But I don't interview at companies unless I really need to get in. If it were some lousy startup and I'm interviewing there it's because I am hard up and need the job or it's tactically where I need to be next to get where I am going.
Basically if I am spending the time interviewing I am probably willing to do whatever it takes to get the job.
Counterpoint, I botched a coding session at a FANG interview. They wanted me so they gave me a take home coding problem. I spent 40+ hours over three days banging it out.
Got the job. 57% increase in compensation. 550k/year combined.
Totally worth it.
Only negative is it's months later and my right shoulder still hurts a bit. Getting old sucks.
This is an alt specifically for discussing compensation because I know it elicits that reaction and I don't want that associated with my professional identity.
I think discussing compensation frankly and openly is very important. People have no idea what is possible. Two people on the same team at the same company can have wildly different compensation. My goal with this alt is to get people to take the biggest slice of the pie they can for themselves and avoid wasting their precious time doing lousy work for lousy money.
I have wasted a lot of time and life opportunities working for less then what I am capable of getting. I wish my future self had been around to tell me to push harder and be more mindful and efficient with my time.
I don't think CRUD glue programmers are at the top of the market right now. You could flood the market with them and it might not move compensation for people in my space. Even so, that is just another argument for pushing hard right now. Strike while the iron is hot. No one knows how long this will last.
I am very wary of making this about respect or the individuals in the company who didn't grant you better compensation. It's toxic for yourself and if other people find out you think that way it can spoil relationships. Never underestimate how the people you work with at your old jobs can end up being stepping stones to bigger and better things later on.
I believe no one in my management chain could have done significantly better. They had their budget and even if they had moved things around in my favor it would have just been a different level of inadequate.
Structurally the entire industry is biased towards preventing you from achieving what I call equilibrium. Equilibrium is where you can't leave your current job for a >10% raise.
I believe it's just a cost saving measure (assuming the ability to pay exists which it may not) and the industry has decided that the average wage suppression is more valuable then the cost of the turn over it creates. I'm not going to pass judgement on whether they are right or wrong.
Ability to pay is a big factor. Most of my prior employers could only offer a fraction of what I currently make.
Currently switching jobs for a personal record 57% increase in total compensation.
And I was NOT poorly compensated before. I was already in the 99th percentile for individual income.
The harder I push on comp the more I get each time.
I am not going to lie and say that it didn't take years to build to this point in terms of skill, work record, professional network, and interview ability. It took three FAANG companies bidding against each other.
Meanwhile I get offered nothing in terms of growth from every employer I have ever worked for ever. Literally never happened my entire career. Just this time after I already had an undisclosed offer in hand I got a promotion with no meaningful compensation increase. It was the first promotion of my 15 year career!
Sure they were willing to match, but who wants to try and soak blood from a stone.
And yet every manager I have ever had asks me not to discuss salary with other co-workers to prevent them from getting jealous. Usually in the same discussion where they tell me I am the highest paid one.
This is usually a few weeks before I have an offer for 40% more.
I think they lie because they know they are going to lose me anyways so it's a gambit with a low probability of success, but no additional penalty for failure.
My finding has been the same. I got a match once. I would have been better off leaving to some place more promising. Early on in your career your current employer is almost invariably a dead end.
Advancement happens, but it's the exception not the rule. Strong organizational growth is a driver of the exceptions.
I am not doing this as a generalist. I picked a specialization and within that specialization I picked a specific ecosystem and then ground out some seniority in that ecosystem.
Once I had that I could pick from anyone who is invested in the ecosystem.
I don't believe that has actually heavily impacted what I am paid in the sense of the credentialing being worth more to individual companies it has just made it easier to get through hiring filters and interview loops. That has made it possible to focus on companies that pay well.
At Google the recruiter put me in the SRE/SWE track which I was skeptical of and communicated to them. I also communicated about the compensation issues in advance saying if I got a bad offer it wasn't going to happen. Still wasted my time.
It's high for the industry if you consider the entire US or the world. The solution there is pick the right employer. The right ones are not that much harder to get into than the wrong ones especially if you play the interview game. You also need to not get caught location based comp schemes.
It's not high for a big corporation that is doing well. They just want you to think it's high so they don't have to pay and the small fry want you to think it's high because they can't afford it. These are all just line items in a budget.
This is consistent with my experience. Was making 175k in a lower cost of living area. Google wanted to pay 190k and require relocation to Mountain View. Had an offer in hand from another company for 240k. Google refused to negotiate.
What a waste of my time. Never again.
The two people I know who came to Google as juniors are forever typecast as such and are also not being paid well.
Not Google continued to treat me better after as well. If it's bad going in it's going to stay bad.
It's just the money. For a 30% raise there isn't a job I would stay at. It's fine by me for a company to be just one more 2 year step on the ladder.
A bit of experience, a bit of pedigree, a bit of pay bump, and a good job while it lasts.
I'm not going to stop switching until people stop offering me 30% raises. Once equilibrium is reached I'll start evaluating them on merits, but the jobs that pay better have also been better in all dimensions. At least that was how it has gone during my career progression.
There is market rate and then there is market rate. Have you ever met a manager who didn't claim to pay market rate and pull out the old "salary data" yarn.
Managers seem to think that just because they say something their employees believe it when the reality is the employee doesn't care and will just replace the faulty manager.
Another important aspect of compensation. When you negotiate compensation with new hire make sure to negotiate the salary you can retain them at not the lowest salary you can get them to leave for.
At my current job I accepted knowing I was going to be leaving at 2 years on the dot. I told the manager hiring me this verbatim. For the first time when I leave a job I will be able to simply say "Well this is what you agreed to when I joined."
Perfect example of cutting of your nose to spite your face IMO.
If you messed up this bad your employer would fire you. Fire your employer. Don't make a stink. Get an offer and give notice. Discussions with management aren't going to do anything but leave a bad taste in their mouth. Never ever bad mouth previous employers and teams no matter how bad they are. It won't help you and it could hurt you.
Now... I wouldn't actually quit immediately. Do your job well and get to the two year mark. You want everyone sad to see you go. Employment is a means to end and keeping your resume well groomed is critical. Your current job is the last step to your next job.
I doubled my compensation (110k to 240k, remote work from NE Coast city) in 4 years and every manager I left wished I hadn't, but they simply couldn't swallow the trajectory I could get by leaving. Each job has been better than the last and each job has been a step towards my next one. I believe I have 30% more to go and then I will be done. All this to goad companies into paying the amount they are actually willing to pay, but simply refuse to due policies that prioritize cost management of visible costs over retention. Go figure.
I know people at past jobs who are getting absolutely demolished on comp for doing the same work I do. One guy making < 100k. You don't necessarily need to leave if you are willing to take on more leadership roles and title changes and can wrangle that, but I don't want that. I want to simply get paid the max for what I do at any given time. My time is valuable to me and it is not a renewable resource.
Employee retention is their job not yours. You are a fungible cog to them and you should behave likewise. Employers are only as good to their employees as they have to be and you should act in kind. You are literally punished for staying with your current employer and rewarded for changing employers. You didn't create this incentive structure you just have to work with it. You shouldn't feel guilty. They are adults running a business and could be competitive if they chose to.
Employers behave this way because as a group employees tolerate ridiculous behavior ranging from constant nickel and diming on compensation to outright nonsense like this. They set progress for existing hires based on churn and churn is usually not high enough to drive change. They also base progress on trailing indicators (churn) at which point the best have already left. You can't fix it.
I have come up with a very loose calculation for how long I stay at a company. It starts at 4 years. HR is bad? -3 months. Weak comp improvement (<5%) at the end of year 1 or year 2? -6 months per year. Lied about something in the offer letter? -6 months. Amazing team members and work? +1 year. External offers > 30% more for same or better quality work? -1 year. Bad manager? -1 year. If it gets down below two years I will stay for two years unless I can't possibly stand it which has never happened.
Obviously I won't change jobs if I don't stand to gain something substantial to justify the transaction costs and risks.
I am not sure the company that justifies staying longer than two years when you have room to move up exists. My current employer is in what people might think of as a different class so I don't know how it's going to turn out. I didn't create the incentive structure I just work with it and I refuse to apologize. This is business and they are not entitled to more than two years.
Employers don't cry because you confuse brinksmanship for negotiation. Learn what a BATNA is and get with the program. You don't choose how much your employees are paid. You only choose whether you get to be the one paying them.