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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 t

by 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.
  - antonyt 2y ago
    If you're a reasonably well-performing IC at US big tech, your "boss" is often also a grunt with little real control over your salary. Just a different flavor grunt from you. In my experience, these managers are often happy to throw money at you but don't have much latitude to do so. Having a competing offer gives THEM leverage to try to convince those guarding the money hose to open the faucet a little.
  - mmh0000 2y ago
    Yes! I've done it several times. It's one of the best and most reliable ways to get a raise. It's "business." Your manager isn't going to make a counteroffer, then wait a month and fire you. I mean, they might if they're a total D.bag, but I've not yet had that experience. And if I had, I'd already proven to myself and my manager that I could get a higher-paying job elsewhere. It'd be a minor annoyance on my side. I don't want to give away specifics, so take these numbers with a lump of salt; the ratios are correct: Went from $50k/yr [1]-> $80k/yr [2]-> $120k/yr [3]-> $205k/yr [1] The company wanted me to stay and raised my pay to match the competing offers. [2] The company wanted me to stay and raised my pay to match the competing offers. [3] The company didn't want to pay that much, so I put in my two weeks and moved to a different company. From my experience, I've found that requesting a raise without a competing offer often leads to a small or no increase in pay. However, when I've approached my manager with a better offer in hand, it has consistently resulted in substantial pay raises.
    - willcipriano 2y ago
      I'd feel bad wasting the time of the other company just because my current one doesn't value me.
      - mmh0000 2y ago
        They're always welcome to offer more money.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - downut 2y ago
        Why? You proved you're competent to the potential suitor by obtaining an offer. They got some valuable quality candidate interviewing experience which can be difficult to achieve, and you got a rock solid tangible improvement in your work QoL, even if the target ultimately didn't achieve their hopeful hire. Possibly they got some data that (to them) implies they should have offered more money. Win win. I would say a win for all of us because "more money".
- delusional 2y ago
  General consensus among my colleagues and bosses are that anyone who comes to a routine salary negotiation with a competing offer is encouraged to take it. If you've been eyeing a different opportunity, then you're not going to find your current role engaging. The money is rarely enough to keep you for long.
  - sandos 2y ago
    I live in Sweden, but very early on in my career I was told that showing a competing offer would simply be viewed as "blackmailing" and you would not become very popular. I never used that tactic, instead just switching jobs. Now the jobmarket is nothing that can be compared to the Bay area, for sure. For example many places more or less use the standard increases brokered by the union, even if you or the workplace is not unionized, with some skewing for being a high performer.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  > Top performers get completive raises by going to their boss with an offer letter from a competitor. In my businesses, I've had employees do this a couple of times. Both times my response was "you should take that offer". Also both times, if they'd asked for a pay increase equal to what the offer represented, they probably would have gotten it. Coming to me with an offer letter in an attempt to get a pay raise is a thing that I think speaks very poorly of the person. It's an attempt to extort me, their current employer, and it's showing great disrespect for the company they got the offer letter from (because the employee is basically just using that employer and wasting their time).
  - lupire 2y ago
    You admit to intentionallu underpaying your employees, and then insinuate moral failing on their part for proving their worth to after you told them your underestimate of it? Good for them that they left, and left you poorer for it.
    - JohnFen 2y ago
      > You admit to intentionallu underpaying your employees Not at all. I've never intentionally underpaid anyone. > then insinuate moral failing on their part for proving their worth Also not at all. Presenting an offer letter from someone is not "proving their worth". My objection is the manipulation they're engaging in rather than just asking for what they think they should be getting. > and left you poorer for it. Only one of them left, and I was not left poorer for it at all. I'm not sure why you seem so hostile here. I never dealt with anyone in bad faith, even a little.
      - anthony_d 2y ago
        I think I see your point but it definitely feels shady to me. First, personally I’ve never asked my employer to match an offer. I just leave. I do think the thought process makes some sense though. If I feel I’m underpaid I’m going to look around to confirm before talking to anyone. If I get confirmation I’m being underpaid then I’m going to wonder why. Here’s where I have a choice… I either assume it’s because you’re intentionally underpaying because you think you can, or it’s because you don’t understand what you’re doing. I know companies understand compensation because I’ve worked in management and on compensation planning software, that’s why I don’t talk about it. More naive people might give you the benefit of the doubt, i.e. think you just don’t know what’s fair. Those people give you a chance to fix it, and only then learn that you’re intentionally underpaying them. It does speak badly of the person but only in the sense that they’re naive and think you “mean well” in some sense.
aleph_minus_one 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. I think talent and the capability to market/self-promote oneself (I believe only for the latter capability, the barrier to change jobs is much lower) are mostly uncorrelated.
- downut 2y ago
  EDIT: Grrr! This comment meant for the GP, sorry. I think there is an unstated underlying assumption in this comment that "higher performing" implies "drop-in transferable technical/social skills" legible to the target interviewing entity. Maybe for software but for wide swaths of actually engineering (double graduate engineers in this family) I doubt that rather strongly. The default 2 weeks vacation for the decades experienced new hire is a pretty strong tell.
  - qingcharles 2y ago
    Coming from the EU, every time I see "2 weeks vacation" I get a twitch.
jprete 2y ago
> 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. The same effect might even be partially responsible for the OP observation. I.e. the cause and effect might not be "job-hopping gets you paid more" but it might instead be "having a lot of skill gets you paid more and also enables you to job-hop more confidently".
- thayne 2y ago
  Or maybe people who are better and more confident at negotiation and interviewing are also more confident at hopping jobs. But those skills may or may not correlate with the skills you care about. Just because you are a good software engineer doesn't mean you are good at finding a new job.
bb88 2y ago
But is this actually a problem for a company? I think most companies can only afford second rate talent with the top tier talent going to FAANG companies anyway. What most companies are really looking for is undervalued high performers. And there's probably a lot of those still that haven't moved to the bay area. I think MBA's these days have decided that they'll hold labor costs low by not rewarding high performers, and then hire whoever they can to fit their budget, but then have a yearly 5% layoff to hold their employee's feet to the fire. And then those same MBA's get a bonus for keeping costs low, meanwhile enjoying their beach houses on the weekends. Granted it sucks to be an individual contributor, but if you're a manager, you have incentives for cutting costs to the bone.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago
  > What most companies are really looking for is undervalued high performers. I'm not sure about that, since very smart people often tend to be, well, "a little bit difficult to handle", in particular by bosses who got to their position by office politics instead of merits (as many do). If companies were really looking for high performers, they'd create an environment where high performers can really flourish. Because in my observation there exist quite a lot of high performers who are "held down" by their current work environment, this would attract quite some potential high performers, including undervalued ones.
barbariangrunge 2y ago
Job performance doesn’t really matter in tech. It’s all about interview skills and leetcode

by arpyzo 2y ago

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.
- antonyt 2y ago
  If you're a reasonably well-performing IC at US big tech, your "boss" is often also a grunt with little real control over your salary. Just a different flavor grunt from you. In my experience, these managers are often happy to throw money at you but don't have much latitude to do so. Having a competing offer gives THEM leverage to try to convince those guarding the money hose to open the faucet a little.
- mmh0000 2y ago
  Yes! I've done it several times. It's one of the best and most reliable ways to get a raise. It's "business." Your manager isn't going to make a counteroffer, then wait a month and fire you. I mean, they might if they're a total D.bag, but I've not yet had that experience. And if I had, I'd already proven to myself and my manager that I could get a higher-paying job elsewhere. It'd be a minor annoyance on my side. I don't want to give away specifics, so take these numbers with a lump of salt; the ratios are correct: Went from $50k/yr [1]-> $80k/yr [2]-> $120k/yr [3]-> $205k/yr [1] The company wanted me to stay and raised my pay to match the competing offers. [2] The company wanted me to stay and raised my pay to match the competing offers. [3] The company didn't want to pay that much, so I put in my two weeks and moved to a different company. From my experience, I've found that requesting a raise without a competing offer often leads to a small or no increase in pay. However, when I've approached my manager with a better offer in hand, it has consistently resulted in substantial pay raises.
  - willcipriano 2y ago
    I'd feel bad wasting the time of the other company just because my current one doesn't value me.
    - mmh0000 2y ago
      They're always welcome to offer more money.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - downut 2y ago
      Why? You proved you're competent to the potential suitor by obtaining an offer. They got some valuable quality candidate interviewing experience which can be difficult to achieve, and you got a rock solid tangible improvement in your work QoL, even if the target ultimately didn't achieve their hopeful hire. Possibly they got some data that (to them) implies they should have offered more money. Win win. I would say a win for all of us because "more money".
delusional 2y ago
General consensus among my colleagues and bosses are that anyone who comes to a routine salary negotiation with a competing offer is encouraged to take it. If you've been eyeing a different opportunity, then you're not going to find your current role engaging. The money is rarely enough to keep you for long.
- sandos 2y ago
  I live in Sweden, but very early on in my career I was told that showing a competing offer would simply be viewed as "blackmailing" and you would not become very popular. I never used that tactic, instead just switching jobs. Now the jobmarket is nothing that can be compared to the Bay area, for sure. For example many places more or less use the standard increases brokered by the union, even if you or the workplace is not unionized, with some skewing for being a high performer.
JohnFen 2y ago
> Top performers get completive raises by going to their boss with an offer letter from a competitor. In my businesses, I've had employees do this a couple of times. Both times my response was "you should take that offer". Also both times, if they'd asked for a pay increase equal to what the offer represented, they probably would have gotten it. Coming to me with an offer letter in an attempt to get a pay raise is a thing that I think speaks very poorly of the person. It's an attempt to extort me, their current employer, and it's showing great disrespect for the company they got the offer letter from (because the employee is basically just using that employer and wasting their time).
- lupire 2y ago
  You admit to intentionallu underpaying your employees, and then insinuate moral failing on their part for proving their worth to after you told them your underestimate of it? Good for them that they left, and left you poorer for it.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    > You admit to intentionallu underpaying your employees Not at all. I've never intentionally underpaid anyone. > then insinuate moral failing on their part for proving their worth Also not at all. Presenting an offer letter from someone is not "proving their worth". My objection is the manipulation they're engaging in rather than just asking for what they think they should be getting. > and left you poorer for it. Only one of them left, and I was not left poorer for it at all. I'm not sure why you seem so hostile here. I never dealt with anyone in bad faith, even a little.
    - anthony_d 2y ago
      I think I see your point but it definitely feels shady to me. First, personally I’ve never asked my employer to match an offer. I just leave. I do think the thought process makes some sense though. If I feel I’m underpaid I’m going to look around to confirm before talking to anyone. If I get confirmation I’m being underpaid then I’m going to wonder why. Here’s where I have a choice… I either assume it’s because you’re intentionally underpaying because you think you can, or it’s because you don’t understand what you’re doing. I know companies understand compensation because I’ve worked in management and on compensation planning software, that’s why I don’t talk about it. More naive people might give you the benefit of the doubt, i.e. think you just don’t know what’s fair. Those people give you a chance to fix it, and only then learn that you’re intentionally underpaying them. It does speak badly of the person but only in the sense that they’re naive and think you “mean well” in some sense.

aleph_minus_one 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. I think talent and the capability to market/self-promote oneself (I believe only for the latter capability, the barrier to change jobs is much lower) are mostly uncorrelated.

downut 2y ago
EDIT: Grrr! This comment meant for the GP, sorry. I think there is an unstated underlying assumption in this comment that "higher performing" implies "drop-in transferable technical/social skills" legible to the target interviewing entity. Maybe for software but for wide swaths of actually engineering (double graduate engineers in this family) I doubt that rather strongly. The default 2 weeks vacation for the decades experienced new hire is a pretty strong tell.
- qingcharles 2y ago
  Coming from the EU, every time I see "2 weeks vacation" I get a twitch.

jprete 2y ago

> 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. The same effect might even be partially responsible for the OP observation. I.e. the cause and effect might not be "job-hopping gets you paid more" but it might instead be "having a lot of skill gets you paid more and also enables you to job-hop more confidently".

thayne 2y ago
Or maybe people who are better and more confident at negotiation and interviewing are also more confident at hopping jobs. But those skills may or may not correlate with the skills you care about. Just because you are a good software engineer doesn't mean you are good at finding a new job.

bb88 2y ago

But is this actually a problem for a company? I think most companies can only afford second rate talent with the top tier talent going to FAANG companies anyway. What most companies are really looking for is undervalued high performers. And there's probably a lot of those still that haven't moved to the bay area. I think MBA's these days have decided that they'll hold labor costs low by not rewarding high performers, and then hire whoever they can to fit their budget, but then have a yearly 5% layoff to hold their employee's feet to the fire. And then those same MBA's get a bonus for keeping costs low, meanwhile enjoying their beach houses on the weekends. Granted it sucks to be an individual contributor, but if you're a manager, you have incentives for cutting costs to the bone.

aleph_minus_one 2y ago
> What most companies are really looking for is undervalued high performers. I'm not sure about that, since very smart people often tend to be, well, "a little bit difficult to handle", in particular by bosses who got to their position by office politics instead of merits (as many do). If companies were really looking for high performers, they'd create an environment where high performers can really flourish. Because in my observation there exist quite a lot of high performers who are "held down" by their current work environment, this would attract quite some potential high performers, including undervalued ones.

barbariangrunge 2y ago

Job performance doesn’t really matter in tech. It’s all about interview skills and leetcode