[hourago]

Ironically, all these will be solved by raising everybody 3% and that's it. By trying to measure individual performance, the company is taking away time from their employees. And the ones that end up getting the rise are the best ones at doing reviews, not at doing the job.

I prefer that everybody gets the same raise, and that the company pays competitive salaries. To spend so much time justifying your own job for a company that is making a lot of profits makes little sense.

[Hermitian909]

> I prefer that everybody gets the same raise, and that the company pays competitive salaries.

I'm not sure how you square this with promotions (the main driver of performance reviews). No company who hired me five years ago could have kept me with a constant 3% increase, that is significantly less than I achieved through promotions, the rate would no longer be competitive.

[dontupvoteme]

That makes sense in a boom cycle, but we're seemingly entering a bust now.

This era of CS was probably unique in the history of STEM of having high salary rewards for changing jobs quickly. This never existed in Medicine, Maths or Engineering really (unless you found your own company or such.)

[Hermitian909]

My question was about promotions - other engineering professions definitely have promotions, and those promotions come with >3% pay rises.

Also, even without boom times top engineers will still make a lot of money because top positions are still insanely hard to fill. I know of several top companies with L8+ positions that have been sitting vacant for over a year, competition for these candidates is fierce.

[lliamander]

Indeed. I've averaged about 10% per year, and I probably could have gone for more.

[majormajor]

In this world your best, most productive people leave because they see the weakest performers getting rewarded the same as them.

Most people know when people on their team aren't pulling their weight. If it isn't addressed by management it turns into a demoralizing situation.

[miah_]

Same is true in the OKR world, but your most productive are leaving because they don't want to play the game or perform theater. You still end up with demoralizing situations as people who don't want to play the review game are going to lose.

[majormajor]

I'm not saying OKRs are perfect, I'm saying "just don't measure performance at all" is a 100%-losing play for a manager, whereas if you try to manage performance, you have a chance of doing at least an adequate job at it.

[ElevenLathe]

Why pretend that there needs to be an objective way of doing this? A company is fundamentally a private club and they keep who they want and fire who they don't. Arguing that they should see your objective worth is like arguing that you are objectively a good friend and therefore should be invited to more parties.

Yes, there are meant to be protections so you don't just fire all the minorities and women but "competent engineer" and "masterful bullshit artist" are not protected categories.

If we don't like this (I certainly don't), then we need to stop letting private companies control so much of our lives and the economy.

[devhead]

i would add that this must include executives; 2 years ago we all got the same 3% while executives got 40% (while overseeing a stock drop of 65%).

one side effect though is w/o equity it's easy to feel a lack of motivation to work as hard if you get the same raise as everyone else who might not be doing great work.

[scarface_74]

You’re actually motivated by equity in a private company that will statistically not be worth anything?

[dontupvoteme]

That's how it works in a lot of places in Germany.