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Comment by aluminum96 | Hacker News Reader

I have lately felt very underpaid, given the current crazy job market for developers. I’m at a FAANG which supposedly pays “market rate,” but it doesn’t seem true in practice. Why play the promo and comp game, spending months or years proving the value of your hard work, when you can just jump ship for an instant level-up?

I basically have a negative incentive to stay, even though I really like my job and I’m pretty good at it. Very frustrating.

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I like the people I work with, they’re very talented and we all get along exceedingly well where we lift each other up by bouncing ideas and having discussions, the job is complex and energizing, the mission is strong and exciting, and I have a ton of autonomy to choose the path forward. I think I make about 85% of market for my job anecdotally, but I wouldn’t leave the above even for 120% market for simply jump ship and “level-up.”

My point is that despite what others in the comment chain state, there are reasons to stay at a place other than simply a little more money, especially when you consider that at our level already puts us deep into the 1% overall.

I absolutely agree! I love my job, I love my colleagues, and I love being able to work on open source. It’s just really unfortunate that most companies make you “play the game”, instead of just retaining people with actual market comp.

As I said right before I left my last job (luckily I've been very fortunate at my current one):

"I love what I do and I love the people I work with - but I didn't come here for love."

Exactly.

It’s not leaving for a 30% raise.

There is a compounding effect.

You’re leaving so that in a few years it’s a 200-300% raise relative to what you’re making now.

That said, I don’t begrudge anyone staying for “love”. If you’re happy then that’s great. I’m happiest when I’m at least making an effort to make as much as I can.

Why not 300% right away?

Why would change of company first to 30% make you get 300% later?

You don't have obligation to expose your current salary so you can demand 300% right away.

If you think you will have enough skills to earn 300% go for it.

There are other things that go into it: but-in-the-seat time, titles, etc.

If you're spending a full third of your life (half, if you count only your waking hours) working, I would imagine "love" for your work and/or people should play a significant role in your choices.

Get an offer from another FAANG and then have your current team match it.

I have managed people in your situation and, honestly, nothing makes me happier than being able to match the incoming offer because the internal system makes it impossible for me to do the right thing.

Yup. There's literally no reason. My manager keeps bringing up the next year of hard work ahead of me to make it to the next level, and it makes me want to puke. I can just leave now for another company to get to that level. But the truth is also that the interviews are tough, leetcoding and system design is not easy without alot of study

> But the truth is also that the interviews are tough, leetcoding and system design is not easy without alot of study

Very true. There is also the fact that when you are in a company, you know the pitfalls and areas to avoid (or at least you might have a chance to do so). When you are moving to a newco, you have less insight (hence the power of the backchannel reference check; good for candidates as well as employers).

That said, the issue of comp not changing without job hopping seems to be a big one. There've been several good discussions here and elsewhere about it. Here's a favorite twitter convo: https://twitter.com/QuinnyPig/status/1484071572314804224

I find the idea of managers still thinking of employees in terms of years to be fascinating.

In Canada at least, 2 years makes you an absolute veteran at many companies.

>In Canada at least, 2 years makes you an absolute veteran at many companies.

This explains the absolute state of many companies. Zero institutional knowledge, and no, a Wiki doesn't cut it.

And devs aren't really incentivized to develop any. You will be gone in a year anyway.

Wiki would be at least of some help. My last job had no documentation about processes at all, current one has a wiki, but it's outdated in many places, because massive effort was put to get it running, but then it was marked "done!" and nobody really cares for updating it. But officially we do have wiki, so there, we're organized now.

It’s interesting how the harrowing interview process resembles an emergent, self-organized form of labor market collusion.

I feel you. It has been very frustrating for me too. I was being definitely underpaid and the raises they promised was very low (even when they said I got the highest possible raise). Even though I loved the team and work, I couldn't justify the pay gap so I jumped ship. I immediately got 50% raise by doing this. I really do wish there had been a way to stay because I would have stayed maybe with 30% raise.

I'm curious: have you compared your comp to that of levels.fyi?

Yeah. It comes in around the 20th percentile, both on levels.fyi and compared to informal internal data.

Edit: I think the reason for this is that I went over a “four-year vesting cliff,” and you really need at least 2 promos to surmount the cliff. Perhaps I’m being sent an implicit message, up or out.

Yup. This.

What do you mean by this?

When you join a company you typically get a larger than normal RSU grant that vests over 4 years. Every year you get new, typically smaller, grants. The compound effect is that your compensation will decrease in year 5, when your initial grant expires.

For example, using my company with relative numbers: Initial grant: $200 Refresher grants: $100

  Y1 = $50 = $50 total RSU compensation
  Y2 = $50 + $25 = $75
  Y3 = $50 + $25 + $25 = $100
  Y4 = $50 + $25 + $25 + $25 = $125
  Y5 = $00 + $25 + $25 + $25 + $25 = $100 < DECREASE

This can be compounded if your company's valuation has increased substantially in this period. The difference between initial and refresher can also be significantly larger than 2x

To stick at the $125/year and not see a drop in compensation, you'd want to be getting larger refresher grants which typically require promotions.

Makes sense!

Its common in all firms (not just IT) that companies expect you to either get promoted or move on to another job. If you're doing the same thing after 5 years you're probably not a star employee and some firms will actively try to get rid of you.

I honestly like working 5+ years on one project so kinda resent being told I'm not great, but that's what it is.

https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Up-or-Out-Solving-the-IT-Tu...

What level are you? SWE I/L3/E3, SWE II/L4/E4, SWE III/L5/E5, etc?

SWEII/L4

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