I understand this management philosophy well, but it’s also very dangerous because you risk hiring people like me, who share salary information with everyone that wants to.
A few decades ago I started working at a place where a couple of really talented people had never asked for a raise. I negotiated indirectly by talking about better opportunities and head hunters with my boss as well as asking for more pay. I got it every year. After a couple of years someone asked me what I was making and it turned out I was making a significantly amount more money than a lot of the senior staff members.
This was very nice for the budgets, but it eventually lead to everyone important to the department finding new jobs over a period of five years. When I stated it was a great place to work with really talented people, when I left it wasn’t because the talent had left and management had a really hard time convincing their managers that they needed to up the starting wages, because the budget had been just fine for so long.
This is very anecdotal of course, but underpaying technicians for years can be a very dangerous strategy under the right circumstances.
Just as the tools and processes in building a product must be documented and improved over time ... so too must the compensations of the employees be improved, documented via employee handbooks, and communicated by culture that "if our business succeeds - you will succeed for it is written!"
and the talented, who are focused on their craft - will feel that the company will take care of them _as a matter of course_.
If the talent feels a Quality of Life upgrading process is met - then they will stop wondering how green the grass is somewhere else. Then and only then will the business be ready to foster a culture of mentorship, collaboration, and documentation from Senior to Junior.
It makes me very sad to see a junior developer I had taken onto my team at my last company 3 years ago - a budding talent in systems who didn't know how to ask for help - is still considered a "junior developer." if you don't know how to give people hope don't be surprised if they're hopeless.
A few decades ago I started working at a place where a couple of really talented people had never asked for a raise. I negotiated indirectly by talking about better opportunities and head hunters with my boss as well as asking for more pay. I got it every year. After a couple of years someone asked me what I was making and it turned out I was making a significantly amount more money than a lot of the senior staff members.
This was very nice for the budgets, but it eventually lead to everyone important to the department finding new jobs over a period of five years. When I stated it was a great place to work with really talented people, when I left it wasn’t because the talent had left and management had a really hard time convincing their managers that they needed to up the starting wages, because the budget had been just fine for so long.
This is very anecdotal of course, but underpaying technicians for years can be a very dangerous strategy under the right circumstances.