I've tried to bring up these kind of big picture frustrations with managers before, but they're always focused on surviving the next 3-6 months.
Nothing to retain employees, nothing to acquire new ones, nothing to retain the DNA of the original company.
Ultimately, they want the whole company running by the same policies and procedures. They don't want to maintain carve-outs for subunits that used to be separate companies.
As soon as the delayed bonus to the execs is due (usually 1–3 years), everyone quits in troves and it’s downhill from there.
On my case the average was around three years between acquisition and atriction leading to first wave of leaves.
- I take pride on what I do, I really care a lot about my career, but my main motivation for working 9-5 is my paycheck. I want more money but not more responsibilities (sounds crazy, I know, but the outcome I produce allows me to ask for this). No company out there is going to give me a free salary raise, hence I switch jobs.
Can confirm this works in our current employment market in the US for Software Engineers. In fact, I have less responsibilities because I don't know anything about the tech or product yet and got a 30% pay increase (granted I was close to underpaid).
Obviously YMMV.
There’s many reasons why FAANGS dominate, but one reason is their ability to attract and retain talent.
Vague job titles like "senior" or "junior" can be useful in limited circumstances, but if a company can promote you within the same title, it's a bit of a smell.
Some people also believe that their work speak for themselves and they shouldn't have to explicit ask for a raise.
Sure. but closed mouths don't get fed. That's how we end up in the opposite situation that brought about this topic. Or worse, the oft-common "promotion" of a happy IC to management role who frankly isn't a good manager, despite being an amazing IC.
IMO, it's the manager's responsibility to advocate on behalf of the employee, especially if they want to retain them.
There's also the matter that a raise doesn't need a promotion. Don't promote people upwards unless they are willing and already working at this level. Give them a simple raise instead.
This is a critical point. I've been a manager at companies where the primary, and sometimes only way, to get someone a raise is to promote them because of strict salary bands defined by level. This creates a perverse incentive to promote too early.
Salary bands are usually in place to -- ostensibly -- make sure salaries are fair. Fair salaries are a good thing. That being said, there HAS to be a mechanism to reward top performers with additional cash that doesn't require promotion otherwise it can feel like "teaching to the test."
Every place I worked bonuses are decided according to a strict formula based on the performance of an entire departments and even the company as a whole. There is no way to reward an individual or even a project group with a bonus unless the whole larger office also hit their targets.
I don't disagree, but I don't think there's anything simple about the process at all.
1. this obviously works against the company's interests, if they assume the employee is satisfied. short term business sense says they want to get away with paying as little as possible for labor, whereas employees want to be paid as much as possible. It's an eternal tug of war. And to be honest, one the tech sector has relative advantage over compared to other industries.
2. Even if we get over this short term block, figuring out how to give "merit based" raises can get very tricky, very fast. Especially if you leave the onus to not the developer, but to the manager's perception of the developer to determine.
This not only has bias on how much they/the company values a project (e.g. would working on a "simple" adtech feature be worth more than the labor overhauling a failing product to fail less? The ad product makes the company more money after all). But on their bias as a person. Would Manager give Bob a bigger raise because he goes to Karaoke on Thursday with the company, over John who has to get back to his family after work? Worse yet, would Manager implictly give Janet not a different raise than Bob due to subconcious sexism and not actually doing more work (be it preferential towards or against Janet)?
It's a whole mess, which is why companies try to objectify the whole thing. At least there, there is no room bias outside of who can pitch themselves better (if we assume equal work done).
3. Even if we arrange all of the above, raises aren't typically something a direct manager has easy access oo. It involves several lines of commands to appeal to and approval, beholden to a bunch of budget issues beyond a typical manager's control. Even if they truly want to compensate properly, the company itself may simply decide that they'd rather take chances hiring someone new when/if they need to maintain a potential void, over potentially compensating someone who was
I think the 3rd point is an interesting quandry since it goes against the usual mantra of "People leave managers, not companies".
What you are essentially saying is that employees should beg not to be devalued, which might make sense in a contractor-client relationship, but W2 employment comes with such a tilted balance of power (especially with non-competes and clauses that bar doing work for other companies on the side) that there just isn't that much to gain from trying to negotiate. Employees are better off changing jobs every few years so they can completely shed any baggage from their last position and get a much fatter paycheck. (industry variations notwithstanding)
This isn't to say that I think that people are being sinister. It's just behavior that the system incentivizes.
I used to think that too but at the end of the day if you don't ask you don't get. Doesn't matter how you wish things were.
To be fair, I took their matching counteroffer, but that would not have happened without me leaving in the first place.
First step: ask for a raise, even a substantial one. You mightn't get it, but you might, and it's a lot less hassle than changing jobs
The hassle is mostly prepping for the interviews. If I can't cut out that step, I am basically being saved the effort of cleaning up my desk and going to a new one.
I've gotten 10-15% raises before without a competing offer or any other leverage simply because I could show that I was a certain "percentage of market rate" when I was hired, but the market rate had increased ~teen% since then. So it wasn't as much me asking for raise, it was me asking to have my compensation keep pace with the market/inflation.
Also ask them if their company is hiring and has reasonable interviewing practices. Not everyone makes candidates jump through hoops.
1. People who are legitimately being taken advantage of can more quickly realize it and either work to correct it or leave.
2. Top earners should be able to justify their outsized compensation to others, including peers.
3. Some people just legitimately don't know you can negotiate things like non-discretionary bonuses, extra PTO, etc.
4. Maybe your company pays everyone below-market, not just you, and at least knowing this will make it easier to decide if it's worth the lower pay (for QOL/WLB or whatever) or if you want to leave.
Now, it's tough to say whether that can be extrapolated out to knowledge workers, but it is a useful datapoint non-the-less.
It doesn't (necessarily) mean you're underpaid currently, it's totally possible your boss recognizes your contributions, wants you to be happy, and has the budget to give you what you want or close to it.
One day the DBA casually submits a query to HR asking "what is my package if I quit?" The HR director immediately runs to the CFO and tells him about the question posed by the DBA. The CFO flips his shit and is quoted as screaming something about wanting him fired immediately. We just had a change in management and the new CIO wasn't having it. He just ignored the CFO. It didn't end there. Over the next six months the CFO plodded on and eventually got the DBA fired...though the DBA was not trying to smooth anything over. He went to HR a second time to ask about his package. LOL.
That's why I never bothered asking my company if I could permanently WFH, just went along with everything until I found a new job.
In my experience - good managers tend to get promoted quickly, while average/below average line managers tend to stagnate. In this environment, it's likely most line managers aren't the greatest managers and the ones interacting directly with ICs have a lot of skills to develop in the manager role.
The reality of most people is that they go to the job for a paycheck and put up with the (bad) management as a cost of that. In this environment, the most effective path towards higher pay is switching jobs, instead of risking navigating the inclinations of typically bad management.
Focusing on switching jobs when you already have a stable job puts you in a win-win situation.
Not really. wanting less money and more responsibilities is what would be crazy.
"I want to be recognized and compensated proportionally to the value I create on your behalf. Furthermore, I suspect that the tasks/goals you choose for me are wasting opportunities for me to learn and for you to grow. Hence, I am bearing the long-term risks of your investment-decisions in my time, and you are reaping the short-term benefits.
"Because you seem to be unable to recognize the value I produce, and because you are squandering the opportunity of my time, I do not believe you are suitable for your job. It is possible there exists a job definition for which you are 'killing it', but it is not apparent from my perspective.
"So it is impossible for us to have an open honest conversation."
Tangent: That comment showed me, after 40+ years of adult working, that any individual person is filling multiple roles, each defined by other peoples' perspectives and needs. Indeed, that individual may not even be aware that they are in those roles, much less that those roles may be crucial to those other people.
Note that I almost edited "multiple roles" to "multiple work roles," but this probably applies to most social relationships.
Huh.
but who calculates this "value"? And what is it relative to? That's partially why stocks exist, to try and answer that question.
That is how we end up with our high turnover culture today.
To understand, explain and illuminate how value is created should be one of the first basic tasks for managers. Part of the purpose is to eliminate as much disagreement with and among "reports".
Imagine someone coming to you and saying it.
- Hey, how's life? What do you think about this project?
- Well, it's shitty, to be honest. Didn't expect it to be this boring. And this on-call... I'm looking for a job that would pay 50% more for 50% less work.
- Yeah, that's the way it is in this company. The owner is a greedy crook, and the fish rots from the head, you know. We're told to lie to employees that there's no budget for pay rises, while the profits have doubled. It's all bs. But I can refer you to a few places that pay what you want. I'm thinking to leave too, btw.
Most to the time one just needs to give HR the resignation letter and that's it.
If one has enough vacation days to fill up the notice period, they don't even need to show in the office again, if they feel like it.
Naturally everyone will want to know why one is leaving, including the boss, but one isn't required to hold such conversations.
"This work is good enough for me for now, but in the future it might not be anymore, in which case I'll want to take it into my own hands to find something new. But since for the moment I like the work, I'm not necessarily thinking about that possibility in the future."
If we aren't taking people at face value I don't know why we should assume the second comment is the truth. "I'm ready for something new" sounds like the "It's not you, it's me" of reasons for leaving a company. It often doesn't benefit an employee to give a real reason they are leaving and many times those reasons have nothing to do with how their employer handled career progression.
For example, if a engineer works at a large company (i.e. one in which a single engineer or manager has no real power to push for organizational change) there is little reason to voice their opposition to the overall direction of the company during performance reviews. It also doesn't make sense for that person to burn bridges by unnecessarily criticizing that direction on the way out the door.
How do you propose doing that given that a manager -- by their very job description -- does not have your best interests at heart and will happily use those interests against you if doing so answers "yes" to the central question: "But Is It Good For The COMPANY?"
However, often that something new is just the same type of work.
E.g. imagine that the tech organization is an orchestra. All you play is the same small set of Bach concertos. Your lead violinist likes it just fine, until she leaves because she is ready for something "new". Turns out to be some place where they play the same dozen Vivaldi concertos. Or not even that, but just a different selection of Bach.
E.g. an embedded developer leaves "for something new", where something new is working on a bluetooth driver, exactly like now, but on a different SoC, with a different BT chip, and two kernel versions higher.
"Drama" is a way to express personal emotions, and probably wishes to change things to better, which I really hope my manager cares about.
1. that I trust her/him
2. that I believe he can actually push the change that would help me through the company
2 has been a problem far far more often.
A phrase I used a lot is "what would you like to differently, or what would you like to learn?" That's often an opening to getting someone the kind of work they'd prefer to do, but are reluctant to bring up.
Just to give insight into why some ICs don't respond to this question. I asked my manager for promotion, he kept stringing me along. One of the reasons for said string-along was that the kind of stuff I want to work on is not big enough. Why couldn't he tell me this 6 months ago? I have no clue.
But I have learned to never trust managers with this experience. Managers will have to work hard to earn my trust.
Some of the situations where no real flex exists are:
- promotion wish where there is no place. For example, someone 1 level below the CTO wishing to be promoted to CTO will not be able to get their wish unless the current CTO leaves. If they don't, promotion to the desired rank will not be possible without changing companies.
- salary demands that can't be met from the budget. Most middle managers do not have significant say over how much budget for raises they are allotted for the year. If one persons raise demand is bigger than the total then not all of it can be met.
- As in the GP post, the things the employee wishes to work on do not fit in the wider strategy of the company and/or will not provide value commensurate with the salary received. In this case, depending on how insistent both sides are, sometimes no compromise is possible.
Sometimes the answer is just to give them a raise. Sometimes it's "you're already at the top of your pay band, sorry."
The first step is creating enough trust and openness in the relationship to get past this communication impasse.
Promotion ladders are one (of many) tools for expressing what the company desires of its employees. For employees seeking advancement, they also work as a tool for discovering an employee's motivation. If promotion isn't the motivation - express what is the motivation. Figuring out that someone loves the puzzle of debugging, or takes pride in being the expert, or is a 9-5 journeyman who wants a stable, competitive salary for their contribution can be the key to having a fruitful conversation.
Once both sides are honest about motivation and satisfaction (the manager obviously also needs/wants something from the employee...) then there's space for adult-to-adult conversations about how and if those motivations line up.
In my experience, managers rarely turn away skilled, drama-free, reliable contributors. But we know our employees aren't totally truthful/open with us about these sensitive topics - so we don't take "I'm fine... leave me alone" at face value.