The one case that it isn't is perhaps companies like google where an employee gets the founders award, which is millions of $$$ of stock options that vest over a relatively large stretch of years. I know a guy who won this award and he is google for life.
In medieval times, the vassal paid homage and swore fealty in a commendation ceremony, and the lord granted him a fief. The vassal had a duty to aid his lord, and the lord had a duty to protect his vassal. The vassal gave loyalty, and got a secure income in return. It was a permanent relationship. To dissolve it, you had to use an axe, rather than a pink slip.
Corporate loyalty died when management culture forgot that the company owes duties to its employees in addition to its shareholders. Defined benefit pensions became defined contribution retirement plans. Then the employer contribution disappeared. Health insurance plans dwindled from all medical expenses paid to you paying 80% of the premium, $30 co-pays at every turn, and deductibles that are met midway through the twelfth month of the plan fiscal year, then reset. Training programs evaporated. Severance packages got smaller, or vanished. Even the amount of notice I get whenever permanent layoffs are to occur has become days, rather than months.
So there are no more loyal vassals. We are all mercenaries now. I'll start sending out resumes if I so much as notice that the building has a new janitor.
H. R. tells new hires:
"How great it is to work here!"
Give me cash, not lies.
A few years later it turned out the "good profits" were actually accounting fraud. The company tanked and everyone lost their job. But Nortel had a fairly good pension system, so the people who had worked there for 25 years or more were fine, right?
Well, the company feared that while they were tanking the "best and brightest" executives would leave. Oh my! What to do? They were allowed to siphon the pension money into "executive retention bonuses". Of course this didn't stop the company from ultimately running out of money, but it did get rid of a large part of the pension money.
Investigate your pension scheme and make sure you understand what will happen to your money should the company go out of business. Especially find out where the pension system is ranked as a creditor. No company is too big to fail.
As for me, I only worked there for 5 years and left when it was at its height. After I quit I got a letter from Nortel stating that my minimal benefits were not worth it for them to administer. They were going to keep my pension money and I was welcome to sue if I didn't agree. I guess as it turned out, it didn't make much difference...
Look at the airline industry. Plenty of pensions have been restructured during the string of bankruptcies. Pensions are guaranteed by a federal body, but only up to ~$50K/yr I believe. You'll never get less than that, but you $100K/yr pension might get cut in half and the gov't will say "that's the best we can do".
These things should always have been administered by 3rd parties and required to be fully-funded.
No "executive" can look at so much money "just lying around doing nothing" without wanting to get their grubby little hands on it.
Very sad for a lot of people
I haven't heard of any developers who make 400k. Then again, I suppose you never said this was for developers, so is there another job where this actually applies?
My last 2 job changes were in the 20 - 40K increase range.
250K is not unheard of. I guess this caps out somewhere, but if the US immigration keeps H1Bs under this control than we are going to soon experiencing 300K wages.
Do you know if it's easier to get promoted when switching jobs? I have a hard time believing that since I think you would have had to accomplish something significant on several projects to get to principal, but if you switch companies it's very hard for them to truly the impact of what you did.
When you are applying for a new, higher, role having enough experience at your current level, being sure enough of yourself and demonstrating the ability to create value within the test period will be more than enough for most companies out there.
When trying to get promoted internally you have to deal mostly with office politics. In a way, the quality of your work is only a small part. And, if you are good enough, it can go against you, I know people that have been skipped for promotions for years because their managers knew that the whole department depended on them.
Of course, there are exceptions and I admire those companies, but they are just that: Exceptions.
In SF this can be achieved quick, enough if you demonstrate your knowledge during the interview loops. For certain positions they also ask for previous experience but those positions more of the management side I think. If somebody walks in and writes good code we are willing to hire even into senior position, I don't care too much about the history. I have seen a candidate walking in to the interview from a grocery story where he worked as a cashier. Not only he got hired based on the interviews but he became one of the top performers on the team.
I think it is definitely easier to get "promoted" by changing jobs, especially if you are in a meritocratic environment, like some of the startups in SF.
The speed with while a typical ~100k dev role gets promoted or awarded payrises to become a 200k position is _much_ slower that the dev who cherry-picks better opportunities when that arise, and works out close-enough-to-truthful explanations for any resulting 6 or 12 months roles (usually with ex-colleagues who'll give references backing up your post-role-claim that it was a 6 or 12 month contract role, not a permanent position.)
Do developers in finance require any unique skills? Also is there anything special one would have to do to break into the finance industry?
There are finance startups where the above doesn't apply, but they don't pay like the banks do.
Then again, that's the only time I've ever done it, so I can't really say at all whether that trend might continue (almost certainly not).
If I was a hiring manager, seems totally reasonable to me.
The higher-ups in be corporations have yet to get that memo.
Corporate loyalty has been dead for many, many years.