[musicale]

> Was pay bad and didn’t Apple want to increase compensation

A frustrating feature of large silicon valley companies is that if you leave the company and come back later you will typically have better compensation than if you had stayed.

I could also imagine that the M1 team felt they weren't adequately rewarded after hitting a huge home run.

Moreover, it's probably the best time to switch jobs, because their market value is highest and at Apple they would just be expected to repeat the same success every year. Not to mention the benefit of gaining equity in a new "startup" which is almost immediately acquired at high valuation.

[tharne]

> A frustrating feature of large silicon valley companies is that if you leave the company and come back later you will typically have better compensation than if you had stayed.

Unfortunately, that's true of almost all large companies. It's one of the dumbest polices out there, but virtually every big corporation does it.

[imtringued]

This basically means workers do not have any negotiating power by themselves. They only have negotiating power when they have a competing offer.

[HelixEndeavor]

Or rather that negotiating power only has any teeth if they know you're serious.

[wil421]

Yup, the first company I worked for even had a name for them “retreads”. The VP of my Org was a former director hired back as a VP. It was a well known path to get a better job.

Maybe I will be a retread one day but the other practices the company does leaves a very sour taste in my mouth.

[zoover2020]

Aka boomeranging

[hardolaf]

It's worse than that. Digital design engineers get screwed at almost every company. Basically only Google, and Facebook in their WA offices, are paying digital design engineers the same or better than software engineers categorically. This is despite there existing a global shortage of digital design engineers that is becoming worse every year as graduation rates continue to decline.

[ca01an]

Why is this the case? Looking at the posts on Blind, even Google and Facebook seem to pay their hardware engineers a bit less than their software engineers, probably because they know they can lowball them. It doesn't make any sense, unless the global shortage of software engineers is even worse.

[bin_bash]

> A frustrating feature of large silicon valley companies is that if you leave the company and come back later you will typically have better compensation than if you had stayed.

That’s just not true, especially with stock appreciation. Unless they were grossly underpaid. It might be the case for some L3-L4 but not senior engineers.

[xyzzy21]

No. It's definitely true.

I got my 30% raises per hop by hopping OUT of a company and then back in. Raises were only 3%-8% staying inside.