62
dooter
3y

I hate how willing companies are to let someone go over money.

I’ll use a real life example with someone I knew. This person joined a company at the entry-level developer and worked up to a senior level. His pay rises were around 3% per year with around a 5–7% promotion raise (there were two of these).

At this point, 4–5 years after joining, he was making far under what a senior developer salary was in his area. Eventually, he interviewed on the team of a friend at another company and was offered a 40% increase. Four-Zero. CRAZY.

What the company did is baffling to me.

His boss said they may be willing to increase 5%, but there was no way they could even match what the other company offered, let alone beat it. The benefits were better at the new company, but he would’ve stayed with the original for a salary match.

So he left…

But what did the original company do? Hired a new senior level developer for the same dollar amount the dev was offered at the new one, then lost about 6 months ramping up that developer due to a super complex code base, and the new developer turned out to be much less capable than the one they just let go.

So wtf? It’s flat out stupid on the company’s part. Some sort of effed up pride or something.

They’d rather let someone walk out the door, knowing it’ll cost just as much to replace them, plus losing literally tens of thousands of dollars on ramp up time, and they gamble on getting a capable developer instead of a known, proven, loyal developer.

Thankfully, the younger tech companies understand this, and many pay people appropriate to level and talent, regardless of what they were making before they advanced to that level.

Comments
  • 9
    Similar stupidity: a large institution is unable to attract decent developers because they offer a wage way lower than what any experienced developer can get pretty much anywhere else.

    Solution: hire consultants instead, while searching for this unicorn senior dev that will work for peanuts.
  • 6
    A lot of companies really don't value who they have and have stupid policies that make hiring new folks for higher pay easier than rewarding their own people.
  • 8
    This is sadly common in some companies, they always underestimate how long it takes for a new hire to be productive, in some departments it can take years. Yes, years to get to the level of that person that they didn't want to keep.

    And the funny thing about such places, they always talk about loyalty (so it could be a flag to watch ;) )
  • 3
    In general, most managers are afraid of a transparent loan system.

    Never let the employees know what each other gets as a loan...

    If they gave person A a rise of 40 % all others would want one, too.

    And if u don't give everyone else a rise, you need an argument why... If u need an argument, you would most likely give out hints about how the loan compares to person A - which would most likely lead to a lot of rage, as in most companies loan equality doesn't exist, rather there are extreme differencey.

    I'm a fan of transparent loan systems. Loan equality not really (no has nothing to do with gender) - as some people take their work seriously and others force those people to work more by slacking off.
  • 2
    @rutee07 recruiting graduates and train them work of you either use them to sit of time while more senior devs impress new customers, thats the bad way.

    Or if you develop in-house or long term software and hire long term, like at minimum planing for several years do the graduate have time to grow into a senior. The in-house/long term part is so that you have a stable software that they learn over time. And this also requires an existing stable base of devs to help teach the new hires.

    Hire graduates to meet a deadline is probably a bad idea.

    If you need help now, graduates will not work so well as it takes time to get productive in many cases.
  • 3
    Bean counters can only think about the next quarter. And that's on a good day.
  • 1
    I mean... the last company I worked for decided to fire me (their only dev that goes beyond "I just entered college"-style development) in favour of 2 people that did the administration (one of which was mostly browsing a forum for some shitty 6y/o girl's game) and 1 person that did coaching (as in jobcoaching, not "how do you write decent fucking code" coaching...

    Sidenote: It was a web dev company :^)
  • 1
    @rutee07 yes, the sad truth in the business, in most cases you are forced to switch job to get an average raise.
  • 0
    Same scenario in each company.
  • 0
    @rutee07 god damn that stung like a bitch.
  • 0
    Could be a policy thing. Max raise 5% without promotion.
    Hiring new people no such policy.
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