[SilverRed]

>But this role wasn’t a fit, and the timing was off. The environment was not correct. The work didn’t have the impact they wanted, finding their dream job instead. Perhaps I was ineffective at communications, championing above, or slow at sponsoring elsewhere

This seems to miss the most obvious reason. That they found more money elsewhere. Of every developer I have seen leave, their primary motivation was a higher pay. Having a team you like is nice and all, but owning a house or being able to go on nicer holidays is better.

The company I worked at this year is falling apart because all of the actual talent has found higher paying jobs and all that is left is the juniors who will struggle to keep things running.

[alienthrowaway]

> Of every developer I have seen leave, their primary motivation was a higher pay.

That's the polite thing to say, without bruising egos or burning bridges. I left my last job because I felt unappreciated after being skipped over promotion, even after accomplishing all the tasks I had agreed to with my manager would give him the capital to push for my promotion. Instead, other members of my team got promoted - and that was the primary reason I started looking around.

The fact that I'd be paid more wasn't the primary reason, few people leave a job for a lower paying one, so it's often an effect, rather than a cause. When asked in my exit interview, guess what I said my primary motivation was? Hint - it wasn't "I'm disgruntled because you didn't keep your end of the bargain"

[yurishimo]

Curious why you didn’t feel it was worth it to be honest with them in that moment? It’s not like they could stop you from leaving.

I left a job recently and had a great conversation with my boss about what went wrong and how I think they could improve and after talking to some old coworkers, it seems they have taken a lot of what I said to heart.

I get it not wanting to talk about it, but at the same time I think that feedback is the most valuable and I would want someone to tell me if I was in their situation.

[krageon]

> why you didn’t feel it was worth it to be honest with them

Being "honest" with folks who might be persuaded to give terrible references later and tell all their friends you are an ungrateful piece of shit is a bad idea. Never be honest with people that have more power than you, unless it is praise.

[atatatat]

...or you care more about your word, and society, than maximizing your 401k.

[krageon]

If I can be ruined by saying the wrong thing (this means any kind of criticism) then your portrayal of what I do is entirely missing the mark and frankly extremely dismissive of the realities of life for people that aren't filthy rich.

[baq]

if the manager had any brains, he connected the dots without feeling offended. whether he takes action on that or not, not the OP's problem anymore.

to put it bluntly, there's no upside to telling the whole truth.

[delinquenz]

Depending on how well your manager takes criticism, you might burn a bridge there without gaining anything.

[pronlover723]

> Of every developer I have seen leave, their primary motivation was a higher pay

I've never seen this ever in my entire 37 year career. I'm not saying it doesn't happen just that I've personally never seen it. All the devs I know work on stuff they choose to work on and are passing up money for jobs they're less interested in.

[the_jeremy]

I will add my two cents, which are that people don't tend to look until they are at least slightly dissatisfied with their current job, and then hop when they find a position with a high enough raise. That has been universally true in my circle of friends at least.

[plorkyeran]

Mostly the same. I have had two ex-coworkers who said they were leaving for the pay raise, but were both clearly unhappy with their jobs prior to leaving. I suspect "I wanted a raise" is just a much easier reason to tell people than "I hated the people I worked with", especially when it's the people you worked with asking.

[Aeolun]

Hmm, for me it always comes down to “I don’t get paid enough for this shit.” They can then reduce the amount of shit, or increase the amount I’m being paid.

If some other company wants to pay me more for the same shit, then that is where we are going.

[pc86]

This is it. Everyone's line of what they're willing to deal with is different, and changes based on where they are in life, what their mood is that month/week/day, etc. It only takes so many days of crossing that threshold for someone to start looking around.

[brudgers]

If a job is crappy in general, the pay is likely to be part of the crappiness. Or from the other side of the yin-yang, part of what can make a better job better is better pay.

[antupis]

I think it is little bit both I bet if offers would be lower most people would just suck it up and continued cranking code.

[fortylove]

Anecdotally, most developers I've seen leave companies over the past 10 years have left for money reasons.

I use to assume it varied by the company, but it doesn't seem to. Invariably, shifting companies seems to be the way to get more money.

[SilverRed]

Companies seem to hand out only crumbs for pay rises but are willing to drop mountains of extra money when hiring fresh people. In 3 years of working at one company, they gave me an extra $20k in pay rises. After leaving that job for another one, My pay went up $60k AUD in one go.

[alfiedotwtf]

I've seen this with many friends right now in Melbourne. People are easily leaving for $30k-$50k with recruiters emailing and calling daily.

I've also seen manager friends hire like crazy in the past few months only for those new hires to leave for more money as well.

[SilverRed]

Yeah I just went from an average Adelaide job to a highish end Melbourne job working remote from Adelaide and the change has been amazing. Almost everyone from my last company just left for remote jobs paying way more.

[Mandatum]

100%, the Adelaide and regional cities IT job market has imploded. Great time to start a consultancy if you're regional.

[DrOctagon]

I'm looking at moving from Sydney to Adelaide, any way I can reach out to you to get an idea of the industry over there? I'm hoping to do a remote job from Adelaide too, but would still like to understand the lay of the land.

[alfiedotwtf]

Nice. Hope you're enjoying it :)

[paxys]

This is an instance where anecdotes will vary wildly depending on the kind of company you work for.

[SilverRed]

Depends on what amounts we are talking. You and the people you know are probably already on the top end of pay and can chose anything. The devs I know saw $40k-$60k AUD pay bumps by switching to remote work for companies in higher paying areas. That kind of extra money is pretty life changing especially when they offer almost exactly the same work environment.

[opportune]

It probably depends on your market.

In areas where going from one company to another as a "senior" only ends up with like a 5k gross pay difference, it's almost negligible.

In Silicon Valley hopping companies can be like $100k/year or more gross pay difference. In a few years you might leverage that when switching companies again to get even more. Adds up fast.

[kamaal]

>>In Silicon Valley hopping companies can be like $100k/year or more gross pay difference.

That has limits too. Its not like you can hop 20 companies in 10 years and end up making like $2+ million an year.

Eventually you will max out of levels to get promoted too. Then the only options are to startup on your own or be an exec at a large company.

Plus Im guessing any reasonable increase in your levels comes with fair degree of risks, workplace politics, up-or-out workplace policies and if you have a history of hopping 2 companies/year serious shops aren't going to hire you to only replace you 6 months from now.

[vmception]

Leave one or two stints off your resume and say you were having a sabbatical at burning man and never left the desert until the universe aligned you with that specific founder’s mission, problem solved

[pc86]

Since we're sharing anecdotes, every single person who has left a team I was on left for more money, sometimes even after much thought because they loved the work and coworkers. All the devs I know have families and hobbies and things that require money like an addiction to clothing, shelter, and food, and these things cost money.

[duckfruit]

This certainly happens quite often. However, speaking purely anecdotally just to add a data point - in my current team at a big tech firm, none of my teammates have left because of compensation. We've had quite a bit of turnover over the years and the vast majority left due to a myriad of other reasons, many even having taken pay cuts in the process.

[Fordec]

Meanwhile, I saw a coworker do it in the past 37 days for a better paying job at Microsoft that he "couldn't pass up"

[gedy]

I really liked my company and the people I worked with, but pretty gladly left recently for 40% raise. Felt foolish to not do so.

[jdavis703]

I was going to argue with you, but every job I’ve left has had other factors that would’ve made me leave even if they raised my salary.

[vmception]

fwiw I’ve lied about passion (for their mission) at every company I worked at until I could qualify as an accredited investor via income test and buy preferred shares in any company instead of earning common stock gambles over years at whichever silly startup hired me

I was passionate about specific frameworks, corroborable years of experience, and making sure I occassionally had at least 2 years of experience at one place

But I would lie about my interest in their mission or whatever these culty developer daycares were up to, for the compensation boost and sustaining that.

(Yes I eventually got lawyers and CPAs to validate my accredited investor status, and eventually learned what “self certification” really meant)

It was super strange to me that feigning passion was the gatekeeper instead of simple work integrity.

Anyway it worked. Priorities. If I was a betting man - which I am - I’d bet you’ve run into people like me.

[rendall]

> until I could qualify as an accredited investor via income test

What does this mean?

[lmz]

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/accreditedinvestor.asp

It means you have enough money around to throw at things that aren't certified as safe for the general public.

[flippinburgers]

Money has always been my primary motivator.

[user_named]

Check Blind

[vmception]

"tc or gtfo"

for everyone else: Blind app is where all of your developers and a few other personalities are talking about industry workplace cultures. Every post also ends with people posting their "total compensation" or tc, which is a meme on that app but absolutely serious. That app pretty much only lets in tech and finance grunts. The situation is similar to how HIRED only has jobs for devs and occasionally other roles.

[danjac]

> Having a team you like is nice and all, but owning a house or being able to go on nicer holidays is better.

You spend maybe two to four weeks a year on a nice holiday. The rest of the time, for around 8 hours a day minus weekends, you are going to be spending with a team. Even if you live in a nice house and you're remote you're still going to be spending that 8 hours a day with a team.

If you don't like the other people in that team, or they don't like you, that's a big chunk of your life that's not going to be pleasant, however much more money you make.

[soneca]

I think bigger house and nicer holidays are mere examples of what to do with more money. There is no point in comparing them in particular with the effects of working inanities team. The good thing about money is that it buys you freedom to do whatever you think is worth.

For example, I know people that look for higher paying jobs so they can work 2 years and not work 1 year. So the “spending 8 hours a day with a team” calculation is very different. You are looking for a higher paying job precisely to not need to spend 8 hours with people working. Which kind of applies to everyone when you give the option to retire earlier and have good money to take care of themselves and their family when old. You are earning ore to work less.

Lastly, you seem to apply a correlation between higher paying jobs and not liking people I your team. In my opinion, there is zero correlation. So leaving a job for a higher pay doesn’t mean at all that you will find a team that you enjoy less working with. The chance of actually enjoying more is just the same.

If you happen to find yourself in a team that makes you unhappy, but all means, leave immediately. But not changing jobs to a earn more because tou are afraid it will be a team that you will enjoy less working is the wrong thing to do.

I think looking for a higher pay (be it by negotiating promotions in the same company or by changing jobs) is almost always the right choice. And I do not mean in the “greedy” sense, I mean that is a very effective way to achieve more happiness.

[danjac]

The thing is though that higher pay, at least where I live, entails considerably higher taxes. "Fuck you" money is never going to be a possibility, outside of winning a lottery ticket or coming into an inheritance. Friends/relations I know who have at least a slim possibility of a comfortable retirement aren't necessarily those with high salaries - they've just been able to play the property market with sufficient skill/luck over the past couple decades juggling buy-to-rent mortgages & inheriting houses at the right time.

So I could jump ship for a 10-15% raise, my take-home after taxes would be maybe an extra few hundred a month. Nice, yes, maybe I can have a slightly nicer HDTV or slightly bigger apartment or stay in a nicer hotel when I go on holiday, but I'm still chained to a laptop for the foreseeable future, even if I save every penny instead of buying nicer things.

[TheCoelacanth]

10-15% is a pretty low raise for changing jobs. A lot of people who have stayed at the same job for multiple years without significant raises can get more like 50-100%.

[SilverRed]

I get away from this by just not caring about work or what happens on a personal or emotional level. If I'm getting paid good money and I'm physically comfortable, I'm not really bothered what is going on because I won't stress or lose a minutes sleep over it.

Eventually I want to save up enough money to be self sustaining off investments and then spend my time doing whatever I want to do.

[oblio]

There's always the risk that you don't get there or you get there too late and you might realize that you've been a drone on autopilot for 40 years.

[glassconclusion]

Agreed. Don't be 100% money focused in your 20s and 30s.

[malandrew]

And the few that don’t leave for higher pay, leave to go work with those that left for higher pay or because morale is low because of people leaving.

By my estimates from hundreds of informal exit interviews I have done with colleagues that have left, I’d wager 60-70% left for higher pay or due to second or third order effects caused by those that left for higher pay.

Half of the remaining engineers left to pursue new opportunities. Almost always these were engineers whose first job out of school is at the current company and they hit 4 years. Many of these won’t cite pay, but almost all got offers way higher than what their first employer out of school is paying them four years later.

Those that left because of a bad manager were in the minority. Most engineers frustrated over a bad manager transfer teams within the company instead of leaving the company.

[marcinzm]

Large tech companies, your profile says you're at Google, have fairly different dynamics than other companies. And most engineers do not work at FAANG. Many people join them explicitly for the money, especially nowadays, and so you're filtering at the onset for employees who follow money above other things. So it's not surprising they leave for more money. There's also generally a decent work culture so changing managers may actually improve things. The company is also large enough to have many managers and divisions with different approaches.

My experience at startups has been that people mostly leave because of management or business collapse.

[sjburt]

I would never badmouth a manager on my way out the door. There's no point to it and anyone I am talking to may or may not be a sympathetic ear; in any case, if they're still there, they still need to work with that individual and it's really no longer my business.

"Dream Opportunity" or "Better Pay" are easy explanations that nobody will question. Best just to leave it at that.

[corobo]

Haha exactly. Of course the leaver is getting more pay, you'd have had to seriously mess up for them to leave for less pay.

They're not likely to burn bridges on the way out though so that's all you hear. No point complaining when you're done

[david38]

I’ve never known a toxic manager who people didn’t know was toxic. Me repeating that will have no influence, so why bother?

[oblio]

1. They don't know it themselves and you'd just make an enemy for nothing.

2. Not everyone knows it, otherwise they wouldn't have a job. Or they're being accepted for other reasons. In both cases, you're pissing someone off, probably higher up.

The ego boost is not worth it.

[Jensson]

Fat people doesn't like you when you call them fat. It is the same. People are emotionally influenced by things you say even if nothing of it is new to them.

[laurent92]

> out of hundreds of exit interviews

Datapoint here, I didn’t say the truth at my exit interview. I left because I was angry my team lead wouldn’t help me reach a new level in my career, but I pretended it was for higher pay. Blaming it on my manager would have been useless and closed doors if I wanted to rehire in the higher position. Saying it wouldn’t have given them an opportunity to fix it, because I needed to learn skills to become a team lead, which I hadn’t, so they couldn’t have just promoted me.

[malandrew]

For me, they are "informal" exit interviewers. I'm not a manager. I'm not in HR. I'm an IC that has asked people informally with whom I've developed good rapport. I generally don't ask people that I don't expect to be candid with me because I don't know them well enough. No one has a motive to lie to me about why they are leaving.

[ipaddr]

That's the stock and safe answer. Left for hire pay or new opportunities.

Most of the time we leave because management failed us. We would never say this because nothing good will come of it.

[alfiedotwtf]

> Those that left because of a bad manager were in the minority

hehe I've seen the complete opposite - a whole dev team rise up to get rid of the manager. And when the manager didn't leave, it was set in stone that most of the devs left within weeks.

[caeril]

> because morale is low because of people leaving.

A broader point, here: Maybe in specific instances people are leaving for legitimate or systemic reasons, but it's still sad that humans still operate on the flawed basis of social proof in 2021.

One would have hoped we'd have advanced past primitive signaling, but I guess not.

Social proof is the perennial mind-killer of humans, everywhere.

[mateo411]

Can you explain how social proof factors into people leaving companies?

I just looked up what social proof is, essentially a phenomenon of people conforming to other people who they think understand or know more than them. It's supposed to explain her mentalities.

I guess I don't see how this leads to people leaving companies. Maybe I don't understand social proof.

[_dark_matter_]

Social proof is a second order effect. Losing users, layoffs, or operational failures are the first order effects - usually of mismanagement.

[circlefavshape]

> One would have hoped we'd have advanced past primitive signaling, but I guess not

We are what we are. We don't "advance"

[sircastor]

As a lead/senior, money was a factor, especially because I was being underpaid compared to the rest of the industry for my experience. But I was working in a field for a company doing things that I wouldn’t find in most roles. I turned down a significantly higher paying role once because I wasn’t very interested in the work that I’d be doing.

[giantg2]

I hate my current job. I'm looking for new jobs internally and externally. I don't find any of them interesting. The closest thing I found to something that might have been interesting was a senior Android dev at a medical start up (with a 50% increase!), but I wasn't qualified (I have a couple basic apps, but no 'real' experience) .

I guess I feel like all the other jobs will be just as bad, so why leave this one.

[EstebanS]

I don't think every job has to be so terrible. There's definitely places out there that value transparency and offer opportunities for growth. Especially in this market.

Where I work now, I'm actively hiring for a Senior Android dev role. We're very open to candidates who demonstrate potential for all our engineering positions. Building a couple small apps definitely counts in that regard. If you're interested in hearing more feel free to reach out! My work email is in my profile.

[BurningFrog]

Not saying you're wrong, but that's also a great reason to give when you don't want to talk about the real reason.

[maverwa]

I quit my job with the primary motivation to work on something else, with someone else. The old company just was no good fit, not good for me. I effectively earn less money now, two yearns into the new job, than when I left, but I am more happy. Sometimes, the grass really is just greener on the other side, and it may not be because of the money. Sometimes its tasks, culture, or even people.

[rufus_foreman]

>> Of every developer I have seen leave, their primary motivation was a higher pay

My motivations for leaving so far:

- Working with more relevant technology. Maybe higher pay in the long run

- Getting experience in different roles. Again, long run thinking

- Getting out of anything related to real estate in 2006

- Moving across the country to chase a girl

- Knowing that my manager was going to quit and that he was the only one allowing me to work remote.

- Douglas

- Entire department off-shored. Was working remote so I could have stuck around I guess. Wasn't worth it.

[pg_1234]

What companies don't seem to get is that they are stack ranked constantly according to a very brutal standard.

In this ranking system there is no place for every employer from position 2 down, even if they're a good prospect.

This is not at the instigation of the employee, but the employers themselves, who all have contracts saying "while you work for us you can't work for anyone else".

Covid has exacerbated this, as these days the work you need to put in for an annual performance review (more forms) often approaches what it takes to land a new job (zoom) ... so if you have to sell yourself to your current company, why not repackage the assessment and send it to a handful of other companies and select the top bidder.

[SergeAx]

> Of every developer I have seen leave, their primary motivation was a higher pay.

YMMV. Of developers I saw leaving, including my direct reports, almost no one was driven by money. There are actually two primary reasons. 1) their performance was suboptimal and it was easier to change the company than to push themselves uphill 2) relocation. Most of those who chose that patch was taking siglificant lifestyle downgrade, even if net pay was somewhat better.

[JoeAltmaier]

Most folks don't look for higher pay if they're satisfied with their job. Once they are unhappy and start looking, then it always looks like "They left for higher pay" which is technically true. But doesn't address the root cause.

[cheshire137]

Agreed. Salary discrepancies and less equity have been the biggest reasons I've seen cited by peers who left, along with getting a promotion.

[JohnFen]

I've left many positions, but never once has it been because of pay. Usually, it's because I grew bored with the position.