67% of workers earning over $100k see themselves quitting in the next 6 months
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
A couple months later, a coworker gets a job offer elsewhere and threatens to leave, and he's immediately promoted. He happens to be the least experienced engineer, and now he's leading the team.
This sends everybody scrambling for job offers, since that's what gets rewarded. Half the engineers have left already, and with any luck, I'll be next out the door.
My theory is that in the last couple of years, the market is booming however for most people, salaries haven’t kept up with it. At Microsoft my rate of raise was lower than inflation (so in essence I was getting paid less every year). Jumping ship was a huge jump. I interviewed at a bunch of places and got an idea what the market would pay for me. I negotiated slightly above and been happy.
I think the reason why the best way to get a promotion and a raise is to get another job is because once you've been working for a company for a few years your salary and benefits are "pinned" or anchored by HR, and you're only going to be able to advance within their acceptable terms, rates, and limits. There's also a lot more negotiation overhead—you have to spend a lot of effort in making your case for a promotion. Whereas with a new job you start fresh and you can negotiate on fundamental terms.
For me, Dilbert used to be like a character in a Kafka novel making funny remarks about all the nonsense. And he used to build things too. Nowadays the "humor" is mostly people insulting each other to their face.
Sucks, though. As you say, it used to be such a great strip.
Interview game >>> Engineering game.
Also from Scott Adams himself: Your day job must be to find a better day job.
I always tell people that the best raises are the ones you get when you land a new job.
I experienced a similar situation just a few months ago. I'm now being asked to step in and take over the project from the very person who got the promotion because said individual never truly had the leadership skills to begin with, rather, they only had the leverage of walking out the door.
It's a very difficult pill to swallow when my manager turns this situation around on me, stating (I'm paraphrasing), "If you truly want to be a senior, you have to know when to swallow your pride and do right by the team."
Our industry is just plain bananas.
I understand companies only being able to afford recent college graduates, but I don't understand the reasoning behind the larger companies paying a replacement more than the person who left.
I guess they're betting on higher performance from new employees trying to prove themselves?
Then when the person leaves they need to hire somebody else and they pay as much as it is needed to hire that new person. So it happens because it is a two step process with two independent decisions from the management and I have yet to see a manager that realizes that the two decisions are connected. I've even seen managers doing the same mistake over and over and never learning anything from it.
You worked more hours but made the same amount of money. Therefore the amount you made per hour is lower than your usual amount.
But if you calculate hours worked and salaries. More often then not. There promotion for example made them earn less and less per hour.
But as someone wrote on hackernews: if your company is using the emotional path they don't have anything to offer on the rational level.
tl;DR: calculate your income per hour, not monthly salary!
Stealing this for my “don’t work for a startup” site!
Each hour past the agreed upon (or expected) # of hours cuts into your actual life, and is worth a lot more (to the person working). Too bad many people don’t see this or don’t have any options.
Narrator: it didn’t.
Now, that’s on me. My employers didn’t force that on me and my inability to say “no” is my fault, not theirs. But it taught me that I’m never not taking vacation ever again. I’m never making two connections to save the company $200 on a flight ever again (when others don’t and I’d still be in budget). I’m never staying late to do a job that isn’t mine because I’m afraid it won’t get done otherwise (it will. And if it doesn’t, it’s above my paygrade).
That doesn’t mean I don’t work my ass off or give 100% (if not more), but it took me until my early 30s to realize that the company wont reciprocate my loyalty.
But going out of your way to save the company money in transportation is a different kind of issue, and so is regularly overworking.
But but but - here's the thing - health, relationships and career. There is a boundary which you can push past for your company which destroys your capabilities very quickly. You are doing more now, but will be doing less in a couple of months. Often people underestimate how much less, and they think that they will get a holiday to get over what they are doing, and they also think that things can be patched up, I'll get better, we'll get over this.
News just in - they can't. you won't. divorce. All promptly followed by dismissal due to underperformance or just not being as positive as management expects.
I don’t do five people’s jobs anymore —- which is what I did at past companies. But I do my job —- and more —- and I voluntarily take on more projects all the time. The difference is, I no longer put my job ahead of my health. I no longer go 18 months without vacation (I took my honeymoon 17 months after I got married. And when I got married, it was 3 days after speaking in Vegas — I was on a red—eye two days before my wedding — and I spoke at another conference two day after my wedding) and I no longer allow myself to be on-call at all hours of the day/night. The nature of my work has changed too — but even if it hadn’t, I still would have stopped.
The stuff I used to do didn’t make me a “better” employee. It’s not some badge of honor.
You don’t know me or my work ethic; to imply that because I no longer kill myself for a business that won’t kill itself in return, I’m not still a hard worker —- kindly fuck off.
Giving 100% != giving all of yourself to your job and employer.
Honestly, climbing the corporate ladder is often about how good you are at politicking and working relationships as it is about anything else.
Besides, much evil in the world has been done by people with good intentions who actually believe they are operating in your best interests. I'll decide what's in my best interests, thank you very much.
How about that guy that runs the FCC who ignores net neutrality sentiment? How about that county clerk a while back who refused to grant marriage licenses to gays? (Of course, she thought she was operating in the best interests of gays.) How about the police who confiscate your cash to fund their departments? Does the prosecutor who hides exculpatory evidence have the public's best interests at heart?
There's nothing special about government organizations that make them operate altruistically.
A corporation isn't a living thing to think about you. Its basically one boss, or at best a few of them, who think about you. The good news is if they like you, they'll do something for you, or at least can be made to do something. The bad news is let alone hating you, if they as much as don't think much about you, there is nothing much you can do but to leave.
It really depends on the people and the size of the company.
It's not uncommon for an engineer to get a boost of 10-25% when changing companies, and other than prepping for the grueling interview process, there really isn't a downside to feeling out what's out there.
Especially when your compensation isn't keeping up with the median due to lackluster annual increases.
Through working my ass off, and pretty great luck, (working on lots of side projects didn’t hurt either), I recently did some looking just to feel the market out and I’m making like $20k more than I “should” be.
Part of this is because my company is based out of Bethesda, MD and I live in Denver, CO - cost of living differences. My company pays really well which allows them to compete with Silicon Valley and everywhere else for the best engineers.
No complaints here. I’m making double what I thought I would be making at this point in my career.
Anyway, yes, anecdotally, it caps out, but I also like to think that if I really hustled, I could keep raising it. But I’m pretty happy where I’m at and would rather spend my free time doing stuff other than coding and hustling right now.
My first company switch literally doubled my total comp. My second one was a double digit increase as well. I expect any future jumps to be smaller. (Though, who knows where the market will be then, as I'm likely years away from any move.)
My observation is that the higher you are in the pay bracket, the easier you seem to be abel to get a new job as your skills/experience are also in high demand else where.
I've been in the market for almost a year now and have had offers, but nothing higher than what I'm currently making. So I stay put.
Where is this magic expectation that job offers instantly come with a salary bump? That may have been true before, but at full employment the indicators have all gone weird.
Some companies can get from interview to offer in a week or two, some take months. Everyone is a black box in the meantime. Getting 2 to line up at the same time is extremely hard, if not impossible unless you stretch one of them out way too long or simply lie about the situation.
This makes the contract market much more liquid than the job market, which has the consequence of arriving at my current valuation quicker.
I'm glad I share my thoughts with this very smart man - https://youtu.be/Gk-9Fd2mEnI?t=908
A couple of years ago, my career seemed to be dead in the water, so I thought about contracting. It's not clear to me what changed, but in the course of a year, I got two huge promotions and am now making double. I'm currently interviewing for a huge step up that might bump my salary another 25% more.
I imagine if I went the contracting route, short term, I could've made much more money per hour, since I am/was pretty productive. But I /really/ doubt I'd get to where I am now on an annual basis (especially considering benefits and vacation). I also seems to have a clear path toward being a VP, CTO doesn't seem unrealstic in a few years, if I want to continue down the career path (I don't, rather start my own business, but nice to have a solid backup).
I know there's a lot of money to be made running an agency, but I don't think that's a natural skillset for the vast majority of engineers. Also it seems like a really competitive space.
I'd love to hear more from some contractors about this.
It's not an ideal terminal position: either you use it as a stepping stone to something better (i.e. starting your own agency, getting into consulting, starting some other kind of business etc.) or you use it as a way to test drive companies without committing (i.e. If you like the place, convert to an employee if it's offered. If not, move on ASAP)
There are people who do contracting for the same company indefinitely. That's usually a career mistake as you're not getting valuable new experiences which will prepare you for something better and your hourly rate will get stuck in the mud. After 2-3 years it will have often been better to have converted to an employee. (i.e. more relaxed relationship, benefits/paid time off, stock/bonus programs etc.) Many larger companies love it when contractors stay long term: for them it's all of the upside of having an employee with none of the downside. (it's also legally problematic but that doesn't stop most of them)
Very relevant to me. I've been contracting for the past 8 years, and earned very well through it. But I absolutely feel the cyclical nature, i.e. the constant starting over is wearing me out.
It's kept me sharp, but I know don't want to be contracting as a senior engineer when I'm 45, and contracting is not the best path to leadership, or product ownership - which I would like to transition to at that age.
And No, its not resetting the switch, because the 'career path' that most companies offer is a hoax - a perk here, a perk there. What matters at bottom is, the money. And as a contractor you arrive there quicker. My references get the next job, and my pay goes up as I raise my rate. There's no reset involved.
It’s kind of like being an “explorer” vs. a “settler”; big kudos to those who clear the land and creating a farm from nothing, I’d just rather be exploring.
You could ask your current manager for that kind of pay raise but if they do give you the increase, they’re going to expect you to work harder to “earn” it.
Of course, all this money being thrown around attracts frauds, and that’s why we have absurd technical interviews.
Not necessarily in that order, though...
1. Learning. I find that I learn 80-90% of what I will learn at a company in the first 12-18 months. Staying at a job for too long is risky because I will miss out on new things happening in my area. In the long term this is the most important, because this is what will get me more money, and make me competitive/valuable. Example: it's hard for people in traditional data roles to do ML/DL without switching jobs.
2. I prefer dynamic equilibrium over static equilibrium. I very strongly prefer being able to go out and get a good job at any time over having a "cozy job". The only way to be good at getting a job is having practice at it.
3. Impact. I find that I deliver most of my impact on the job in the first 2 years, after that it levels off and I tend to do more maintenance stuff of all the things I've built (both systems and teams).
4. More money. This is almost a side-effect of 1-3. But also in itself: if I want to get more money in my current job, it's partially up to me, but it's also up to my manager and the company/culture. If I get unlucky with my manager/company, I'm not going to get it. Also, sometimes I hit a glass ceiling, and there's simply nowhere to go (eg. I'm already the Head/Director whatever, but the company isn't that successful and/or/but pay levels aren't that high). On the other hand, switching jobs is entirely up to me: if I am good at what I do and have a good track record to prove it, practice interviewing to be good at it, and play the numbers game (apply to lots of companies), I will succeed at finding a higher paying job.
Overall:
1. I have to be ruthless and watch out for my own interests. Nobody else will. The world doesn't owe me anything, I have to go out, work for it, make smart decisions and then pluck the rewards myself.
2. I don't think this is unfair towards companies. If a company/org is badly run, people leaving is valuable feedback. Assuming a company can hire good new people, those will deliver new impact, bring new knowledge, etc.
Having said that, there are companies where you can work and make more and more money (usually stock options play a big role here), and keep learn more and more (because the company is growing like crazy). These are the startups that are run well and are rocket ships (the FAANGs were like this).
Be careful not to burn any bridges thought. Even in suboptimal situations take the high road and cultivate relationships with the people there that you want to work with again. In the long run this is going to pay dividends.
My own work history so far has been similar - 3 jobs lasting between 1.5 and 2.5 years, and I'm now currently on my 4th. It's never been brought up as an issue in interviews.
People evaluate others based on their own experiences and ideas of success. If they feel that staying at one job for a long time is the utmost important factor above all else, what does that tell me about the kind of person they are and the kind of company they’re running? It tells me it’s probably a run of the mill mediocrity-factory full of people mostly just punching the clock every day. I’ve ignored these signs in the past and learned the hard way.
IMO places that have strong engineering cultures that are run by smart and driven people understand that your technical skill is what matters and aren’t going to hold it against you if you’ve hopped jobs to maintain your career growth, because they’ve most likely done the same thing themselves. Ambition recognizes ambition, and ambitious people HATE to stagnate.
1. My tenure lengths used to be longer (3.X years), and then became shorter recently, so this signal is not that strong. It looks like: uni - 3.X - 1.X - 3.X (my startup) - 3.X - 1.X (FAANG) - 1.X (current). There are 2 positions that I leave off my CV: during my startup I did some parallel work in Academia, and there was a failed aqui-hire at the end of my startup, where technically I was an employee at a big NASDAQ company for 3 months, but then the deal exploded. Both are 6-10 years in the past and were during my rollercoaster startup years, so I just compress it into the startup entry, it's not worth detailing (not to mention NDAs). In my experience, both as a hiring manager and when interviewing, things more than 5 years in the past don't matter anyway.
2. My shorter gigs were in different countries, and people understand you're only going to stay in a foreign place if everything is really awesome (city AND company is a good fit).
3. I have FAANG on there, which esp. outside the US moves you past issues like this.
I think it's worth pointing out, I'm not saying you should job-hop for the money. That's why I put money as #4. I'm just saying you should maximize your learning (good for you) your mental well-being (good for you and your team, nobody likes to work with burnt out ppl) and your impact (good for the company). If you can find a place where this is possible for 5-10 years, jackpot, don't leave!
Boomerang employment is super common too (you don’t get your promotion/level bump so you go to competitor X who hires you at s higher level and salary. You do your 2 years and then return to company Y at a higher level/better salary, in less time than it would take to earn a promotion using the system.).
I don’t know if this is sustainable — but I don’t fault anyone who does this or thinks about it. And because it’s so common, it’s not like it looks bad on a resume, because loyalty isn’t valued the same way anyway.
Well, no, the opposite is true. Employees have to quit because companies stubbornly refuse to be competitive on salary.
The reason for that is mismanagement - managers and HR would be personally criticized for "being soft" if they offered raises, regardless of the benefits to the company of doing so.
It makes sense on the balance sheet. A large fraction of employees (33% if we take the article at face value) are unwilling to exercises their market options, and will stay at a company that underpays them.
The rest leave for greener pastures, and are replaced with new hires that are paid as much as a promoted position would be paid. But this way, companies can hold on to those 33% that never see a raise that exceeds inflation.
Large companies don't factor in things like loss of domain expertise, retraining, or loss of productivity due to hiring in their spreadsheets. So they will continue to do this and the only way to negotiate a true raise will be to leave; or threaten to leave.
They hope you'll just be passive.
You work for a company for X amount of time, and you gain domain knowledge of the company, and general industry experience. Some other company looks at your CV, and without knowing you, and probably without caring about your specific company domain knowledge, decides you are worth say 20% more than you are earning. You then go to your current company, and say 'my general skills are worth 20% more on the market, you know how well I work, and you know I have extra domain knowledge specific to this role, I would like more money' - and the company refuses.
They then spend time and money finding someone with similar skills to what you have, but without your domain knowledge, and probably at a similar amount you asked for since that's the market rate.
How is it not in the companies best interests to just keep you on and give you a raise? How do they justify all that wasted time and money every time? Do they just not measure it?
Better to be less profitable than bankrupt due to lack of cashflow. Mark Zuckerberg would have been a great hire for any company even at a salary of a billion dollars a year, but any startup that hired him for that salary would immediately go bankrupt.
Suppose they say yes. What happens next: other people hear about it and go to their managers saying "I think I'm underpaid; give me a 20% pay rise". If the answer is yes, then FooCorp is paying 20% more in salaries for the same work as before. If the answer is no, then those people have a concrete motivation to go and interview elsewhere, and probably a bunch of them will then leave even if they get counteroffers at FooCorp once they've demonstrated that they could earn more elsewhere.
Suppose they say no. What happens next: most likely you leave for that better-paid job; others at FooCorp hear about this and understand that they aren't going to get paid more at FooCorp even with a job offer in hand. Some of them will decide to move, but maybe fewer than in the first scenario (because they haven't had the specific motivating experience of asking for more money and getting turned down, and because they don't feel like they have the lower-risk option of interviewing elsewhere, getting a counteroffer, and thus being paid more without having to move jobs). And the ones who don't move can go on being paid less.
It's not obvious to me that the first of those scenarios is better for FooCorp than the second, if all they care about is maximizing their profits.
The second scenario, you always keep your worst staff and you potentially lose your best staff.
I've had those conversations and they've worked out positively for me, but I've spent time building rappour with management, along with very carefully gathering data sources, cost of living shifts, and current income.
If I just rolled up and asked for money, I expect I'd be shot down, and laughed at after I left the room...
Expect it to be a conversation, but it's a healthy conversation to have with a good manager -- we can't help meet your expectations if you do not communicate them to us!
Plain and simple. It’s the asymmetry of power in the relationship that is causing all this. The power dynamic is in the employers favor and the employer exploits that. Historically. Currently. Systematically.
There's a subtle difference between this argument and what I said. I said, "If you want to make your case, then you need to bring data." not "If you want a raise, then you need to make your case."
"Company policy is that raises are no more than 2.5% per year with a perfect yearly review. You got your 2.5%. You can't have a raise." Umm I'm about to leave and get 30% more from your competitor! I know you don't want that and I don't want it either. Surely... "Company policy is that raises are no more than 2.5% per year..."
In response to others who said "this is a good recipe for losing your best people": yeah, it might be. But if you don't believe your best people are dramatically better than the rest, or if you think that actually your best people aren't the same as the people who will go shopping around for higher pay elsewhere, maybe the calculation works out differently.
Also, for the avoidance of doubt, I'm not saying that this is good on balance. Only that it's not so hard to understand how a company might arrive at that sort of policy while trying to maximize its performance.
But a really good reason to switch jobs is to increase the size of your network.
Funny story, at a previous employer people who had been there 10+ years, would always say, it takes 3 years to really hit your stride in this company. They meant the time taken to have made the contacts and established the reputation that you could really be effective, be trusted with important decisions, and so on. It was a vast company and operated on multi-year cycles was a large part of the reason.
But the average tenure of an engineer at this company was 2.5 years...
The reality is that there's always opportunities at other agencies where they'll pay you a bit more than you're currently making (which is still less than paying someone there already more) and give you an inflated title.
Due in part to the nature of the industry, tasks are made to not be dependent on a given individual, and people float around because agency teams are never at equilibrium. They either have too few clients for the team and need to let people go, or too many/too big clients and need to staff up.
Source: worked agency side for most of my career and managed a bunch of people. I'm brand side now at a company with a significant percentage of employees at or over the 10yr mark. There's a reason I left the agency world.
One way to try to get a raise at a current job that I've done in the past is get an interview and see if you can get offers for a higher paid job and then use that as leverage for a counter offer.
I know there are already many threads about taking counter offers, but its not always a bad thing... in my experience, the manager just needed better justification for the higher ups. It was too large a company for him to just give me a bump.
At first I was furious and a bit depressed and that's when I said enough is enough, I will never let anyone else in a position over me, I'm done being an employee, I will never be let go ever again.
A year later I was working insane hours as a freelancer, just learning the ropes with enough pay to get by on. Fast forward to year 3 and I am a consultant making more than I did at the ecommerce company. I am my own boss. I can fire my clients instead of the other way around. Pay is great, hours are insanely good - I work just a couple of hours per week with occasional bursts of power sessions exceeding 3-4 hours. I get to spend most of my time with my kid.
The downside is having to always have business lined up but I have been fortunate to never really have any downtime. I'm slowly building out my marketing channels and once everything is in place I can pick and choose really carefully who I work with. Oh, and if I want a raise I just increase my weekly retainer.
If you want to see how one person does better on conversion rate optimisation look at draft.nu Given what you’ve said about your rates and funnel you probably don’t need to improve but Nick Disabato puts a lot of work into being a guy people think of when they’re doing big a/b tests so he can charge them giant piles of money. Thought leader stuff like books, mailing lists, for a while a podcast.
To answer your first question, I do consult in e-commerce, but not limited to it (though that may be a good idea). Most of my leads come through dribbble or LinkedIn. The client typically expects grunt work but after my initial email and call, they are quickly educated on my process and most see clearly that the way they thought of approaching their problems is backwards.
That's the part that makes me hesitate jumping into consulting. How do you advertise yourself in a way that you can avoid the wrong clients, which seems you'll always gonna get.
Do you mean per day?
Promotions tend to take years and are often more political than technical. I've seen often that a company prefers to hire someone techie from the outside rather than promoting internally. It is just the way it is.
When the already hired engineers see this kind of thing, it is not surprising that morale gets low and churn gets high.
I'm not sure if at this point in my career, it really makes a difference in the big picture of my life to get a 20% raise.
The only times I have seen strong leadership and fast work is in agency/consultancy work and military.
It was amazing. Then we re-org'd, and I'm still looking for that combination somewhere.
1. You'll be labeled as disloyal. Which is euphemism for: someone at HR is already looking into replacing you.
2. Whatever problems prompted you to want to go away are still there.
Similarly, never offer a counter-offer as a manager. Because:
1. You don't want to send the message to others that it's a valid way to get a raise.
2. Whatever problems prompted them to want to go away are still there.
There reportedly are exceptions when things work out on both sides of the fence. But in almost 20 years, I've yet to see one first hand.
Well, not that I disagree that accepting a counter offer is a bad idea, I'm pretty sure that someone at HR is always looking into replacing you, all the time.