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Comment by neversupervised | Hacker News Reader

Years of experience don’t correlate to output in all careers. Surgeons and engineers get better over time. This might not be true for all jobs. Meanwhile, management is naturally capped because every manager necessarily needs people to manage under them, so there’ll be 1/N^y managers at the yth level of the org. Unless loyalty ought to be reward for its own sake, it’s not clear why 100% of workers should get promoted indefinitely.

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It's not that promotions should be given out indefinitely but I think a pay raise in line with inflation should be the minimum, unless you are under performing. It's funny when a company excitedly shares a pay raise with you are it's below inflation...

I always look at inflation when I get a raise. Or if they are skipping raises because of the economy - I compare to inflation. I accept that as a staff level engineer I've reached about the top of what I can make - but I still expect my income to match inflation, and I have left when it doesn't.

Merit raises are typically based on market rates as a baseline. The employees' costs in terms of consumer price inflation are not a factor. If every employer gives out raises in line with inflation that also creates a positive feedback loop which contributes to higher and higher inflation every year (I do understand that's not the only thing which drives inflation rates).

If your wages are falling behind then look for opportunities in higher growth sectors.

As an employee I don’t care about the reasons that inflation exists, I care about getting the same real money over time (only counting inflation raises, not counting merit or other kinds). And citation needed about inflation raises driving inflation, there are much bigger factors that contribute to it.

Employers don't care about whether you're getting the same real money over time. Why should they?

Because I do, and if they only care about me as an economic output machine then why should I care about them?

Put another way, if they aren’t matching inflation, should I reduce the work I do correspondingly?

No one is forcing you to care or to produce any particular level of work. If your job has no growth opportunities and stagnant compensation then you might want to look for other opportunities.

I think the issue here is that you're trying to frame the issue in terms of some sort of concept of fairness. But in reality that has nothing to do with it.

That’s a bit misleading, no? If you don’t produce a certain level of work you’re going to be fired.

There's nothing misleading about it. You can make your choices and accept the consequences of your actions.

Because people are not perfect incarnations of idealized concepts. Employers are people who exist in society who have concerns beyond the bottom line. That many or well more than most employers have forgotten this fact is at the core of what is wrong with work, corporate America, and capitalism in general.

There is a dual ladder setup. Where you can have Administrator, Systems Engineer, Sr. Systems Engineer, Lead, Architect, Sr Architect, etc. These will have parallel tracks to equiv. management positions for benefits and perks (bonus levels, etc).

Now obviously you can't have every employee promoted to a Sr. Architect or Fellow, but that is ok be cause not everyone can (or want to) obtain that necessary skill set. A while back I recall seeing a grid with various levels, what management title that would typically mirror, and the skills that would be required for each level.

> Years of experience don’t correlate to output in all careers.

YoE only gives potential, but are not necessarily sufficient in any career. I've interviewed engineers who learned the narrow job they were doing in 6 months, and then only did that for a few years. Do they have 6 months of experience or 3 years? I'd argue closer to 6 months unless they were doing more. I imagine surgeons are similar, where I'd rather see X number of successful surgeries performed than YoE.

This issue with YoE is also why I'm bothered when HR uses YoE too heavily to base salaries around.

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