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As an engineer on the other side of the table - I would much rather this be the case too. I would much rather join a company, devote myself to a problem, a tea

As an engineer on the other side of the table - I would much rather this be the case too. I would much rather join a company, devote myself to a problem, a team, and a product, and have the company reward me as such. Instead, engineers who are willing to jump are generally able to attain much higher compensation than those who stay put - so we're incentivized to do so, rather than investing ourselves in a company and having the company invest in us. As a result, engineers are forced to maintain two skillsets: one for interviewing, and one for actually building & shipping products.

flinty 11y ago
Great points. The idea of having to switch companies to get any meaningful raise or using it as a threat is a misalignment of incentives that over the long term leads to bad culture
iamthepieman 11y ago
I totally agree with this. I actively try to improve my job hunting skills just like I try to improve my technical skills. And except for the time I gave up government contracting to move to the middle of nowhere, I've always made much more by switching jobs than I would have by asking for a raise. That said, I've never switched jobs just because of the money. Either there was no more room for growth, the company was falling apart around me or I just wanted to take a different path in my career.
7Figures2Commas 11y ago
> Instead, engineers who are willing to jump are generally able to attain much higher compensation than those who stay put - so we're incentivized to do so, rather than investing ourselves in a company and having the company invest in us. Notwithstanding the fact there are companies that under-invest in their employees, you make it sound like engineers are being forced to try to maximize compensation. The reality is that compensation varies, and the differences can be quite pronounced in the technology industry. A startup with minimal revenue and $1 million in funding probably isn't going to be able to compete with Facebook or Google on salary and benefits. Expecting it to is like trying to get blood from a stone. There is nothing wrong with trying to maximize your compensation at the cost of everything else, but if that's your approach, you need to live with the fact that you will almost always have better opportunities somewhere else. Constantly lamenting the fact that your current employer can't pay you as much as another employer can is no way to live life. Incidentally, in my experience, a lot of people who allow their job satisfaction to be based entirely on a perception of relative compensation are never happy no matter how much they make. They constantly find ways to convince themselves that they could and should be making more.
- majormajor 11y ago
  At what point does people griping about poor compensation at startups stop being the fault of "greedy engineers" and start being the fault of investors/founders not being willing to allocate the right amount of money to labor? Software startups would still be super cheap, relative to most other things. Based on the recruiting contacts I get, there are some startups with massive amounts of cash in the bank that are still stingy on the salaries but will go on and on about equity even when they've raised several rounds at ever-higher valuations. But, fortunately, there are also others that are starting to be willing to pay more cash at earlier stages. I'm far from convinced that this is a bad thing.
  - mpdehaan2 11y ago
    Totally agree on CEO compensation and not valuing the employee - often even the founders get screwed in those deals. This is the problem. The "dream of equity" doesn't pay out so many times that people shouldn't assume it's part of compensation. I recall losing some relatively good engineers at various startups due to very small, in the end, not bank-breaking levels of compensation, we just couldn't compete with larger companies, when I really would have loved to hire them and maybe just hire less people. Meanwhile, people who work at companies like Cisco in the area are able to command about 30-40% more in salary sometimes and have better hours. If you find the right big company, your work can be quite as good as a small one, and you may have better hardware/software resources. For me, I think the answer is mid-size to large startups right now, but small ones can be good. Can be. But they can go either way really quick. I recall a similar thread somewhere about sales compensation, which gets super crazy at times, but sometimes getting an engineer who is going to work tons of hours $100k (who is going to make the product you sell or raise money for) at some companies can be really hard. It's not right. They lose big to save a dime in the most important areas and blow it elsewhere.
  - tsotha 11y ago
    What's the point of griping about compensation at startups? If you don't like the job offer, don't take it. Work at a big company instead. If you have a more remunerative job offer from a big grey company and you still take the startup job they're pricing their offer correctly. Hell, they might be offering too much.
soham 11y ago
This is so true. I happen to make a living because this dichotomy is real. I run a bootcamp to prep engineers for interview skills (http://InterviewKickstart.com http://InterviewKickstart.com). We routinely have sad moments, thinking and seeing how little correlation there is, to what technical interviewing tests for, and what is actually required to ship a product. Because I've also been on the other side, I clearly understand why it's so. There is just no good way to predict future success with what's demonstrated today. Human beings work differently in different contexts. (BTW: Aline, who blog this article is from, is awesome)

flinty 11y ago

Great points. The idea of having to switch companies to get any meaningful raise or using it as a threat is a misalignment of incentives that over the long term leads to bad culture

iamthepieman 11y ago

I totally agree with this. I actively try to improve my job hunting skills just like I try to improve my technical skills. And except for the time I gave up government contracting to move to the middle of nowhere, I've always made much more by switching jobs than I would have by asking for a raise. That said, I've never switched jobs just because of the money. Either there was no more room for growth, the company was falling apart around me or I just wanted to take a different path in my career.

7Figures2Commas 11y ago

> Instead, engineers who are willing to jump are generally able to attain much higher compensation than those who stay put - so we're incentivized to do so, rather than investing ourselves in a company and having the company invest in us. Notwithstanding the fact there are companies that under-invest in their employees, you make it sound like engineers are being forced to try to maximize compensation. The reality is that compensation varies, and the differences can be quite pronounced in the technology industry. A startup with minimal revenue and $1 million in funding probably isn't going to be able to compete with Facebook or Google on salary and benefits. Expecting it to is like trying to get blood from a stone. There is nothing wrong with trying to maximize your compensation at the cost of everything else, but if that's your approach, you need to live with the fact that you will almost always have better opportunities somewhere else. Constantly lamenting the fact that your current employer can't pay you as much as another employer can is no way to live life. Incidentally, in my experience, a lot of people who allow their job satisfaction to be based entirely on a perception of relative compensation are never happy no matter how much they make. They constantly find ways to convince themselves that they could and should be making more.

majormajor 11y ago
At what point does people griping about poor compensation at startups stop being the fault of "greedy engineers" and start being the fault of investors/founders not being willing to allocate the right amount of money to labor? Software startups would still be super cheap, relative to most other things. Based on the recruiting contacts I get, there are some startups with massive amounts of cash in the bank that are still stingy on the salaries but will go on and on about equity even when they've raised several rounds at ever-higher valuations. But, fortunately, there are also others that are starting to be willing to pay more cash at earlier stages. I'm far from convinced that this is a bad thing.
- mpdehaan2 11y ago
  Totally agree on CEO compensation and not valuing the employee - often even the founders get screwed in those deals. This is the problem. The "dream of equity" doesn't pay out so many times that people shouldn't assume it's part of compensation. I recall losing some relatively good engineers at various startups due to very small, in the end, not bank-breaking levels of compensation, we just couldn't compete with larger companies, when I really would have loved to hire them and maybe just hire less people. Meanwhile, people who work at companies like Cisco in the area are able to command about 30-40% more in salary sometimes and have better hours. If you find the right big company, your work can be quite as good as a small one, and you may have better hardware/software resources. For me, I think the answer is mid-size to large startups right now, but small ones can be good. Can be. But they can go either way really quick. I recall a similar thread somewhere about sales compensation, which gets super crazy at times, but sometimes getting an engineer who is going to work tons of hours $100k (who is going to make the product you sell or raise money for) at some companies can be really hard. It's not right. They lose big to save a dime in the most important areas and blow it elsewhere.
- tsotha 11y ago
  What's the point of griping about compensation at startups? If you don't like the job offer, don't take it. Work at a big company instead. If you have a more remunerative job offer from a big grey company and you still take the startup job they're pricing their offer correctly. Hell, they might be offering too much.

soham 11y ago

This is so true. I happen to make a living because this dichotomy is real. I run a bootcamp to prep engineers for interview skills (http://InterviewKickstart.com http://InterviewKickstart.com). We routinely have sad moments, thinking and seeing how little correlation there is, to what technical interviewing tests for, and what is actually required to ship a product. Because I've also been on the other side, I clearly understand why it's so. There is just no good way to predict future success with what's demonstrated today. Human beings work differently in different contexts. (BTW: Aline, who blog this article is from, is awesome)