This is totally it. Engineers, in particular understand that they have options, they are highly in demand, and they have strong negotiating positions when they interview.
It's not uncommon for an engineer to get a boost of 10-25% when changing companies, and other than prepping for the grueling interview process, there really isn't a downside to feeling out what's out there.
Especially when your compensation isn't keeping up with the median due to lackluster annual increases.
Does this work for your entire career or does it only work until you hit some kind of "salary cap" for your local market? I've had a few good raises in a short period of time, but I'm scared I can realistically only get one or two more in before I reach the top of the market.
I’ve hit that in my market - or a soft cap, at least, meaning if I want to earn more, I’m going to have to make 2-3x as much effort than I did before.
Through working my ass off, and pretty great luck, (working on lots of side projects didn’t hurt either), I recently did some looking just to feel the market out and I’m making like $20k more than I “should” be.
Part of this is because my company is based out of Bethesda, MD and I live in Denver, CO - cost of living differences. My company pays really well which allows them to compete with Silicon Valley and everywhere else for the best engineers.
No complaints here. I’m making double what I thought I would be making at this point in my career.
Anyway, yes, anecdotally, it caps out, but I also like to think that if I really hustled, I could keep raising it. But I’m pretty happy where I’m at and would rather spend my free time doing stuff other than coding and hustling right now.
Were your feelers all in Denver? Denver seems to have surprisingly low salaries, especially when accounting for the housing boom of the past 5-6 years.
Salary caps but stock does not. FAANG companies give massive RSU grants to senior people. There is no ceiling at companies that can afford to do that, which gives them a big advantage over startups.
There was a statistic in germany about doctors, diploma and other high income people. Around 40 to 45 the salary capped or even started to decline. (age discrimination is real)
I'd imagine the gains are somewhat asymptotic -- there's definitely a theoretical maximum somewhere out there, and every jump moves you closer to it. The bigger gains (percentage wise) probably come earlier?
My first company switch literally doubled my total comp. My second one was a double digit increase as well. I expect any future jumps to be smaller. (Though, who knows where the market will be then, as I'm likely years away from any move.)
Strongly agree that the 67% of workers are not quitting, they are leaving for a new job that pays more.
My observation is that the higher you are in the pay bracket, the easier you seem to be abel to get a new job as your skills/experience are also in high demand else where.
They may see themselves changing jobs for higher pay, but what happens if companies are holding tight on salaries?
I've been in the market for almost a year now and have had offers, but nothing higher than what I'm currently making. So I stay put.
Where is this magic expectation that job offers instantly come with a salary bump? That may have been true before, but at full employment the indicators have all gone weird.
Well you have replacement rate wages which a company would use to fill positions they can't do without so the wage has to increase. Then you have expansion based wages where the company wants to grow and seize marketshare. Your best bet is to have some kind of leverage. So multiple offers.
Unless you're a new grad multiple offers are a very rare thing.
Some companies can get from interview to offer in a week or two, some take months. Everyone is a black box in the meantime. Getting 2 to line up at the same time is extremely hard, if not impossible unless you stretch one of them out way too long or simply lie about the situation.
