[untog]

I don't disagree with a lot that's being said here, but:

At that rate, you can give a junior developer a 10% raise every year for 3 years at the end of which you'd have an experienced senior employee

This won't work, because of the "short-termism" that permeates through startup culture. A great many companies have no intention of still being a startup in three years time- they want to be acquired or be absolutely huge (at which point that individual programmer means less). There is a huge (and perhaps damaging) focus on early results, and in that environment waiting for a junior to get to grips with stuff will be seen as a weakness.

[mindcrime]

Personally, I think "short-term'ism" is a disease that plagues business (if not society as a whole) in America these days. I also think taking more a of a long-term view can be an advantage on many levels, and I have often said that - when we get to a point where we can hire employees - one thing we will do at Fogbeam Labs is focus on hiring younger, less experienced folks and provide training, education, and mentorship... and build a "promote from within" culture where we aim for long-term relationships. Some sort of profit-sharing plan would seem to be a good idea as well.

Then again, we have all sorts of radical "against the grain" ideas. Like, the idea that you don't need to recruit at Stanford and MIT and Harvard to get great people. We believe you can recruit at, say, NCCU[1], UNC-P[2], ECSU[3], etc., - or even WTCC[4] - and find talented people who will not demand the same salaries as the Ivy Leaguers, but will also be hungrier and have a something to prove.

Time will tell...

[1]: http://www.nccu.edu/

[2]: http://www.uncp.edu/

[3]: http://www.ecsu.edu/

[4]: http://www.waketech.edu

(disclaimer: by saying "younger" I don't mean to say that actual age will be a factor... it's just that less-experienced folks tend to be younger by nature. But we would hire a 65 year old who had just undergone some sort of career retraining program, for example, if he/she was qualified. Discriminating by age, color, religion, ethnicity, etc., isn't just illegal, it's bad business. Why narrow down the pool of quality people you're working with?)

[codeonfire]

It won't work. you won't do the promote from within step, or you will promote one guy, or you won't pay enough money with the promotions. It will take your employees 2-3 review cycles to learn what's up. At that point your (now experienced) people will leave for places that pay more for experience.

[wccrawford]

I agree.

I worked for a company that gave me raises to bring me up to what I was worth for a few years. Then they stopped, and 2-3 review cycles is exactly how long it took me to catch on. By the time I left, my new job paid me 40% more than the old one.

And even before I got my first standard programming job, I knew that proper raises only come from changes jobs in this industry, and I was prepared for it.

I would have loved to pick a company and stay put, but companies just don't keep up their end of things.

In the end, it works out, though. I get an exciting new job every few years, and the fact that everyone is doing this makes sure there are plenty of job openings all the time.

I've yet to figure out what the companies get out of it, other than a temporary cost cut. (They end up spending the money to train the new guy.)

[mindcrime]

Of course you're never going to be able to keep everybody. That's not the point. But I believe you can build a culture that promotes longer-term relationships and a tighter bond. Maybe we'll never get back to the days of life-long employment followed by a gold-watch and a pension, but I think we can do better than the current system that most firms seem to be using.

Another thing I want us to do, is define a career path that allows technical people to continue to advance in pay and prestige, without forcing them into becoming managers. But that issue will be a long way off for us (heck, we're a pre-funding, bootstrapped startup right now... most hiring/retention issues are quite a ways off for us!)

[SatvikBeri]

What's with the cynicism here? I've worked at at least two companies with a great train & promote from within culture, and heard of several more from my friends.

[codeonfire]

It's not cynicism, it's just logic and my observation of how several tech companies operate. It may seem great that a company would want to promote its novices, but the fact that it operates with novices doing the work precludes this. It's not economical to promote and pay more just for the sake of promotion. All they need are novices so why pay senior wages? Turnover does have some cost, so companies will either bait there employees into staying a bit longer by promoting one or two people and letting everyone know that person's new salary, or they will just not promote anyone. Either way, most people are going to look elsewhere after 2-3 years of flat salaries.

[mindcrime]

OK, I don't know what other companies do (or will do, or claim to do), but what I'm talking about, vis-a-vis the company I'm working on, is not a situation where we have "novices doing the work." We're definitely working on hard problems that require smart, experienced people. All I'm talking about, is having a mix of both very junior and very senior people, and then focus on adding senior people by helping the n00bs advance to that level over time.

This may have veered away from what original article was proposing, so I may be muddling the conversation here a bit.. but I definitely believe we can build a company that has a strong "promote from within" culture, that provides a very supporting environment that helps people grow, and provides a career path for technical people that doesn't require them to move into management in order to advance their careers.

It's not economical to promote and pay more just for the sake of promotion.

But you don't do it just for the sake of promotion... you do it to keep a person's compensation in line with the value they create and to stay competitive with the market. As people gain new knowledge and skills, and gain experience, they become more valuable.

[lsc]

Eh, but there is a reason for this "short-termism" - people want to exit before the current favorable business cycle ends. Business cycles are famously quick and famously dramatic here in silicon valley.

[untog]

Sure. I wasn't blaming people for responding to the stimuli around them, but that it's still unhealthy all the same.