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> Most companies don't want to pay for retention.

But many companies, the companies with that 20% greener grass, are willing to give a complete stranger a 20% raise.

"The irony ... the irony ..."

Most decent companies have two pools of money. One for raises, and one for retention. The key here is, the manager has to really fight for it. If they believe enough in the employee to battle for the retention dollars, I've typically seen it go well.

Here's the key, a lot of managers are too afraid, confrontation averse, or short sighted to make a fight for their employee.

ime, that's driven from the ceo/whoever actually runs eng down. Some places appreciate keeping the engineers who built a system around; other places prefer to pay more to hire new people and then have them spend 6 months getting up to speed. Those costs are invisible in the budget though; they just manifest as slower output.

I had a manager who used to tell, he was surprised how timid people at managerial levels act when it comes to fighting for their people.

There are cases where there isn't even a competition for funds. All you need to do is ask for a raise and it passes through without any problems, managers just don't do it because they are too afraid of even making that very request.

Maybe most managers see themselves as Company Representatives to their staff, rather than Staff or Team Representatives to the company management.

They do not fight for their people, they get work and outcome from them to achieve the company objectives.

Most probably they are right if they consider who will give them their next career opportunity.

I remember the first time I went to my CTO to get a retention raise and, frankly, how easy it was. I think you're right in that there's a decent amount of money left on the table because the managers don't reach for it when they can.

That being said, I've always been able to get _SOME_ money for retention, but I've not always been able to get enough. If they go interview somewhere else and their current salary is $120K, it's entirely conceivable they could be getting an offer of $160 with a bonus structure that's better.

I've even encouraged employees to leave before when it sounded like they were going to get put into a position for growth that we couldn't offer. If they're already feeling stifled or short changed enough to go looking, any move you do to keep them now is just delaying the inevitable. If I let someone leave with a clear conscience, that's someone who could come back to the company even better than they left (it's happened a surprising amount of times in my career). It's also someone who can help me and/or my company in the future, whenever our paths may cross again.

I have followed managers to companies and I've had employees follow me to companies. If you just adhere to the damn golden rule things are a lot easier for everyone involved.

I think this is inertia from the housing bubble in 2008. After that, companies didn't have a retention problem with employees because everyone was terrified of not having a job for even a brief time. But since then, the economy has recovered (at least for this fairly high class) and also the ACA means that (at least for now...) you aren't as dependent on your job as you used to be. So you can afford to look around, and all the employers have the money to pay you what you are worth. They just don't remember that they have to do it to their existing employees too. They have forgotten to pay for retention, and I suspect that barring a new crisis (which I admit is more likely now) employers will start to realize again that retention is cheaper than searching for and training new employees

I am about to quit my job for every reason in the article, so perhaps you are wrong wrong wrong.

Most companies don't want to pay for retention.

I'll venture to say this: Not every project knows how to produce long term value, and not every shop is a good long term steward of value. This is a big factor in retention, in part because it's correlated with meaningful work.

this is largely my experience, usually I leave because I hear of others at my "level" that are earning more and I start to believe that the company I am at has fallen behind, then I ask for a raise, they don't give it to me and I leave for more money. rinse, repeat. I am underpaid at the moment but what's keeping me around is I get to do what I want and there is not the pressure I had elsewhere.

I agree with the underpaid argument. Remove a few developers and shut down. Remove a few managers and get three hours a day back.

I have a theory that most people in the US are overpaid. However the overpayment is a strategy by management so that they themselves can be even more overpaid. This can be afforded because the overpaid people are locked into middle class life scripts driving up cost of living (houses) so that they are still reliant on the jobs. It's potential "fuck u" money but isn't because of the attractive force of a domain and resistance to change. (ironically the same arguments some techies deride locals for for not moving some place cheaper)

There is excessive profit taking at all levels including the IC level, however market dynamics actually create greater and greater differences in wealth despite the trickle down.

If most people are "overpaid", why have wages dropped relative to productivity for decades?

I have a theory that facts don’t matter

"Strange, yet symbolically compelling."

I have a theory that most people in the US do not work in SV-like jobs.

Your theory is not based upon sound economics. If everyone was colluding in the way you describe to pay themselves more, then a situation would emerge where companies that didn't comply with this conspiracy would be significantly more profitable than those that did.

Note that, although managers may wish to throw money around because it's not theirs, shareholders view every penny spent on salaries as an expense that eats into their profits. They have an incentive to insist on lower employee salaries whenever possible, and they're typically the ones who make the rules in most firms.

Also, if situations like that could exist, you wouldn't only see them in the US.

Apparently Apple pays less than average for silicon valley: http://bgr.com/2016/01/04/steve-jobs-answer-apple-engineer-s...

Did you read that story to the end? There’s a bunch of editorializing not backed up by the actual details.

Who do you think knew more about compensation at Apple, Steve Jobs, or the random employee? Or perhaps your argument is Steve Jobs was just lying?

On the contrary, it's mainstream economics that a lot of internal corporate decisions are made for the welfare of employees/managers rather than shareholders.

Sure, that's an example of principal/agent problems. Those happen all the time and are very real.

But to claim that, there would be a vast conspiracy tobtake all of that money on a wide enough scale to make everyone in the USA overpaid is where the thing breaks down.

Not one vast conspiracy. Just many people in similar positions with similar incentives acting in similar ways.

pay is a big one, another big one is rapport with coworkers. if someone likes going to work every day talking / interacting with their fellow employees, then its a lot harder to leave

Yep exactly this, the job I had a few years ago wasn't the best pay (or work) but I stayed because the guys I worked with were awesome to chat with. Slowly, one by one they all left (for better pay/location), leaving only the lazy, soon after I left too. We often complained about the people doing bad work, but nothing much was ever done. Have yet to come across a similar workplace :(