[niccaluim]

Counter offers are a little silly. People in our industry are already making far above the median, which makes it extremely unlikely that money is the motivation behind resignation. More often it's a bad manager—there's a saying that people don't quit jobs; they quit bosses—uninteresting work, change in direction, or some other environmental factor. If you're going to make someone a counter-offer you should also be sure to address the real issue that caused them to want to leave in the first place, or they're just going to leave after a short time anyway.

[chrisbennet]

Uh, no. We in the industry make a lot of value and as such, we should have no compulsion about trying to capture as much of that value as possible.

This is a business relationship. I'm not going to be satisfied earning less than my market value just so another party can make a larger profit.

[niccaluim]

Yes, by all means, ask for what you're worth. My point is that money is almost never the reason people decide to start looking for work elsewhere. A counter offer by itself is sort of an empty gesture that is bound to be ineffective in the long run as a retention tool.

[ZanyProgrammer]

And you wonder why people in hot housing markets like in Portland really hate the new wave of tech transplants.

[chrisbennet]

Suppose you make delicious fruit pies which you could sell for $5. Along comes a company that will buy your pies and sell them for $40. Would you:

A) Tell the company; "I'll split the profit with you."

B) Tell the company; "I'm an honest days work for an honest days pay kinda guy. You keep all that extra value."

[nbb]

> People in our industry are already making far above the median

Well, half of them are.

[wtracy]

The median income in the US (in 2014) was $29k. The median salary for a software engineer is supposedly $95k. That's more than triple the overall median.

Sources: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/central.html https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/software-engineer-salary-...

[vonmoltke]

That's the average salary for a software engineer, not the median. Also, the SSA site uses "net compensation" for their numbers, which they define as "compensation (wages, tips, and the like) subject to Federal income taxes, as reported by employers on Form W-2" and "includes contributions to deferred compensation plans, but excludes certain distributions from plans where the distributions are included in the reported compensation subject to income taxes". It is not clear to me how that maps to salaries reported on Glassdoor.

[wtracy]

I could have sworn that page said median, not average. Thanks for the correction.

[st3v3r]

That median salary includes fast food workers and other low/non skilled positions. Comparing our profession against that is dishonest.

[wtracy]

You completely lost me. We weren't discussing the median skilled wage, we were discussing the median wage. The median wage is the median of all wages.

Trying to redefine words in the middle of an argument strikes me as dishonest.

[st3v3r]

I didn't redefine anything. I pointed out that the "median wage of all wages" does not add anything in the discussion when we're talking about skilled labor. Trying to compare skilled labor wages to all labor wages of course is going to make it seem like the skilled labor is getting paid too much. That's what's dishonest.

[tomsthumb]

He means the median income for the US. An easy, easy majority of developers and sysadmins are making more than the US median income.

[st3v3r]

"People in our industry are already making far above the median"

The median also includes lots of low/non skilled positions. I really don't care how I'm doing compared to that

[mars4rp]

It is all about point of reference, depends on you are comparing yourself with someone that makes you more in industry or someone that makes less in other industry.