12 ms·

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 ration

• 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.
    • BHSPitMonkey 2y ago
      I'm sure you mean no _guarantee_ of stability, but clearly remaining in a current position is more "stable" than actively leaving it (by definition).
      • antonyt 2y ago
        Only because you've chosen a certain definition of stability. For most people, I'd bet leaving a job voluntarily for a new opportunity yields a higher sense of stability than enduring getting laid off, having your teammates get laid off, or having your org structure drastically change.
        • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
          > than enduring getting laid off “Probability of job loss is strongly monotonically declining in tenure,” with job-loss probability falling from 15% for first-year private sector employees to 5.8% after twenty years [1]. (If you’ve ever had to do lay-offs, you know that it’s easier to lay off the new guy than someone with deep ties to the team.) [1] https://www.princeton.edu/~ceps/workingpapers/171farber.pdf https://www.princeton.edu/~ceps/workingpapers/171farber.pdf page 31, Figure 16
• nonethewiser 2y ago
  Remote vs. non-remote seems like a huge factor here. Sure, many people when they're young are geographically flexible. But that's less true as you age and are tied down by a house, spouse's job, kid's school, daycare, etc. If you have to come into work, then all those details depend on your job location. You can't just change job locations. Again, this works for some single young people who rent apartments in NYC or SF. But that will always be a subset of job candidates. This is why the trend towards remote seems inevitable. There are just too many incentives for too much of the workforce to require it. Long term that Of course these things have always been true, but since remote work became prevalent I think people have realized how shitty of a situation it is - especially when you're not compensated for it. In fact you are actually compensated LESS since you arent job hopping.
  • Rinzler89 2y ago
    >This is why the trend towards remote seems inevitable. I wish, but not in my country. Remote here means 2-3 days/week WFH tops and that's it. Nobody offers more. Meaning you're still tied to the location of your employer as you have to come regularly in the office. It boggles my mind that employers don't see the advantage of employing people remotely nation-wide as that gives them access to a wider talent pool outside their area making it a win-win. But no, old-school boomer MBA managers want to see buts in seats in the office, otherwise to them it means people are slacking off as they can't possibly imagine motivating people to work if they're not within physical reach. We also need to post pictures of the employees pretending to have fun at barbecues, teambuilding events and sitting in cramped open space offices on yoga balls wearing headphones with coffee mugs with nerdy memes on them. But it's ok, there's a weekly fruit basked, employee organized sports events and you can bring your dog to work. Totally worth spending 2h per day on commuting. I just don't get it, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Is it me the one being unreasonable, or "is it the children who are wrong"?
    • eastbound 2y ago
      I’ll give you the startupper’s sad side. See, if we want to hire, then a team of Matrix people in full remote isn’t going tk be sexy. We need young faces on the pictures, and we need to make every day an event worth instagramming. First hire for a team of developers should be a community manager. The scene is as stupid as it sounds. I’ve walked the path. Developers won’t develop anything good for $200k, but they will if you give them attention, care, events, and hope. I literally have to refrain myself from giving higher raises, because I’ve made people rich in the past and they’ve stopped being motivated. The more you pay them, the more they have the thrill to play competition. (Please watch me if I don’t give them fat equity for the exit event, God, they deserve it).
• giantg2 2y ago
  Based on my experience, I assume disabled people also job hop less often. I often wonder if my lower pay is because I don't job hop, because of my disability, or if I'm just a piece of shit.
  • jvanderbot 2y ago
    Why not both? Just kidding! It is almost certainly the lack of "flight risk". I've been on the management side long enough to know that you reward the most useful folks who "could go anywhere". As GP said, it's a rational strategy for them. I personally have lowered my expectations of salary growth over the years, and would be happy with some of those other benefits GP listed in the mean-time.
    • giantg2 2y ago
      I'd be happy if I were successful in my job and maybe had another promotion. It's been a struggle just to keep a Dev 2 job. No chance of promotion based on how "inconsistent" I am. I'm hoping not to get PIP'd.
  • PaulRobinson 2y ago
    I don't know you, but I know you aren't a piece of shit. Nobody is.
    • vsuperpower2020 2y ago
      I had to deal with many pieces of shit when I was a child. Maybe you aren't looking hard enough?
      • financltravsty 2y ago
        Same, but with age and also being on the "piece of shit" side a few too many times -- I've realized most of it just circumstance and the more-often-than-not conclusion of a series of unfortunate life events. I don't know. I try to maintain empathy, even for the most despicable -- but that doesn't mean their actions need to be tolerated.
• LunaSea 2y ago
  This does not match my experience where the average retention duration for employees across all the companies I've worked for or have known has bee around 2.5 to 3 years.
  • cstrahan 2y ago
    In what way does this not match your experience? You’ve mentioned one variable (retention) but not the other (salary increase over time), so your comment as it stands doesn’t refute the claim of the person you’re replying to. Are you implying that you know that these people have received raises year after year that are comparable to the pay increase they could have if they took a new job?
    • LunaSea 2y ago
      It refutes the claim in the sense that employees leave at about the optimum time (close to two years) as per the study.
  • dweinus 2y ago
    If 80% of employees stay each year, then the expected tenure would be about 3 years.
• divbzero 2y ago
  Ironically, the value of employees tend to go up the longer they stay as they grow more familiar with the people and systems at the company.
  • theendisney 2y ago
    And it takes less effort to do the usual.
  • burningChrome 2y ago
    This is an interesting fact and brings up a paradox I've seen at the last two major companies I've worked for. Both saw a limit on the time someone could be at the company and still be promoted. The C-Suite people really felt if people were at the company for more than 5 years, they were no longer viable candidates to move up because they had become to "accustomed" to the corporate culture and would develop a sense of apathy with pushing their departments or employees to greater success. They have now opted to hire outside executives or managers to try and keep the ideas and approaches fresh so to speak. I remember my director at the time wanting very much to move up into an executive position and had been at the company some 15 years. He had been a director for some 7 years and had already been passed over twice before for an executive position. He recruited me for a senior dev role and had stood up an entire cloud computing team to take on specific work the company was having a hard time getting done quickly. 6 months in and he pulls me into his office after our 1:1. He tells me he's putting in his two weeks and loved working with me and wanted me to come with him to his new company once he gets set up there. He told me his bosses boss told him she knew his aspirations of moving into an executive position, but it wasn't going to happen here. She told him in no uncertain terms he had reached his ceiling at this company and should move on if he really wanted to be an executive. Same thing happened at another company. The VP of the company had been in that role for some 10 years and had been passed over at least three times for the CEO position which he wanted very badly. Many of the managers had told me he has just accepted he wouldn't get any higher than VP, but had no aspirations of leaving the company. This unfortunately created a huge choke point in the company because now managers would be at the company for a certain amount of time, and then know that's as high as they were going and leave. While I agree with your point, I feel like there is some amount of time threshold you can cross where the corporate apathy can take hold and your value starts to decline. It seems that way the higher up the ladder you go.
• arpyzo 2y ago
  My observations suggest that this applies far more to lower performing employees than higher performing ones since the barrier to change jobs is lower for top tier talent. In effect this means that while companies that give paltry pay bumps that don't keep up with the market may successfully hold on to lower performing employees, they'll be continually churning through top performers.
  • s1artibartfast 2y ago
    why not do both? thats what I see. Firms give paltry pay bumps as default, but will fight with competitive salaries to retain top performers. Top performers get completive raises by going to their boss with an offer letter from a competitor.
    • jcon321 2y ago
      Would you really bring your boss an offer letter? Even as top performer it seems like a bad idea to take any counter offer.
      • s1artibartfast 2y ago
        That is literally how I got my last promotion. I set up a meeting and told them I had an offer I intended to take. They had a 20% raise and promotion approved within 24 hours. I also routinely get asked by managers for promo recommendations for coworkers thinking about leaving. IF they refuse to counter, then you should be asking yourself why you are staying. You cant pull this maneuver more than once or twice, but it lets them know you are serious and wont just whine and accept token raises in future negotiations.
        • eternal_braid 2y ago
          What company is that?
      • geph2021 2y ago
        It depends on the counter offer and your situation. I would have agreed with you, but a couple years ago I told my employer that I had a job offer kind of land in my lap (I wasn't actively looking), that it was good and I was inclined to take it. I wasn't unhappy at my current job, but the change in title/seniority and compensation of the job offer was definitely worth it. They didn't want me to leave, so they countered with a very strong offer, which I decided to take and stay with the company. If you want to leave because you're unhappy with other aspects of your job, then I agree that accepting a counter offer doesn't seem like a great choice.
• wouldbecouldbe 2y ago
  Job hopping works till you hit the ceiling. At some point you are at the relative max of your skillset and then other variables become more important.
• snarf21 2y ago
  I agree and healthcare (US) is a major factor. However, companies push the envelop too far. The cost of filling replacements, lost domain knowledge, decreased velocity during ramp up, etc. are far more costly that leadership admits. The main reason they just don't try to keep up even a little bit is because most leadership sees employees as replaceable resources that are all identical (not themselves though!). The thing is that people would stay forever in most cases if they gave a fraction of what they end up hiring replacements for. People don't quit jobs, they quit bosses.
  • PopAlongKid 2y ago
    >healthcare (US) is a major factor. Not as much since Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) became law over ten years ago. Anyone can get minimum essential coverage, with a subsidy if income is low enough (as it would be when out of a job), regardless of pre-existing conditions.
    • kbolino 2y ago
      If you go without a job for a while and you don't want Medicaid [edit -- not even an option: and you don't want to submit to an invasive examination of your finances], you are paying out of pocket for individual marketplace plans. While they run a lot cheaper than COBRA, they are still hefty (ca. $500/mo for 2 people at minimum coverage). Maybe it was worse before the ACA but it sure isn't a picnic after.
      • PopAlongKid 2y ago
        >invasive examination of your finances, The househpold income is voluntarily self-reported.
        • kbolino 2y ago
          You're right. I misremembered; no amount of information would have helped. The option was Medicaid or full out of pocket.
      • 2y ago
• assimpleaspossi 2y ago
  I'm pretty convinced that, eventually for most of us, job hopping breaks down when you reach an age where you no longer fit in or lack of new skillset and you can't find a job. Then you wind up as one who stays at one place for more than two years for security--if you can find one.
  • JohnFen 2y ago
    I haven't noticed that, personally. > or lack of new skillset Job-hopping is a powerful way of ensuring that your skillset remains current. That's 80% of why I do it.
• zug_zug 2y ago
  Except if an employee knows they provide more value to their employer than they receive, then an employee has every reason to stop working hard and start coasting off the social-capital / past-accomplishments / strong-relationships.
• nomel 2y ago
  Two more: - The company has a limit for how many times you can leave and come back. For example (last I checked), Intel is 2, Apple is 0. - For large companies, internal transfers can be diverse enough to make someone happy with a change. Although, pay raises are more limited.
  • rcbdev 2y ago
    The first point sounds insane. In my vicinity the trend seems completely opposite - HR is trying to get a smoother rehiring experience for employees they lost due to their high turnover. This might be because the talent pool of people willing and able to do IT jobs in my country is very small, so you run into the same people over and over again in this field.
    • nomel 2y ago
      From what I've been told, Intel allows 2 so you can go try to start a company. I once worked at a startup founded by a whole group from Intel doing this (including one of the original architects of 8086!). Several were on their last attempt. Every one of them went right back to intel, after it didn't work out. And, from what I've been told about Apple, the idea is that if you can't find something within Apple (since they literally do everything, even textiles!), then Apple probably just isn't a good fit, especially since it is possible to spin up a team to make something new internally.
• sunshowers 2y ago
  Excessive job hopping simply does not look good on a resume! I want to work with engineers and PMs who build lasting monuments, seeing them through to completion, dealing with both the fun and the unfun bits.
  • mondomondo 2y ago
    Yeah but IMO most people learn 90% the stack in a year, smart people usually get bored after two years. I say that as someone who’s been at the same job for 12 years now. I never met a dev who worked at the same place for more than 4 years that was actually worth the money.
    • therealdrag0 2y ago
      “Place” should be team or project. Same company can mean many teams or projects. For example I’ve been at a company 5 years but worked on 3 diff teams.
    • sunshowers 2y ago
      Well, I was at my last job for 10 years :) To be honest, none of the stuff I've worked on I've gotten comfortable within a year. At Oxide I feel like I understand maybe 30-40% of the stack at the moment after 18 months?
      • edward28 2y ago
        Well oxide isn't exactly a simple crud app, is it.
  • thatjoeoverthr 2y ago
    You claim to want it. Do you pay for what you want?
• _cenw 2y ago
  I've been in several places where this leads to a death spiral of "comfortable" employees doing a lot less (or rather, the bare minimum) and the people that compensate for it leaving after 1-2 years of this supposed social capital of being the go-to person (and sometimes the only competent person / person who cares around) killing all joy they had for the job. They were the (large) IT department of a (large) retailer though, and they tend to have meh hiring standards to begin with. One day my boss "forgot" to bring up a very small raise I had negotiated with the CEO (who signed off on all raises personally), failed to see any urgency in fixing the situation to restore trust and gambled on me being one of those people that don't find another job. He seemed very surprised to be wrong. My raise from switching jobs was about 50% - and I got to work with people who hadn't given up on improving things half a decade ago.
• JeremyNT 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. Ambitious employees "know" that switching jobs will give them the pay they're looking for, because they see those numbers right on the job postings. What's less obvious is that a current employer might really value an employee's skills, and would be willing to match or exceed the competition - if they just open up the conversation. IME it's not even (always) any kind of rational decision on behalf of management to "stiff" people. If you have a happy employee making a wage they're satisfied with (+ annual COL), then these conversations about TC may not even come up at all. It's easy to just turn on autopilot here. If you like your job, but you're not happy with your TC, make sure you're letting management know. It could be that everybody could end up happy. Even a good manager might not be doing this for you until/unless you advocate on your own behalf.
  • kagakuninja 2y ago
    I've tried having that conversation a couple times in my career, and it never works. At my current job, I am the top performer on a mediocre team, and it seems to be impossible to convert from contract to full-time. I also demanded something resembling a cost of living pay raise (been here 3 years), and eventually got the agency to give me about 6%.
  • hebetude 2y ago
    You're describing the fake breakup. Where you tell your girlfriend/boyfriend you want a break, then let them talk you back into the relationship. This is just a bad relationship move. Now they don't trust you and you have a needy or untrusting partner now. I've had 50% pay raises that were nearly matched by the current employer. My last manager literally said the words, "What if we offered you a big bag of money to stay?". I left. Now I work at a place where people stay literally until the die, 10, 15, 25 year tenures. My coworkers are mediocre. I'd say it's a mixture of laziness and sometimes maybe just incompetence. It's a two fold problem. Employees that stay this long do not progress in their careers or learn new skills. I've learned next to nothing in my 5 years here. Employers that don't create churn in their workers create numerous problems. If we didn't hold a monopoly in our field, I'm sure we would have been bought out and had mass layoffs by now.
• downut 2y ago
  - there is friction for an employee with established systems for dealing with childcare/k-12 school to potentially have to start all over again figuring out those systems. You could subsume all of these points into "moving house is hard", but the details matter. We moved across the country for a job for the money and even with an empty nest it was dauntingly difficult, the hardest thing we have ever done over 4 decades, and we didn't have to worry about money!
• nullserver 2y ago
  I left a job due to almost entirely for poor pay. Entire department got an immediate 10% raise to stop more people from leaving.
• baobun 2y ago
  You forgot this one, might be more common than you think: - Visa status
• beacon294 2y ago
  Ramping up at a new company also costs employees time, so even though the employer has to pay this fee more, so does the employee. So the employer can play chicken on this and eat the cost more statistically than the employee.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• bravetraveler 2y ago
  Nailed it, exactly. Not an endorsement but that's how it is. I just struggled through this list for years. First, internally - then I announced my intent to leave. People raised some of the points in a caring way. I have so many trust issues I don't know if I was being gaslit or if they truly believed it. I started to wonder who it served when I saw the patterns. Anyway, don't believe the bastards. If you're willing to work, good people will teach you what you need. Find them. Don't waste your time places where you aren't happy and valued
• mancerayder 2y ago
  Also, I'd add - In a sea of jobs with on-call, workaholic hierarchical reward culture, and night/weekend work, a company may pay less but offer work-life balance that a 30k pay bump in New Corp may not outweigh the risks.
• sedawk 2y ago
  In a recent org-wide all-hands a member from senior leadership (C-suite) did explicitly say that they always have a much higher budget for new hires than the budget for rewarding/retaining existing talent; and that this is by-design. This was an eye-opener to me :-|
• jmbwell 2y ago
  Holy crap, this list nails it.