I'm the author of this piece - I've had multiple jobs since then (obviously), and I've always been given pretty substantial raises and bonuses throughout my career enough to nearly 10x my first jobs salary in only 15 years. Now all that isn't from one job, but because I'm a contractor and basically set my rate with each new company, I invest as much as I can either in the stock market, or more recently into side projects and my family run businesses, etc.

I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed your writing style and the overall message of the article. Thank you.

Whenever a topic like this comes up on HN or Reddit, most of the comments I see are incredibly pessimistic about the job market and/or reek of entitlement. I'm not saying that we should make excuses for exploitative employers but unless you get extremely lucky when starting out, you just have to show up and put in the work, even when the works sucks, even when the pay sucks. Then after a little while, put that shit on your resume and move on to something better. Rinse, repeat.

"Then after a little while, put that shit on your resume and move on to something better. Rinse, repeat."

I guess I'm one of the pessimists.

I'm 10 years in and nothing has gotten better. The benefits have been eroding too. It never paid off and I have trouble seeing it ever pay off if the first third of my career has been so terrible. I've become disengaged, which I'm sure will lead to a vicious cycle.

I can only speak from my own history, but I've worked in Houston, TX and NYC, and both have pretty good senior dev jobs available at all times.

Are you maybe not applying for those higher positions? Junior devs will always be taken advantage of unless you know someone. I even took a Jr Dev job (on paper) only 6 years ago or so, because the manager knew me. I was paid more than the senior developer, and he reported to me in practice.

I'm not allowed (have a wife) to leave my current area (Philly-ish). I have applied for a couple jobs. I dont apply to most jobs because there is no salary info or the salary range listed is not any better than my current job.

I'm an intermediate developer. I've unofficially filled roles like senior dev and tech lead. I've also worked as an ASC (supposed to be reserved for senior devs). Oh well

You should apply for senior dev roles. I’m not saying lateral career moves are always bad (and sometimes that’s all that is possible), but I always look at a next job as a way to level up. Even if I don’t fit the requirements right then and there, I have the confidence I can do the role. Obviously, you shouldn’t level skip - meaning apply for something two levels higher than where you are at (unless you are supremely confident in your abilities or are going to a smaller company where that sort of thing makes sense) — but going from intermediate to senior is what makes sense. When hiring a senior dev, I’m not looking for someone with a decade of senior experience because that person is probably overqualified or will want to be quickly promoted to principal/staff . I want someone who can fill in the role well for a long time, which means someone who is intermediate but has stepped up to do senior work when asked, is the right move.

My problem is that all the tech I built experience with is obscure (Neoxam, FileNet). That's obviously in addition to my lack of faith in the system and being treated fairly.

Sorry just reading along and felt a need to point out that it seems you’re likely being your own biggest obstacle, more so than “the system”. Systems are meant to be hacked.

Exactly. You can always come up with excuses for why something isn’t going to work out, but if you want to change your circumstances, you have to at least try. You might still fail, but you have to try.

Oh, I've tried - multiple times. The people/companies that make the rules don't have to follow them. If you repeatedly beat a dog, do you expect it to be friendly or do you expect it to cower in the corner hoping it doesn't get beaten again?

If the company ignores their own policies repeatedly to my detriment, then I fail to see how I'm the obstacle. Doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result is insanity - I've simply been conditioned to expect the company to screw me over.

Check out Mindset by Carol Dweck. You’ll either think it’s total nonsense and will quickly forget about it or you’ll be inspired by it to put some of the principles into action.

I haven't read that one. But what I know about mindset is that it can help you frame your experience, and that can maybe even be leveraged into behavior changes that can help someone. But it won't help change restrictions imposed by others.

To summarize the book, people with a growth mindset rarely ascribe their circumstances on restrictions imposed by others and instead focus on changes they can make. Those with a fixed mindset avoid changing themselves because they believe much of their life is determined by things outside their control.

It’s like a spectrum where few people are fully one or the other. And some people are “fixed” in one part of their life and “growth” in others. Virtually everyone has both traits and must work to find opportunities to be more growth-oriented — assuming of course, that’s something they really want to be.

You can change how you react to restrictions imposed by others. Many restrictions aren't as solid as you may be assuming. For example, you say that "you're not allowed to leave Philly", but many people don't even live in the same country as their families, in an effort to make more money and offer them a better standard of living. A less extreme version of that is living in a different city for some period and commuting home on weekends. And that should generally be a negotiation, not a diktat.

Those negotiations are off the table. Living apart is also something I'm not allowed to do.

You've decided you don't want to. And that's fine. But it's ultimately your decision.

It's not that I don't want to do those things. It's that I don't want to be divorced even more.

What is on the table then? If that is unchangeable, what is in your control when it comes to a new job?

I've posted to some internal and external jobs. That's about it.

If your end goal is a new and better job, what’s a step you can take (that you haven’t taken yet) to make it happen?

If the job looks good, apply. Becoming expert at interviewing is a real thing and improves your ability to navigate the process. If they don't want to pay what you're asking, then you've at least benefited by getting one more interview experience under your belt.

I actually interview really well. It just doesn't seem to translate to money. (Probably because IT is a cost center)

Thank you for saying that. I love writing down my stories. It is therapeutic, almost like writing them releases me from the bad memory. It is basically a VERY lightly edited stream of consciousness.

Software is simultaneously in "high demand" and continually in a state of lay offs, unemployment, and unhirable students. If you were lucky in the 2010's, sure, but dev work is increasingly exported and those safe and comfy don't have to worry about it so they don't look at what's going on.

It seems like nowhere will just give you a raise because it's the right thing, valuation-wise. You basically have to threaten to leave or something. My inflation adjusted increase over 10 years with one promotion (10%) and a masters degree (9%) has been 22%.

The right valuation is determined by people rejecting job offers (or leaving current jobs) and accepting job offers. Repeated cleared transactions is what allows a market to determine the price.

But can also create inefficiencies for an organization because they lose institutional knowledge and incur training costs.

Markets are more efficient when transaction information is public, and hence all wages should be public. Assuming the goal is to minimize that friction.

True. It would be great if they would at least post salary ranges for jobs (based on company policy and/or the people in the role at the company).

I don't even feel like applying to most jobs. If it's not paying more than I make now, why should I waste my time? Such a pain to filter out jobs without it listed.

Colorado took the first step in that direction. If you are applying to a company that employs people in CO, you can check their CO listing.

Hence why some companies now explicitly disallow CO residents from applying for jobs. Those employers would rather lose out on CO talent instead of weakening their negotiating position by posting an explicit salary range.

Yes, but to avoid it, the employer must not have any employees in CO. The law applies for any position that can be done remotely, even if the employer does not intend to hire a CO resident, as long as the employer already has CO employees:

https://www.huschblackwell.com/newsandinsights/updated-faqs-...

>Under EPT Rule 4.3 (A), the promotion posting requirements do not apply to employees who are entirely outside of Colorado. However, if a Colorado employer has a promotion opportunity available anywhere in the company, even outside of Colorado, its Colorado employees must be notified. Under EPT Rule 4.3(B), job postings and promotional opportunities do not need to include compensation information if the job will be performed entirely outside of Colorado or if the job is posted entirely outside Colorado (i.e., not on the internet).

>INFO #9 instructs that the out-of-state exception applies “narrowly,” only where the job is tied to non-Colorado worksites (e.g., waitstaff at restaurants outside Colorado). Therefore, postings for remote positions that can be performed anywhere are subject to the EPEWA’s requirements, even if the posting states that Colorado applicants won’t be accepted. However, a non-Colorado job that may include “modest” travel to Colorado is still considered an out-of-state job not subject to the transparency requirements.

Except the ranges aren't even useful. I've seen most that are like $50k-150k. Not helpful at all in my opinion.

It will take some time, and ideally more stated will follow. If CA/WA/OR/MA/IL/NY/NJ/CT follow, then it could lead to some real change.

This strategy can be sub-optimal from the employer's perspective.

Consider yourself as an employer and assume your employees have perceived switching cost C > 0.

Your employee will approach you with bids b_1, ..., b_n all of which are substantially larger than C. So to keep your employee you will need to pay C plus some premium. In fact, not just any premium, but probably something close to max(b_1, ..., b_n).

If you can make good guesses at C and b_1..b_n, then you can retain employees by ensuring you're always giving raises between C and max(b_1, ..., b_n).

And all of that assumes that employees are fungible at any particular price point. They're not; employers also have switching costs. Among two otherwise equivalent employees you'd much prefer the one you already have.

This might be true for FAANG employers or others employing people in high demand, but based on the behavior of the vast majority of employers, it is clearly less costly of a problem than the savings of not having to pay prevailing market prices for all their employees.

You don't have to threaten to leave, you do leave.

The cost of changing jobs is pretty high, in my assessment. I mean, perhaps not if you're young, single and mobile; but if you are married with kids in school, own a home and pay a mortgage, changing jobs is personally very disruptive.

And then you have to develop a working relationship with your new boss and employer, and your new colleagues; you have to learn new tools and platforms, which may make you much less productive for up to a year. And all of these learnings carry risk - for whatever reason, the new job might not work out, and you might have to move again, this time maybe with a shotgun to your head.

The employer-employee relationship isn't symmetrical, even if you are a superstar engineer. No company has ever relocated just because a superstar engineer decided he preferred a warmer climate. Basically, staff are fungible, employers are not.

The moment the high-tech antitrust employee lawsuit was announced, I got a pay bump of 50%. (Literally the moment - the press release went out and within an hour managers were making the rounds and saying "Well, looks like you got a raise.") It equalized at about 2x my hiring comp.

Makes the $1000 I got from that class action lawsuit look pretty piddly, though - if the whole industry's salaries were increased by 50% in a day, how much were we being underpaid before?

It’s rare, but it can happen.

I once negotiated a a raise in salary (of about $15k a year) because they wanted me to move to a much more expensive city. No quitting threats, it was just decided that it was a requirement for me to relocate.

Then, the week I arrived in the new city, I got another $10k raise. It was because we’d just lost another senior employee to a large company and they wanted to preemptively retain me, but it was one of the few “out of nowhere” raises I have ever had.

But in general, it isn’t in a business’s best interest to just offer raises without any negotiation or discussion. If a person isn’t asking for more, why should you offer it? Like, morally, I totally see the argument to do it preemptively, but as a business function I don’t.

It’s true that the best way to get a promotion or a significant raise is to get an offer at a competitor. And that sucks. But, it is also possible to make the argument for a promotion or raise without threatening to quit. I’ve done both over my career and while the competing offer tactic usually works faster, it isn’t a pre-requisite.

The one important thing to note is that if you are going to leverage another offer for a promotion/raise, you need to be prepared to walk if the company says no. If you don’t, you will never have any leverage ever again. So my advice is always to not make idle threats you aren’t willing to back up. I’ve had job offers before for substantially more money but at places I did’t want to work at. I don’t take those offers to my current employer (assuming I still want to work there). Instead, I use that knowledge of my value/worth to leverage get an offer at a place I would leave for OR to craft a better argument when I present my case for promotion/pay raise at my current employer.

> But in general, it isn’t in a business’s best interest to just offer raises without any negotiation or discussion. If a person isn’t asking for more, why should you offer it? Like, morally, I totally see the argument to do it preemptively, but as a business function I don’t.

It demonstrates that a business values its employees, literally, and this does build good will. Honestly, this is how you keep the better employees, and you're probably keeping them at below-replacement rates, even if yo do give "generous" raises. I have a friend who gets a consistent 4-8% annual raise and he refuses to interview because he likes that reliable growth.

Replacing a worker is a dice roll, and if you already have a five, it doesn't really make sense to let them leave for greener pastures in the hopes of scoring a six on the next role.

But it definitely doesn't make sense to keep raising pay on take-em-or-leave-em middling employees. Let them keep doing a mediocre, but useful job for a few years until they leave, then hope you role a five or six on their replacement.

Our merit increases are basically just inflation. Even the years when I filled roles above my grade, it was maybe a real raise of 1-2%. If your friend gets under 5% this year, he might not be so happy...

> So my advice is always to not make idle threats you aren’t willing to back up.

Don't draw your revolver until you are ready to use it. This rule is universal - it applies in employment, personal relationships, and gunfights.

Yes, of course there are. When I moved on (from the underpaid job I mentioned in another post), I got almost double the salary because I was so underpaid at that previous job. After being there a year, I was offered a 5% raise, but I negotiated it to about 15% IIRC because I was clearly worth it and they didn't want me to leave.

Some companies prosper in business by being run properly, others do it by sheer coincidence.

I work in finance, so I think the company knows perfectly well what they are doing. Ifs no coincidence they are taking advantage of people.

This.

It's business. If they treat employment as some kind of "friends" relationship, they will go broke, and you will lose your job.

They don't have to treat it as a friends thing to treat people fairly. The least they can do is not violate their own policies (happens all the time at my company).

Yes. It is normal to have some process or agreement in place to regularly talk about the past and future, including raises/bonuses. Every three two twelve months seems sensible to me depending on circumstances.

The are companies out there that will give raises to high performers as incentives, but it's far from standard. Typically, you have to _ask_ for a raise. (And, importantly, you need to bring _proof_ of why you deserve a raise.)

But getting personnel responsibility should be a good reason to ask for a raise, right?

Anything's a good reason to ask for a raise if you think it is.

I wonder how that employer got affected when the guy left, and employer was left with $300k worth of employees laid off. In 2007 engineers have already started being pretty hot commodity.