are VPs of some sort now, as the company has shown consistent meaningful growth. Early on, though, there was little room for growth in the short term at such a small company. My largest raise staying at a company was going from $9.05 / hour to $13.05 / hour. That's 44.2%. Ha! But realistically since being salaried, my single largest raise was a couple years ago during the inflation rush, where I got 13%. Often changing jobs would land me 15-20%, and I could generally do that every 3 years without any obvious negative consequences. Assuming a more conservative 12% at 3 years intervals (with 3% in the years between), after 24 years I'd be at around 4x my original salary after 25 years. Comparing 4x to the 2x from my first example, I've come out double. Factor in possible promotions and maybe it would've been 2.5x vs 4x which is about 50% more. If the promotions came with substantial pay raises, it would start to favor staying put. Personally I haven't seen any promotions like that because I've always been valuable as an individual contributor, and less so as management. But individual results may vary. We're looking at "on average" though.
BhavdeepSethi 2y ago
Tell this to NVDA employees.
- rgrmrts 2y ago
  Nvidia is obviously an exception. That’s like saying working at startups will lead to higher monetary rewards because “look at early Facebook employees”, whereas your expected pay after 4 years at a startup is almost always lower than if you just worked at a medium to large company that’s public. (See https://levels.fyi https://levels.fyi)
  - BhavdeepSethi 2y ago
    Yes, it was meant to be a joke.
- PeterCorless 2y ago
  This gets into "salary vs. equity," and it's a fair point. On paper, Cisco turned me into a millionaire over a decade. However, when 2001 occurred those gains were wiped out. I was left with a lot of tears and a big tax bill. Hence I am near 60 and still planning on working for a good while to come. A Cisco-like or Nvidia-like unicorn lifetime achievement is what everyone hopes for when they sign up for a Silicon Valley startup, but you can see the misery index rise when the stock is underwater and it make take years, a decade or more — or never — for those stock certificates to even be worth the paper you'd print them on. I've been at a number of startups where you can walk away after 2 or 5 years partially or fully vested and your options are not worth optioning. Some people are indeed early Cisco millionaires. Many others only get in after the stock tumbles and are just really grinding away for salary. Nvidia will also eventually find its natural limit. Joining Nvidia in 2024 is totally different than having joined it in 2014 when this article was written. YMMV on this, widely.
deleted 2y ago
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spauldo 2y ago
Yep, I see this in industrial automation. My company is particularly bad about it, since the corporate office is in Houston where you can hire people for the duration of a project fairly easily. Problem is, my part of the company isn't in Houston, so qualified employees are hard to find. So we need to hold on to people, which is hard when we rarely hand out raises. I do my best to train up my guys, but I know that they're probably going to move on in a couple of years. My goal is to make an enjoyable environment so that they'll come back eventually at a higher pay rate. My best worker - the one I'm training up to be a lead - is the lowest paid member of the team, and I can't do anything about it. It sucks.
- mondomondo 2y ago
  Stop suppressing wages and quit.
  - highwaylights 2y ago
    I get the impression from the parent post that they have no control over compensation and therefore are doing the best they can, with what they have, for the people around them.
  - spauldo 2y ago
    I'm one of the only ones being paid what I'm worth, so I'm not going anywhere.
    - fundad 2y ago
      Accepting proper pay is suppressing wages of others. It's ok because you need money.
      - spauldo 2y ago
        I'm not interested in communist nonsense, so waste your time bothering others.
  - vsuperpower2020 2y ago
PeterCorless 2y ago
This is a hideous truth: loyalty is punished under modern corporate feudalism.
- crooked-v 2y ago
  I don't think calling it "feudalism" is quite right, because feudalism as a system depends extensively on personal loyalties at each step of the chain of authority. The death of feudalism came from monarchs developing enough administrative power that they no longer had to depend on the loyalty of their vassals to control areas outside their personal domains.
  - PeterCorless 2y ago
    Late-stage capitalism is definitely different than late-stage feudalism. For example, we still have the equivalent of early Medieval English right of "socn" ("soke") — the right to withdraw our loyalty from one lord and grant it to another. We're not "tied" to our corporate overlords the same way that serfs were through strict infeudation. A recent court case threw out most of the nonsense non-compete clauses also helped beat away or forestall the rising threat of "you can't leave with what you know... I'll make you unemployable." But that was a threat to modern day "sokesmen." One can even establish themselves as their own freeholder by incorporating, say as an LLC, or remaining a "freelancer" like the errant knights of old. In other terms of what I consider "corporate feudalism:" • Do you wear any "corporate heraldry" (logo'd gear like t-shirts, hoodies, polos, backpacks, laptop stickers, etc.) • Do you participate in any "corporate jousting?" (benchmarks, competitive bakeoffs, panel talks or meetups) • Do you have or retain any intellectual property you've created during your employment, or was it all work-for-hire and assigned away in perpetuity? And don't get me wrong. I am somewhat of a big fan of the medieval period and feudalism. In a way there were more freedoms under feudalism than we realize. Certainly we had far more free time. I just find it an interesting mental exercise to spot the commonalities and the differences of then and now.
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      > In other terms of what I consider "corporate feudalism:" What about having an SP500 index fund (or other broad market fund) compose the majority of your life savings? Or your city/county/state government’s pension fund savings?
ldjkfkdsjnv 2y ago
The highest paid people are often the ones with the highest tenure. Have seen many people at a company over ten years, making 1-2M a year, head and shoulders above their levels comp bands. If you cant get promoted, then you have to job hop. But at some point, its really that you just arent that valuable.
- roarcher 2y ago
  I've seen this too, but it was because those people were early/founding members and got some significant equity or options package as a result. If you're not one of those people at your company or there isn't a high chance of your equity being worth something in the future, sticking around isn't going to lead to more money. I'd also note that in many of the cases I've personally seen, those people actually did leave at some point but came back, sometimes even multiple times over the years. They were valuable enough to the company (or at least were perceived to be by leadership) that they could pretty much come and go as they pleased.
- sed3 2y ago
  Not really, employment is too vulnerable position, too much liability, and too many taxes. Today such people get accused by someone, and promptly fired. Later they reappear as consultants.
jxramos 2y ago
Isn’t this an equilibrium of sorts, those who trade stability and familiarity for slow growth? Those who can jump ship can and do and those who aren’t don’t.
jonfw 2y ago
This would highly depend on the strength of the market, right? Seems like a weaker market now
mondomondo 2y ago
Not in communist countries though.
- rc_kas 2y ago
  What?
prakhar897 2y ago
Do employees suffer from having too many jumps in their Resume? After some time, companies would be less inclined to hire these people right?
- soggybread 2y ago
  I can't imagine it would be too much, depending on how it's worded it could show that the applicant has a 'wide range of experience'. Plus I kind of wonder if HR would already take that into account, it's not just software engineers and salespeople doing it, it's everyone, HR and Execs included
- mjr00 2y ago
  IMO as someone who has done hiring at a FAANG and many other companies, short answer is no, if anything it's the opposite. As long as you hit a sweet spot of staying at each place for at least 9-12 months with no gaps in between jobs--in reality, this means "it doesn't look like you were fired"--switching jobs not only makes you look more motivated, it also gives you a wider breadth of experience to draw from. A senior engineer at Amazon for 8 years knows how to do things the Amazon Way. A senior engineer who was at Google, Meta, Netflix and Amazon for 2 years each knows how to do things four ways, and as long as they can intelligently compare and contrast the way those four companies operate and the pros and cons of each, would be an extremely valuable asset. The only time this would maybe not apply is director/VP level roles, though if you're switching at that level you presumably have a pre-existing relationship with someone near whatever role you're trying to move into.
  - giantg2 2y ago
    " 9-12 months with no gaps in between jobs--in reality, this means "it doesn't look like you were fired"--switching jobs not only makes you look more motivated, it also gives you a wider breadth of experience to draw from." Fuck HR. 12 months is nothing for actual deep learning. I've seen job hoppers come through my company and it's obvious most of them don't get very deep in the work and just move on instead of becoming a real expert in the system. It's one thing not to hold it against them, but it's something else to say count it as an advantage at such short intervals.
kilroy123 2y ago
I really wish this would change. I'm sick of constantly moving around every few years. Too be fair the last 3 startups I worked at failed financially but still. I would love to go work somewhere for 5-10 years. It's just hard to find these days.
- datavirtue 2y ago
  Yeah, I took a huge pay cut for what I thought was stability with an 85 yr old company. You have to hire on to learn the real deal. Turns out they are having trouble managing the changing workforce and shifting market conditions. Everyone crooned on and on about all the "boomerang" employees and long tenures during interviews. I realized after joining that the employees were coming back after being laid off!! WTF!? They were absolutely over the moon to get me and have been blown away by my work and are remodeling a new office for me and queuing me up for bigger projects but I can't leave my eggs in this basket. This will be my shortest tenure ever at under a year. An old CIO friend is creating a new Principal Architect role for me now at another company. I will dive into that startup for 3-5 years until it is acquired.
hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
Such is the nature of life. FTEs who invest the considerable amount of time to continually do a job search are investing a lot more of themselves into their work than guys who stay in the same SWE II role for 10 years straight. They also, pretty much by definition, have more bargaining power even if they stay in their current roles - because they have other jobs on the table to credibly bargain with.
- wsatb 2y ago
  > FTEs who invest the considerable amount of time to continually do a job search are investing a lot more of themselves into their work than guys who stay in the same SWE II role for 10 years straight. I'll play devil's advocate on this one. Are they investing more into their work or do they care less because they'll be gone in a year anyway?
  - hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
    They are investing way more into their own work, is what I meant. Grinding Leetcode, searching for jobs, doing side projects, networking, etc. is a lot more exhausting than just putting in your 40 and punching out. All that on top of a normal 9 to 5 can easily put you at 55-60 hours per week.
uldos 2y ago
It is better to leave the job and get hired again, than be loyal to the same company.
s0kr8s 2y ago
Caution: you might get paid 50% more to work at a company that is 500% worse managed, and therefore is hemorrhaging employees so fast that the only way they can maintain staffing levels is to offer a hefty premium above normal market wages to get new suckers to take a chance on them. If you're nihilistic and believe all employers are rotten, then jumping ship every 2 years might be a decent game strategy, but I tend to believe that good employers do exist and are just somewhat rare. So if you find a unicorn, I would recommend holding onto it.
- fire_lake 2y ago
  This is true. The pool of companies hiring is biased towards companies with poor retention.
  - giantg2 2y ago
    In general I would agree. However, you could have many people retiring early from fat salaries, or high growth with low attrition.
- AlotOfReading 2y ago
  Perhaps this is just personal experience, but the worst jobs I've ever had also paid the worst. The places that are badly managed either don't know or can't afford market rates, so they try and hire cheap labor. Think body shops, game dev, government positions, etc. By contrast, a place that has expensive employees is going to see their time as more valuable, so there's a direct monetary incentive not to waste it and the cash flow exists to do things. Doesn't always work, but it dramatically improves the odds.
  - oarla 2y ago
    The worse pay is what adds on to the feeling of the job being terrible. As much as many want to claim, its not very satisfying to slog away and ship an elegant product for peanuts. When the pay is lower than what is the standard, it's always going to make the job feel terrible.
ukoki 2y ago
Employers don't reward long-term employees because they don't need to. Even though everyone knows you make more by job-hopping, companies are following a rational strategy because too few people "walk the walk" despite wanting more salary. Arguably unethical, but rational. At the cost of losing a minority of job-hoppers they retain the cheap majority that: - finds job interviews exhausting, or is anxious about being rejected - dislikes conflict or negotiation - has good relationships with colleagues they don't want to lose - has a comfortable commute or WFH arrangement they don't want to change - is proud of becoming an expert / go-to-person in some part of the business and doesn't want to lose that source of social capital - is proud of product or service they have made a big contribution to and wants to "see it through to the end" - believes leaving would place an unfair burden on other team-members or would be disloyal to a manager they consider a friend - (US only) cannot risk losing healthcare It's possible that in the future the ratio of job-hoppers to lifers changes and companies find they need to switch strategies. But until that happens the job-hoppers will have the upperhand compared to the lifers. It's the same reason why your phone/insurance/whatever provider puts up the prices year-after-year: although some people leave, enough people simply put up with it that they make more money this way. "Do nothing" is an easy choice and companies are banking on enough people making that choice.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  In a sense, it’s trading convenience and stability for compensation.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    Employees are also giving up compensation for lower risk and fewer unknowns. A risk adverse person, or even rational one, may avoid still avoid positive EV gambles.
  - datavirtue 2y ago
    There is no stability. Maybe in government jobs. Any stability is just luck.
elintknower 2y ago
Job hopping works if you're already in the top 10% of engineers and really talented when it comes to... interviewing. I suck at leetcode so maybe that's why I'm just not cut out for this. As long as I'm making $150k+ and can WFH I'm not exactly confident I could go out and interview and get something better. My work history isn't great because I tried job hopping and was a co-founder at a few startups. I quickly found a few 6-8 months stints really made me look radioactive even with around 5yrs of experience. I'm open to advice here, but I don't blame people who are optimizing for consistency and a stability.
- justsocrateasin 2y ago
  I thought for a long time that I was trash at leetcode. I would regularly fail the coding portions of interviews. Then a recruiter reached out with a tempting JD and I became good at leetcode, it just took a lot of hard work of tricking my brain into thinking it was a good use of my time.
  - elintknower 2y ago
    I'm getting tired of wasting my time at startups so 4.7 years into my career it might be time to finally just waste the time necessary to nail these problems.
- kagakuninja 2y ago
  Even for a shitty interviewer like myself, it does work. It just takes me more interviews to finally get the offer. I've tried doing a good job and asking for raises, they never match market rate.
  - elintknower 2y ago
    Any advice, I need more of a forcing function to actually get my resume through the first pass. Too many startups under 1yr definitely has fucked me.
austin-cheney 2y ago
I remember seeing numbers several years ago that the average retention at Uber was around 18 months. My big learning from employer hoping as a JavaScript developer is that it’s risky. There is a universal assumption that the people who do that work fall below an accepted baseline of delivery and maturity compared with other developers as qualified by the amount of tooling and hand holding they require. That said many employers will not invest much in these employees and thus expect them to jump ship. The other side of that coin is that employees see this too. Those who tend to be more competent and have a really good situation with their employer tend to be the people that stick around knowing they are missing out on pay raises by moving around. For example if I get to spend half my office day watching movies and working on side projects in a stable company with no stress that potential raise from the next employer might not be worth it.
- mjr00 2y ago
  > For example if I get to spend half my office day watching movies and working on side projects in a stable company with no stress that potential raise from the next employer might not be worth it. tbh when I'm on the hiring side, this is why I consider a long tenure in the same role at a company a... not really a red flag, but maybe a yellow flag, something to talk about in an interview. Hate to say it, but lots of long-tenured employees are in this situation. They remain at companies because of interia. Processes have been built around them; they have tribal/domain knowledge which is poorly documented and not readily replaceable; they may be functionally a "C player" but they have additional value they bring via historical context ("Oh, this bit of weird nonsense code? Yeah, I remember we hacked that in right after the acquisition in 2017, we don't need it now...") It's a real concern that someone coming from a situation where they only do ~4 hours of actual work per week might not be able to handle a new job where they have to provide value through other means, i.e. shipped code. It's not a total disqualification of a candidate for me, obviously, but it'd certainly be something I'd ask about.
  - austin-cheney 2y ago
    Your response is curious to me because it suggests multiple unstated biases. I am inferring you suggest: 1. Ambition is more a product of social mobility than product delivery. 2. Success is more a product of prior established salary than personal goals. From an economics perspective these seem weird to me for two reasons. The goal of economics is always to redistribute resources to a more desirable pattern. One of the first things I look for in job interviews from interviewers and hiring managers is perception of bias. This is easily discovered by looking at what they want which can be some mixture of technical competency, charm/vanity, or communications dominance. Interviewers want to control the conversation, so just let them until the conversation concludes or I achieve communications dominance passively. I don't want to play games, but when there is noise in the inter-personal communication I have to be a little bit smarter than I appear. I just want a job doing what the paper says, but people are silly. The second reason why its weird is that in the past I have been that 10x (or much more) developer because my goals are different. The only point of software is automation, which means if I can automate my own job then I don't have to do it either. I usually keep this to myself, because the goal is time maximization so I can do other things with my day while delivering superior quality work. If I told other people about it my peers would whine and I would be tasked to do things outside of product delivery to compensate for their whining. I am certainly not looking for anybody's adoration. I just want to do less stupid.
HEmanZ 2y ago
This seems very generally true to a point, so on average it works out. But I think there is a big caveat. My thoughts are centered around software development, but I know there are many analogous career paths. I really believe if your career goal is to peak a lot higher than just middle-management or senior software engineer, and earn the pay that comes with those higher positions, you need to stay on the same company and even same project for much longer periods of time (I would say 5 year absolute minimums). If I look around at the careers of Distinguished Engineers and senior principal engineers, or VPs of Engineering at FAANGs, etc., these people always have massive chunks of time at the same company, often many years on the same product even. If they have changed companies a few times in their careers, it’s after a string of promotions and delivering big things. It is really hard to build a portfolio of high-level impact with 2 year stints.
- nicolas_t 2y ago
  That’s how I became cto at 40 years old, I stayed long enough while being indispensable enough and always taking the difficult projects. It’s a gamble though and I needed to play hardball when negotiating with the owner for the new salary to properly reflect my new position. That only worked because I was more willing to walk away than he was. I’d honestly recommend doing 2-3 years stints in the early 20s and then progressively longer but only if the company had room for growth and ways of to get into difficult projects where you both learn something and deliver actual quantifiable benefits to the company
  - ido 2y ago
    Is 40 an unusually young age to become CTO? I’m pretty sure most CTOs I worked under took the position first around that age or younger.
    - aetherson 2y ago
      Founder CTOs are young, other CTOs tend to be older.
- bradlys 2y ago
rc_kas 2y ago
I'm applying to every job under the sun and no call backs this year. Either the job market sucks right now or my resume sucks right now.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
laweijfmvo 2y ago
I've experienced this to varying degrees over my 15 year career, but can safely say that my current job at a FAANG probably pays more than any job I could get today (including another FAANG). Stock appreciation and more importantly, extra stock awards, are difficult to match. Or I could be a sucker and 100% wrong.
- Loughla 2y ago
  The problem with all of this is that it assumes the attitude that pay is the most logical, if not only, measure of success in your career. I decided to work in higher education after a WILDLY successful short career in sales. I lost over 80% of my compensation annually to make that switch in the first year. And I did it because the time off benefits, pace, and stability are much better for my mental health and well-being. If you feel like you are compensated appropriately for what you're doing, don't worry about gaming the system. Just be happy with your life. Have you ever read The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham?
  - jjice 2y ago
    > The problem with all of this is that it assumes the attitude that pay is the most logical, if not only, measure of success in your career. I see what you mean, but I don't think the parent commented about career success, but just specifically pay. I agree with what you're saying in that there are other valuable things besides pay from a job.
  - laweijfmvo 2y ago
    Agree with you, but this particular article/discussion is focused on pay :)
- sangnoir 2y ago
  Setting aside stock appreciation, are your refreshers greater than new hire FAANG RSUs for a similar position? Most FAANG total compensation dips in year 5 due to 4-year vesting schedules, and refreshers for existing employees being lower than nee hire grants (assuming stock price remains flat).
tombert 2y ago
I'm not sure that this is sustainable anymore. I've definitely done the job hopping game, and it generally led to a substantial increase in salary each time, but eventually that comes back to bite you. I got laid off three times last year, and that already looks pretty bad on a resume, but then seeing a bunch of jobs beforehand where I was only there for two years makes a lot of employers really hesitant to move forward, especially in 2024 (ten years after this was written). At this point I'm happy enough to just sit my ass down and stay at my current place; I didn't realize how much I valued stability over anything else until 2023 came along and became the worst year of my life.
- gamepsys 2y ago
  Did you leave positive impressions on your coworkers? Did you maintain contact? Part of the advantage of moving every few years is that you work with more people, which means more people are willing to recommend you for open positions. In those three jobs you were laid off from did any of your coworkers also get laid off? Where did they go to, and can they give you a recommendation? No matter what story your resume tells, social connections will usually be a louder signal.
  - tombert 2y ago
    >Did you leave positive impressions on your coworkers? Some of them, though it's hard to become really good friends with a coworker after only three months of a remote job. At the jobs that I stayed two years at I definitely made lots of friends > Did you maintain contact? For a few of them, the ones that I got close to (generally the people that were as geeky as I am about bizarre CS concepts). That was immensely handy to get job referrals, and it's in no small part why I was able to land my current (very decent!) gig. In most places I've worked, people generally like me ok (I hope), and usually I will develop one or two pretty close friends as a result if I've been there sufficiently long. > In those three jobs you were laid off from did any of your coworkers also get laid off? Yes, though in the more recent laid off jobs I sadly didn't know people well enough to get them to give me referrals or anything. > No matter what story your resume tells, social connections will usually be a louder signal. I mostly agree, but only to a certain extent. If you can make it to the interview stage, a good referral and social contacts can be great and really helpful, but the problem with short stints is that you're considerably more likely to fail the initial screening by the internal recruiter. I get it, I don't really blame them, you can't go into super thorough detail on every resume that's submitted, so they have to look for red flags to immediately filter out stuff.
TJSomething 2y ago
If you love in the USA, I don't know how you job hop if you have more than two specialist doctors. Everytime I have to figure out how an insurance plan works is suffering.
jholdn 2y ago
One hypothesis I don't see mentioned is that time limited roles pay more. For example, a person brought into to oversee an acquisition or transition is going to be paid phenomenally well (and, I think, rightly so). But part of that job is making your own position redundant. If you're still there after a few years, you aren't doing your job. I expect there are many other examples, roles that are project based and become redundant when the project is completed. And, I expect, many of these pay more than operational jobs, taking care of some day to day tasks of the business. Probably rightly so; if the projects successful, I would think building something new would create more value as it should produce something that continues producing value into the future - higher risk, higher reward.
- datavirtue 2y ago
  Depends on the business. If all revenue is coming from contract work then everyone's job is tied to having a contract. If revenue is streaming in from services then most jobs are tied to support and are buffered by much higher margins.
andrewmutz 2y ago
The headline sounds like it's stating a fact, but if you read the article it wasn't supported anywhere other than the author stating it. There is no data presented or study that was done. The author seems to believe that the salary jumps that accompany 2-year job changes can be sustained over time. From my experience, I don't think this is the case. In your twenties it's definitely true, but when I look at the highest paid people (in their later career) it is not true that they did this. I think the reason is that as you progress up a leadership structure, stability becomes increasingly important and candidates who have exhibited short tenures in roles are passed over because it is assumed this behavior will continue. It's highly damaging to have a VP leave an org leave after only 2 years in the role.
- setgree 2y ago
  Even if there were observational data to this effect, the obvious confound is that more skilled people are more in demand -> more likely to hear from recruiters -> more likely to move
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
I totally believe that. Nevertheless, after job-hopping a bit, in my twenties, I stayed at my last job for almost 27 years. I have found that money isn't everything. I know that's basically heresy, around here, but it's been my truth.
softwaredoug 2y ago
Do yourself a favor and try to spend some time as a freelancer. Constantly have to sell yourself. Constantly managing stakeholders, etc. This will translate to always thinking about your place in the market and gives you a lot of skills to avoid being taken advantage of.
pocketsand 2y ago
A family member is paid very highly. He has switched jobs almost ever year for over a decade, including at top tier tech firms. I'm not sure why he does this but I have my suspicions. What I do know is that he is never seems happy with his work. And I also doubt how much impact he can be having with such short stints. I have never quit a job without a major life event forcing me to (spouse getting a job, moving, etc.). I've had great experiences everywhere and I'm probably underpaid for it. I have no regrets. I'd prefer my lifestyle and job satisfaction to money.
sct202 2y ago
Just want to point out that this is just an Excel thought experiment and not a study of peoples lives of any kind. The comparison is just 3% raise vs jumping every 2 years for 10%. I've seen too many people take this as some gospel of a career strategy when it's more of something to keep in mind when you get stagnant at a job.
1970-01-01 2y ago
Generic career advice is to apply for a different job every month. After 24 months, you will at minimum know your market value.
stevofolife 2y ago
Sure you get paid more, but it comes attached with a whole baggage of other things. A better research should provide insight on the total compensation over the entire career, work-life balance, impact, satisfaction and so on. Now let's see what is better.
dang 2y ago
Related: Employees Who Stay in Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14784900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14784900 - July 2017 (535 comments) Employees That Stay In Companies Longer Get Paid Less - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7928008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7928008 - June 2014 (198 comments)
up2isomorphism 2y ago
The conclusion is somewhat biased: The employees who jump a lot often implies he hit the salary increase ceiling quicker than other who don't. In fact, what I observed is that people are constantly looking for place with better pay, regardless if he/she ACTUALLY finds one.
black_13 2y ago
[dead]
dasil003 2y ago
It's probably true on average job hopping pays off when you're young, it also has some real upside risks as more senior positions generally require you to think longer term, and that's very hard if you don't see how your actions and decisions play out. As a hiring manager, three 2-year stints would be perfectly reasonable for an L5 candidate, but five 2-year stints I would be very concerned about hiring an L6 expected to drive long-term architectural directions. Ultimately I think the "learning or earning" advice is better. When you are young you should chase your interests and prioritize personal growth and finding out what you are good at. The primary heuristic should be whether you are learning quickly, and are you surrounded by people and structure that help you with that. Later on in your career when you have more personal responsibilities you should prioritize earning, and hopefully you have built a foundation of strong and deep expertise that qualifies you for more senior positions. Of course if you can get both, that's great, but you also need to be careful because a lot of things you learn at the best paying companies have limited applicability outside that bubble.
kristopolous 2y ago
Your can flip this: people who hop jobs care about pay more.
JohnFen 2y ago
Excluding cost of living increases, the only time that I've received a pay increase is when I've switched jobs. Every time I change jobs, I increase my minimum acceptable salary by 20%. I don't change every two years, though. I usually go about 5. Even then, I don't change jobs for the purpose of getting a pay increase (that's just a nice side-effect), but more typically because I've learned everything that I'm going to learn from a the job and need to move to a different one in order to learn new skills (or sometimes just to work on something fresh).
skizm 2y ago
This seems like a borderline tautology or at least very obvious? People rarely switch jobs for less money.
Waterluvian 2y ago
I’m sure HR would hate this but I make this abundantly clear to the engineers I manage. The best raise you’ll ever get is by switching companies.
smrtinsert 2y ago
This is my curse. I need to move currently
b212 2y ago
Not in this market. Got a job paying x almost 2 years ago. Now we’re hiring at 0.5x and actually find good and very good candidates…

379 points by AlgoRitmo 2y ago

I wonder how stock options play into this. Assuming you have generous stock options in a thriving company, wouldn’t it be worth it to stick out 3-4 years for a majority of that equity?

fishpen0 2y ago
Gambling vs Guarantee. I've lost options or unvested RSU 3 times to companies suddenly rolling over, getting acquired, or doing layoffs. Of the two times I've hit it and actually had them pay out, one payed out at only 1/3 of the original valuation of the equity and one only paid out for two quarters before we were acquired. Take the pay increase vs the equity every time. Plus by changing 5 times, I diversified my equity on more companies and ensured something hit at least a little.
- sashank_1509 2y ago
  RSU’s most of the time are not gambling. You’re talking about gambling in startups (or small companies ) that can get acquired, run out of funds etc. Tech layoffs, people don’t realize that after the dot com crash this might be the first time layoffs happened at big tech companies (even then Apple and NVIDIA didn’t layoff). Not taking RSU’s in these tech companies is a very bad idea financially, I like to think of it as equivalent cash. You can always sell your RSU immediately to get cash. But another advantage is when you individually invest in stocks, you rarely have a large fund into 1 stock, you probably diversify into index funds. This gives you consistent returns but leaves no shot at making a fortune. In my experience RSU’s as by default are fully invested into the 1 company you’re working for, give you that outsized return opportunity. Just ask employees at snowflake, NVIDIA, Tesla. Heck even MSFT RSU’s have doubled in value every couple of years and Amazon had insane growth from 2010 to 2022, where if you had gotten equivalent in cash you would be more than 10 times poorer than someone who just held Amazon RSU’s. Yes putting large amounts in 1 stock is risky, but not nearly as risky as you make it sound to be.
  - fishpen0 2y ago
    > You can always sell your RSU immediately to get cash. This is not true at all. My current company is privately held and has RSUs. Over the last two years there has been a single buyback and it was at a fixed closed market price and we were limited to selling 10% of our vested RSUs. Lots of startups flipped to RSUs with no plan to go public or be bought out in the last few years. Additionally, even if your company is stable RSUs are frought with issues like what happened two orgs ago where a blackout period started and our stock went into a 30% free fall during the blackout and never recovered. We ended up getting a tender offer, the company sold to private equity and unvested shares were clawed back
    - sashank_1509 2y ago
      Private company RSU’s are a different ballgame entirely. They are essentially paper money and I would classify them under startups. Yeah I’d agree for a more risky venture, cash is better (unless you are in a gambling mood), I’d disagree that being true for FAANG or any of the 100 billion + tech companies (Airbnb, Uber, snowflake, Palo Alto networks etc)
paholg 2y ago
With options, there's always a risk that they will be worth nothing, or very little. I would rather have some options in several companies than a lot of options in one to increase the chance that some of them will be valuable. That approach does require you to buy the options, whereas staying at one company means you can delay the purchase
- irrational 2y ago
  Seriously. My brother received $1 million in Tesla stock options when they recruited him. They certainly aren’t worth that much anymore. Does he stay and hope the Musk will stop tanking the stock or jump ship?
  - seattle_spring 2y ago
    Tesla is giving options instead of RSUs still? Usually big public companies grant RSUs except to the top-most senior leadership team.
    - sashank_1509 2y ago
      Known from a friend, he could choose RSU’s, options or cash from Tesla. (You would get more options than RSU’s to compensate for risk). Also Tesla stock price 10xed in the year 2020, even after all the hits , it’s still like 6x from pre 2020. Your brother had to join after 2020, which is unlucky I guess.
- philsnow 2y ago
  Strategy 1: Stay for four years and vest your entire initial grant. Strategy 2: Stay 1-2 years and vest 25%-50% of your initial grant, and repeat 3x-1x. If all the companies you work for have similar likelihood of doing exceptionally well, you've paid 4 years and gotten either one lottery ticket worth X (strategy 1) or 2-4 lottery tickets each worth 50%-25% of X. When you don't already have "enough" money, 25% of X is still life-changing, and if you can get 2-4 shots at it instead of 1, that can be a very workable strategy.
dentemple 2y ago
The number of people who meet the conditions of having "generous" stock options (that aren't just pretend money) in a company thriving enough for them to overcome a -50% salary deficient are probably a very, very small minority.
bluGill 2y ago
Most companies don't offer options. If you work for the rare one that does (generally a startup) it might be - but you better watch the books: most of them are not worth much if anything. Never put your savings into the stock of the company you work for. If (as happens) the company goes bankrupt you can be out of a job and all your savings at the same time. The only exception is if you have reason to believe you will be CXX - at that level (or one below in some cases) your stock owners is published to shareholders and they look for high levels to show you have your personal wealth on the line for the company - and you also have enough power to do something about it. (most of us don't have enough power for anyone to care what we think). Stock options are the same as any other stock: don't put your net worth into it. I have long ago learned that until the money is in my bank account it isn't mine. Sometimes the promised $$$ arrives, sometimes it does not. But always I want to see the money.

shinryuu 2y ago

Though at some point it feels like you reach a ceiling even if you change jobs.

giancarlostoro 2y ago
At which point your only options is (unless you're in the) FAANG or making your own business if you're in tech (or relatable ish businesses). Or moving to a low cost of living state / city. I feel like the ceiling for me is awful, since in Florida the cost of everything is going up, but companies aren't willing to pay competitive salary, despite boasting about it, they all seem to pay standard / average pay.
- dumbo-octopus 2y ago
  Therein lies the trick: if nobody is competitive, everybody is competitive. FWIW I'm actually coming out of a 3 year hiatus making 50% more than the FAANG position I left in 2021.
  - giancarlostoro 2y ago
    I assume you don't live in Florida? I don't know anyone here making insane amounts of cash doing the kind of work I do, unless you're doing mainframe programming, then you're just guaranteed some paychecks.
whateveracct 2y ago
I've run into this. I work at a place that claims they pay top market rate. I've poked around other options and it seems like they're right about that! Back in 2014 when this article was posted, it was probably more true. Lots of money frothing around and salaries were growing and growing faster than employers were willing to keep up with for existing employees (although even then, I had a job that gave me a substantial raise just to keep up with the market.)
- op00to 2y ago
  I am in the same position where the company I work for tends to pay near the top of the market. I account for this by trying to save as much as possible and not having a lifestyle that requires this top of the market salary. I’m under no illusion that the gravy train can run out at any time and my next role may be a step down or step up in salary.

asaph 2y ago

This article is nearly 10 years old. Is this still true?

dmitrygr 2y ago
yes
giancarlostoro 2y ago
Certainly feels like it.
yumraj 2y ago
This concept is timeless. Numbers might vary though..
lotsofpulp 2y ago
I assume it will always be true outside of employees who are exceptionally VIP or employees selling to union/government roles that are compensated strictly according to length of tenure. The employer gets labor at a lower price, and the employee gets lower volatility. If you want the best price, you have to do the work to keep buying and you have to do the work to keep selling, only way any market can work.
- eschneider 2y ago
  Except the employee isn't guaranteed lower volatility. At. All.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    There is volatility due to the buyer changing the terms of deal (including ending the deal), and there is also volatility due to the seller choosing to sell to different buyers, such as working in a different location or getting along with new colleagues, etc. The former is not controllable from the perspective of a labor seller, but the latter is. Whether or not the tradeoff is worth it is dependent on the seller and always in flux. I would say the tradeoff is usually not worth it.

fsckboy 2y ago

this whole thing is sus. why isn't this a better explanation: High performing, "desirable" or "skilled" employees get enticed (i.e. rewarded) for jumping to a new employer. Average schlubs do not. explanation from TFA: Why are people who jump ship rewarded, when loyal employees are punished for their dedication? The answer is simple. Recessions allow businesses to freeze their payroll and decrease salaries of the newly hired based on “market trends.” These reactions to the recession are understandable, but the problem is that these reactions were meant to be “temporary.”

mr_00ff00 2y ago
They mentioned “average” vs best employee, and the raises each can expect. So that at least seems to imply that they adjust for that. Specially the line where you can get a 1% raise or a 10% new offer.
PhasmaFelis 2y ago
A lot of people fucking hate having to switch jobs. This has little to do with their skills and a lot to do with all the stress and uncertainty that comes a major life change. Some people enjoy making big changes and shaking themselves up, and that's fine too, but don't confuse that with some sort of inherent superiority.
- fsckboy 2y ago
  5 factor personality model, one of the factors is "neuroticism" (the others being openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, and agreeableness; the mnemonic OCEAN) neuroticism measures "the tendency toward negative emotion". Stress in the face of uncertainty is a good example of a negative emotion that can be exaggerated in some people. Negative emotions also correlate to less success in social and job situations.
  - PhasmaFelis 2y ago
    This seems like a lot of justification to say that people who enjoy changing jobs frequently are objectively better than people who don't. I'm guessing you're in that first group?

sed3 2y ago

Quitting just because you are not paid enough is so 2014. I will gladly take 50% less, if you keep me!

dakiol 2y ago
I guess it depends on the region. Recently, I have quit a job to get a 15% increase (I know, it’s not a huge increase but I am already hitting this glass ceiling around here in Europe for senior developers)
- giantg2 2y ago
  15% is a huge increase for most. I've never seen a 15% increase at one time.
  - justsocrateasin 2y ago
    I got a 20% increase the other year. But only because I threatened to quit aggressively and got promoted in the same year and was valuable to my small team of ~4 engineers.
kagakuninja 2y ago
Take 50% less, until you get a better offer. The job market will pick up again. There is no guarantee that your current stable job will not suddenly come to an end for many reasons. Outside of a few rare companies, there is absolutely no reason to stay, if they are not paying you market rate.

hehdhdjehehegwv 2y ago

And it’s getting worse. Somebody told me their team at Big Tech used to have a mini cupcake party when people hit a tenure milestone like 5 year, 10, etc. Along with layoffs the company killed the cupcake budget. (Mind you the stock is sky high and they’re raking in cash.) If a company doesn’t think your decade of commitment to making them money merits a fucking cupcake, it goes without saying you’ll get screwed on comp.

ApolloFortyNine 2y ago

Odd to see skepticism here, I thought this was well known. I've seen it first hand just a couple years ago where a large company was offering new hires a 20% bump, and yet when I told them I was leaving the counter offer was only a 3~% bump.

paxys 2y ago
Yeah I'm surprised that people are still surprised by this. It is a pretty well known practice at large companies. If you have been at a company for a few years getting promos and stock refreshers is always a struggle due to limited budgets and internal politics. On the other hand if you "boomerang" (quit and come back after a year or so) you will automatically get a higher title and a fresh new hire stock grant.
francisofascii 2y ago
I think people are skeptical of the 50% figure. New employees joining a firm might make more than the current employees at the same level, but do they make 50% more?
- iends 2y ago
  The article is talking in aggregate over a workers lifetime.
  - jvanderbot 2y ago
    Indeed, taking 20% boost, factoring in 3% raise / year, for 30 years is in fact 49% higher.
- neogodless 2y ago
  Probably depends on a lot of factors, but here's a simple example. My first job I was an entry level developer. If I had stayed there for 25 years earning 3% raises each year... my salary would have finally doubled last year. In real life, I left there after ~2.5 years, and left the next job after 2.5 years, at which point my salary had already doubled. Of course staying in the same company, I'd likely have moved up some and gotten some promotions with meaningful raises along the way. That company was pretty small but... I know that a lot of colleagues at that time stuck around and are VPs of some sort now, as the company has shown consistent meaningful growth. Early on, though, there was little room for growth in the short term at such a small company. My largest raise staying at a company was going from $9.05 / hour to $13.05 / hour. That's 44.2%. Ha! But realistically since being salaried, my single largest raise was a couple years ago during the inflation rush, where I got 13%. Often changing jobs would land me 15-20%, and I could generally do that every 3 years without any obvious negative consequences. Assuming a more conservative 12% at 3 years intervals (with 3% in the years between), after 24 years I'd be at around 4x my original salary after 25 years. Comparing 4x to the 2x from my first example, I've come out double. Factor in possible promotions and maybe it would've been 2.5x vs 4x which is about 50% more. If the promotions came with substantial pay raises, it would start to favor staying put. Personally I haven't seen any promotions like that because I've always been valuable as an individual contributor, and less so as management. But individual results may vary. We're looking at "on average" though.

BhavdeepSethi 2y ago

Tell this to NVDA employees.

rgrmrts 2y ago
Nvidia is obviously an exception. That’s like saying working at startups will lead to higher monetary rewards because “look at early Facebook employees”, whereas your expected pay after 4 years at a startup is almost always lower than if you just worked at a medium to large company that’s public. (See https://levels.fyi https://levels.fyi)
- BhavdeepSethi 2y ago
  Yes, it was meant to be a joke.
PeterCorless 2y ago
This gets into "salary vs. equity," and it's a fair point. On paper, Cisco turned me into a millionaire over a decade. However, when 2001 occurred those gains were wiped out. I was left with a lot of tears and a big tax bill. Hence I am near 60 and still planning on working for a good while to come. A Cisco-like or Nvidia-like unicorn lifetime achievement is what everyone hopes for when they sign up for a Silicon Valley startup, but you can see the misery index rise when the stock is underwater and it make take years, a decade or more — or never — for those stock certificates to even be worth the paper you'd print them on. I've been at a number of startups where you can walk away after 2 or 5 years partially or fully vested and your options are not worth optioning. Some people are indeed early Cisco millionaires. Many others only get in after the stock tumbles and are just really grinding away for salary. Nvidia will also eventually find its natural limit. Joining Nvidia in 2024 is totally different than having joined it in 2014 when this article was written. YMMV on this, widely.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

spauldo 2y ago

Yep, I see this in industrial automation. My company is particularly bad about it, since the corporate office is in Houston where you can hire people for the duration of a project fairly easily. Problem is, my part of the company isn't in Houston, so qualified employees are hard to find. So we need to hold on to people, which is hard when we rarely hand out raises. I do my best to train up my guys, but I know that they're probably going to move on in a couple of years. My goal is to make an enjoyable environment so that they'll come back eventually at a higher pay rate. My best worker - the one I'm training up to be a lead - is the lowest paid member of the team, and I can't do anything about it. It sucks.

mondomondo 2y ago
Stop suppressing wages and quit.
- highwaylights 2y ago
  I get the impression from the parent post that they have no control over compensation and therefore are doing the best they can, with what they have, for the people around them.
- spauldo 2y ago
  I'm one of the only ones being paid what I'm worth, so I'm not going anywhere.
  - fundad 2y ago
    Accepting proper pay is suppressing wages of others. It's ok because you need money.
    - spauldo 2y ago
      I'm not interested in communist nonsense, so waste your time bothering others.
- vsuperpower2020 2y ago

PeterCorless 2y ago

This is a hideous truth: loyalty is punished under modern corporate feudalism.

crooked-v 2y ago
I don't think calling it "feudalism" is quite right, because feudalism as a system depends extensively on personal loyalties at each step of the chain of authority. The death of feudalism came from monarchs developing enough administrative power that they no longer had to depend on the loyalty of their vassals to control areas outside their personal domains.
- PeterCorless 2y ago
  Late-stage capitalism is definitely different than late-stage feudalism. For example, we still have the equivalent of early Medieval English right of "socn" ("soke") — the right to withdraw our loyalty from one lord and grant it to another. We're not "tied" to our corporate overlords the same way that serfs were through strict infeudation. A recent court case threw out most of the nonsense non-compete clauses also helped beat away or forestall the rising threat of "you can't leave with what you know... I'll make you unemployable." But that was a threat to modern day "sokesmen." One can even establish themselves as their own freeholder by incorporating, say as an LLC, or remaining a "freelancer" like the errant knights of old. In other terms of what I consider "corporate feudalism:" • Do you wear any "corporate heraldry" (logo'd gear like t-shirts, hoodies, polos, backpacks, laptop stickers, etc.) • Do you participate in any "corporate jousting?" (benchmarks, competitive bakeoffs, panel talks or meetups) • Do you have or retain any intellectual property you've created during your employment, or was it all work-for-hire and assigned away in perpetuity? And don't get me wrong. I am somewhat of a big fan of the medieval period and feudalism. In a way there were more freedoms under feudalism than we realize. Certainly we had far more free time. I just find it an interesting mental exercise to spot the commonalities and the differences of then and now.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    > In other terms of what I consider "corporate feudalism:" What about having an SP500 index fund (or other broad market fund) compose the majority of your life savings? Or your city/county/state government’s pension fund savings?

ldjkfkdsjnv 2y ago

The highest paid people are often the ones with the highest tenure. Have seen many people at a company over ten years, making 1-2M a year, head and shoulders above their levels comp bands. If you cant get promoted, then you have to job hop. But at some point, its really that you just arent that valuable.

roarcher 2y ago
I've seen this too, but it was because those people were early/founding members and got some significant equity or options package as a result. If you're not one of those people at your company or there isn't a high chance of your equity being worth something in the future, sticking around isn't going to lead to more money. I'd also note that in many of the cases I've personally seen, those people actually did leave at some point but came back, sometimes even multiple times over the years. They were valuable enough to the company (or at least were perceived to be by leadership) that they could pretty much come and go as they pleased.
sed3 2y ago
Not really, employment is too vulnerable position, too much liability, and too many taxes. Today such people get accused by someone, and promptly fired. Later they reappear as consultants.

jxramos 2y ago

Isn’t this an equilibrium of sorts, those who trade stability and familiarity for slow growth? Those who can jump ship can and do and those who aren’t don’t.

jonfw 2y ago

This would highly depend on the strength of the market, right? Seems like a weaker market now

mondomondo 2y ago

Not in communist countries though.

rc_kas 2y ago
What?

prakhar897 2y ago

Do employees suffer from having too many jumps in their Resume? After some time, companies would be less inclined to hire these people right?

soggybread 2y ago
I can't imagine it would be too much, depending on how it's worded it could show that the applicant has a 'wide range of experience'. Plus I kind of wonder if HR would already take that into account, it's not just software engineers and salespeople doing it, it's everyone, HR and Execs included
mjr00 2y ago
IMO as someone who has done hiring at a FAANG and many other companies, short answer is no, if anything it's the opposite. As long as you hit a sweet spot of staying at each place for at least 9-12 months with no gaps in between jobs--in reality, this means "it doesn't look like you were fired"--switching jobs not only makes you look more motivated, it also gives you a wider breadth of experience to draw from. A senior engineer at Amazon for 8 years knows how to do things the Amazon Way. A senior engineer who was at Google, Meta, Netflix and Amazon for 2 years each knows how to do things four ways, and as long as they can intelligently compare and contrast the way those four companies operate and the pros and cons of each, would be an extremely valuable asset. The only time this would maybe not apply is director/VP level roles, though if you're switching at that level you presumably have a pre-existing relationship with someone near whatever role you're trying to move into.
- giantg2 2y ago
  " 9-12 months with no gaps in between jobs--in reality, this means "it doesn't look like you were fired"--switching jobs not only makes you look more motivated, it also gives you a wider breadth of experience to draw from." Fuck HR. 12 months is nothing for actual deep learning. I've seen job hoppers come through my company and it's obvious most of them don't get very deep in the work and just move on instead of becoming a real expert in the system. It's one thing not to hold it against them, but it's something else to say count it as an advantage at such short intervals.

kilroy123 2y ago

I really wish this would change. I'm sick of constantly moving around every few years. Too be fair the last 3 startups I worked at failed financially but still. I would love to go work somewhere for 5-10 years. It's just hard to find these days.

datavirtue 2y ago
Yeah, I took a huge pay cut for what I thought was stability with an 85 yr old company. You have to hire on to learn the real deal. Turns out they are having trouble managing the changing workforce and shifting market conditions. Everyone crooned on and on about all the "boomerang" employees and long tenures during interviews. I realized after joining that the employees were coming back after being laid off!! WTF!? They were absolutely over the moon to get me and have been blown away by my work and are remodeling a new office for me and queuing me up for bigger projects but I can't leave my eggs in this basket. This will be my shortest tenure ever at under a year. An old CIO friend is creating a new Principal Architect role for me now at another company. I will dive into that startup for 3-5 years until it is acquired.

hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago

Such is the nature of life. FTEs who invest the considerable amount of time to continually do a job search are investing a lot more of themselves into their work than guys who stay in the same SWE II role for 10 years straight. They also, pretty much by definition, have more bargaining power even if they stay in their current roles - because they have other jobs on the table to credibly bargain with.

wsatb 2y ago
> FTEs who invest the considerable amount of time to continually do a job search are investing a lot more of themselves into their work than guys who stay in the same SWE II role for 10 years straight. I'll play devil's advocate on this one. Are they investing more into their work or do they care less because they'll be gone in a year anyway?
- hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
  They are investing way more into their own work, is what I meant. Grinding Leetcode, searching for jobs, doing side projects, networking, etc. is a lot more exhausting than just putting in your 40 and punching out. All that on top of a normal 9 to 5 can easily put you at 55-60 hours per week.

uldos 2y ago

It is better to leave the job and get hired again, than be loyal to the same company.

s0kr8s 2y ago

Caution: you might get paid 50% more to work at a company that is 500% worse managed, and therefore is hemorrhaging employees so fast that the only way they can maintain staffing levels is to offer a hefty premium above normal market wages to get new suckers to take a chance on them. If you're nihilistic and believe all employers are rotten, then jumping ship every 2 years might be a decent game strategy, but I tend to believe that good employers do exist and are just somewhat rare. So if you find a unicorn, I would recommend holding onto it.

fire_lake 2y ago
This is true. The pool of companies hiring is biased towards companies with poor retention.
- giantg2 2y ago
  In general I would agree. However, you could have many people retiring early from fat salaries, or high growth with low attrition.
AlotOfReading 2y ago
Perhaps this is just personal experience, but the worst jobs I've ever had also paid the worst. The places that are badly managed either don't know or can't afford market rates, so they try and hire cheap labor. Think body shops, game dev, government positions, etc. By contrast, a place that has expensive employees is going to see their time as more valuable, so there's a direct monetary incentive not to waste it and the cash flow exists to do things. Doesn't always work, but it dramatically improves the odds.
- oarla 2y ago
  The worse pay is what adds on to the feeling of the job being terrible. As much as many want to claim, its not very satisfying to slog away and ship an elegant product for peanuts. When the pay is lower than what is the standard, it's always going to make the job feel terrible.

ukoki 2y ago

Employers don't reward long-term employees because they don't need to. Even though everyone knows you make more by job-hopping, companies are following a rational strategy because too few people "walk the walk" despite wanting more salary. Arguably unethical, but rational. At the cost of losing a minority of job-hoppers they retain the cheap majority that: - finds job interviews exhausting, or is anxious about being rejected - dislikes conflict or negotiation - has good relationships with colleagues they don't want to lose - has a comfortable commute or WFH arrangement they don't want to change - is proud of becoming an expert / go-to-person in some part of the business and doesn't want to lose that source of social capital - is proud of product or service they have made a big contribution to and wants to "see it through to the end" - believes leaving would place an unfair burden on other team-members or would be disloyal to a manager they consider a friend - (US only) cannot risk losing healthcare It's possible that in the future the ratio of job-hoppers to lifers changes and companies find they need to switch strategies. But until that happens the job-hoppers will have the upperhand compared to the lifers. It's the same reason why your phone/insurance/whatever provider puts up the prices year-after-year: although some people leave, enough people simply put up with it that they make more money this way. "Do nothing" is an easy choice and companies are banking on enough people making that choice.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
In a sense, it’s trading convenience and stability for compensation.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  Employees are also giving up compensation for lower risk and fewer unknowns. A risk adverse person, or even rational one, may avoid still avoid positive EV gambles.
- datavirtue 2y ago
  There is no stability. Maybe in government jobs. Any stability is just luck.

elintknower 2y ago

Job hopping works if you're already in the top 10% of engineers and really talented when it comes to... interviewing. I suck at leetcode so maybe that's why I'm just not cut out for this. As long as I'm making $150k+ and can WFH I'm not exactly confident I could go out and interview and get something better. My work history isn't great because I tried job hopping and was a co-founder at a few startups. I quickly found a few 6-8 months stints really made me look radioactive even with around 5yrs of experience. I'm open to advice here, but I don't blame people who are optimizing for consistency and a stability.

justsocrateasin 2y ago
I thought for a long time that I was trash at leetcode. I would regularly fail the coding portions of interviews. Then a recruiter reached out with a tempting JD and I became good at leetcode, it just took a lot of hard work of tricking my brain into thinking it was a good use of my time.
- elintknower 2y ago
  I'm getting tired of wasting my time at startups so 4.7 years into my career it might be time to finally just waste the time necessary to nail these problems.
kagakuninja 2y ago
Even for a shitty interviewer like myself, it does work. It just takes me more interviews to finally get the offer. I've tried doing a good job and asking for raises, they never match market rate.
- elintknower 2y ago
  Any advice, I need more of a forcing function to actually get my resume through the first pass. Too many startups under 1yr definitely has fucked me.

austin-cheney 2y ago

I remember seeing numbers several years ago that the average retention at Uber was around 18 months. My big learning from employer hoping as a JavaScript developer is that it’s risky. There is a universal assumption that the people who do that work fall below an accepted baseline of delivery and maturity compared with other developers as qualified by the amount of tooling and hand holding they require. That said many employers will not invest much in these employees and thus expect them to jump ship. The other side of that coin is that employees see this too. Those who tend to be more competent and have a really good situation with their employer tend to be the people that stick around knowing they are missing out on pay raises by moving around. For example if I get to spend half my office day watching movies and working on side projects in a stable company with no stress that potential raise from the next employer might not be worth it.

mjr00 2y ago
> For example if I get to spend half my office day watching movies and working on side projects in a stable company with no stress that potential raise from the next employer might not be worth it. tbh when I'm on the hiring side, this is why I consider a long tenure in the same role at a company a... not really a red flag, but maybe a yellow flag, something to talk about in an interview. Hate to say it, but lots of long-tenured employees are in this situation. They remain at companies because of interia. Processes have been built around them; they have tribal/domain knowledge which is poorly documented and not readily replaceable; they may be functionally a "C player" but they have additional value they bring via historical context ("Oh, this bit of weird nonsense code? Yeah, I remember we hacked that in right after the acquisition in 2017, we don't need it now...") It's a real concern that someone coming from a situation where they only do ~4 hours of actual work per week might not be able to handle a new job where they have to provide value through other means, i.e. shipped code. It's not a total disqualification of a candidate for me, obviously, but it'd certainly be something I'd ask about.
- austin-cheney 2y ago
  Your response is curious to me because it suggests multiple unstated biases. I am inferring you suggest: 1. Ambition is more a product of social mobility than product delivery. 2. Success is more a product of prior established salary than personal goals. From an economics perspective these seem weird to me for two reasons. The goal of economics is always to redistribute resources to a more desirable pattern. One of the first things I look for in job interviews from interviewers and hiring managers is perception of bias. This is easily discovered by looking at what they want which can be some mixture of technical competency, charm/vanity, or communications dominance. Interviewers want to control the conversation, so just let them until the conversation concludes or I achieve communications dominance passively. I don't want to play games, but when there is noise in the inter-personal communication I have to be a little bit smarter than I appear. I just want a job doing what the paper says, but people are silly. The second reason why its weird is that in the past I have been that 10x (or much more) developer because my goals are different. The only point of software is automation, which means if I can automate my own job then I don't have to do it either. I usually keep this to myself, because the goal is time maximization so I can do other things with my day while delivering superior quality work. If I told other people about it my peers would whine and I would be tasked to do things outside of product delivery to compensate for their whining. I am certainly not looking for anybody's adoration. I just want to do less stupid.

HEmanZ 2y ago

This seems very generally true to a point, so on average it works out. But I think there is a big caveat. My thoughts are centered around software development, but I know there are many analogous career paths. I really believe if your career goal is to peak a lot higher than just middle-management or senior software engineer, and earn the pay that comes with those higher positions, you need to stay on the same company and even same project for much longer periods of time (I would say 5 year absolute minimums). If I look around at the careers of Distinguished Engineers and senior principal engineers, or VPs of Engineering at FAANGs, etc., these people always have massive chunks of time at the same company, often many years on the same product even. If they have changed companies a few times in their careers, it’s after a string of promotions and delivering big things. It is really hard to build a portfolio of high-level impact with 2 year stints.

nicolas_t 2y ago
That’s how I became cto at 40 years old, I stayed long enough while being indispensable enough and always taking the difficult projects. It’s a gamble though and I needed to play hardball when negotiating with the owner for the new salary to properly reflect my new position. That only worked because I was more willing to walk away than he was. I’d honestly recommend doing 2-3 years stints in the early 20s and then progressively longer but only if the company had room for growth and ways of to get into difficult projects where you both learn something and deliver actual quantifiable benefits to the company
- ido 2y ago
  Is 40 an unusually young age to become CTO? I’m pretty sure most CTOs I worked under took the position first around that age or younger.
  - aetherson 2y ago
    Founder CTOs are young, other CTOs tend to be older.
bradlys 2y ago

rc_kas 2y ago

I'm applying to every job under the sun and no call backs this year. Either the job market sucks right now or my resume sucks right now.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

laweijfmvo 2y ago

I've experienced this to varying degrees over my 15 year career, but can safely say that my current job at a FAANG probably pays more than any job I could get today (including another FAANG). Stock appreciation and more importantly, extra stock awards, are difficult to match. Or I could be a sucker and 100% wrong.

Loughla 2y ago
The problem with all of this is that it assumes the attitude that pay is the most logical, if not only, measure of success in your career. I decided to work in higher education after a WILDLY successful short career in sales. I lost over 80% of my compensation annually to make that switch in the first year. And I did it because the time off benefits, pace, and stability are much better for my mental health and well-being. If you feel like you are compensated appropriately for what you're doing, don't worry about gaming the system. Just be happy with your life. Have you ever read The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham?
- jjice 2y ago
  > The problem with all of this is that it assumes the attitude that pay is the most logical, if not only, measure of success in your career. I see what you mean, but I don't think the parent commented about career success, but just specifically pay. I agree with what you're saying in that there are other valuable things besides pay from a job.
- laweijfmvo 2y ago
  Agree with you, but this particular article/discussion is focused on pay :)
sangnoir 2y ago
Setting aside stock appreciation, are your refreshers greater than new hire FAANG RSUs for a similar position? Most FAANG total compensation dips in year 5 due to 4-year vesting schedules, and refreshers for existing employees being lower than nee hire grants (assuming stock price remains flat).

tombert 2y ago

I'm not sure that this is sustainable anymore. I've definitely done the job hopping game, and it generally led to a substantial increase in salary each time, but eventually that comes back to bite you. I got laid off three times last year, and that already looks pretty bad on a resume, but then seeing a bunch of jobs beforehand where I was only there for two years makes a lot of employers really hesitant to move forward, especially in 2024 (ten years after this was written). At this point I'm happy enough to just sit my ass down and stay at my current place; I didn't realize how much I valued stability over anything else until 2023 came along and became the worst year of my life.

gamepsys 2y ago
Did you leave positive impressions on your coworkers? Did you maintain contact? Part of the advantage of moving every few years is that you work with more people, which means more people are willing to recommend you for open positions. In those three jobs you were laid off from did any of your coworkers also get laid off? Where did they go to, and can they give you a recommendation? No matter what story your resume tells, social connections will usually be a louder signal.
- tombert 2y ago
  >Did you leave positive impressions on your coworkers? Some of them, though it's hard to become really good friends with a coworker after only three months of a remote job. At the jobs that I stayed two years at I definitely made lots of friends > Did you maintain contact? For a few of them, the ones that I got close to (generally the people that were as geeky as I am about bizarre CS concepts). That was immensely handy to get job referrals, and it's in no small part why I was able to land my current (very decent!) gig. In most places I've worked, people generally like me ok (I hope), and usually I will develop one or two pretty close friends as a result if I've been there sufficiently long. > In those three jobs you were laid off from did any of your coworkers also get laid off? Yes, though in the more recent laid off jobs I sadly didn't know people well enough to get them to give me referrals or anything. > No matter what story your resume tells, social connections will usually be a louder signal. I mostly agree, but only to a certain extent. If you can make it to the interview stage, a good referral and social contacts can be great and really helpful, but the problem with short stints is that you're considerably more likely to fail the initial screening by the internal recruiter. I get it, I don't really blame them, you can't go into super thorough detail on every resume that's submitted, so they have to look for red flags to immediately filter out stuff.

TJSomething 2y ago

If you love in the USA, I don't know how you job hop if you have more than two specialist doctors. Everytime I have to figure out how an insurance plan works is suffering.

jholdn 2y ago

One hypothesis I don't see mentioned is that time limited roles pay more. For example, a person brought into to oversee an acquisition or transition is going to be paid phenomenally well (and, I think, rightly so). But part of that job is making your own position redundant. If you're still there after a few years, you aren't doing your job. I expect there are many other examples, roles that are project based and become redundant when the project is completed. And, I expect, many of these pay more than operational jobs, taking care of some day to day tasks of the business. Probably rightly so; if the projects successful, I would think building something new would create more value as it should produce something that continues producing value into the future - higher risk, higher reward.

datavirtue 2y ago
Depends on the business. If all revenue is coming from contract work then everyone's job is tied to having a contract. If revenue is streaming in from services then most jobs are tied to support and are buffered by much higher margins.

andrewmutz 2y ago

The headline sounds like it's stating a fact, but if you read the article it wasn't supported anywhere other than the author stating it. There is no data presented or study that was done. The author seems to believe that the salary jumps that accompany 2-year job changes can be sustained over time. From my experience, I don't think this is the case. In your twenties it's definitely true, but when I look at the highest paid people (in their later career) it is not true that they did this. I think the reason is that as you progress up a leadership structure, stability becomes increasingly important and candidates who have exhibited short tenures in roles are passed over because it is assumed this behavior will continue. It's highly damaging to have a VP leave an org leave after only 2 years in the role.

setgree 2y ago
Even if there were observational data to this effect, the obvious confound is that more skilled people are more in demand -> more likely to hear from recruiters -> more likely to move

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

I totally believe that. Nevertheless, after job-hopping a bit, in my twenties, I stayed at my last job for almost 27 years. I have found that money isn't everything. I know that's basically heresy, around here, but it's been my truth.

softwaredoug 2y ago

Do yourself a favor and try to spend some time as a freelancer. Constantly have to sell yourself. Constantly managing stakeholders, etc. This will translate to always thinking about your place in the market and gives you a lot of skills to avoid being taken advantage of.

pocketsand 2y ago

A family member is paid very highly. He has switched jobs almost ever year for over a decade, including at top tier tech firms. I'm not sure why he does this but I have my suspicions. What I do know is that he is never seems happy with his work. And I also doubt how much impact he can be having with such short stints. I have never quit a job without a major life event forcing me to (spouse getting a job, moving, etc.). I've had great experiences everywhere and I'm probably underpaid for it. I have no regrets. I'd prefer my lifestyle and job satisfaction to money.

sct202 2y ago

Just want to point out that this is just an Excel thought experiment and not a study of peoples lives of any kind. The comparison is just 3% raise vs jumping every 2 years for 10%. I've seen too many people take this as some gospel of a career strategy when it's more of something to keep in mind when you get stagnant at a job.

1970-01-01 2y ago

Generic career advice is to apply for a different job every month. After 24 months, you will at minimum know your market value.

stevofolife 2y ago

Sure you get paid more, but it comes attached with a whole baggage of other things. A better research should provide insight on the total compensation over the entire career, work-life balance, impact, satisfaction and so on. Now let's see what is better.

dang 2y ago

Related: Employees Who Stay in Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14784900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14784900 - July 2017 (535 comments) Employees That Stay In Companies Longer Get Paid Less - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7928008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7928008 - June 2014 (198 comments)

up2isomorphism 2y ago

The conclusion is somewhat biased: The employees who jump a lot often implies he hit the salary increase ceiling quicker than other who don't. In fact, what I observed is that people are constantly looking for place with better pay, regardless if he/she ACTUALLY finds one.

black_13 2y ago

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dasil003 2y ago

It's probably true on average job hopping pays off when you're young, it also has some real upside risks as more senior positions generally require you to think longer term, and that's very hard if you don't see how your actions and decisions play out. As a hiring manager, three 2-year stints would be perfectly reasonable for an L5 candidate, but five 2-year stints I would be very concerned about hiring an L6 expected to drive long-term architectural directions. Ultimately I think the "learning or earning" advice is better. When you are young you should chase your interests and prioritize personal growth and finding out what you are good at. The primary heuristic should be whether you are learning quickly, and are you surrounded by people and structure that help you with that. Later on in your career when you have more personal responsibilities you should prioritize earning, and hopefully you have built a foundation of strong and deep expertise that qualifies you for more senior positions. Of course if you can get both, that's great, but you also need to be careful because a lot of things you learn at the best paying companies have limited applicability outside that bubble.

kristopolous 2y ago

Your can flip this: people who hop jobs care about pay more.

JohnFen 2y ago

Excluding cost of living increases, the only time that I've received a pay increase is when I've switched jobs. Every time I change jobs, I increase my minimum acceptable salary by 20%. I don't change every two years, though. I usually go about 5. Even then, I don't change jobs for the purpose of getting a pay increase (that's just a nice side-effect), but more typically because I've learned everything that I'm going to learn from a the job and need to move to a different one in order to learn new skills (or sometimes just to work on something fresh).

skizm 2y ago

This seems like a borderline tautology or at least very obvious? People rarely switch jobs for less money.

Waterluvian 2y ago

I’m sure HR would hate this but I make this abundantly clear to the engineers I manage. The best raise you’ll ever get is by switching companies.

smrtinsert 2y ago

This is my curse. I need to move currently

b212 2y ago

Not in this market. Got a job paying x almost 2 years ago. Now we’re hiring at 0.5x and actually find good and very good candidates…