[ryandrake]

Presumably that's always a risk regardless of whether you hired someone junior and trained them or whether you hired someone already skilled. As long as you're doing the standard things that help you retain talent (like paying market rate, providing good opportunities, etc.), there should be no reason to worry, right?

The only companies that should be worried about "poaching"[1] are the ones, for example, who are not paying market rate, have crappy projects, provide no career advancement opportunities. I've never heard of a talented employee leaving a company for literally no reason.

1: Which by the way, is a pretty offensive term--we're not deer or wild game owned by some feudal lord.

[humanrebar]

> The only companies that should be worried about "poaching" are the ones, for example, who are not paying market rate....

Well, "only" is implying it's not almost universal. Companies routinely pay market rate for new hires and then base raises and bonuses on KPIs for individuals, teams, or the whole organization.

Are there companies that say, "Well, we had a mediocre year, but market rate for devs went up 8%, so I guess that will be the baseline raise for everyone."? If a company does anything less, eventually employees are paid below market rate and they're forced to negotiate a bigger raise (convincing management to ignore KPIs and pay attention to market rates) or find a new job.

[ryandrake]

Or they leave for a company paying new hires market rate.

The job market doesn't care if your company had a mediocre year, any more than your suppliers care. If the price of screws or cables goes up 8% you either pay it, look around for something cheaper, or negotiate. Somehow, when it comes to labor, companies think paying “what we paid last year plus N%” makes sense.

I guess the take-away here is: Companies by and large do not worry about poaching. Rather, they are willing to live with it because they see the alternative as too expensive.

[Rylinks]

>As long as you're doing the standard things that help you retain talent (like paying market rate, providing good opportunities, etc.), there should be no reason to worry, right?

Right, that's the point: sports teams benefit from being able to pay below-market rates to players they have developed. If you're doing the standard things to retain talent either way, why not just hire someone skilled?

I'm not arguing about the moral case here. It would be great if companies invested in people out of a sense of responsibility. But I don't think "As you sow, so shall you reap" translates from professional basketball.

[humanrebar]

> sports teams benefit from being able to pay below market rates to players they have developed

They also pay to keep players off the payroll of their competitors. There's not strong incentive to develop the players in those cases.