Job switchers are earning a lot more than those who stay
wsj.com
wsj.com
Because companies have imperfect reading on worker productivity, and are also trying to balance other priorities when determining pay, high output workers are consistently underpaid, called Wage Compression (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_compression)
After getting a 2% raise in the last cycle, and knowing that my granted options were going to be worthless (a factor which is under-discussed in popular news articles), I decided that it was a particularly opportune time to jump. Like many, I was not particularly unhappy, so I had not been motivated to go through the effort for search process before.
When I got an offer, my employer quickly matched it (suggesting that I really was worth that much to them) but burning a bridge with the contact you got me the new job was not worth simply reaching parity in my current one, so they lost me. If they had preemptively gotten a few percentage points closer before I sunk effort into interviewing, I probably would not have started looking.
I don’t know, I don’t necessarily think my employer is perfect, but they’re certainly good to me.
Can't underestimate job security in the evaluation of salary.
This is "common knowledge" but I've never seen it in real life before.
I've accepted counter offers, as has my wife and quite a few former colleagues. And none of these people were ever let go from that position.
The logic doesn't even makes sense. In large companies, the hiring manager doesn't care about salaries beyond if it fits in the budget. And firing people is a huge pain in the ass. If the company wanted to replace a person with someone cheaper, letting them go would be the best strategy. That would give the company two weeks to get documentation of the job function in place and start interviewing.
I can see this kind of vindictive behavior a very small company, where decisions are made on the whims of a mercurial owner. But you're equally as likely to get fired from a place like this for any number of mundane offenses which the owner finds insulting.
I was told by a manager that HR has a difficult time figuring out salary levels for tech skills. And that an in-hand offer is very effective at convincing them, and upper management to approve a larger than normal pay increase. Worst case, they might just tell me to take it.
They'll fire you on the spot when finally you heal though.
“Neoclassical” economists might say you made an irrational choice.
Human beings know that how you feel is as important as how much you’re getting.
A person in my life changed jobs to a worse location and then changed back. Pay rise of like 20% and a better position (senior doctor). That is just not justifiable. Same employer, same hospital, same ward.
It's fair to argue whether it is moral to pay people less than what you think they are worth to you. That is questioning the morality of capitalism.
In contrast, "fighting fire with fire" is justifying lying. Maybe the ends justify the means in specific cases, but I believe that generally people and particularly ethicists agree that lying for personal gain is generally considered immoral/unethical. Of course, there are cases where lying is considered justified and the moral thing to do e.g. saying no if a Nazi asks you if you're hiding Jews in your attic. But in that case, you're lying not so much for personal gain but to help others.
For example, your manager would like to give you a raise, but company policy or unwritten "this is how it works" rules say that a raise of more than 15% can only be given when the employee has received an offer from another company. But they don't actually want to see the offer, they just want you to say it, just as your partner wants you to say "I love you" to him or her from time to time to continue receiving the benefits you have been looking forward to maintaining or increasing.
Withholding the truth is also lying, by omission. In that sense, your employer is already lying to you by not compensating you according to your actual value. I realize it’s a bit of a stretch but there’s something there.
Lying to get a financial gain is the definition of fraud.
That said, it's one of those technically illegal things that no one in a million years is going to get charged for.
However, I wonder if it actually is fraud. Intent matters. The intention isn’t to defraud the employer, but rather to short-circuit the whole process of job skipping for a correct wage. So it’s actually not an unfair gain, and that is precisely why I think it’s not even immoral in this case.
I usually only dress formally when I’m presenting outside of my company and people usually joke about my having interviewed somewhere else that day.
I have a very cynical view about this sort of behavior. I feel that managers do this to make the employee lose the offer at hand and then are put on the "first to be fired" list.
Once a decision has been made to move and you inform your employer that you are leaving, it is best to leave. Even if the counter offer is higher than the new offer. It just shows how dis-honest your manager is.
I have been both an IC and a manager, and when I was an IC I saw managers as vampires who fed on the blood of ICs. When I was a manager, I saw ICs as a bunch of whiny, entitled cogs. I am exaggerating for illustrative purposes.
Perhaps the manager had not been informed before of the IC's financial demands; perhaps the manager could not offer a raise before the employee had received an outside offer because of company policies; perhaps the manager did not see the IC as particularly capable, but this offer from a solid company made them think they had made a mistake; or perhaps they thought it was a bluff, and now they are paying for the all-in.
It is good to be cynical and to have one's own self-interest in mind. But the caricature that sees management as incompetent, corrupt or vindictive is all too easy to present to an audience that is well receptive to these appeals. I have met many like those, sure, but I have also met many ICs for whom I could use the same adjectives.
People too often blame the former for constraints from the latter.
I am happy and content where I am at, the job has good work life balance, it is for a good cause, and I make enough to provide comfortably for me and my family, this employer is also very stable so I don't have to worry about economic uncertainty.
All in all I could make more money but I have found a level of contment and peace and it has allowed me to persue other hobbies outside of tech and serve in my local community.
So maybe I am stupid and leaving money on the table, but I have found peace for now. For those who feel they need to make more I tell them congratulations that is awesome for you. But for now I am happy.
But it's true for all anecdotal evidence and circumstances i can see. It just boggles the mind why such simple inefficiencies don't get fixed up.
And why wouldn't they? If you're happy with your work and your team and your boss, why gamble it away by going somewhere else? A bit more money is great, but may not be worth it if the new job sucks.
It makes no sense at all, but that’s what I experience being a somewhat new manager in a tech company.
If you play any management games with employees you'll do it too, granted that the game doesn't have any employee happiness or resign when underpaid. But yeah, game and real world situation is not the same.
In game though, usually better stats hiring are only appear mid-late game, or are expensive to hire early on that you can only get one mid-late game. Don't compare with real life though.
DEIA is also being used as the reason for a lot of this push. Instead of raising salaries to equitable levels, they want to bring people down.
But yeah, it is a waste of time trying to find sense in the management folks.
I guess a lot of people are under the impression greed is something to be ashamed of, or feel it would be confrontational or ungrateful to ask for more money?
When I managed people in a big company, it was closer to your experience. When I was one of the owners in a small startup, people had no problem asking for more. I think it's a different type of person who works in bigco vs. small startup.
In that environment, choosing to spend my manager's time discussing my pay and not these work questions, would feel to me that I'm narcissistically putting myself ahead of my team and organization.
How in the hell am I supposed to balance my needs against the companies when we're all stressed the duck out and just trying to make it work well enough that we can have a relaxing dinner with our families.
Shouldn't it be obvious I would accept a pay raise? Another classic example of management demanding one behavior and rewarding another.
Every company that approached me with raises without my asking got A LOT more of my time than those who seemed to want me to open negotiations.
In your situation (like many out there) it's a lot easier for you to get a new job with a much higher pay rate than to ask your current employer for that raise. They might be paying low on purpose, or they might just not realize the situation they've put themselves in. Either way, you're being undervalued and it's causing you stress which is not helping your productivity.
Sure, everyone would always accept a pay raise. But not everyone feels they deserve one at the moment, and the company can't know who feels that way until they're told.
You need exposure to many different environments before you can truly be good.
What about you?
One was quite exceptional.
I don't know about present availability of any of them.
I have left a company and worked there a few years later for more money. (However, I wasn't salaried, I was contract both times)
Thinking further, I also know two people who have left the company I worked for and had a change of heart - but were not able to be hired back.
That's really what's happening here, people job hopping to keep the status quo of the previous generation(s).
I would not imagine still working in the company where I started as a Junior (and only receiving a 5% raise per year). In the same time, after jumping a few times, my salary increased 7x and I found a place where I felt really happy working, too. (before starting my own business)
Exactly. This doesn't have to be one extreme or the other. I believe you can have a good job and a good wage.
That's simply not an option in most areas of the world.
I agree that a balance between the extremes is healthy, but I don't think that you're a case in point.
That is an option in 2nd-3rd world countries, even to a greater extent than in the US (because the market is global and local jobs usually don't pay well).
E.g. my compensation (I'm from an ex-USSR country) increased by a factor of 13 after two job changes (for the same amount of work).
My assumption was 40k start/80k senior/120k exceptional/160k moonshot.
As always, as a disclaimer Europe is a big place. I had Central-Northern parts in mind.
If I’d have been paid in INR over my career, a 7x multiple over that time would leave me less than 2% better off than when I started.
I’ve done 7x in Japan, and I think 4x is possible in the Netherlands (minimum wage is higher, and maximum lower).
4x is possible, but in that short of a timeframe, you're more likely moving from a Dutch company to an international one and becoming employable across the entire globe. Which given US salaries would give the ability to 5-10x anyway.
I know some countries use decimals like commas are used in the US, so maybe that's actually 25000 and 60000, which would make more sense.
In fact, it seems most of these comp growth discussions tend to fall into black-and-white thinking, when in reality there are several factors that can hugely impact comp, e.g. from retention promos and diagonal internal transfers, to company tiers (see Gergely Orosz on trimodal distribution), to international remote or full blown migration.
The thing about happiness vs job hopping risks is also a false dichotomy. You can be one of those 500k+/yr staff eng at FAANGs and do 9-5 days working on interesting problems. You could be miserable in that exact same position. The spectrum is wide and how different people feel about things varies a lot too.
After factoring in ~10x 15-20% jumps over 25 years, compounding interest and more maybe that translates to being 100% financially secure 10 years sooner. I didn't do the math but you get the idea. Basically is a temporary bad place or 2 for a year worth gaining 10 years of not having to work unless you wanted to?
There is no substitute for "I can retire at 60 instead of 70".
Of course, OP said he was making 6 figures (an insane amount of money away from my position) so perhaps they are already planning to retire at 55...
It depends, what was my life like for those 60 years vs the 70?
I'd love to be financially independent, but I don't want to spend 60yrs working on projects I hate always chasing the next promotion with only the promise of retiring early. It really depends on whether that increase comes at the expense of my work life balance or not
Of course, if you don’t find dysfunction stressful, or you don’t really enjoy working in your industry regardless, it’s worth it to max the comp. But I’m happiest with a balance of flexible work, passionate coworkers, little bureaucracy, and slightly less money than I could otherwise make.
Right, but the point is that apples to apples comparison you'll make a lot more money switching. There's no cost to work life balance or interesting projects or anything. It's 20%+ of your salary every year in exchange for dealing with interviewing and switching companies. It's a pretty fantastic deal.
Would you choose 30 bad work years over 40 good work years?
They are all valid points, unfortunately.
Let's just remember some people have really bad really underpaid 40 years of work.
Good point.
> I think the idea is to squeeze as much as you can now,...
I really, really don't think that's healthy. Be unhappy now so you can be happy later is misguided, because you need to work on being happy now to be happy later: putting it off is self-destructive. I recommend "The Power of Having Fun" by Dave Crenshaw.
I'm making a decent amount over $100k, my wife also makes good money, and yet we're way, way behind on where we're supposed to be in savings for a comfortable retirement at 67 (which is apparently 3x your annual salary at the age of 40), despite me boiling the frog in increasing how much we save for it the past few years (around 20% of my paycheck now, up from 8% a few years ago).
I, for one, plan to stay away from it as long as I possibly can. My body will retire its own self when it's done.
If you hate work for whatever reason and you want out of the system faster? Yes, stack dollars and exit. That may require sacrifice and "bad gigs" but that could enable the exit.
If you find your work engaging and rewarding? Why would you optimize to exit? (Queue the lawyers/doctors/etc that work into their 80s for the love of it.) Tech has brutal ageism but the point still stands -- figure out what you are optimizing for, and your answer will be clear.
(OP sounds like they have found the secret that money isn't everything, and happiness is rewarding and they are optimizing for that.)
To mitigate the risk of losing the ability to earn income. You can always choose not to work or work a lower paying job after you attain financial security.
I feel like the risks are especially high of losing ability to earn sufficient income between ages 50 to 65 such that you are able to afford healthcare expenses to carry you until you qualify for Medicare (at age 65). So my goal is to earn everything I need to before then.
I think part of the issue is that society in general (and tech in particular) are extremely productivity-focused which trains you to be future-biased in your thinking. Everything becomes about preparing for the next milestone rather than, as the OP advocated, optimizing for the present period of time.
No, it is predicated on the increasing probabilities of illness and injuries as one ages, as well as age discrimination resulting in more difficulty obtaining a job with sufficient pay and health insurance benefits.
I've shared this elsewhere, but it's like the story from Oliver Burkeman's book about the NYC businessman chastising a Mexican fisherman for spending too much time on the beach drinking wine with friends instead of growing his fishing business. When the fisherman asked, "And once I have all that money from growing my business, then what should I do?" and the businessman said, "Well, then you can spend your time drinking wine on the beach with your friends."
No. The goal is to be able to secure desired resources without needing a job, i.e. having enough wealth to not have to work in the event that I am unable or unwilling to work.
What am I supposed to do if my wife or I get hit with a cancer diagnosis in mid 50s?
The fisherman and NYC businessman story is missing the volatility component of life. Hence the utility of markets for futures trading, etc.
There's probably something to be said about the systemic causes that create an environment where even tech workers are so financial insecure as to foster that mindset, but that’s a digression.
If you look across different professions in different countries across different times, you see that a profession that is very lucrative in one time period often isn't anymore in a subsequent one, or in another nearby society. These things come and go. There was a time when becoming an airline pilot or factory worker were lucrative options in the USA.
There are a lot of good reasons to guess that the good times will continue for the time being, but you're kidding yourself if you think it's a certainty.
1.2^10 is also a 620% pay increase. From my starting comp this would put me at like 1.5M, which is an extremely unusual pay level.
[0] https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/how-much-incom...
My experience is it was way worth it at the start of my career, so by now I've brought my compensation "anchor" up with those bumps. Now I prioritize other things.
Stressing about would-have-beens is unfortunately easy to do, the ability to appreciate the present is much more difficult.
Maximizing happiness for me means finding the right balance between having a positive impact and making enough money. (I'm not sure I've struck the right balance, but that is my mental model.)
Let’s look at data: If the geezer is 60 and paid off their loan today, they got it 30 years ago (in 1992). The median price of single family freestanding homes in LA county in 1992 was 221k. Today it’s 860k. In 1992 the median household income was 32k and in 2020 (last available data point) it’s 76k.
I understand that “the geezers” have something to teach us with a perspective of a lifetime and the needs all humans share.
At the same time, we have to acknowledge and account for the economics having totally changed.
You clearly need to balance all of the benefits of a job - compensation is just one aspect.
If you're looking for work-life balance, it doesn't make much sense to jump ship for a 50% increase in comp if your work week goes from an easy 6 hours/4 days per week to 12 hours days and working on weekends.
The other benefit is that early in one’s career, a high salary can be a good boost of self esteem, and set one up for even higher salaries later.
If you have other goals (just money), then the trade-offs might be worth it.
There's something unique about being in a position where you could exchange that extra money for other great comforts and STILL have plenty to do alright.
With my current job I know I could go elsewhere and make $50k more, but at what cost? It really started to make me consider, how much is remote work worth to me, how much is a laid back environment worth to me. For now even though I could be making more, the value in having the control over my time like I do not is worth more than what companies have been offering.
Maybe if you do some funny math with assumed stock option prices and price in value of PTO, etc you might get a few percent…
That being said, I've "hopped" jobs earlier in my career, but more in the 2-3 year window rather than 6-8 months. I can only imagine what I'd be making if I was still at the first two places I worked. It'd probably be 2/3rds of what I'm making now at best.
I don't think it's as clear as "always stay" or "always hop". At a certain point in your career, hopping may be looked at as a liability, and staying in a position that's a bad fit or doesn't advance your career doesn't make sense. Ultimately a job and your career is more about numbers, and you've got to optimize for more than just that. Understand when you are leaving money on the table, and when you've got something worth sticking around for.
Any company that allows me to define my own WLB and pursue my passions outside of it brings me tranquility. I cannot imagine the stress is worth it. It eats at you faster than you think. Then you'll be looking for another job two years later.
Ultimately 2x pay, say from 200 to 400, makes a huge difference to me, mainly with the current house prices.
I am happy and content where I am at
...
I have found a level of contment and peace
...
I have found peace for now
...
But for now I am happy.
Joking aside, there's nothing wrong with staying with a job you like if it doesn't quite pay market, but take care not to end up getting underpaid to the point you don't have a cushion. Curious if by "several chances to switch positions" you just mean recruiters have reached out to you though, because that's not quite the same thing.
In my experience, the companies that paid least were also the most stressful, and the ones who paid most were a mixed bag.
To broadly generalize, when I was younger I think it made more sense to move up by switching companies, and I'm not sure I really valued a stable team with great coworkers as much as I should have. When you find a really good team, that's worth staying in place.
Ultimately I feel like switching jobs isn't entirely about money, but more so driven by a lack of growth and fulfillment in your role.
Like compounding comp increases?
Honestly, most software jobs, even "tough" ones with lots of domain knowledge are bullshit.
It's very easy to jump into a new job and immediately be "highly effective."
Sorry you didn't figure this out yet, but those traits can be taught. You are not a lost cause.
I agree 100% with this. If you are staying long time at a big corporation, you will eventually become an expert in the domain you are covering. Now, sure you can transfer some experiences to other companies, but mostly the domain knowledge is worthless outside of the company.
You'd be a lot more reluctant to risk switching to a higher paying job from a job you've only been at happily for a month than one you've been at happily for several years.
That doesn't mean, of course, that changing jobs is never the right move. Clearly, it often is. If there's a re-org and you're not promoted, you should probably leave--you're going to have to prove yourself to a new set of people either way, so you might as well get paid for it.
As for the comp increases, this is tricky. If you're increasing your salary but not getting promoted, you're actually putting yourself first in line for layoffs in the future, because HR people are going to see you as anomalously expensive within a band. This strategy can pay off, especially because 99% of corporates are too dumb to assess performance correctly and so often you can improve your perceived performance by becoming more expensive--but you have to be sure you're getting yourself a better position in the pecking order, or otherwise you're going to end up in a career cul-de-sac.
Also, the job-hopper stigma is real. It isn't right, but if you have three or more jobs under 18 months, people are going to assume you keep getting fired for performance or, worse yet, keep getting fired because you're disabled... neither of which they'll touch.
The last thing I want to advocate for is corporate loyalty. They aren't loyal to you, and so you should always have your eyes open and be ready to take everything that isn't nailed down (within the confines of enforceable law, of course) and jump. However, you have to be strategic. Remember that these people are a lot more skilled at screwing people like you than you are at screwing them--that's just how capitalism works.
Or maybe I've just seen people get burned by spending too much time trying to get people to like them.
Knowing this cycle well you're already effective when starting a new job. Want to start even faster keep your tools limited and multi platform, lets just say your tool set shouldn't exceed a post-it note using big letter sizes.
The rest is domain knowledge something you will pick up over the coming months or years from colleagues and be paying attention at refinements and other meetings.
This is mostly about software development jobs/gigs, if you're doing some STEM job in nuclear reactor design etc then yeah thats a completely different story.
IMHO, once you're in the new role, it's not so scary. Sure it's a risk, but life is all about calculated risks. Of course you should do your homework. Talk to people from the company, check out their Glassdoor, get some references from the potential employer, etc. My experience is that you can find good jobs and be paid well. I just make my expectations about work-life balance clear in the interviews. I won't work longer than 40 hours a week. If the expectation is more, I'm not your man. My priority is my kids, not work. Sure it has lost me some potential roles, but I've also had some great roles.
Yup. If you're decent at your current job, you'll be decent at the next job after an initial adjustment period.
The only time I'd be worried is if I thought I was bad at my job, because I feel like a new company is going to be more critical at first.
That's a gift and a curse. After working on the same things for years, not being responsible for any of the current woes can be very freeing. My MO early in my career was going into new positions and cleaning up the mess. It seems most like greenfield, but I like cleaning :)
this; I read the headline as:
"People who regularly out-grow their roles earn more than people who are sitting still."
I just went through this starting earlier this year, and it didn't go well. It was a smaller company and even though I knew all the parts of the tech stack ahead of time, there were just a ton of undocumented internal-isms and an overall culture of "just stay in your lane and iterate on JIRA tickets. None of us really understand how to build the software, can deploy the software, or can trace inputs and outputs throughout the system." Among other tedium.
I only lasted four months before moving on, but the new job is working out a lot better and pays more, too. So I agree it's not risk-free, but at the end of the day, I was getting paid the whole time and ended up somewhere better, so it worked out anyway.
I started out with a start-up, the pay was poor and any benefits or 401k were very very minimal. I put up with it because the work was "interesting". Then I got a call from a recruiter in a FAANG company, and their salary range for the exact same role, started at an 80% increase in baseline salary, with nearly the same again in RSU's and benefits. Then I went into a managerial role with a non-tech company, which was a small increase again, and more lately back into another tech company which has me getting an increase yet again.
In ten years I've probably tripled my baseline salary, and total compensation is probably 5 to 10 times what it was for a similar level of effort.
How did you do this? I think it would be hard for me to make the same outside of tech. Tech to managerial role outside of tech doesn't sound like an obvious or easy move.
Doesn’t hurt to be friendly with a few recruiters
I recently switched from tech to education by emphasizing the educational parts of my previous jobs, which were otherwise very technical.
Now, when she left us, I can assuredly say that she wouldn’t have gotten an offer to return because of pseudo-regulatory reasons and red tape, but the sheer hustle-mindedness struck me as impressive.
I’m sure she makes much more than I do now, and I clear a quarter mil doing 1099 work and have several decades of experience to sell.
In todays world and particularly in America, the game is entirely rigged for those who have money. In that regard I find it disingenuous to fault those who pursue the money therefore, being the only true security in this country.
I'd say the game's outcome for an individual is determined by whether or not that individual puts in the effort to grow an in-demand skillset (i.e. development of competency), followed by marketing their skillset.
I used to live in a tent. But during that time I began teaching myself software development skills. Now I make nearly $200k, 100% remotely.
The only reason my career worked out:
- I went to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and saw SWE as a top 20 fastest growing occupation, and as a field with a very high amount of job openings & among the highest pay rate. Yet requires no degree.
- While living in a tent in the US, and later got sick of living in a tent and drove into the developing country next door where I survived on a $5/day food budget (got malnourished, health declined a bit), I sat at a table and built my skills daily. Once I had decent skills, I marketed my skillset via open source projects, a web portfolio, and a linkedin presence
I literally just had a strategy which I knew was foolproof, and I knew the outcome was guaranteed because the data demonstrated such.
Let’s say something catastrophic happened. Doesn’t matter what exactly, the question is this: Is there ANY likelihood that you wouldn’t be able to secure a decent standard of living based on your in-hand capital? Can you see yourself in a tent ever again?
Once you have acquired a certain amount to provide for yourself, it’s easier to take risks. It’s easier to make moves. For people caught in wage traps with kids and debts, it’s not so easy.
I respect what you’ve done and I’m very proud for you. I know your future must be very bright if momentum counts for anything, because you’ve done wonderful work already. With that being said, it’s reductionist at best to say that your path is just freely replicable by anybody living in poverty. Particularly those who aren’t gifted towards computers. How’s a teacher supposed to make their way in America? Probably half of them are either living off food stamps or close to doing so. Should they give it up and just write Vue/React all day and take home their six figures?
This is far deeper an issue than can be discussed in HN comments anyhow. I hope you can see where I’m coming from.
Gosh. Lately I find it terribly difficult even to hit 1 yr mark. Companies and bosses whine about how difficult it is to find skilled people but they do whatever they can to drive them away on first chance.
If they don't care for me, I may as well get the most benefit in cash instead
It's been my experience that people leave managers; not companies. I had good managers (for the most part). One of my old managers went on to become the Chairman of the company, so I did have "friends in high places." I always enjoyed seeing the shocked faces of the local execs, when he'd insist on coming down to visit my humble little office.
I stayed for many reasons, and compensation was not one of them.
However, as time went on, the HR of our company became more and more "American" (it is a Japanese company, but I worked for a US subsidiary). By the time I left, the company was pretty much an awful place to work; mostly because the Americans ran everything. I stayed on, knowing the team was doomed, because I wanted to be there for my team.
Captain, ship, etc.
If you can't afford a relaxed housing, it matters very little that your manager is a 8 whereas the other one is a 6.
If you've got basic meets met, the other things matter far more.
Aside from compounding factors, that's really what's happening here. People are fighting decades of lackadaisical attitude slowly making what was the status quo unreachable, despite efficiency increasing tremendously and doubling the working population. For no good reason but "the economy says so".
Even software devs across the world aren't immune.
But software developers are really highly-paid, compared to a lot of vocations. I'm not sure how many of us truly appreciate that.
We get to complain about not being able to afford million-dollar Capes in Palo Alto, while teachers can't afford a trailer in East Palo Alto.
We have the rare luxury of being able to choose.
Across the globe this is starting to become false. "Highly-paid" compared to the average, yes, maybe. "Highly-paid" according to previous status quo, no, not at all. That's why I specifically mentioned software developers aren't immune, you need additional traits tacked on to make that claim (combination of e.g. working for international companies, in a well-paid tech hub, senior+, and/or others).
Many places, median income can't afford housing, sometimes not get past rent requirements, and more. Many of these places, developers start at-or-below median and need 5 years to comfortably get past it. Yes, they'll outearn teachers in an even worse spot. But if the argument then becomes "well at least they can afford the bottom of the RE ladder, whereas teachers can't afford anything", I'll retaliate and ask how much that society has failed to make almost the entire working populace go down several notches, given those teachers were able to live comfortably a few generations ago.
Sadly, I think that our exchange is at an end.
> I'll retaliate
I did not realize that I was in a fight. I simply shared my own experience, relevant to the story, then made the mistake of expressing a personal observation/opinion. It did have a bit of “personal bias,” as there are several teachers in my family and circle of friends.
I apologize, and I’m done here.
Have a great day!
I've been at my current (and only) FAANG for almost four years, climbing two rungs in the IC ladder over that span. Right now, I'm not sure how I'd begin my hops. My current comp is alright, which has meant that I'm having trouble finding alternatives that can offer substantially higher comps.
The only alternatives I've seen are:
1. Hop to a different FAANG, same level => Overall comp is roughly on par to what I'm getting right now.
2. Hop to a different FAANG, one level higher => Does this actually happen on a regular basis? How might one approach this?
3. Hop to a startup => Too much of the comp is based on stock options which are highly volatile. Particularly in this current economy, I want to go/stay somewhere with healthy cash flows.
4. Hop to a non-FAANG tech company => How do they match up in comp against FAANG? Is this worth pursuing?
That's the way to do it at the lower levels, yeah.
You apply, ideally via a referral, and at the early stages the recruiter will establish roughly how senior you currently are. They'll be keen to know your current comp, too. It's common advice not to reveal this, and I'd follow it, but that's less crucial when you're at a standardised BigCo because they'll already know what bracket you're in, as long as you're in the same geographic area.
Then you go through the rigmarole of interviewing, and if they want you, they need to offer you higher comp, usually via a higher level (or higher spine on an existing level for the companies that do it that way).
On the other hand, I’ve been bombarded by recruiters so much recently that I finally decided to take one of the interviews to see where I’m at. I barely missed an offer that would have been almost twice what I’m currently making, and I didn’t prep for their interview loop, so I think if I brushed up a bit on my coding I could probably get an offer around that range.
~2x comp for a remote position is hard to pass up, but a lot of companies that are reaching out to me have already had layoffs (maybe not necessarily technical staff yet) or lack the stability that FANG has. I wonder if I would join a new company just to get laid off. A few people from my team who left for other companies have already come back within months. And one of my interviewers just outright derided his own company to me in a long and strangely personal rant at the end of my interview.
So I don’t know. I think I could increase comp and career growth much more quickly by switching, but there’s a lot of risks, particularly for being a remote worker and trying to have a second child during what is possibly a massive economic crash. I think for now I may just stay and see if I can get permission to moonlight on a side project.
Ask them if they got a pay bump when they came back.
If you have leverage by being hard to replace with clear high $ impact and you ask your skip-level manager to make you whole, then you can negotiate a rise. For instance, I received a 45% increase this year upon an already good pay.
What does this mean?
Put in my notice, got a call from the skip-level manager expressing surprise and how I meant so much to them, they need me, and what would it take to keep me. I said I got a significant raise in my offer (and I did, was about 60%), and asked for 30% on top of that to stay, and he just said "Wow. Well I can't do that. I was was thinking more like 20%."
And if they had given me the 20% earlier, maybe I wouldn't have gone job searching in the first place to get that 60% increase. So I guess in a perverse way I should thank them for being so stingy?
I have contacts I was planning to reach out to if comp didn’t line up.
You have on your otherwise amazing CV job switch every year or two? Well we won't even meet since such a person wouldn't be a match for our bank, as for the rest of banks. And most other industries. When employer is choosing from pool of 100-500 often good candidates (since smarter half of the world strives to get here), this is more then enough to dismiss a candidate.
I get it, I've done it in the past (elsewhere) too and its true you get higher base salary. That's the end of benefits. People who are in only to start things, not to maintain/evolve or even deliver final product are largely not interesting to stable companies. its not a rocket science neither, everybody is aware of this. And its not some automated skill all people magically have, in contrary - some of the brightest folks I've met would fail exactly at this check.
And the more senior the role the worse it looks. In fact ie some department leader switching jobs every 2 years means something is very NOK.
Off to body shop consultancies, that's a perfect match from customer point of view. Use them for 6-12 months and them move on.
As for senior roles, you have your data backwards. Senior roles have higher turnover, including in Switzerland. They're paid more, but there is also much more risk associated with the roles. They're some of the first roles to go during strategic and structural shifts.
Conservative is the name of the game here, and its not specific to banking, whole society runs like that and you would struggle to find a company behaving differently, mostly just startups.
They simply prefer stability over bleeding edge, and job hoppers are anything but stability, that's obvious from a light year away to anybody with any experience. In fact it signals a person who is often not happy and instead of improving things they just move - one of the trademarks of juniors with big egos.
Also hiring on a perm position takes time and effort (and costs a lot), nobody is eager to waste so much resources again and again just to have potentially slightly more efficient employee.
I've been on the other side and agree with arguments generally, but this is generally their way here and they are doing just fine.
Where I'm from (Norway), job hopping every year or every two years, would look real bad. Software Engineering IS a bit more forgiving, but you're still going to get asked "why have you switched jobs five times, since you graduated in 2017?".
In fact, there's a real chance you wouldn't even land an interview. The employer is going to assume one or more of the following things
A) The person gets easily bored, and constantly needs fresh and stimulating work.
B) The person does not (easily) get along with people, or has problems with settling at a workplace.
C) The person is constantly being let go / can't hold a job.
D) The person is very salary/compensation focused, and will jump ship on the first chance.
Hopefully some of these things will be uncovered when contacting references - but there are lots and lots of former employers that will cover up for a bad hire, just to be polite. Or the bad hire is very good at picking people to use as a reference.
So you're kind of stuck with a candidate that's either job hopping because they want to "level up" as far as salary goes, or some other underlying reason they can't stay.
If tenure over 1-2 years is of no importance, then that's obviously not a big deal. There are businesses, ranging from startups to mega corps, that just need warm bodies to power the various projects - easy come, easy go. Be productive from day 1, and work them as much as they can.
But for highly specialized firms and positions, where you spend the first N years on training, job-hopping candidates could be completely unacceptable.
In the US, no one has ever asked me why I never make it 2 years at a job. I recently got a new job that gave me a senior title and 50% increase in salary.
Oh no, someone in a design and problem-solving role need stimulation!
I get what you're saying, but the idea that this is a negative really stings.
The first time I interviewed (and failed) with Microsoft, the final stage of the interview was with a guy who had been with Microsoft for 20+ years. He looked at my resume and grilled me about job hopping (even asking me about individual positions and why I left).
Ironically, I didn't even job hop just for salary, I did it because of layoffs or really toxic environments. However, all that job hopping was also crucial to gain different experiences I have today in different technologies, patterns, and sets of scale I would have never gotten in my original company.
While explaining this to the interviewer, he started talking about how he started in the operating systems division, then moved to security, then moved to office, now works in an Azure area. He failed to really understand that he was doing the equivalent of job hopping in order to facilitate his own technical growth, and the majority of us do not work in companies where we are able to side-load into vastly different domains without changing high level companies or losing RSUs.
I don't think this was the reason I failed the interview (I didn't interview well that time), but I do think about that.
Of course job switchers will earn more than those who stay. There is a predicament of "starting over" however. Some people can handle that well and network quickly while exceeding expectations wherever they go. Some people need to build up to that.
While I have many friends who hop jobs every 2 years, I never got a sense that they are "happy". I don't think you can put a price on happiness although its always nice to have more money.
note, I'm not in software but do it occasionally
I rejected it feeling it was too low. But my own company gave me a 20% hike in my fixed pay but reduced my bonus down by 33% roughly making my overall hike at ~5%. I had expected a 30% hike as I had worked pretty hard (my manager gave me the highest rating possible and I got an award for being a "great employee")
I don't think that's the GP comment.
I've had offers below my current pay and not switched.
Hell, I've even got 10%+ bumps and turned it down, because the h1 visa disruptions would eat up time (& complicate travel plans). Plus Hortonworks used to pay 100% of the healthcare premiums, which worked like a stealth raise YoY.
If you would only switch for a pay up, then this result is a natural result of the strategy followed by the switchers.
At best, the article is a recommendation for that strategy, if you care about money & don't know this already.
Of course there will be some that do, but when you crunch the "average change in salary" it is going to be positive.
And my friend who I recommended them that had 0 commercial xp and no solid skills received something like 10% more than I had after 3 years
I've been kinda stupid.
Now, obviously it's not just about money. Or at least, not all material benefits (or costs) of being at one employer vs another can be easily translated into a dollar value. But ultimately, loyalty should not be a factor at all
But where things get messy is that employees get emotionally attached to their coworkers and even projects and workplaces. This can be some serious baggage to deal with if it was a good place where the employee got an opportunity to grow and form relationships. It’s why folks have to overcome resignation guilt when leaving. These are totally normal feelings.
how much does that translate to in terms of pay? I guess it depends on one’s value system. As long as the employee was not exploited with low pay, it could easily be >30% if the new offer is a unique opportunity.
this is a serious problem.
I went through some of the hardest most stressful projects of my life when the COVID vaccines were coming online building systems for US state governments to manage the vaccine program and all the analytics and reporting at the same time dealing with the trauma of the pandemic personally. I handled the tech and a managing director two levels up handled the relationships. We grew so close and shared so many tears (quite literally) and high-fives that i'd follow her to the gates of hell if she asked. It would break my heart to leave her and go work for someone else.
getting emotionally attached to your job is a very real risk.
If you're lucky, you can go somewhere new where you know a couple people. And then you can bring others with you to form a group you trust. And build it over time.
There is also the potential that if the new place is paying you more than they are others on your new team (that have been there for a while), they will expect a lot more from you than what may even be practical. I've experienced both of these in the past. At this point I make well at the upper end for my job specification (although I end up wearing quite a few more hats), and although I can get a 10 - 15% bump that isn't worth as much in my current tax bracket.
The most standard analysis would tell you that this will cause whatever work they're doing to be done better.
But that's only beneficial if that's the most valuable thing for them to be doing. Having worthless work done well is not obviously better than having valuable work done poorly.
Old tribal knowledge is as important as new perspective.
Even if I'm an "employee" in my mind I'm the owner of a one-man company that sells IAM/development services. Sometimes I have to dump one customer to service another that's going to pay me more money or let me work fewer hours. Work ethic and my personal reputation matters to me, but I don't care one whit if my employer goes belly up.
I am similar, having been a contractor for about a third of my working life. And even when I was permanent I rarely lasted longer than 2 years with a company, due to mergers and redundancies and bad management.
I'm currently in a perm role, been here nearly 3 years and quite happy to stay for a bit longer. I've been to a couple of interviews in that time that headhunters put in front of me, but I'm not actively looking. I like my current place, but I'm not married to it.
Be an asset to your family.
Was this ever not the case?
You could estimate the pension as a risk free asset, paying approximately 4% a year. That would give you a comparison between what you need to save in industry vs. the government. For example of the pension is 200k a year, you would need to have saved 5 million in industry for the equivalent.
If I go into management, whether it's technical leadership or as a normal manager, then I could cap out around 176k a year.
I don't recall off the top of my head how much that translates to per month with pension.
Many usually mention that the company will be bad to you if you stay, which means a bit of a childish approach. I mean, there is a cost balance to be made from the company side, given the cost involved in hiring and training.
I am at that exact point right now, working at the biggest, very well known British tech company.
If you're comfortable with the above, go get some leverage!
a) "I'm unhappy here with my compensation and I think I deserve a promotion. I went and interviewed with <insert company name here> and they've offered me $X, as a <TITLE> and I'm going to take it."
b) "The last few times we spoke I told you that I thought I was deserving of a promotion. Since last month's meeting, I was contacted by a recruiter from <insert company name here>, and they've made me an offer for $X as a <TITLE>. I think I can keep providing value here as <TITLE> and I'd like you to help me make that happen".
As a manager, I would probably tell a) to take it, and try to promote b)
I'm too lazy to look it up and verify but IIRC the majority of employees who ask for a raise with another job offer on the table end up leaving within about 6 months even if they get the raise. So yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if doing that basically puts a red flag beside your name for management. You also probably don't want to go that route unless you are actually prepared to leave... there's no guarantee that they will agree to give you a raise. I left a company this spring after ~4 years and thought I was in a very good position to get a counter offer. I was lead for one of their most important projects and was slated to move into an architect role to oversee a major revamp and expansion of that project. When I turned in my notice I told them (truthfully) that I wasn't necessarily look to leave if they were willing to make a counter offer, but the answer unfortunately was that they couldn't go that high for my role.
Staying at a company longer can help build particular skills like leadership and working in an organization. They are less relevant at junior-mid, but become increasing important at senior+.
The thing with the two years is I still haven't found my lifelong calling, it could be in robotics but I don't have the academic background for it, so it might be something I work on, on the side until it can become its own company.
Anecdotally, I changed jobs four times in four years right after I graduated college - same reason. Got bored, looked for something new. This was the late 90's, when it was really easy to find something new. I didn't think much of it at the time, but I hit a soft limit after job change #4 - all of a sudden, after having gotten bored and looking for something new, every interviewer started saying, "you've changed jobs four times in four years... why would I want to hire you if you'll be gone in a year?" I've slowed my roll quite a bit since then and made a point of hanging in there for at least three years, usually longer.
some hiring managers are really conservative and want people with some longevity
most, however, won't care as long as the reasons for you leaving make sense
I was a phone systems expert with a previous job, mostly because I stayed at the job way longer than my coworkers. I gladly gave that up for a 60% bump in pay and not having to be oncall for 4-6 hours in the middle of the night whenever there was a network issue, which happened a couple times a month at that job. I hope I never have to deal with phone systems ever again.
Though, imagine being able to leave behind the responsibility for all the technical debt you've accrued -- must be nice :)
On the other hand, I don't want to live like nothing matters. I want to build stuff. And I want to care about technical debt and keep it manageable.
Beyond a certain point, money is just numbers on a bank account or in stock portfolio. They have minimal impact on my life.