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An engineer is certainly not a good person to make such claims. A director or an executive, yes. Regardless, what I've observed is that a lot of Googlers inter

An engineer is certainly not a good person to make such claims. A director or an executive, yes. Regardless, what I've observed is that a lot of Googlers interview around, get an offer from a company and then they use that as leverage to get pay raises at Google because promotions are extremely competitive and scarce. And it works great.

jfoutz 12y ago
Well, it's a little sketchy. It's never clear from an employer's point of view why someone is looking around. People look around for other jobs for lots of reasons. If they're not satisfied at work due to reasons other than money such as lack of autonomy or boring projects and their employer offers them more money then they'll stick around without solving the underlying issue. It's very hard for an employer to distinguish which case an employee falls under. Does this person just want more money or do they hate their job? When the time for promotions or layoffs rolls around, this kind of stuff is a factor. Maybe not on purpose, heck, maybe not at google. But for two identical candidates - except for this one trick for a raise, people are going to tend to pick the loyal one for promotion. Loyalty doesn't count for anything in the modern workforce except it does. It factors into people's decision making in spite of their best intentions, because it's part of biological wiring. It's unfortunate that poeple can't get raises without leverage. Using leverage brings all these other factors in to play.
- gaius 12y ago
  There is another bit of biological wiring that skews your analysis - proof of value. Two employees, A is loyal, B has a competing offer? Well loyalty is good but I'll wager that most managers would assume that B's competing offer means they are "better" and give B both the promotion and the raise, while A gets to go on being loyal (or in management-speak, a sucker) for another year. Same reason it is easier to get a job if you already have a job.

jfoutz 12y ago

Well, it's a little sketchy. It's never clear from an employer's point of view why someone is looking around. People look around for other jobs for lots of reasons. If they're not satisfied at work due to reasons other than money such as lack of autonomy or boring projects and their employer offers them more money then they'll stick around without solving the underlying issue. It's very hard for an employer to distinguish which case an employee falls under. Does this person just want more money or do they hate their job? When the time for promotions or layoffs rolls around, this kind of stuff is a factor. Maybe not on purpose, heck, maybe not at google. But for two identical candidates - except for this one trick for a raise, people are going to tend to pick the loyal one for promotion. Loyalty doesn't count for anything in the modern workforce except it does. It factors into people's decision making in spite of their best intentions, because it's part of biological wiring. It's unfortunate that poeple can't get raises without leverage. Using leverage brings all these other factors in to play.

gaius 12y ago
There is another bit of biological wiring that skews your analysis - proof of value. Two employees, A is loyal, B has a competing offer? Well loyalty is good but I'll wager that most managers would assume that B's competing offer means they are "better" and give B both the promotion and the raise, while A gets to go on being loyal (or in management-speak, a sucker) for another year. Same reason it is easier to get a job if you already have a job.