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 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 always tell people that the best raises are the ones you get when you land a new job.
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.