[bsder]

> What makes it worth staying 1-2 years, but not 2-3 years?

A 4% raise.

Management are idiots and will only give out small single digit percentage point raises while jumping companies will result in 20+% raises. The longer you stay with a company the further your salary falls behind.

This financial dictate means that your max tenure at a company should be 5 years--and definitely not even that long without a REALLY good reason.

[nyarlathotep_]

It's also pretty frequent at larger companies that new hires (even those at a level lower) will get higher comp than tenured employees.

Many of these same companies also have very difficult promo processes, requiring you to effectively "got to trial" and defend why you should be promoted.

This exact scenario has occurred with multiple co-workers of mine (most have now left, the rest are actively interviewing:

If, after the months of preparation for promo you "got to trial" and do so successfully, you may find a newly hired, less experienced, lower leveled co-worker with no experience with any of the internal processes or tooling makes 25% more than you.

When companies behave this way, what's the incentive to stick around?

[matheusmoreira]

Yeah. If companies want people to stay, they should just pay for it. Pay more, give better and frequent raises, offer more benefits, more everything. Then people won't want to leave for the other companies offering better compensation. It's very simple.

Any "red flag" talk is just companies trying to disincentivize employees from effectively negotiating better compensation for themselves. They're trying to eliminate employee BATNAs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiat...

[fshbbdssbbgdd]

Lots of tech companies give a stock grant that vests over 4 years. Then each year an additional “refresher” grant that also vests over 4 years. So your comp increases each year because of the stacking grants (a lot better than 4%) then drops a lot after year 4 when the initial grant expires.

Obviously many circumstances can change the equation.

[eyelidlessness]

Idk, I got a ~400% raise over 3 years as I showed I was more valuable than my comp and got the right ears to listen to that, with help of a V-level who recognized it. I’m not saying that will be everyone’s experience, but its odds become much more favorable for people hopping startups with smaller overall org charts

[ttymck]

Is it possible that, given the information your employer has, they can determine you are worth no more than a 4% raise? While, on the other hand, the prospective new employer does not have the same information (the experience of actually being your employer) and risks a 20% premium? In the end, maybe the market is actually operating efficiently?

[SpicyLemonZest]

In a typical company, raises are budgeted based on a company-wide assessment of how much people "should" get. So even if your manager is sure you're worth 20% more, you simply can't get a 20% raise without some exceptional justification.

[snovv_crash]

How exactly are you measuring impact such that you think you have it characterized with 4% error bars?