Unless you work at a company that “gets” it (as listed below): instead of hoping or arguing for a raise that puts you and your colleagues in tech in-line with the market, just go out and interview for offers that should increase your total compensation 30-50%.
I’ve been writing about this topic for months, including publishing how much companies in 2021 did one-off adjustments as discussed on HN [1] (a list of about 50 companies, between 5-30% as one-off increases outside annual raises) and suggesting to those in charge of budgets to do one-off adjustments ASAP to retain their engineers.
Although many CTOs and VPEs read and understood the rationale, the majority could not get meaningful budget increases. The reason? Their non-technical CEO and CFO.
This very hot market is only the case for tech and the rest of the business struggles to understand why tech should be any exception at annual budgeting.
I see it as the typical story of execs assuming tech leaders are crying wolf when there is no wolf. By the time the wolf takes away most the sheep, it’s too late.
The only exceptions I’ve seen are:
1. Companies seeing attrition impossible to ignore. In May 2021 a company in the UK announced no pay raises till Apr 2022 answering an all-hands question. 25% of senior engineers left the next 3 months, and the company did an emergency 15% raise across engineering in November.
2. Companies that collect, and act on market data. This is mostly Big Tech. It’s why Amazon has been decisive in increasing base salaries, and why Meta increased RSU refreshers by ~20-25% this year. They know the market better than any salary benchmarking company does (which companies’ data is outdated).
I still get messages of engineering managers asking how they can make their leadership understand their dire situation. I tell them that unless their company is in the #2 category, the only way is to put them in #1, and suggest these engineering managers lead by example in securing much higher offers, leaving, and after enough people leave, non-technical leadership might eventually act.
instead of hoping or arguing for a raise that puts you and your colleagues in tech in-line with the market, just go out and interview for offers that should increase your total compensation 30-50%.
I'm not sure if you're suggesting interviewing and then using the offer to go to your boss and ask for a raise, or if you're suggesting actually changing job, but at a company that really doesn't understand the value of retaining staff going to your boss with an offer that's 30% more than you're on now is going to mean you end up changing job. Few companies are willing to match that sort of increase. They'll let you go and try to find a replacement.
This is the danger of using an offer to try to force your boss to give you a raise - a lot of bosses don't really understand the value you bring, so they'll say no.
That's not a particularly big loss - you still get a 30% raise by changing role, but if you really like your job you should be aware of the risk.
but if you really like your job you should be aware of the risk
I get your last line, I really do. But what I and many others have found by going through this COL raise cycle several times is that leaving for a role that offers 30%+ total comp isn't much of a risk. Think of what that offer signals. It's not just money. Does anyone really think that a company willing to make an offer like that is going to be a worse place to work at compared with your previous company in terms of non-salary perks, benefits, and quality of projects?
Sometimes, yes. Twice I’ve been offered roles that paid literally 2x my salary at that time (which was already pretty high), but did so because they knew the work was boring and they had trouble finding great engineers for it.
Sometimes, the salary gap is literally there because the work is that much less interesting, and whether it’s attractive or not depends on your values.
it could also be there because the work is for a company that some have moral objections to, like raytheon or meta. i think i remember a story on here that meta had to highball offers for similar positions when compared to their contemporaries because of how they've been torched in the media lately.
i think of it like free agency in sports -- unsuccessful teams, teams in small/undesirable markets, and teams with unliked coaching/management will have to pay a premium to attract talent. why go to detroit, a basement dweller team with a coach who is universally reviled when you can go to los angeles and be on a winning team with a respected front office for a modest pay cut?
Whenever you interview at another company you're evaluating what is your worth in the market, instead of just guessing. It's always good, even if you don't intend to take the offer.
If you show it to your boss, it means you intend to leave if he does not match it or offer some other perks. It's not forcing anything, it's negotiating.
No, that will be viewed as an ultimatum not negotiation.
If I am at the point where I am interviewing for a new position I am gone. There is no counter offer, no proposal to match, nothing like that. If they try to match I view that as an insult because before even looking for a new position I would have came to my boss several times expression displeasure with the current level of compensation, if they only respect me enough to pay me what I am worth after I threaten to leave then it is not a place I want to work at anyway
I really think it varies greatly depending on your current relationship with you leadership, the company practices and so on.
I think it may be healthier to see it as a game of sorts. Everyone knows the dance. No one really gets upsets ( and if they do, it is either for show or they just didn't see enough yet ).
My buddy from another group just left ( following a mass exodus from that team ). The company begrudgingly offered a match only to discover that the other company offered even more as a result and refused to match it again. The absolute additional match amount at that point was maybe $5k -- small amount given what they are now forced to spend on recruiting, training and so on, but they opted to not do it despite managers' protestations.
It is not a small company. They just posted near record profits. Executives just don't get the current market. Or they don't want to.
>>I think it may be healthier to see it as a game of sorts.
I am not sure why "playing games" would ever be viewed as the "healthier option"
healthier to what exactly, if you have to "play games" then it seems that would be very definition of unhealthily.
I am always up front and honest with my leadership, I dont "play games", they know exactly what my target salary is for 1, 3 and 5year pictures, what my target responsibilities are, what I will not do, etc. If they can meet them great, if not it is on me to seek out an employer that can.
in the reverse I want my leadership to direct and honest with me on what I need to do to improve, or what comprises I need to make to get my target, sometime that is some kind of educational plan, or taking on responsibilities I may not exactly want, or some other factor.
I do not want to treat my employment nor my income as "a game of sorts"
I agree with you in an abstract, but in reality I can only point to the current state of affairs.
Things are what they are. I am not going to quit just to send a message regardless of how briefly satisfying it may feel. Even 'being honest' is a carefully calculated stance ( and I have employed it as well ) that is intended to show that when you say you don't bluff, people should listen.
And it works out quite similar in the other direction: an employee retained by giving in to the ultimatum will likely pick up another offer a few months later, this time without an ultimatum or with the ultimatum rejected. And it all happens with all the engineer's peers avidly watching, inspiring them to set out for more as well.
Much better to just wish them luck at their new job, even if the replacement hire will be more expensive than giving in to the ultimatum (not excluding employees from wage market developments before they are tempted to try ultimatums might be even better)
I think this is a cynical take, and hear it a lot from management-types.
If I go through the trouble to share an offer with a willingness to stay, how exactly is that an ultimatum? Seems there is no avenue for an employee to try and stay except silently turn down offer and eat lower pay?
Go, let them know why you leave, allow them to learn that trying to pay under market can have consequences. Staying would deny them that learning experience.
> If you show it to your boss, it means you intend to leave if he does not match it or offer some other perks. It's not forcing anything, it's negotiating.
How successful is this "negotiation" typically? I've not heard great things about taking counteroffers.
> How successful is this "negotiation" typically? I've not heard great things about taking counteroffers.
Are these "not great things" first-hand accounts?
I've done it and it was great. I've had colleagues who've done it with success. And I've hand manager who recommend it when I wasn't happy with my increase.
I feel like this kind of attitude is really damaging to peoples' careers and holds back wages. I have a friend who adores their job but refuses to accept a counter offer because they are afraid of being fired.
> Are these "not great things" first-hand accounts?
Nope, second hand accounts, mostly on slacks where I don't know the people talking. This is really useful to me, and I appreciate you sharing your first (and second) hand accounts.
I've seen these discussions a million times, and this is nearly always brought up in a 2nd/3rd hand way. I'm not criticizing you. But I think this is a big hole in our collective knowledge about effective strategy. e.g., how much truth is behind the meme?
I suspect it varies a lot based on individual factors both in the eng and the manger and the company. And I think you're more likely to just not get a counter offer, than to get one and things turn sour.
In theory this makes sense, but of all the Big N engineers I know who’ve tried this, they’ve never been given an attractive enough offer that they would stay.
> They'll let you go and try to find a replacement.
This is an oft-repeated trope, but it has little basis in reality.
Engineering managers have trouble convincing their managers / HR to provide market raises, because most of them are stuck in their own little bubble where the current salaries are "market value." They buy salary information from companies who tell them what they want to hear, that the company's below market salaries are inline with the market.
Wanna prove HR wrong? The only way to do that is to walk in with an offer letter. At that point, HR will look at the reliable salary reports and determine if that's viable.
You aren't getting fired by negotiating for a market raise via offer letter. Also, good luck finding a replacement for less anyway.
This is exactly my struggle as a CTO in a non-tech company. The comp & ben budget I'm operating off of started taking shape 18+ months ago and is now "locked-in". It's not only overcoming non-technical CEO's as you're also having to convince your other non-technical peers that Tech should be the exception. The best "evidence" most CEOs and CFOs will accept is outdated aggregated market data that can't be accurately sliced for applicable skils.
I've had to knowingly let attrition happen to prove a point.
If you can't change your company, change your company I guess.
> This very hot market is only the case for tech and the rest of the business struggles to understand why tech should be any exception at annual budgeting.
This is not correct. Digital marketing skills are in super high demand over the last 18+ months and salaries have risen accordingly. I suspect this is true of other areas as well.
>>This very hot market is only the case for tech and the rest of the business struggles to understand why tech should be any exception at annual budgeting.
That is very much a regional thing, as most employment is. In my area most companies are having trouble filling less skilled position than they are filling skilled positions like IT. Granted filling skilled positions here has always been hard as there is not a huge talent pool in the first place, but I would not classify the market as any "hotter" or "colder" than a few years ago for tech workers.
However for production line workers, warehouse, and other non-skilled trades it is very hot.
As more and more companies start to Rescind their WFH rules I figure things are about to return to normal in that regard as well
This is just my anecdotal view but it’s based on a few decades in non-tech organisations, from startup to emerging-into-enterprise to enterprise (my path was enterprise -> startup -> e2e) and I think we’re a while out from non-tech organisations understanding the value of their own development resources.
Its everything from how IT is still often viewed as a “them-and-us” resource drain similar to HR but less understood (and this less valued by the organisation) even though 95% of the people in every organisation now works with IT devices that wouldn’t operate without IT. To how development continues to live in the weird spectrum of the business that actually needs something more than excel, being under digitalisation (efficiency) and IT (operations and development are natural frenemies).
It’s having to live in a 2022 where the “standard” solutions, the “document libraries” the “data-warehousing”, the “data-management-systems”, the “enterprise-architecture”, the “data/ml/bi-architecture “ is still just a bunch of really shitty systems and drawings that can’t connect together and quickly become a nightmare for anyone trying to do any real work leading back to massive excel usage and a constant need for “connection-inhouse-solutions” to make things actually work.
Leading to developers still being one of the best paid resources inside organisations with almost limitless tolerance for their non-conformity and rolling eyes in management meetings because most of us simply don’t understand the organisation lingo or the internal political power plays (yes, the bullshit).
Anyway, I’ve seen no change in change management to suggest that developers are going to be more valued going forward. If anything I think the want and belief in “standard” solutions might just birth the opposite in the coming decade, until the money managers once again realise that developers are simply necessary in a world where every “standard” solution is just as shitty as it was 20 years ago.
> Leading to developers still being one of the best paid resources inside organisations with almost limitless tolerance for their non-conformity
> tolerance for their non-conformity
> non-conformity
It's an occupational hazard: hiring-mangers really do put their jobs on the line when they decide to start employing ASD folk.
And I salute them! (seriously)
But I think the spreadsheets show it's more than worthwhile: when utilized appropriately ASD people can be absolutely massive force-multipliers for a software project. The question is: will the stuffy east-coast elite be able to withstand the blood-pressure spike of learning that their most profitable employees come to the office to work while wearing what's known colloquially as a "kigurumi" instead of a suit-and-tie?
-----
(in case you're wondering, I own dozens - and I make it a sticking point whenever Amazon recruiters call me the three times a week like they do...).
...which at this point shares a kind-of-larger spectrum with ADHD too. We've come a long way from proscribed-comorbidity in the 1990s to routine comorbid diagnosis post-DSM-V.
HR isn't getting any memo, they are threatening me with disciplinary measures because I refuse to follow their return to the office location policy.
They even proposed to cut my salary in half if I persist in preferring to stay remote to save on expenses.
I think some fast growing tech companies are causing many developers to leave their jobs for better pastures, and that's mostly because some tech companies are performing poorly hence not keeping up with decent salary increases.
Easy to get a job with a salary bump ? My recent attempts took well over 6 weeks each, with 3 to 5 interview rounds, mostly being screened by developers and managers having significant tech skills gaps, making the questioning a painful dissonance exercise.
But sure. The market is hot for developers and compensation are on the rise.
5 interview rounds sounds about normal, especially with the price tag being so high these days. Compare buying a loaf of bread to buying a house. The bread just gets plopped into your cart. The house involves visiting multiple times, inspections, lawyers, etc. because the amount of money is so high. You cost as much as a house, so the buyers are going to scrutinize a little bit.
It's also worth mentioning, you say that you won't follow rules about where you're supposed to work and you think everyone interviewing you is dumber than you. People pick up on that attitude and read it as a red flag. You're going to be doing their code reviews, you're going to be commenting on their designs; if you seem unpleasant in the interviews, they're not going to hire you.
Do be aware that this is a common symptom of burnout. If you're burned out, you're not going to be approaching the job hunt in a great state of mind, and it's going to hurt your chances. My recommendation is to heal on your current employer's time; look at new projects, taking a vacation, options for paid leave, ADA/FMLA allowances, etc.
I disagree. If there is a significant gap between you and the company, that's as much as a red flag for you than them. Maybe the OP should focus more on companies where he feels integrated (remote working, leetcode b.s., using his own tools, emails instead of slack, etc...) I'm pretty sure there is something for everyone in this big world. Keeping yourself in a job where you have all these processes is what makes you burn out. The guy is probably responding to elements that might have made him burn out in the past.
Very true. I think that two bad options for dealing with burnout are rage quitting without another job lined up and getting fired for show. They put you in a worse negotiating position and set you up to be burned out again when you're bitter about not getting paid enough.
I doubt not getting paid enough is the problem. although a contributing factor. it doesn't necessarily leads to bitterness, unless other factors come into play.
Such as the scenario of providing feedback on how certain technical choices made by (supposedly technical) managers, in contradiction with senior architects and most senior developers, are going to cost a lot to reverse down the road, then when that's precisely what happens, and being explained the company isn't in a position to increase your salary, that manager gets promoted anyway, and 3 new hires joins in to help reverse the misguided technical direction, but of course new hires have no clue how anything was put together, so end up asking the long timers some help, help that is pretty much doing 80% of work to meet deadlines, and then of course the newer hires' manager ensures the credit goes to his new reports, so that he can at least give those a rise and retain them. and also control them since they still little exposure to the entire stack.
the bitterness is usually not about the money, it's about how a few bad apples know how to play power games and ultimately ruins all the hard work of long ago gone managers who somehow made meritocracy at the core of the company. Those managers weren't very technical either, but they worked more ethically and shined at their role.
note: this isn't my own anecdotal story. it's a theme I've started seeing more and more in the last 5y or so, plaguing mid size companies the most, those that reached a level of maturity.
“I had proposed a design two years ago for this. I’m happy to share those documents and explain why, this approach should still be viable. Good luck implementing it!
I am not available for the project unfortunately.”
Not working is a perfectly valid option for dealing with burnout. Finally start that business, do some consulting, put that savings to use as a cushion instead of just a high score. Jobs will be there when you're done.
COBRA depletes the cushion very quickly. I feel like if your employer made you unhealthy, they should pay to make you healthy. That's why I recommend avoiding the rage quit plan. If you live in a country with government-provided health coverage, the equation changes a lot, however.
the UK unfortunately only seems to provide long term sickness support, which is a slim weekly allowance. they don't hesitate to take away 33% off gross salary in tax and other contributions, but no safety net.
> The house involves visiting multiple times, inspections, lawyers, etc. because the amount of money is so high.
Ironically, because the market is so hot for houses these days in the Boston area (and many others, I’m sure), there are many house sales with limited visits and waived inspections.
I never called out those interviewers dumber than me. I specifically said they were significantly less technical than I am. And you may think highly technical candidates should play along with that, that it's unreasonable to expect higher expertise from interviewers. I tried, but they come up with the questions, and drill candidates with technical questions that the interviewer can't even grasp the answers given, expecting different ones probably because mine, although more adequate, sounds nothing like what he has on his script. Am I supposed to take a guess on the answer he wants? They aren't dumb. they just don't have enough technical understanding to recognise the gap when facing very experienced coders.
If I appeared unpleasant to them, it isn't because I'm disrespectful or condescending, or even burnout. it's simply because they are red flags and being fortunate enough to be hired would probably turn out to become a curse.
I however appreciate your advice about being burned out. and that is precisely what I'm doing. I started new projects, mostly artistic, and also a bit of coding to stay up to speed with that kind of mental activity. I think doing that for a few months to heal is desirable to get ready to join a new environment. thank you.
> Easy to get a job with a salary bump ? My recent attempts took well over 6 weeks each, with 3 to 5 interview rounds, mostly being screened by developers and managers having significant tech skills gaps, making the questioning a painful dissonance exercise.
Perhaps my view is skewed but that seems like a very standard process at every large company? If they give me a raise after that without me having to negotiate, I’d definitely call that “easy”…
that's my point, it remains the standard process. and I don't think it should be that way given how ineffective that process is.
Some companies would hire who they consider the right candidate after the first or second interview. they recognise it won't be of much help to drill a candidate for 5h to 8h and make sure 5 or 6 people in the team all agree on that candidate to be a good fit, that this approach rather lead to hiring the wrong candidates. top performers may very well take another job in between since the process of 5 interviews takes obviously several weeks. Talented engineers may not even want to put down 5 to 10h scattered across 8 weeks for a job they may not even be offered due to a sudden hiring freeze or just being dislikes by that HR interviewed on the final round.
Very standard process at large companies. so what? the article relates to the great resignation. Well this standard process is a contributing to the great resignation in tech. I'm temporarily resigning. until I need to earn a living again. in other words I don't want the job, even at 200k/year job given what they generally expect us to go through prior to getting hired and then on the job.
All the companies at the high end of the pay scale will do this to you. Usually it’s not the interviews themselves that take 8 weeks anyways, it’s scheduling them to be on the same day and then dealing with a bunch of administrative tasks.
they are out of touch with the industry, and also out of touch with the organisation itself. they are at the same time getting worried seeing alarming attrition figures. they are wondering how to improve retention.
> HR isn't getting any memo, they are threatening me with disciplinary measures because I refuse to follow their return to the office location policy. They even proposed to cut my salary in half if I persist in preferring to stay remote to save on expenses.
That's the effective way to negotiate working conditions. If they showed up to the office then their managers would never approve anything. Best to look for another offer in case you get fired, though.
Unfortunately for me, I've had a WFH gig since 2018, so Covid hasn't affected me all that much.
But I do feel like I'm missing out on power-trip fantasies of getting to say "no" to the CEO's face about returning to the office in a Zoom call and grinning while knowing they have zero leverage because I'm the only domain-expert in an incredibly niche field at the company and they'd be unable to replace me - and if they did, I'd be able to walk-in to a higher paying job within a few months besides.
Has anyone on the Internet recorded and shared their "negotiation" Zoom calls? Genuinely curious - not least for the entertainment factor...
I’d recommend asking for it politely, and if they don’t give it to you find another job that will let you work from home (a lot will be flexible during negotiation even if they generally say they prefer in-person roles) and then just come back saying (politely, of course) you are planning on leaving because you want remote work.
an under appreciated consequence of remote working is the radical reduction of switching costs to a new job.
In the on-premise world, this would require all sorts of calculations outside the immediate considerations of the job itself - the commute, the parking, the new office amenities vs old office amenities, the degree with which you 'click' with colleagues - all of this is reduced or eliminated in the world of remote work. You will be sitting at the same (home) desk, at the same set up, probably using the same tech environment.
For European contractors there is currently so much demand from US companies. And they have no problem paying very high rates for the region, it’s such a different dynamic than dealing with European clients.
The last 2 contracts I negotiated with US clients went like this:
- “My rate is X, good for you?”
- “Let’s make it X +20%. What do you think? We want to be sure you’re available and keep work capacity for us.”
Which makes me realize I still have plenty of room to push the number even higher.
I sometime shift my day a bit to adjust to their time zone, mostly for long calls with people west coast (8h of time difference). It hasn’t been an issue so far, we have enough overlap and async communication works well for software development.
What kind of platform/recruiter do you use for acquiring US clients? I have mostly relied on local meetups etc, but for obvious reasons they don't attract a lot of US attendance.
So, almost all my US contacts come from HN one way or another. Over the years I contacted people here after they mentioned they may need some help for a project (only when I feel we could be a good match), with great success.
People here have fantastic connections and will share your contact around if they had a good experience working with you, or tell you when their friends are looking for some help.
Lot of new companies are looking for help to get started with their project and HN is one of the place where they advertise/create awareness, that makes it a great environment to get in contact with potential clients.
But don’t spam people, only contact when you feel you have a genuine interest for what they do.
very much. I have always worked in open source, so the joke has always been 'change of badge / laptop, but business as usual'. This is playing out widely now. Onboarding of a new worker now involves mailing a laptop and some swag to their house, getting them on a vpn, so they can be up and running in just a few days.
Why a, say, Portuguese pro, would go and work in some american meat grinder? He's also able to choose.
Here in Spain I know a handful of devs working remotely for american companies. It's true none of them get +100k but they are about 70-80k and say it's pretty pleasant experience, so I guess they also have the typical EU holidays package + some other niceties.
So I guess that while they're cheaper for those american companies, it's not everything about cost, otherwise they could go somewhere else and pay 20k. It has to be, because AFAIK for american companies the attitude towards work here in europe is prety alien.
Every time an american company has tried to set up in Europe and manage their operations as in america it has failed.
This is a completely different situation than what I and tons of other EU devs working with US companies are. We're not in siloed team with only communication happening between layers of managers highly above people doing actual work.
We're just embedded into normal US teams and communicate directly with American engineers, managers etc. Everyone works remote. Only difference is that I work 11-19 and turn off Slack at 21.
If were an american company, why would I pay for such setup? Provided I have the resources to screen it.
That scenario is a time bomb, and if the americans are the ones putting the money in the table they'll get bitten by it.
Anyway, nowadays with services like remote.com or similar ones, you can hire and manage your own talent without the outsourcing company overhead (not affiliated with then).
It is easier to manage, instead of a swarm of remote devs.
There are even companies that hire externals based on ticket budgets, e.g. "we have budget this quarter for 10 tickets, hire externals to handle them".
The world of companies whose main selling product isn't software is quite interesting in this regard. Anything related to computing is a cost center that has to be minimised.
Depending on the European country, 40h week are 40h, want more pay extra hours, or extra vacation days.
We have between 20 and 30 vacation days depending on the country, plus national holidays that can be used to extend it even further on lucky years.
On some European countries unions actually matter, they affect the whole building across a specific industry domain, regardless if the devs think they should belong to one or not.
From what I know, 60h work weeks are quite common, you only get 10 vacation days on the first set of years then it gets incremental, health insurance is tied to employer, you can be fired at any moment, people usually despise unions, you need to take care of own retirement assuming the pension fund isn't blown away is some stock exchange deal,...
> replace the position with the Wipros of the world
They'll do this and suffer. I was hired in my previous job specifically to fix a bunch of code coming out of a similar contract organization (I actually had to mostly toss it away). It might save money at first, but the result will be 10x worse at 2/3 the cost of a regular full time developer.
I have found, multiple times, that externalisation of higher level roles hurts product development.
This is less obvious in traditional entities, where they may care more about yearly checks and balances than long term consequences, but it eventually hits them still.
Not saying that there isn’t great and cheaper talent out there, but they aren’t usually fond of these big meat machines that are IT consulting companies.
yeah maybe. Definitely remote is a stepping stone to what we used to call 'off shore'. Only govt legislation will stop this, though with the decoupling we are seeing from the Russo-Ukraine war we can expect govts to do precisely this
I joined a pre-IPO unicorn 9 months ago, and am having very serious doubts about my compensation now. Given the direction the public markets are going, there is no way companies will be going IPO in the next few years. Even if the company goes public in a few years, it will take a while for the markets to climb to the exuberant levels they were at when the fair-market-value for the stock options were determined.
Now, I have to do the hard maths of if I want to stick around with my comp being stuck for years, or head to greener pastures after my 1 year vesting cliff.
If you joined a late stage private company recently, your options are completely underwater and as soon as the stock market seems to have stabilized you should jump ship, even just resign and re-interview for your existing company to get new options.
“always” – the tech market is very young, the only recessions were 2000 and 2008, and those were during the ascent phase of the Kondratieff cycle of the Internet.
Falling when it gets granted is good, as long as it goes back up before it vests, which is at least a year away. The history of share prices is that something good happens at least once a year.
Yep. Companies make offers based on dollar figures. Typically the average price of first month is what is used to determine how many shares they will grant for RSU. So now is a good time to change jobs! Assuming things ever go back to normal… you will have a lot of upside. Just pick a company that you believe in.
That’s assuming it will go back up. Big tech stock prices are only at pull back range at the moment, not a real decline. Time will tell, but my guess is that big tech that depends on ads will have a hard time keeping up with valuation.
The vesting schedule at big companies has been changing recently. They started vesting immediately - no more year cliff. This is because people hated being paid half their comp for a year on such a regular basis. (Makes it hard to pay for a $2-3m home)
Again - this is not how it works. Holy shit - why are you spreading misinformation? Just read a damn article online about how it works! It’s super common knowledge!!!
There are a few different new ways companies are working out vesting rsu/options.
There is the traditional 4 year grant on day of hire with a one year cliff and 25% vesting a year.
The second (which I describe above) is rather than granting stock that vests over four years, it’s a single year vest that vests every quarter.
In the second case you get stock over a shorter time frame but since you are getting a specific dollar amount each year but you miss out on the upside of a four year vest.
Example above:
If stock is at $10 a share and you get $100,000 over four years you get 10,000 shares over the four years. The stock doubles you have 10,000 shares worth $20 each after 4 years.
In the second case you get $25,000 a year or 2500 shares the first year. Stock doubles.
The second year you get $25k or 1250 shares. Year three.. Stock stays at $20 or 1250 shares. Year four stock at $20 or 1250 shares.
Scenario 1: 10,000 shares at $20
Scenario 2: 6125 shares at $20
You’re missing out on the upside. The four year grant is better if the stock goes up.
The yearly grant is better if the stock is going down.
Just curious - have you EVER had stock? This is NOT how it works.
Your price and share count gets set when you join the company. They offer you $X worth of shares when you join - say $100k. Price is $100/share then. They then set your grant to be 1,000 shares. That's it. That's it. You get 250 shares/yr or however your team wants to split it up. They DON'T change the amount of shares you get EVER.
You are clearly misinformed. Please stop spreading misinformation! Read an article about it ffs!
No... They're treated as part of your comp - just a part of your comp that fluctuates with stock performance. I'd read some articles about Google/FB compensation to get a better idea of how it works. Plenty of companies have been changing their comp structure to be more appealing. (getting rid of 1 year cliff, etc.)
The developer market may be hot, but I'm also seeing that they - and I - are getting more picky, especially at my current salary (which isn't high for modern standards, I think?).
I'd like a new job doing full-stack development with some Go involved, but there's very few jobs like that, or their requirements are well beyond my abilities (despite 10+ years of experience in half a dozen languages across half a dozen domains).
I have a comfortable job at the moment; it's nothing exciting, but I earn well enough and I get to work from home (and the company says they'll keep this up, at most they'll go back to two days a week at the office, but they're thinking of moving to a more comfortable / fancy co-working space instead of dedicated office space). This means I get to be picky, and I don't need to accept lowball offers (below what I earn).
I rejected an offer two years ago that was 25% above what I earn now; it was going back into consultancy and I wasn't convinced I actually had the skillsets they needed for what they were offering, their tech interview was a take-home assignment and at most an hour of reviewing it. I didn't feel like I had earned it. While I haven't had an offer like that since, it did set me a benchmark. Unfortunately, nobody's made me an offer like that since.
In my experience, the demand for Go devs far outstrips the supply - which isn't true for things like Java or Node. Also, companies that list a zillion technologies as requirements either don't mean it, or won't be able to hire a single soul - usually the former.
True, but many many Go jobs are in crypto or k8s-like nonsense. If you care about building something useful and fun then you need to easily skip >80% of jobs.
(no doubt people will comment that crypto and k8s aren't nonsense, but many people do think so: crypto has been widely discussed here already, and k8s maybe perhaps makes sense in a few scenarios, but for most it's just an overcomplicated mess; I've never seen it be employed even remotely smoothly).
Anyhow, I think I'll do something other than Go because of this.
The problem is that it's hard to hire developers of less-used languages without the experience. I'd like to try working in an Elixir shop - I've done some side projects in the language and I like it - but it would be impossible to find an Elixir job without the requisite 3 years' minimum, and switching to Elixir professionally to get that experience would essentially mean an enforced demotion back to junior again.
It's definitely possible. I applied for jobs with 3 days of Elixir experience + 30 years of dev experience. My requirement of half time was the issue, not my knowledge of Elixir, and I still got an offer from super.mx (we're hiring).
I feel Elixir is particularly easy to pick up for an experienced dev.
I'm not sure about straight-up Elixir jobs, but in my experience, some bosses are cool with writing whatever small module/dashboard/script etc. in a language of my choice, so that way you could get a few Elixir projects rolling (if there's no big resistance in the team)
Generally I would avoid building something in a non-standard language at a company unless there was a compelling technical reason to use it - someone else will need to maintain it and if you're the only Elixir person on the team that's not a very good long term strategy.
Totally agree, my team has been lumped with random projects in C# and Go for this exact reason, with no technical justification for it. It's not that either is particularly difficult to learn, but the person who originally wrote them did it for their CV's benefit.
If they offered you the job, they must have thought you had the skills? Even if it was something that you didn't quite know, you could learn on the job?
I see this a lot. I call it “negotiating against yourself.”
I’ve always been a little scared when starting a new role for this reason, but you always figure it out - or it’s a bad hire! Only one way to find out.
> I wasn't convinced I actually had the skillsets they needed for what they were offering, their tech interview was a take-home assignment and at most an hour of reviewing it. I didn't feel like I had earned it.
"Feels like" is often be influenced by complexity. It was easy, but you expected it to be hard, so it must be wrong. It could be interpreted as a red flag, or it really could have been that simple. Keep an eye out for things that feel like they should be harder. Once you feel like you grasp the disconnect, ask questions to find out if it is an actual red flag, or, if bias was clouding.
No way to know for certain without making a decision, but the thought work to finding an answer will assist with the long-term confidence of the decision.
Nothing, because at the end what matters is that I am happy. I am not a fan of pursuing the rat race of always more money. It will create a tunnel vision and, at the end, FOMO and stress.
I am also not in my 20s anymore where I would be willing to move across the Ocean for more money.
I'm myself quite tired of this money rat race. But recently i've been literally heart broken.
I work at a small company that tried to do build their own Cloud product, but wasn't very successful at promoting it. So now it outstaffing me to one big name company that was previously tried to adopt our solution but now is building they own. Which i quite dissatisfied with as i completely lack any sense of ownership working on it. So i started to look into job market.
So i found cscareerquestionsEU sub on reddit. And literally the first post i saw from a fresh graduate who got offer at Amazon(in Germany) with base more than my base and first year bonus more than mine. On top of that he got RSU. And i have 7YoE, contributed to big projects in K8s eco and gave talks at conferences. Seeing this just destroyed my whole motivation to do anything at my job.
I know Google pays new grads ridiculously high salaries, especially if they have a ML specialization. That's just a thing with huge companies, they can afford it. You said your company is small, so what is the issue?
I think it's simply that they can afford it, and if they don't, their competitors will happily steal the best talent away with higher salaries.
I don't suppose the same situation exists within Google, although I've heard freshly graduated ML hires can get up to $500k, which sounds crazy until you realize China is paying twice as much.
Taking part in the "money rat race" isn't just about the Benjamins. It is about working for a company that explicitly values your contribution. That in itself helps with motivation.
I don't experience this "hot market". TC has barely increased for the 0-5 YoE crowd, employers still trying to drag people to the office, job offers are still massive wish lists with very little information. HR and hiring practices are still progressively adopting more American practices without the benefits they bring for the employees (more compensation, practices which benefit the employee directly, etc.)
Meanwhile CoL is increasing ever more (gas + housing), doubly so in the cities these employers eagerly move to trying to poach the local happy-go-lucky graduate with pizza fridays and a starting comp so low it makes you wonder if they enjoy living like a student for another 5 years.
It is quite annoying been working now for 16 years in the industry and seeing someone straight out of uni make more than me really rubs me the wrong way.
I suck at interviewing though (nervous) and in my area of the world I'm quite well paid.
Not to pick on you specifically, but I'm not sure why people accept that they suck at interviewing. It's an extraordinarily valuable skill that can be practiced. Say you spend 50 hours this year training on how to interview better and then search for a job next year. You could easily increase your salary by 20% and realistically 50% or more by going from a bad interviewee to a decent/good one. It's the single most valuable thing you could do this year.
Translating to raw numbers a US developer could effectively get "paid" like $1,000 an hour for doing training. Over your career that snowballs into an order of magnitude more.
They are referring to the coding portion most likely. You need much, much more than 50 hours to improve although you are right it can be practiced and is surely cost effective.
While you want to do your best, the key is to remember that the world is not going to come to an end if you fail that interview. For me, becoming too results oriented (am i going to get this job mindset) vs process oriented (how do I get better at interviewing and take each interview as a practice session) helped.
Is it easy in practice? No, especially when you know you could double your comp in certain companies and you can feel your opportunity slipping away during a bad interview but the worst case is that you go back to your cushy job and your family still loves you.
I'm in my mid 20s and have been working for a small 5-person company since I started developing professionally 4 years ago. I know through my peers and offers I received that I could get at least twice as much compensation if I switch companies, and it doesn't bother me one bit.
At my current company I'm in touch with everything. From setting up servers, developing on every part of the stack, deploying and maintaining applications to working with clients on understanding their needs and business processes and then working out a solution for them. I get to argue about estimates and negotiate. I got to understand how manufacturing, sales, shipping, accounting, calculating employee payrolls and second incomes works. And as a bonus the people I work with are some of the best people I've ever met.
The amount of experience I'm getting here is definitely worth getting payed less.
I did something very similar at the start of my career. I stayed 2 years. The experience was invaluable. I got poached from the husband of one of our managers, oddly enough. The job I went to paid nearly double and still is one of the highlights, "big boys you've heard of" on my resume.
You definitely see the big picture when you're an internal part of most of it.
But not if I'm going to hate the new job. Not if the people suck. Not if the company is hopelessly mired in bureaucratic process, not if they can't do continuous improvement and continuous delivery.
I would be looking for good experience with good engineering practices.
I would be looking for "autonomy, mastery, purpose" - look it up.
I would be looking for working for a company that builds something that I think the world is better off having.
In other words, I'm fortunate enough to be at a point where I can think of things besides only "need more money". If I'm in the market for "I can do better" then simply more cash is not the only factor for "better".
My previous company had had such a stable team with no-one leaving for two and a half years. The pay was not amazing but we all got on well and the company seemed to treat us all well.
A new CEO came along and got the CTO to make a third of the team redundant. Soon after everyone left apart from 2 devs and one tester (16 in team originally ). They will struggle to offer support and introduce new features now. Its a big shame really good things were happening and then bang it all fell apart.
> stable team with no-one leaving for two and a half years
Amazing how times change. 15 years ago I left a company after 6 years and they were "really? why? we're just getting started with intresting things, honest."
Yes, I've had 8 year and 6 year tenures in my career, sprinkled with 2 year stints. The 8 and 6 year tenures were great, so I stayed. At least until we got acquired by a larger company which made it not so great, so I left.
I can't imagine the cost of a software company not being able to release quality releases because of brain drain. I can't imagine executives being so isolated from the ground that they don't realize this or don't care. US business seems so short sighted today. Perhaps that's necessary to make the quickest buck. I've noticed this trend in mostly larger corporations, so I stay away from them and usually work at smaller, fast growth companies when I can find them.
It blows my mind that the most effective way of getting a market level pay increase is to switch jobs.
That makes no sense; successful companies will figure this out and unsuccessful companies will lose their talent. For companies that aren’t in tech it’ll probably not matter, but tech companies will have to adapt or die.
> That makes no sense; successful companies will figure this out and unsuccessful companies will lose their talent
I think there's a rational argument for it. Yes they will lose some talent by not raising wages to the market rate, and maybe they will lose a lot of talent this way. But they will also keep talent cheaply that:
* finds job interviews exhausting
* hates negotiating
* has good relationships with colleagues they don't want to lose
* has a comfortable commute or WFH arrangement they don't want to change
* is proud of becoming an expert / go-to-person in some part of the business and doesn't want to lose that source of social capital
* is proud of product or service they have made a big contribution to and wants to "see it through to the end"
* is generally impresionable and does what management want without too much complaint
But the constant job hopping among engineers can come at a cost: Higher expectations of productivity from the go. Less training. and similar.
If you hire someone, knowing that they'll only stay for 1-2 years, you obviously want them to be as productive as possible for that time period. In traditional engineering firms, you'd probably spend the fist N months on training, and won't get to touch production in a long, long time.
This culture kind of reinforces the "hire fast, fire fast" mantra that tech companies love.
You've got to consider the fact that interviewing is kind of a nightmare process in tech that involves lots of ramp-up time off the clock and takes months to get through. Most people just want to do their 8 hours and then zone out - not do their 8 hours and then do 6 more hours of Leetcode and CTCI practice, despite the potential for comp increase that comes at the end.
Right now is like the 1980's electronics, make it out of the cheapest possible parts and when it fails, they'll buy a new one! And then competitors spend one cent more on resistors, and their devices last longer and people buy those. Stupid companies haven't caught on to this. The ones that do are having a great time getting quality resources
Not everyone is an ace hire and new people bring new ideas. So churn helps move the median developers out the door so the company has a chance with someone new.
I wonder how things are at Amazon with the recent base salary changes.
I imagine if most technical people don’t see a decent salary bump there will be a mass exodus, which is ironic given the increase seems to be in response to attrition.
I don't know for the US but in Europe inflation rise mostly driven by energy costs will call for a substantial adoption of wages anyhow. Inflation adjusted wages will not yet mean increased disposable income, I know.
If energy price increases are dominating your budget as a developer you should probably ask for a raise anyway or consider adjusting your energy consumption.
If anything the constant growth of real-estate pricing (now driven by low interest rates and inflation fears) should impact developers much more.
What I'm saying is that if you're upper middle class income you are probably more concerned about the cost of housing than the cost of energy/food/etc.
CPI increases started way before Russia and the energy price instability - the things energy will immediately reflect in will not be a big % of your income so increases aren't that dramatic. If my heating bill goes up 300% that's still going to be less than 2% of my household monthly income and that's during winter when we keep the heating on the entire time.
The European energy crisis is mainly one of supply - most of Europe chose to be dependent on Russia for their gas supply despite US warnings that Russia would use that to try and get away with invading neighbouring countries, and now they have there isn't enough gas available and it will take years to build and switch to new sources. (The market was already pretty tight due to a higher-than-expected surge in demand after all the lockdowns.) So quality of living and real-terms wages after inflation have to go down for most people because there isn't the energy to support their old quality of life. It's possible that developers and other Big Tech employees will manage to dodge this, but there's no guarantee of that.
> but in Europe inflation rise mostly driven by energy costs
For now, yes, if you happen own your own place. If you don't already own it, your rent or planned house purchase will go up as well from the increased demand from the 2.5 million of refugees already here and millions more on the way as the war goes on.
Whatever is left of the EU middle class who aren't real estate owners will be obliterated.
Even if your place is mortgaged - most people in the UK for e.g. are on short fixed interest rate deals, usually 2 to 5 years. If you're on a shorter term deal and your interest rate increases at the end, you're going to struggle to pay your mortgage.
My wife joined Amazon in Jan. She says that in her department (does not work in engineering), they are yet to see a change in comp and they are trying to figure out if it is real or just a PR stunt.
I think it's not really that ironic, if you consider that the mass exodus was anyways likely to happen, if Amazon had done nothing. So really the only thing that changed, is Amazon trying to make an attempt to stave off the default exodus (which was already being observed/starting); in that sense, by analogy: is pumping water on a fire ironic? The fire is a given, it's already happening, so the water is just a genuine attempt at firefighting (might work, might not).
Anecdotally, Amazon recruiters have far more slack to work with these days when recruiting. No idea how this affects compensation internally, of course.
MANAGER: Is there anything that can change your mind?
ME: It actually is.
MANAGER: It's money, isn't it?
ME: Well, yes. Inflation is 10%, I haven't got any raise.
MANAGER: How much do you want?
ME: The other company is offering me +25%, so that's the amount.
MANAGER: I will try to speak to the higher ups, but there's already an order from above not to raise wages.
ME: Please do. How much do you think it will take?
MANAGER: speak to me in one week.
Two weeks after.
ME: Hey, did you speak with the higher ups?
MANAGER: Yes, and they said we shouldn't raise your wage.
ME: Ok then, we should talk about my resignation.
MANAGER: But couldn't you still not leave? You don't have a small salary after all.
ME: The prices are crazy, next year there is a prognosed high inflation too, and I have kids to take care of. So, regretfully, I will have to say good bye.
I wasn't the only one who resigned and for three seniors who left, they only found a junior to joined them now. I don't feel sorry for the company, I feel sorry for my former colleagues who have to endure a higher workload, because business people don't care there is a smaller number of people to do the same jobs.
Something which made me want to stay where I am even more is a recent counterexample to this seemingly common response...
I went to my CTO with a similar conversation and his response was "totally understand, leave it with me" - 6 hours later he had spoken with whoever it was he needed to speak with, and my ~20% raise was formalised. I was not expecting that response and the way it was handled made me even more happy to stay.
The company I work for even improved their benefits in some ways which do not directly affect the salary spend (added unlimited paid leave) to further sweeten the deal for everyone.
At the time I assumed they wouldn't want/be able to match it so I was very regretfully ready to go.
These conversations sometimes go differently to the way you expect!
Unlimited leave is actually a dirty trick. On average people go on less holiday under such a deal, because there's no "use it or lose it" incentive to take time off. Everyone works under the anxiety of wondering how much holiday is acceptable and whether they're taking too much or not enough.
I prefer what my employer offers: 30 days paid holiday plus the ability to sell days back to the company.
It’s only a dirty trick if they don’t mean it. We actively encouraged vacations, and as founders took them ourselves, and it generally worked very well.
It's also only a dirty trick if you fall for it. I've spent my life being accused of having autism, sometimes it's good to strategically not be aware of social norms like that.
I have never had an issue taking every day I was owed, including taking month-long vacations. I have tried to be sensitive to not taking time off at "bad" times but if I was ever generally told I couldn't take my vacation time I would be interviewing.
It’s not “still just a way” to keep it off the books - that’s just a convenient side effect for the company. The overall effect was that more people took more vacation at our company, which was overall a good thing.
It's a trick to reduce the average number of PTO days taken by the employees. When companies offer use-it-or-lose-it 20 days of PTO, the average PTO usage per employee is going to be like 19 days. But when they keep the 20 day policy behind the scenes (because HR systems don't often support "unlimited"), but call it unlimited, PTO usage drops dramatically.
Plus, there are other benefits to the employer, like not having to pay out banked PTO to employees who leave.
Unless it comes with a mandatory minimum, unlimited PTO is a negative for me.
1) Having a set number of PTO days can also often come with pressure to not take them. When I worked at Morgan Stanley, you got vacation, but taking it made you look bad.
2) Plenty of HR systems support unlimited vacation; ADP and Gusto both do, at a minimum. My company used Gusto, and the acquirer used ADP; both had unlimited.
3) Mandatory minimums are a fantastic idea, and it's something we implemented as well. Agreed there.
Whether PTO usage drops dramatically when unlimited is entirely dependent on how the company treats unlimited vacation; if they encourage it, that isn't true. Also, the flexibility of being able to 'not run out of sick days' and take a longer vacation during the holidays, etc., is something that all of our employees greatly appreciated.
Point is: just like anything else, it can be done poorly, but that's not as a result of it being unlimited.
I don't even understand how that's legal. If you took 100% of your time off as leave, what recourse would they have to fire you? Presumably this only happens in regions with laws that have few legal protections for employees?
The only time this works is when the company's in early-days stages, when you'll be severely underpaid in cash and paid in equity instead, that the VCs have added a tolerance for crash-out-time to their spreadsheets.
I've never worked for a company that put "unlimited paid leave" in their job-ads, let alone the actual contract, so I'm curious how those things are spelled out.
Under at-will employment, the company can fire you for any (legal) reason, but if you bunk-off work all the time, but your contract says "unlimited paid leave", what case do they actually have? Has it been tested in court?
You can be fired for any reason, aside from a few exceptions, but since the "reason" simply never needs to be one of the exceptions, it undermines the point of the exceptions.
In New York, a compliance officer was fired for reporting compliance violations and this former employee challeneged that and lost, and lost on appeal, helping people realize that its a check-the-box job filling a seat.
So, as these will always be at state levels and will remain unresolved for all states within your lifetime, you have to make assumptions for how to achieve and maintain standing in society. Best to just assume its the same everywhere. As this extends to nearly anything regarding employment, there is no reason to elevate "using paid time off" as any higher reason you'll get fired than anything else. If you are intimidated and feel there will be a disruption in your ability to exchange time for food and shelter, then there is no assurance that US employment can offer you.
You have to try to make in-office leverage yourself, and then rely on the assumption that you have it.
I like unlimited PTO because it doesn't "accrue". I don't stay at places long enough to accrue PTO.
In the US contracts aren't very common for average employees. I assume that executives and maybe upper management have contracts, but not the peons. Most of the US also has at-will employment so they don't _need_ a reason to fire you.
Something like unmetered or untracked is probably a better term. Of course, it's not literally unlimited.
It really does need to come with a top-down culture of taking vacation which a senior former Netflix person told me was the case there. (Though I've also heard it varies by team.) It also isn't great if you want to switch around jobs a lot because you won't get any payout when you leave.
Though you do have issues with people taking vacation even in a more traditional system. In a prior job I took some month long vacations and there were some coworkers who were incredulous that "I could do that."
It's why so few companies want to invest in France and things like Activision Blizzard closing all their French offices. And of course, the radically lower salaries there.
This has absolutely nothing to do with companies wanting to invest in France - or not. Blizzard closing its Versailles HQ is also a very bad example, one, because they are in a middle of a massive crisis, and two, because the move was motivated by unnecessary greed and it will most likely cost them an arm and a leg in severance packages.
Yeah I put it just below what people in developed nations get, because the holidays and sick leave put it much closer on par (5-6 weeks)
I don’t consider france a productive environment that has struck a balance for doing business reliably, with a hostile sentiment that permeates down to seemingly everyone and so I don’t really put much stock in their particular labor advances
Why do you think that is? Is the balance of power in France tipped in favour of labour rather than capital? Or is the arrangement in France fairly typical for European countries, and it is countries like the US that are weird exceptions?
The US tends to be one of the only countries literally obsessed with worker productivity. Many other countries value worker happiness over worker productivity, generally speaking, partially because of a social safety net.
in australia it is standard for all full time permanent roles to have 20 days paid leave a year, in addition to national/state holidays (there are about 10 of these). moreover, if you have accrued a balance of leave when you quit your job, you get paid out for it.
having "unlimited leave" where you can't cash it out if you don't use it seems pretty bogus.
I have 30 days per year (plus another 12 days of public holidays). How does “unlimited paid leave” work? Can I just sign the contract and then never show up but still get paid? Or is it just a euphemism for “we expect you to never take a day off”?
Perhaps helped going to the top of the food chain? Otherwise the 3 managers betwen you and the decising makers start to wonder if they too deserve a 20% pay raise and bat harder for themselves than for you.
Imagine getting the chain of emails through 4 levels of middle management we need +25% for this little guy down here - oh and while we are handing out candy, me too.
As a manager myself I've had a couple of experiences where my reports have read others negative experiences on HN and presumed it would be true for them also.
It's very disheartening to not be even given the chance to fight for more money for my team.
Be kind to your manager. If you're seriously interviewing around at least drop hints in your 1:1s so your manager can start the ball rolling about your raise internally.
Why do you need reports to drop hints? Once they are even considering leaving for a greater salary enough that they are interviewing, they are half a step out of there already. You should be proactively fighting for your team on their behalf regardless.
A manager going to HR with "cost of living increase please" vs "I have a valued member of my team who is dropping hints theyre unhappy about pay" are very different things.
You're presuming all employees are like yourself. Not everybody is motivated by money. I have team members who are well paid, know it, and turn down large increases elsewhere due to the projects they have excite them, etc.
Like, your manager in their mid-30s might value steady employment, a good salary and good benefits, whereas their low-mid 20s report might value fast promotion, salary growth and relocation potential. So if their request to move from London to Seattle got denied, the manager might think it's not a big deal, while for the report it's a complete deal-breaker
This is it exactly. The only "hint" that a manager needs than an IT employee is thinking of leaving is that their salary isn't increasing faster than cost of living. I guarantee they know that they can leave and get a bigger raise.
If that happens multiple years in a row, it's not just possible, it's likely.
All the time 100% of the time? There has to be an upper limit somewhere. Your manager is not a mind reader. You need to tell them when you are not happy with your comp.
Of course, it's your manager's job to make sure you are more comfortable talking to this about them than you are interviewing with strangers, which honestly is not a high bar to clear.
That’s great to hear. However I’ve always had trouble trusting my manager. There’s a lot of information managers cannot legally disclose to employees. So it feels very one sided when I get well-rehearsed-seemingly-ok responses.
What is stopping my manager from doing a 20% raise today, then replacing me in 3-6 months with a lower cost person? How do you build trust or guarantee a 2-5 year timeline attached to that raise?
Bingo, I have little incentive to accept a counter offer. It requires alot of trust and if that trust existed, I wouldn't be leaving.
I thought I had trust with my manager, but when I converted from contract to FTE (required), they rejected my request for a small raise and tried to lowball me. They eventually settled on the same pay rate, so 2 years with no raise. Only to "adjust" my salary up in year 3 because 2 people quit. I'm still looking at an easy 15% increase and less stress by jumping.
At my current job (Series E+ fintech) 3 of my team of 4 are quitting over an 8% pay rise being too low. This would have been unthinkable a few years ago, but the market is going nuts.
I'm currently on a TC of £130k and I've been offered roles with a TC of £470k (this is UK remote)
This is interesting. I'm currently on £150k in the UK working for a startup (non-VC backed, just an owner with very deep pockets) and have an ownership stake vesting in 3yrs. Like you, i'm trying to weigh up the risk of staying (minimal salary raises for 3yrs) and get the equity or bail for an offer at £175k.
Is that higher TC on offer from an American firm? I didn’t realise such numbers were accessible from the UK. Even FAANGs in the UK seem to top out around £200k for mid level.
I’ve never been offered a crypto token or asset as a form of compensation, but I’d count anything liquid and with reasonable volume as cash equivalent assuming you can sell it.
Ironically I’d count crypto towards TC more than what you actually see more often which is counting ISO or private RSU as TC. Mostly since I think there is much more risk they will never be liquid. And even if they go liquid they are tough to evaluate exact dollar value unlike something being actively traded. For example many private companies got valuations before bear market that would be worth a lot less if actively traded but doubt the recruiters at those companies admit that.
Are you just bitter that someone would earn so much? Why are you being so snide and nasty to this person sharing their compensation? We all benefit from that.
> Are you just bitter that someone would earn so much?
…no?
Look, anyone who admits they’re working for fintech is fair-game for punch-upwards jokes, regardless of their total-comp. I’d be cracking jokes about their soulessness even if they said they were working for a minimum-wage job in the sector.
It’s only slightly less disgusting than admitting you work for the Trump Organisation or Scientology.
Where do you draw the line. Would you maintain such ire for someone that worked at, say, mastercard? Unarguably 'fintech', but almost everyone would agree that efficient global transaction networks provide a lot of utility..
Hey I’m UK based too. Those amounts are way higher then what I’m on, 60k. I’m curious about the type of companies paying such TC, do you have an email to chat more?
You can get above £100k fairly easily by working in finance or even just a profitable PLC in London (eg I know of Sainsburys offering that several years ago albeit for an EM role). Even if you don’t like investment banking or hedge funds, high street banks also pay well and have generous pension, annual leave etc.
Funny, it's the same for freelancer:
ME: I'm working on this project for one year, we were due to discuss about raising my fee
BOSS: yeah, but you already have a lot
ME: yes, but I'm doing more hours than I should. I like the project but I have another lined up with what I want.
BOSS: we're already paying you a lot, so, well, it's normal you do more
ME: no, it's not. You're paying me for X, not for X+Y.
BOSS: oh so you're only here for the money and want to be a civil servant?
ME: Ok, so here's the end of contract
BOSS: but...
If you're a freelancer, you should say CUSTOMER, not BOSS. Also, you decide when you raise your prices (yes, it's still a negotiation, and yes, it depends on your contract).
You decide when to raise prices, but the other party can just break the contract, much the same as with normal employment (except it's the other party raising wages and you breaking the contract in the absence of a raise).
I am astonished at how accurately this describes the situation in many other companies, with the difference being that sometimes they give you e.g. 5% raise instead of 25% and promise "future growth" also underlining how important you are to the company. You just forgot to mention that they are probably giving market level salaries to the newcomers. Such a pity.
Why do you feel like you need to justify your pay requirements?
Does your CEO need to invoke inflation to justify his multi-million pay package?
If other companies are offering you +25%, then that's your current market value. You do not have to justify or apologize for it, no more than your CEO apologizes for the far higher pay package required to hire and retain them.
If you in general want to stay, just with a higher compensation, it's good idea to help them rationalize your salary. Especially if your manager will have to argue for you with his boss.
If you simply want a raise and don't care where, indeed that will not benefit you.
I think you and NeverFade actually have different definitions of "justify"
If you can point to where you went above and beyond, which improved the company's bottom line by $X, that will never hurt you in salary negotiations. In that sense, being able to justify your raise strengthens your position.
But you don't have to defend yourself against accusations of sinful greed, or justify why you should earn 3x what teachers or nurses earn. You're talking to someone who is paid more than you, not speaking at a college anarchists' debate about fat cat bosses. You don't need any special justification in that sense.
In such case - you're right. Good CTO should know if what employee requests is within market range for his position. If so - not much point in arguing with the market - it will come to bite you sooner or later.
Personally playing the "I have kids to feed" justification just acts to remind me (coldly) that you can not afford to not be collecting a pay packet from me or someone else.
The market for me is $X, you are paying $X*0.5 - that is unsustainable
For a lot of companies, this is economically sound thinking. If someone who is considering leaving because of a low salary is already a good few steps towards the door in terms of decision making, pre-empting any such motivation from occurring can be a lot cheaper than losing employees who are fully up to speed and have a lot of internal know-how. They're not getting an adequate replacement for the same salary after all.
Any insights into why companies are allowing people to walk? I've been at both ends of the carnage which can occur when a senior member exits, replacing the knowledge that went with them can sometimes take years (and in some cases it never happens). Training replacements is expensive and has a measurable impact on a team's output.
Why is offering even a small raise so unpalatable?
That's a question that lingered through my whole career so far (about 18 years).
I've been through so many cycles of: work 1-2 years on the same domain (or product), finally achieve mastery of all its components: infrastructure, dependencies, dependents, product vision, to the point where I can give detailed and relevant assessments on the future planning of whatever I'm working with.
Whenever I get to that point my salary stagnates, I need to change teams or domain, or company, to get a decent bump (10-20%), if not I will be stuck on the forever cycle of either aiming for a promotion or getting 2-5% raises/year.
It looks so stupid from the factory floor side, when I'm finally a master of what I'm working with I get devalued. When we hire a new senior+ engineer they will get a similar or higher salary than I have. That will naturally push me to search for something else.
I simply cannot understand on an organisational level how can not giving raises but paying premiums for new hires is sustainable or even in the best interests of said organisation... I have never got a good answer from CTOs (or other C-level executives).
Having been employed at both very small and very large companies, my experience is that the former cannot compete, while the latter prioritise money over talent.
Two examples to illustrate this. Back in the 2000s, I got an offer from a larger corporation, for 25% more than what I was making at the time. Told my then manager and his counter was a 5% raise, plus a not quite moving “we are all a family here” speech. It wasn’t only me though, at least ten other engineers left in a few months, all were offered between 3% and 7% raises. The team was eventually disbanded and people were reassigned to other projects. After some years, someone told me that they simply didn’t have the budget.
In the late 2010s, while working at a large multinational, I asked for a raise. At the time, I was repeatedly told that the project I was leading was, by far, the most impactful of the whole division, so I thought I would deserve it. Manager went to HR they recommended that I shouldn’t get a raise, since I was doing “well” already, according to their salary charts. Now, my manager could have fought it harder, but the disconnection and power over budget HR and higher ups have, made it so difficult and dragged for so long, I ended up leaving.
When there's a buyer's market for talent, making the raise process difficult and slow is a negotiating tactic on the part of the corporation.
Instead of telling your employees "no" you can tell them "ask again in 6 months" because of the "budget process" or "headcount approval" or "appraisal process" or "salary bands" or "fixed pool for raises" or some other nonsense, as a soft way of refusing their request. Junior managers will be able to deliver that message sincerely, because they genuinely believe it. Maybe the company finds there's a good chance the employees stay around.
Of course, if the job market favours workers this tactic doesn't work any more. But how many companies are agile enough to respond quickly to changing employment market conditions?
I'm not justifying it, but at most companies a budget is set for a team.
Most CFOs rule with an iron fist and so any money for raises comes from general budget raises.
As a manager it's your job to wheel and deal within that constraint. Eg turn a vacant role into a less senior position to free up budget for keeping a valued team member.
people here are not talking small raises. Like what job can match a 30-50% raise in compensation? That's absurd. Do you think they can sustain that over time?
They will just pay it to someone newer. Costs are costs and they are going up. I worked with a guy 3 jobs back who is just now making a bit less then what they hired me at. He's good, but won't change jobs. He's been with the company for 20+ years. I've had 3 jobs since then and I'm close to double his salary now.
The extremely sad thing about this is that threatening to resign is the only way to get a decent raise in my experience. Nobody cares if you just phoned it in during the last period, or went above and beyond and implemented great ideas that ended up saving hundreds of man-hours.
My manager is busy arguing with senior management to ensure that he, myself, and my team receive at least a CPI adjustment this year. Preferably something more, since the job market is so competitive. I'm not getting the impression it's going well. It's a pain to change jobs but if they won't keep up with wages then I see no choice.
Personally, I'm not going to endure a higher workload just because my teammates left. The company will just have to find and train replacements or deal with slower delivery and missed deadlines. The worst they can do is fire me and that will just hurt their projects even more.
Is it that surprising? Colleague of mine rejected a 50% pay rise at another company because the commute would be too annoying. He then took it when the next company offered full remote. Another colleague of mine is struggling to pick between all the companies offering him almost double his current salary. That's the market right now.
It makes sense because leaving a job you're actually happy with is a big step to take, especially if said job may choose to match or go beyond the other job's offer.
Just leave. I've seen more than one senior engineer given a raise, then the.company extracted their knowledge and laid them off in the next downturn when it was harder to find any job.
The white hot market for developers has been going on for over a year and besides Amazon raising its salary cap, I have yet to hear of a single retention initiative, even outside of tech.
I have spoken to more former colleagues just today (well, yesterday) who did not get meaningful raises this year while the new hires got 30% more.
Yeah, it’s especially frustrating in Europe where developers are not « rich » like in the US. We sure make some decent money but we can still suffer from inflation if we don’t fight for raises. Still, new hires get 20 to 30% more than existing developers.
Sure we can easily switch jobs but it’s really tiring, especially when you are in a great place. You have to weight the money against the comfort and it’s a shame because it have an enormous impact on the whole team motivation.
"Switch jobs to increase income" seems to have been folk wisdom for as long as I can remember, yet nothing changes. Recruitment costs are enormous, so I can only surmise that the cost savings to business by underpaying staff are even more enormous.
> so I can only surmise that the cost savings to business by underpaying staff are even more enormous.
I think this is what is going on. "Switch jobs to increase income" _is_ the folk wisdom, but not enough people actually "walk the walk" for it to be worth it for companies to change their strategy. As I mentioned in replying to another comment, this way companies get to retain for very cheap talent that:
* finds job interviews exhausting
* hates negotiating
* has good relationships with colleagues they don't want to lose
* has a comfortable commute or WFH arrangement they don't want to change
* is proud of becoming an expert / go-to-person in some part of the business and doesn't want to lose that source of social capital
* is proud of product or service they have made a big contribution to and wants to "see it through to the end"
* is generally impresionable and does what management want without too much complaint
If there are systemic mistakes being made they appear almost universal. I am not opposed to the notion of this particular issue being part of the human condition, but it does seem suspiciously ubiquitous, which leads me to believe instead that it is profitable. This seems more likely.
Yup, changing job is still the best way to get a raise — rinse and repeat.
It seems "all dev can do everything, all manager can manage everything" means "we can replace any cog by any other cog since they're all the same". Yeah, well, no. I don't understand why, when they have a good fit, they don't fight for it. I even have seen some senior replace by out of school grad "because that's we can find".
It's because big companies are optimised specifically for this. The entire enterprise dev culture is built around it.
If you have to actually code, some devs are going to 10x other ones. But if you stack in as many dependencies as you can to the point where everyone is just reading documentation trying to get caught up, and the entire measure of productivity is whether you've used a library before so you come into a project with it's API pre-memorised, all devs look the same. Any dipshit can look at a few code examples and copy the basic patterns out of them.
It's literally impossible to gain any real expertise in these codebases. I've been using React since 2015. I've got more specific experience in React front-ends than basically anyone I've ever worked with. I've run into virtually every NPM library in the ecosystem at least once over that time. It doesn't matter. I've forgotten 90% of the interesting details in all of them except for a small handful that I truly believe are quality. I can write some basic code using whatever from memory, but as soon as you hit anything with any real complexity it's back to the docs and back to trawling Github issues for everything that's not in the docs. You're in the same boat as everyone else, grinding out a scrap of knowledge just to abandon it at the start of the next project when you find out that there's a new set of fad dependencies you need to learn the internals of because their abstractions leak like a sieve.
This works for big companies because they can afford the severe productivity hit with their momentum and market dominance. It's a death sentence for startups though. That's why everyone hires 20 year olds to run their startups. You might leave a ton of great experienced candidates on the table, but you dodge all their colleagues that have spent 20 years learning how to fuck everything up and get away with it because their individual contribution has always been indistinguishable in the company's revenue.
Despite all the hype, this is my and seemingly the experience of everyone else since records began. Everyone has seen the hire on 30%/40%+++ more or hire 2 people to do the job of the person who left - on 30% more because a 5% pay increase would throw out the budget or they were sure the person would never actually leave.
Companies wont pay till people are out the door; by then its too late, too little or it goes to the incoming hire.
>I have yet to hear of a single retention initiative
A large number of big tech companies have had unusual retention initiatives, including Robinhood issuing ad-hoc stock grants after a stock drop, Apple issuing $180k stock grants out of cycle and others.
Apple was considered on the lower end of FAANG-tier salaries, so the grants which were outside of the normal process are unusual.
This isn't an isolated incident. Even companies that pay mid-tier salaries ($300-350k for a senior in the Bay Area) are experiencing above normal attrition.
Attrition is a real problem right now. Hiring is fierce. If you're a senior or staff level engineer, it's a buyer's market.
Just for anyone outside of the USA reading this, 300k is actually 99th percentile for American developers, regardless of what happens at a select few Bay Area companies.
Most Fortune 500 companies do not even have a procedure to pay that much.
Maybe, but there are a lot of Bay Area companies, and almost all of them are hiring right now. Basically if you’re a good SWE in US you should have no problem getting $300k total comp. Just make sure to warm up your leetcode skills.
"No problem" in HN parlance usually means "Rare staff+ leadership role at outlier FAANG company." Are there actually non-FAANG companies paying that much to non-leveled employees, without massively broken work cultures (we all know who these places are)? Is anyone willing to name one?
Sure, it might be hard to believe people who are just like me make this much for the same type of work, but just 3 years ago I didn't believe people made as much as I do now (in a small startup).
Verizon, American Express. There's plenty. One of those listed below is even in Arizona.
As for the "leveled employees" thing, being at terminal level in any FAANG or similar company isn't exactly rocket science. Do you think these people are working on rocket trajectories all day? Nope, they're copy/pasting protobuf specifications and writing a few test suites. Just like working for Verizon or another non-FAANG.
False. Even these dubious claims do not suggest that they were comp packages that were offered at hiring (0 years with company). If you refer to these at a hiring negotiation with Verizon or AmEx they will surely pass to the next candidate who will accept 200k or whatever the real maximum is.
You claimed F500s do not ever pay that much. The fact an ancient prehistoric company like Verizon is paying garden variety senior developers $300k disputes that statement. I didn't even have to fish very far to find those examples.
>real maximum
Clearly the real maximum isn't the real maximum if $300k offers are possible. In Arizona, no less.
$180k over four years, which was the top end of the grant, is a $45k raise. It’s definitely nice to have, but not massive, especially as it was only given to certain high performers. I guess they got to go through the equivalent of two comp cycles this year.
I have seen the opposite. Managers and executives are bending over backwards to offer stock grants, spot bonuses, flexible work options and more to key employees who are at risk of leaving or simply ask to renegotiate their comp package. In my experience people who are complaining simply didn't bother to make the effort and expected huge raises to fall into their laps. And management knows that these same employees will continue to complain but not actually quit.
This has happened to me. I am pretty sure my company set up a 'who is a risk to lose' list that I am on. Had more stock / bonuses and pay rises in the past year then ever before.
Amazon seemingly contacts me and everyone I know several times a year. I have assumed to this point that they have been operating on the churn for so long that they won’t be able to replace that approach for a long time.
I predict we will not be in such great shape in 6 months. I'm really worried that current inflation and rising oil prices are going to knock the wind out of the global economy.
I'm not sure it's going to be easy to find a job soon.
As long companies keep using human resources and labor instead of investing in intellectual assets or partners the situation will never get better. People are no longer motivated by money alone, as money is just compensation, not incentive. Companies tend to be ignorant in that regard.
I’m not sure that things are sustainable. COVID was just one more stressor. Wages have been rising for software people since long before COVID, and the average tenure of engineers has been 2 years or less, for close to a decade. The entire industry is formed around it.
This (IMNSHO) has led to many, many problems, like project architectures, designed to compensate for many engineers of mixed skill levels, working on the code, instead of a smaller number, with consistent skills, shepherding the project from start to finish. This is opposed to designs for deliverable-focused Quality and market fit.
It’s nice to think about making lots of money, but I prefer writing and delivering projects that make me proud, and that I design and implement from napkin sketch to shrink-wrap. I don’t find it attractive at all, to contemplate an industry that is totally focused on keeping developers happy, because it won’t keep all developers happy; just ones that “play the game.”
>instead of a smaller number, with consistent skills, shepherding the project from start to finish. This is opposed to designs for deliverable-focused Quality and market fit.
Ultimately, if companies truly valued this, they would've done more to keep talent. Instead the majority keeps looking for the fine line between "they will quit" and "they will stay", even going so far as disregarding the basic premise of "a happy, stress-free employee produces more valuable output".
>I’m not sure that things are sustainable.
Of course things aren't sustainable. Nothing points towards most companies aiming for sustainability in the first place.
Considering Google came back on its brain teaser interview practice and several other practices, I have a hard time believing their decisions are largely empirical as opposed to short-term rational. This is even worse for "happiness" since individual happiness extends all the way to communities and back into society. Not only that, happiness is very dependent on culture, upbringing, cost of living and more.
However, even HR at small tech companies in Europe follow the basic idea of "if employees are happier, they will produce more output!". Assuming this isn't a pretty lie, we know people are generally happier not having to live paycheck to paycheck by force. We know people are generally happier not having to sit in traffic jams because of a 9-5, at the office mentality. Even modern hiring practices are based on distrust and making things more tedious for both sides of the equation, when there are solutions which would at least help the employer out. There's plenty of room for them to actually follow their own advice, and we have plenty of studies at least suggesting benefits of remote work, less hours, different work hours, etc.
If I did the math right (euro vs yen, and wikipedia has different years) Mercedes is slightly bigger than Honda. Honda sells more cars in the US, but Mercedes sells much bigger trucks (freight liner is Mercedes), and both sell around the world.
The short tenures also lead to a bias toward technologies and techniques that look good in their first 0.5--1.5 years of usage but then ages badly with increased maintenance.
NPM packages are by far the worst offender of this.
Some packages are great, but others drop maintnentece completely after a year of support. Then you have to move off of them because they are tied to old versions of react or other core packages.
> Some packages are great, but others drop maintenance completely after a year of support.
Indeed. I would consider it one of the key skills for a JavaScript developer to be able to differentiate between packages that will be maintained and those that won't. Luckily JavaScript itself is quite straightforward, so JS devs should have plenty of time for learning this stuff.
Oh, so all you need is somebody who can see into the future? Sorry mate, these guys are already busy otherwise as stock brokers.
I've tried to come to terms with TypeScript during the last two months, but I am sorry, it is still too messy and does not give me enough guarantees about my code.
What I would love is a Swift to TypeScript / JavaScript compiler.
> Oh, so all you need is somebody who can see into the future
Well yes, anticipating future developments is one of the main things a software developer does. And IMO one of the main differentiators between junior and senior developers. A library that has a history of regular maintenance is unlikely to get suddenly dropped. And a library that has a large user base will have its maintenance picked up by others if the original maintainer(s) do step down. If the library doesn't meet these criteria then you probably shouldn't be using it.}
I don't think you can realistically use Swift client-side. But Rust is an increasingly viable option (for browsers that support WASM). WASM compilation is built in to the official toolchain, and the js/ts-interop story is quite good too at this point (modulo some overhead when calling between JS and wasm).
> A library that has a history of regular maintenance is unlikely to get suddenly dropped. And a library that has a large user base will have its maintenance picked up by others if the original maintainer(s) do step down. If the library doesn't meet these criteria then you probably shouldn't be using it.}
Projects die all the time or start being very lazy with the maintenance. Not that I expect anything more, there is literally no money in them.
The criteria I like to use is "Will I be able to fork it and fix it when it goes unmaintained"?
Sounds like the criteria you outline for using a library can be learnt in a second. Why is it then a differentiator between junior and senior?
I have been thinking about Rust, but it has too much stuff like ownership I rather don't want to think about on top of the already complicated things my code does.
A compiler from Swift (or a subset of Swift) to TypeScript would make it a viable option for me. Maybe I write it myself.
It's a differentiator between junior and senior because senior people need to make "the call" on using a technology, juniors don't.
There's a couple of other heuristics for whether or not something is worth using on a project (like complexity of learning, and context within a larger stack), but suffice to say it's about looking past a specific problem and on to subsequent problems down the line.
Juniors often make the call too. Seniors make the call on major things, but there are a lot of little things juniors get to decide, and some of them become bigger over time.
Do you mean client-side as in an ios/mac app? If so then yes my bad, I meant client-side web (which I believe the OP is trying to do as other they presumably wouldn't be using JS/TS seeing as they don't seem to like it). Of course, client-side mobile apps are great in Swift. I just would't recommend compile-to-js. If you do have a good compile-to-js workflow for Swift I'd be interested in hearing about it.
I've spent the last couple years using Dart as a backend language, and even working with the Dart team on a couple improvements to core packages. It's a really nice language, supported by Google, and transpiles to JS.
Did it remind you of the bad parts of Java, or was it a more superficial resemblance? When I've used Java, what bothered me was the apparent overabstractions and complicated frameworks for simple things. I've never seen that in Dart.
I feel like Dart gets me reasonably close to the kind of elegant, intuitive code I can write in Python...but with static typing.
Dart is a fine language. But I struggle to understand why it exists in the first place, there is nothing in there that is done better in Dart than in other languages. Yes, Java has some "Enterprise" problems, but the language itself is just like Dart. Really, they could have just used Java, they probably didn't do it for legal / political reasons.
What I like about Swift is its "protocol oriented programming", which is basically pragmatic Haskell type classes. There is just so much done right in Swift, that I have a hard time going back to any language that doesn't have it:
* protocols, integrated with struct/enum/class
* dot-syntax when the context is known (like .blue instead of Color.blue)
* immutable data structures via copy-on-write, nicely integrated into the language
* best integration of optional type (like Int?) I've ever seen in a language
* (optional) named function parameters (in the beginning I was annoyed, but now I am a big fan)
* the way exceptions work
* cheap garbage collection (kinda; ARC is working like garbage collection for most of the code I write)
Ah, thanks for clarifying. I don't think Dart is quite so similar to Java that it needn't exist, but I understand what you meant better now. I haven't used Swift, and I'm not likely to, but it sounds pretty good.
How is the experience in debugging production issues with this sort of transpiling? Like how do you match a Javascript stack trace of an error back to the Dart code?
Yes, I have used Scala.js before for a project, about 6 years ago. Scala wouldn't be a bad choice, but for some reason, I prefer Swift.
I think I've just come to a point where I don't want to split my attention between formalisms for reasons that have nothing to do with the formalism, and just its ecosystem.
>* one of the key skills for a JavaScript developer … to differentiate between packages that will be maintained…*
Also, a core policy of any development company, using any languages/frameworks/etc but more so if using JS currently due to the exceptionally high churn, is monitoring dependencies for liveliness so a transition to something else when they inevitably fade can be planned in advance and not implemented in a mad rush (leading to bad decisions) when deprecation notices start to arrive or, worse, after deprecation when security issues become apparent but not fixed upstream.
It needs to be policy, with someone who is responsible (or hands out responsibility but is where the buck stops), or it won't get done reliably. It isn't an interesting task, at least not for most people.
I get why the old timers say they prefer proven technology now. When i had less then 4 years of experience every new framework was worth checking out no maater how unproven it even was.
My first job out of college was maintaining and refactoring a 10+ year old Perl CGI application. After a bit of adjusting, I found it quite rewarding to refactor overgrown messes into nice and readable OOP patterns, and more significantly, it was character-forming because it really hammered home the point that one person's quick fix will always become someone else's maintenance burden down the road. It's definitely been a positive influence for me to experience the other side of the stick early on in my career.
This has been hitting me hard lately in my late 20s. I'm realizing all of the cool "new" concepts I'm learning have been around since the 60s
It's made me rethink the supposed "skill reset" that happens in software which leads to software developers leaving for other roles more often than other engineering disciplines.
I really like working on a project for 5-8 years at a time and really building tools to make the system run smoother and reliably. It really has backfired, I'm out of touch in the latest interviewing fads and I think hiring managers wonder what's wrong with me rather than thinking I'll be a good hire.
I just stopped looking for work. I got tired of being insulted, right off the bat.
Too bad. I could have been an awesome hire, for a number of these companies; especially the smaller ones. I'm not "behind the times," at all, and would have been happy with far less compensation than most.
It was funny, these little shops were doing the same kinds of interviews as major-league FAANGs, even though their workflows and requirements (and pay) were drastically different. I guess it's a case of "Monkey see; monkey do."
A lot of companies have found success in treating engineers fungibly. If you think of the engineers as part of the computer system, this actually adds resilience in that front, traded off by resiliency of the software itself.
If you lose 10 software engineers due to the bus factor, the fact that you already are treating engineers fungibly gives you resilience on that front.
Making people fungible dehumanizes them. Personally I hate having to job hop just to get what I wanted from this industry.
The business community wants everybody and everything as replaceable and fungible as possible, to its long-term detriment. That so many see short-term "success" and call it that should be far more appalling than it seems to be.
Take Circuit City, for example, which, when it was already struggling, let go all of its senior sales people on the floor and replaced them with minimum wage. The knowledgeable salespeople was pretty much the only thing going for Circuit City at the time. Customers noticed, responded, and the business fell off a cliff
> Personally I hate having to job hop just to get what I wanted from this industry.
A couple of times I've landed at a good company, where I figured I could stay for a long time and build something resembling a traditional career. But something invariably changes - the company gets acquired by some MegaCorp, a leadership changeover, your awesome team gets disbanded and scattered, etc... c'est la vie.
Really great team, great project, great codebase, loved a lot of things about it.
Then a leadership change happened. I've got a new job, gave my notice, and hopefully will keep in touch with the people I like here. Very bittersweet time.
The story of my career. Literally EVERY good employer I've had suffered some change a year or two into my tenure that turned the place around... into a shithole.
No, it's not. Far more capitalism in many other countries operates with workforces that have been there for generations. We used to offer pensions here in the US, that is still going elsewhere and in government
Human capital has value and appreciates over the long-term
If your compensation, benefits, and perks are great, you might be happy, but if you're a functional programming expert spending all your time writing up TPS reports on a spaghetti legacy COBOL application, you may not be satisfied.
> Wages have been rising for software people since long before COVID
Inflation is "solving" this problem. No way are companies going to give across-the-board 8-10% (or more) cost of living adjustments this year. And it's a safe bet inflation will still be high next year.
as a general rule my ADHD tends to get my burned out on being at the same place, same tasks after 2-3 years, and then I decrease in productivity. So if the system was set up to retain me longer than that, I don't think I would take advantage of it anyway.
I once worked at a company that specialized in R&D. Short projects, ad-hoc teams, etc. Kept things fast, interesting and ever changing. I consider that time to be one of the best (and happiest) of my career.
But then some of our projects turned into production systems, and the place started to take on a more "traditional" software shop feel with terms like SDLC and CMMI being thrown around. Then we got bought by a bigger company - that was the last straw for me. Oh well, was nice while it lasted :(
I don't want to look for a new job but it seems like my current company is practically begging me to start a job search.
My job, which I joined last year, moved equity grant to quarterly vesting mid last year and my vesting date has been moved back 3+ months. This directly violates the terms of my offer letter which explicitly mentions vesting on 1 year anniversary of join date. The change was made after I joined and they made the change retroactive. But asking the equity team is like talking to a wall
One of the interesting things about hiring in tech is that most companies when they try to hire will say it's very hard to hire someone. On the other side of that I see that the same company will get dozen to hundreds to resumes / cvs. Speaking to these candidates I see that many seemed competent enough to do the day to day work that most companies require from a dev.
The problem it seems it that to get candidates that are willing to complete your insane process not the lack of qualified people.
I've had 21 LinkedIn messages this week, and I'm not even really looking for a job. Almost all are an increase on my current salary. But I've just switched job, so going to bide my time for the next 12 months and then see where I'm at.
You got 21 recruiter messages _with salary_?? Amazing.
I have had almost no luck getting that information from recruiters without hopping on a call. None have ever provided that information upfront.
I only managed to get that info from an Amazon recruiter after pushing the issue pretty hard. At first he bragged that Amazon had upped their bands, without mentioning any numbers. When I asked how much, he pointed to a reddit thread and levels.fyi, still not mentioning any numbers. I finally straight-up asked him to stop being coy and just name the range, after all it's law in California and I'm going to keep asking until I get an answer. It took him a couple of days to respond, then I never heard from him again.
And this is the only recruiter that has ever actually given me an answer. Ever.
If anything has been apparent, it's that many companies are okay with losing their "hit by bus" factor employees over a salary adjustment or working conditions.
I don't think HR departments realize just how much money this costs them in the long run. They are just enforcing a policy and that policy is never in the best interests of the people (including the managers).
I suppose maybe they will get the memo when teams are too small to function, people are being over-promoted for retention reasons out of desperation, and then they use that leverage to get what was wanted at the beginning; autonomy.
HR departments know this well, but they're not the decision makers here. They can advise on legal practices around hiring but ultimately management sets the direction - much like as a developer you can push back on this or that technical thing but you still have to build what management wants.
HR/payroll usually works closely with senior management. I think the big challenge is that there's not enough "in case of emergency" money or flexible work agreements to go around to those bus factor employees. Guess they'll have to learn the hard way that one person who does 3 jobs will mean the company will have to pay for the sourcing and retention of those 3 new roles.
After the war it was not just individual people that who traumatised,
but the whole of society.
Being robbed of years of life, facing death and disruption on a daily
basis has long term effects. It brings home mortality and makes one
focus on the more important things in life, like spending time with
family and looking after your health.
After WW2 we entered a period of extraordinary economic growth. Most
of "modern America" was built in this time.
But something is different about COVID, climate emergency and the
emerging Ukraine crisis. While they are all similar types of stressor
in creating societal trauma, the upshot is a withdrawal toward slower
economy, low growth and even regression in some areas. We all know the
"party is over", at least until fusion is here. It's not just an aging
population either, I hear this from 19 year old kids.
What's the solution? William James wrote a fascinating
long-essay/booklet called the "Moral equivalent of war". Some people
read it as a call for something simplistic like "National Service",
but it's actually a psychologically astute account of human (and he
claims especially male) need to feel "useful and part of something".
Technological capitalism is failing to deliver that. On the contrary
it is making us weak and dependent.
Resignation means two things.
One is quitting a job.
The other is "surrender in the face of despair"
Make of that what you will about our societal disposition in 2022.
Do we see this trend continuing through the remainder of this year? Is there any reason to expect a shift back in favour of employers in the labour market here in the near future?
In the long-term, an increase in full-remote positions and offshoring will be broadly implemented to cut costs. But that takes time to do without affecting quality and productivity.
Offshoring wages and management have traditionally militated against quality parity. Cutting costs 75% is just a set up for failure in that regard. On the other hand, cutting only 20% or 30% you will find a lot of leetcoders on other continents.
We aren't talking about top surgeons or airline pilots who need access to rare equipment, simulators, and hands-on training. We are talking about people who need to train by leetcoding on a 12 year-old laptop in a dank basement with a 3G phone hotspot
If you have even the slightest doubts about your current job, go have a look right now.
I'm not a recruiter but even I have made a number of placements lately. People literally have written to me out of the blue on LinkedIn, and when I tell them I've recently moved they ask if I have friends who are looking. I certainly do.
Particularly if you're remote, it's super easy just to schedule interviews during your day.
It's not rational at all, but I'm much more likely to be satisfied at a job if they offer some token benefit, like free smoothies, than if they offer the equivalent smoothie per day price to my salary. Anyone else?
Eh... the dev market has been hot for about a decade now. Remote work has lessened the friction of labor movement, but is this really a sea change, or just a continuation of a preexisting trend?
I’ve been writing about this topic for months, including publishing how much companies in 2021 did one-off adjustments as discussed on HN [1] (a list of about 50 companies, between 5-30% as one-off increases outside annual raises) and suggesting to those in charge of budgets to do one-off adjustments ASAP to retain their engineers.
Although many CTOs and VPEs read and understood the rationale, the majority could not get meaningful budget increases. The reason? Their non-technical CEO and CFO.
This very hot market is only the case for tech and the rest of the business struggles to understand why tech should be any exception at annual budgeting.
I see it as the typical story of execs assuming tech leaders are crying wolf when there is no wolf. By the time the wolf takes away most the sheep, it’s too late.
The only exceptions I’ve seen are:
1. Companies seeing attrition impossible to ignore. In May 2021 a company in the UK announced no pay raises till Apr 2022 answering an all-hands question. 25% of senior engineers left the next 3 months, and the company did an emergency 15% raise across engineering in November.
2. Companies that collect, and act on market data. This is mostly Big Tech. It’s why Amazon has been decisive in increasing base salaries, and why Meta increased RSU refreshers by ~20-25% this year. They know the market better than any salary benchmarking company does (which companies’ data is outdated).
I still get messages of engineering managers asking how they can make their leadership understand their dire situation. I tell them that unless their company is in the #2 category, the only way is to put them in #1, and suggest these engineering managers lead by example in securing much higher offers, leaving, and after enough people leave, non-technical leadership might eventually act.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29320889