[nelc]

As a young kid on one of those "competitive" jobs, I've always wondered about this. Do you genuinely encourage them to stay, or do you secretly wish them to move on to better work as well? Surely getting stuck there for a decade isn't the best thing for their career.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Yes, and no. A few did move on, and had well-paying careers, but it took them a long time to find happiness, and they tell me that they never found a situation that was as comfortable as when they worked in my team. The final team members have moved on to do fairly well, although it took a while. They are brilliant engineers, and will be a credit to any organization that hires them.

The pay wasn’t awful, but I was a good manager, and worked hard to accommodate things like family obligations, and, in a couple of cases, serious medical issues. The company had its flaws, but, for the most part, treated its employees well. As time went on, that became less and less. By the time I left, I felt as if the company had become quite rapacious, in its HR policies, and that made me sad.

The pay may not have been that great, but the work was very interesting. We were a marquee brand imaging corporation (which is why they felt they could get away with mediocre pay), and the technology was pretty awesome. We regularly worked with some of the top engineers and scientists in the world. It was an excellent line in your CV.

I have come to learn that money isn’t everything. There’s a tremendous amount of cynicism in our industry, and that is really pretty discouraging. Money has been quite corrosive to the joy of software development, in my opinion. Real damoclean sword.