3 ms·

Agree, as a manager of 15 people, there's 1 or 2 superstars I would say pay them almost whatever they want - if they demanded it (which they don't). They're wo

by dpweb 11y ago

Agree, as a manager of 15 people, there's 1 or 2 superstars I would say pay them almost whatever they want - if they demanded it (which they don't). They're worth it. Only true for the highest performers however.

vosper 11y ago
Are you also empowered to make that decision yourself?
throwaway151 11y ago
Throwaway cause I'm a lurker and don't really care. Just sharing a contrarian experience... As a manager of 7, formerly 10, those 'non-superstars' can easily go find a job elsewhere as well. Remember, these are engineers. "Superstars" or not, they're not stupid. The demand is there. When management balked at requests to bump pay (not even that much, and only to bring it in line for the region) for people they didn't think were 'rockstars', they walked off to better offers (I don't have authority here to bump pay without approvals). It's created a bit of a headache. Not only do we have to find replacements, which is time consuming, folks are concerned they may not be considered a superstar (it hasn't been stated so succinctly, but the conversations have that vibe). And in the long run, it was decided to raise pay across the board to reflect the increase in the area. Be fair to your employees as a whole. Assess their overall contribution to the company. Not just number of commits, LOC, or that the wrote some really cool but useless feature in no time at all (really hate when my boss beams over having folks like that here, fortunately they're not on my team).
- seiji 11y ago
  Fun related story: a few years ago, Google was hiring entire teams from Microsoft away to work on Google-only projects. After noticing the ongoing pattern, Microsoft just doubled the salaries of entire teams over night. 90k -> 180k. 110k -> 220k. That stopped the Google drain for a while.
brianobush 11y ago
I find superstars harder to manage than regular engineers. Yes, they are amazing but sometimes, enjoy going their own direction which can be hard to manage and sculpt into the group motion going forward.
- harryh 11y ago
  Rands has a great blog post on this. Learning how to manage superstars well is a very valuable skill! http://randsinrepose.com/archives/free-electron/ http://randsinrepose.com/archives/free-electron/
kmonsen 11y ago
I would take 5 pretty good hard working developers that really want to ship a good project instead of 1-2 superstars any day. There are exceptions, for some projects your really need a superstar. Designing new APIs to be used by millions is one example. But for 90% of the projects we work on superstars are not needed.

by dpweb 11y ago

vosper 11y ago

Are you also empowered to make that decision yourself?

throwaway151 11y ago

Throwaway cause I'm a lurker and don't really care. Just sharing a contrarian experience... As a manager of 7, formerly 10, those 'non-superstars' can easily go find a job elsewhere as well. Remember, these are engineers. "Superstars" or not, they're not stupid. The demand is there. When management balked at requests to bump pay (not even that much, and only to bring it in line for the region) for people they didn't think were 'rockstars', they walked off to better offers (I don't have authority here to bump pay without approvals). It's created a bit of a headache. Not only do we have to find replacements, which is time consuming, folks are concerned they may not be considered a superstar (it hasn't been stated so succinctly, but the conversations have that vibe). And in the long run, it was decided to raise pay across the board to reflect the increase in the area. Be fair to your employees as a whole. Assess their overall contribution to the company. Not just number of commits, LOC, or that the wrote some really cool but useless feature in no time at all (really hate when my boss beams over having folks like that here, fortunately they're not on my team).

seiji 11y ago
Fun related story: a few years ago, Google was hiring entire teams from Microsoft away to work on Google-only projects. After noticing the ongoing pattern, Microsoft just doubled the salaries of entire teams over night. 90k -> 180k. 110k -> 220k. That stopped the Google drain for a while.

brianobush 11y ago

I find superstars harder to manage than regular engineers. Yes, they are amazing but sometimes, enjoy going their own direction which can be hard to manage and sculpt into the group motion going forward.

harryh 11y ago
Rands has a great blog post on this. Learning how to manage superstars well is a very valuable skill! http://randsinrepose.com/archives/free-electron/ http://randsinrepose.com/archives/free-electron/

kmonsen 11y ago

I would take 5 pretty good hard working developers that really want to ship a good project instead of 1-2 superstars any day. There are exceptions, for some projects your really need a superstar. Designing new APIs to be used by millions is one example. But for 90% of the projects we work on superstars are not needed.