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Comment by civilized | Hacker News Reader

Being slightly past the 35+ threshold I'm feeling the pull of this perspective, but also very irked at the thought that my company might know this and decide to let my comp fall behind the market.

From what I hear of the corporate world, companies are always waiting to do this to everyone. The moment they're confident you're a lifer, you'll never see another market-matching raise or bonus. Maybe never see a raise again.

Any older workers have thoughts on how to manage this? I suspect there may be nothing for it but being prepared to leave if I feel my comp is falling too far behind.

(Or maybe I should just give in, call the $$$ good enough, semi-retire and chill... there's more to life, I hear...)

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I guess I can answer this, I've got 21 years in at one of the OGs of SV. When I came on board all the old timers told me to get everything I wanted up front so I beat them up pretty hard (they really wanted to hire me). I did fine but that was pretty much it aside from 1-3% raises every year and often no raises at all. Since we are a very flat company there's not a lot of room for a promotion -lots of chances to do other things but not a change in pay bands unless you go from tech to sales. It took six years from the time I started actively pursuing a promotion until I finally got one -this included two job changes and 8 managers. The promotion was a bigger deal than I thought because not only did I finally get a decent raise but it moved me into a managers level for bonuses and stock options and that equates to a 20-30% increase. Even if I didn't get promoted the money was fine, I have 6 weeks defined of vacation, good benefits and I've worked from home since 2003 -a lot of which I'd lose if I went to another company. Several years back I tried to assign a monetary number to what it would take to leave and it was between 25-30K which I might be able to get but you just don't know what kind of rats nest I'd be walking into, at least here I know what I'm dealing with.

I was like most people in IT when I started here, I had done a lot of job hopping, made good money and was a temporary millionaire at some bullshit startup. What I didn't expect was to stick around. When I started half the team had been at the company for over 20 years and I thought that they had to be nuts -a few people never worked for any other company 45+ years of service. Then one day I realized I had been here for a decade and then 20 years and now I have 9 years left before I'm sitting on a beach drinking Imperial and being bitten by mosquitos so I figure if I can do it here I might as well.

It seems like if it’d only take 30k for you to leave then you’re underpaid for your experience or you don’t actually have it that good. I say this because when I have it good it’d take a ~30% raise to get me to leave.

> but you just don't know what kind of rats nest I'd be walking into, at least here I know what I'm dealing with

Very well put. With work, it's often better the devil you know

i think grandparent meant that even if your company decides to 'capitalize' (pun intended) on your lifer attitude, you're ok with it, because you've chosen to ignore money in favor of stability. only works if you already have a couple of millions from your younger years imo

If you’ve already got a couple of million then you’d be on about $80k - $180k a year before you get out of bed anyway, so I doubt job stability matters much to you at that point anyway.

35+ ain't that far. For all. Damn. Is that fewer than 2-3 chances for huge economic outcomes?

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