Hong Kong's Massive High-Rise Neighborhoods - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/design/2013/08/unbelievable-photographs-of-hong-kongs-crazy-high-rises/ <comment><USER2> I used to -- and still do, to some effect -- fetishize living in a highrise. I was a suburban kid who grew up in a boring (and, in retrospect, wonderful) house surrounded by other boring houses -- I watched Seinfeld and Frasier, and loved the idea of living in an apartment complex, where prospective friends and plotlines were only yards and floors away.

Looking at Michael's pictures, I'm struck with a particular sense of envy -- I realize, knowing what I know about median Hong Kong quality of living, that its likely unpleasant to live in these conditions. And yet, the sheer mathematics of it -- twenty thousand tenants divided by sixty floors is around three hundred per floor -- makes me smile at so many imaginary hallway interactions.

<comment><USER3> Spacehunt and gotrecruit are on the money.

Even if you spend 3-4x more than the average household's entire monthly income so that you live in a flat that's almost got half as much usable space as a typical suburban home in, for example, the US, you've got your neighbors to contend with.

The exorbitant rent or mortgage that you're paying only buys you a bit of extra elbow room (likely translated into more bedrooms and a coffin-like chamber into which your domestic helper, i.e. maid, is supposed to be banished at the end of their workday) and a better address. That money doesn't translate into a higher quality of construction. Everything is built as cheaply as possible and buildings begin to degrade pretty much as soon as they're put up for sale. There's no insulation and floors/ceilings are very thin.

Upstairs neighbor's child practicing piano at midnight ahead of a piano exam that they have to pass so that they can cram another cert for another activity into their portfolio for school applications? Their dog(s), which they keep in a cage or exile to the balcony at night, barking or whining? Deal with it. Down-the-hall neighbor having an epic, all-night mahjong tournament and the neverending _ka-lakka-lakka-lak-lak_ sound of the tiles driving you bonkers? Watching a football/soccer match on their TV and bellowing every time that "their" team scores a goal? Deal with it. Condensation from someone's air conditioner dripping from a great height and impacting one of your air conditioners (or a nearby neighbor's) with a loud _twang!_ every few seconds? Deal with it.

Then, there are the sidewalks. Thirty-floor (and taller) highrises are the norm, but the sidewalks tend to be the same size as the ones in a low-density suburb ... or smaller. At peak periods, trying to navigate the sidewalks without getting elbowed or shoved into a railing or wall or (worst case) off the curb and into traffic, is an adventure. At off-peak periods, you'll play air conditioner drip Frogger and try to get to your destination without being slimed with a melange of condensation, pigeon poop, and algae/mold/bacteria by inferring a safe path from the locations of puddles on the sidewalk. Aiyah! Look out! Here comes a guy pushing a metal cart laden with 3-liter cans of corn oil barreling towards you down the sidewalk!

<comment><USER4> My dad always tells me any apartments look glossy only in their first year of construction. After that, things start to degrade pretty quickly. Start with paint, then window glasses and then leaks and then what not. All the best trying to get every one to pay up to fix the issues related to the general apartment building. It never happens.

Unless you are living in a super luxury apartment, I see high rise residential buildings as nothing more than modern day slums and ghettos.

The biggest annoyances you come across are the ones related to privacy and hygiene.

<comment><USER5> _I see high rise residential buildings as nothing more than modern day slums and ghettos._

Some people prefer to live in cities, for example people who are driven to earn lots of money, people seeking higher education or cultural experience, people looking for partners, etc. For those people, depending upon the density of the urban environment and their will to dedicate significant portions of their waking hours to a soulless commute, sometimes that means there's no other option but these buildings.

That said, I basically share your perspective. After living in apartments throughout Asia and London for a decade, I really enjoyed being in a house again in Los Angeles and am currently considering building one somewhere in remote New Zealand. My thinking is that high density cities are lovely to visit, but quality of life for the nine-to-five cityslicker typically sux. The 'burbs aint that much better, given commute overheads, an often broadly similar lack of nature and, per capita, not entirely dissimilar rents (despite the extra space afforded).

One point nobody seems to have made is that capital for buying houses is virtually free in Hong Kong .. something like 1-3% interest IIRC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is a fortunate side effect to living in such tiny spaces. Having spent a couple of years living in what could be considered submariner sized dwellings, I found that the only thing I used the spaces for was sleeping. When one lives in a tiny, depressing hole, one tends to maximise the time spent out in the world doing things and socializing. With all of that activity I lost weight too.

There is a tendency to beautify and manicure our dwellings as if they were tombs in which to be eternally housed, sometimes with the result us of not wanting to leave them.

<comment><USER3> When you were living in a cozy apartment, did it happen to be in a city where free, public conveniences (like greenery, shaded benches, water fountains, etc.) were rare to nonexistent, situated in a region where the climate was extremely hot and humid year-round?

I ask because I live in such a city and socializing seems to take the form (for the affluent) of, for example, sweaty people buying overpriced iced coffees so that they have an excuse to sit in an air conditioned cafe and (for the less well-off) of people, especially the elderly, sitting on ledges, steps, the rare bench or two, etc. in air conditioned shopping malls, libraries, and government buildings all day.

<comment><USER6> No, it wasn't in such cities. They were, however, equipped with excellent public transportation, which certainly lowers the barriers to going out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Having lived in several buildings identical to the ones in a couple of the photos for nearly a decade I can assure you there is nothing very nice about living in them. The lifts and the hallways have no air conditioning. The flats themselves are really really really small, you can fit a queen size bed into the larger bedroom, but you're left with enough room to ease into the room sideways. The worst is during Jan to early March when you get 6-8 weeks of cold weather. It's only down around 10C but the buildings aren't insulated and everything is made of tile, so the wind slices through the walls and the tiles suck the heat out of your body. A lot of these housing blocks are built on top of enormous shopping malls, or train stations or both. And getting to and from work every day means pushing your way through what my Chinese wife used to call "a sea of people" which people in the West would only see if you went into a city for fourth of july, or new years eve fireworks.... And the pace of life there makes NYC feel like a backwater village. There truly is no place like Hong Kong on the planet.

That said, my time in Hong Kong was perhaps the happiest of my entire life. And you get used to living on top of everyone else. I'm headed there next month, which is only a 1.5 hour flight from Phnom Penh. I can't wait. There is a little noodle shop in Dai Wai that I've been dreaming about for two months now....

<comment><USER8> I'm headed back to Phnom Penh after 3 months of Euro summer. Haven't bumped into many coding types back when I was there (Jan-May) but then I've been staring too much into my own codez all the while.. wanna hang for hacker coffee after 4th September, then just get in touch!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of the reasons for such high housing costs is the influx of investment money. For example, this [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beverly_Hills](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beverly_Hills) apartment complex is mostly empty. Most of the houses bought up by rich mainlanders looking to park their money somewhere that would still grow their investment.

Secondly, there are cheaper alternatives. Living in teh New Territories can be tremendously more cash efficient. I live in the hills in a house, 2 floors, 3 bedroom, with a garden, and pay less than $2500 USD per month.

<comment><USER10> Correct.

What few realize though is that the archaic pegged exchange rate is the key contributor to this. In a typical exchange regime, such an influx of capital would push the exchange rate higher and provide a balancing effect. Instead, you get asset price inflation while wages in local currency remain flat. This makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. [1]

Compounding the effect is the inability to have any kind of independent monetary policy since the rate is pegged and there are no currency controls. Consider an economy with strong growth, 6% inflation, and interest rates on home mortgages of .....~1%? Welcome to HK.

[1] [http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-06-18/hong-kong-s- weal...](http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-06-18/hong-kong-s-wealth-gap- widens-amid-aging-population-inflation)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "In Hong Kong, Rich Live In Mountain Mansions And Poor Live In Cages"

[http://www.businessinsider.com/hong-kong-rich-live-in- mansio...](http://www.businessinsider.com/hong-kong-rich-live-in-mansions-and- poor-live-in-cages-2013-2)

I think it wouldn't be too far out to guess that the eventual end of planet earth is to be covered with structures like in the article posted and people living in it along the lines of the one linked here.

How many people could you cram in like that?

Hope you like to eat fish.

<comment><USER12> First, Don't take such a dim view! There is no reason why the buildings can't be twice as high and twice as roomy.

Secondly, We be living off soylent

<comment><USER3> Are (many of) the apartments privately owned in this scenario?

If so, then everyone who has already bought an apartment and everyone who stands to inherit such an apartment will "lose" money or the opportunity to convert their real estate into money in the future if newer apartments are more spacious or nicer in any obvious way.

Real estate developers will have less difficulty selling the units that they build right now if buyers are confident that future apartments will not be nicer (and hence more desirable to future buyers) than the apartments that you're trying to fob off on them today.

It's a feedback mechanism that, unchecked, leads to what you find in HK: progressively slightly smaller, more unpleasant apartments being built with every passing year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Up to 60 floors / 20,000 people in an apartment building? I didn't realize that existed. I don't think you'd find an apartment building in the US that has even a fraction of that. The largest hotel in New York is the Marriott Marquis in Times Square. It has 49 floors / 1,949 rooms, which I don't think comes close to 20,000 people; I couldn't find the exact occupancy.

<comment><USER14> I found a mention online that the average household size in Hong Kong is 3 people (in 2006).

So that's 20,000 people over 60 floors, 3 per apartment. That's 100 apartments on a floor! They must be incredibly compact if those numbers are correct.

<comment><USER10> The 20k figure would be referring to the development, which would be several "blocks" (i.e. independent buildings crammed next to each other).

The average household size is still 3 (bit lower in public housing) with average living space per person of ~140 square feet. Keep in mind that those 140 square feet are measured based on the outside of the building!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> (Google Street View) [https://maps.google.de/maps?ll=22.335737,114.14855&spn=0.002...](https://maps.google.de/maps?ll=22.335737,114.14855&spn=0.002858,0.008444&t=h&z=17&layer=c&cbll=22.335773,114.148685&panoid=odCVp6Lk8NXqDop5iFDjFw&cbp=12,174.11,,0,-48.77)

</comment><comment><USER16> > After years of living in a small house in Hong Kong's countryside...

Hong Kong has countryside?!?

<comment><USER17> The Hong Kong we tend to think of is the very densely populated Hong Kong Island and Kowloon area across the bay. Actually there is a huge area beyond Kowloon to the north known as the New Territories which is much less developed:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Territories](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Territories)

<comment><USER18> Hiking is fun there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Also, let's face it. It's very difficult to reason about the interior of a building from pictures of its exterior. Who knows how nice these apartments are? I grant that many of them are not probably up to the standards Americans are used to, but the mildew from the tropical climate and various other factors conspire to make things look worse than they are, I bet.

<comment><USER20> And most of them have a choice of multiple ISPs offering 1Gbps FTTH for about US$20-40 a month...

<comment><USER21> Of course they do. The cost to run fiber to a building is largely independent of the number of units in the building. So it makes perfect sense that higher housing density leads to lower costs and higher speeds.

<comment><USER22> Based on my experience living in a small town in England five minutes walk away from rolling, open fields, I suggest that what leads to lower costs and higher speeds is actual competition between broadband suppliers, rather than regulatory capture and cartels. I understand that it's common in the US for high-density housing areas to have very little choice, poor service, and to pay a fortune for their internet.

<comment><USER21> OK. As long as we're giving anecdotes, I live in high-density housing in the US, and pay $50 for 200 Mbps symmetric service. Service which is only available in buildings above a certain size.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I watched Dredd on Netflix a few days ago, and I'm struck by how similar these apartments and the blocks in the movie look.

<comment><USER24> The set design and sense of claustrophobia induced by Dredd was brilliant.

They even had accurate looking graffiti.

It was an exceptionally well designed set.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Price for Flat and Rental by income average are highest of anywhere on earth. And NO, New Territories aren't cheap either. Heck even flat in Out Skirt Island are expensive.

Business Monopoly by a few companies. Not necessarily a bad thing since South Korea are the same too. Except Samsung manage to feed to poor and give back to the country. Even with so much evil going on with them they still have some decency to their own country. And yet these companies in Hong Kong are much more about extracting all they can from Hong Kongers while not making contribution.

Government has zero direction on where to go, no leadership what so ever. No idea where the problems are. And unwilling to solve it.

</comment><comment><USER26> birth control.com

<comment><USER22> [http://lmgtfy.com/?q=hong+kong+birth+rate](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=hong+kong+birth+rate)

<comment><USER27> thanks for this, made me lookup this : [http://lmgtfy.com/?q=afghanistan+birth+rate](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=afghanistan+birth+rate)</comment></comment></comment>


Wikipedia blocks T-Mobile's entire IPv6 /32 from editing - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=User%3A2607%3AFB90%3A0%3A0%3A0%3A0%3A0%3A0%2F32&type=block <comment><USER2> I experienced this years ago (IPv4) on Sprint, where Wikipedia edits were blocked from all of us using Sprint mobile data (native on device _or_ tethered).

</comment><comment><USER3> (This only affects you if you're logged out, right?)

Seems to be the fault of a _particularly_ dedicated vandal: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Long- term_abuse/Dog_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Long- term_abuse/Dog_and_rapper_vandal)

This person has been at it since 2014! I wonder if there are better solutions - can Wikipedia ask T-Mobile to block that subscriber from accessing Wikimedia sites? Can you throw machine learning at these changes to identify future abusive ones?

<comment><USER4> > can Wikipedia ask T-Mobile to block that subscriber from accessing Wikimedia > sites?

If I were an exec at T-Mobile (or any ISP) I'd be extremely reluctant to set that precedent.

<comment><USER5> besides he is not violating ISP's ToS only Wikipedia's,

<comment><USER6> Are you sure? This has a broad interpretation:

 _Unless explicitly permitted by your Rate Plan or Data Plan, you are not permitted to use your Device or the Service in a way that we determine:

[...]

\- Causes harm or adversely affects us, the network, our customers, employees, business, or any other person;_

[[https://www.t-mobile.com/Templates/Popup.aspx?PAsset=Ftr_Ftr...](https://www.t-mobile.com/Templates/Popup.aspx?PAsset=Ftr_Ftr_TermsAndConditions&print=true)]

Even if that person's Wikipedia activities are not themselves deemed as TOS violations, it seems probable that if their activity were monitored for a bit, T-Mobile could come up with a TOS violation unrelated to those activities and shut them down. (That violation could be something that they knowingly let vast numbers of other customers get away with.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does HN's Algolia search by popularity work? - <AUTHOR> While trying to find an article via HN's Algolia search (and failing at it), I started to do a broader-term search on Stories only, filtering by Popularity and Past Month.
I did several searches like this without finding what I wanted until I started scanning results a bit closer and found that sometimes Stories are listed without any order relative to popularity (which I assume is upvote count).
For example, searching for just the term "error" with the previous filters, I get the following three results (shown in order of appearance):
https://imgur.com/GgrH6UK
- Elon Musk Teases Second Part of 'Top Secret Tesla Masterplan'

  3 points  Errorcod3  8 days ago  2 comments  (https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/11/elon-musk-teases-second-part-of-top-secret-tesla-masterplan/)
 - Here comes the Pokémon Go malware

  1 points  Errorcod3  8 days ago  0 comments  (https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/11/here-comes-the-pokemon-go-malware/)
 - Errol Morris's Secret Weapon for Unsettling Interviews: The Interrotron

  141 points  prawn  8 days ago  42 comments  (http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663105/errol-morriss-secret-weapon-for-unsettling-interviews-the-interrotron)

 If you look closely, the last story has 141 points, and even though they were all submitted 8 days ago, it shows stories with 3 and 1 points first.
So now I am having doubts about how can I trust that the result order is really correct?
Is there anything else going on here related to the "Popularity" filter metric? is it maybe something other than upvotes? It just strikes me as very odd that a story that is clearly popular (141 upvotes, 42 comments) is rated lower than stories with 3 and 1 upvotes and 2 and 0 comments respectively.
I'm sure the search engine works fine, so it's probably my lack of knowledge on how to fully use it. Are there any guides on how to do good searches on Algolia? <comment><USER3> Looking at your search results for the keyword "error",

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=error&sort=byPopularity](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=error&sort=byPopularity)

[https://imgur.com/GgrH6UK](https://imgur.com/GgrH6UK)

I can see that you're highlighting search results on Page 3.

The search results for the keyword "error" start on Page 1 with a story that has 286 points ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12041210](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12041210)) and end on Page 3 with a story that has just 1 point ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12072880](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12072880)).

The story on Errol Morris with 141 points ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12070472](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12070472)) highlights the keyword "Errol" and not "error". This is part of Algolia's typo-tolerance algorithm.

[https://www.algolia.com/doc/guides/relevance/typo- tolerance](https://www.algolia.com/doc/guides/relevance/typo-tolerance)

I would recommend that you approach the search with a fresh mind - a good night's sleep followed by a cup of coffee would probably do it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Here's a link to information about Algolia's ranking formula - [https://www.algolia.com/doc/guides/relevance/ranking](https://www.algolia.com/doc/guides/relevance/ranking). One thing to note is that 'textual relevance' is considered before 'business relevance'.

One component of textual relevance is the presence of typos. A typo-containing match (error instead of Errol) carries less weight than a typo-free match, so it will be ranked lower even when the business relevance ranking (popularity in likes/comments) is higher.

Algolia is an API so each implementation can be a bit different - <USER2> have the ability to tune the relevance formula to better suit their needs. So don't feel bad about needing an explanation, this stuff can get complicated :)</comment>


'TWTRQ' Up 685% in Clueless Trading - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/finance?q=twtrq&ei=OmZPUsC9KoSZ0QH2GQ <comment><USER2> Brb, about to go list my shelf companies GeetHub, AireBnb and Boox.

Can you imagine how much the shareholders of this company would have been making as the stock was going up? I mean, there's only $1.3M of total shares on issue even now but for a company that was worthless just days ago, that's a great outcome for them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Man, I miss Tweeter. Where I grew up, they were the one store that you could go to and talk to a guy who really knew the technical ins and outs of electronic hardware, and wasn't trying to upsell you on something you didn't need.

I remember walking in with my dad one day when we were looking for a new TV (ours had just died). The guy working the floor directed us to a model that cost 30% less than what we were originally looking at, explaining (correctly) that it fit our needs much better.

</comment><comment><USER4> FINRA halted trading of TWTR Inc. at 12:42 p.m. Friday because of the issue.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveschaefer/2013/10/04/the- big...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveschaefer/2013/10/04/the-biggest- winner-from-twitters-ipo-a-bankrupt-entertainment-retailer/)

It might be an interesting failure scenario for algorithmic trading. Almost like misspelled domain names and ad networks.

<comment><USER5> _> It might be an interesting failure scenario for algorithmic trading._

It's not how auto trading works. Traded instrument ranges are preset before the algo is started. I've never heard of an algo that tries to pick stocks to trade dynamically based on a _name_ , it would be astoundingly risky.

<comment><USER4> > It's not how auto trading works.

That's OK. It doesn't have to exist for it to be interesting to me. Think of it more like an interesting extrapolation of a scifi story, if you want. HFT advantages become slim enough to warrant dynamic instrument selection based on twitter sentiment analysis. So, you get bad algorithms following imperfect people, who execute millions of trades to fast to watch. And, someone trying to take advantage of that would act like a domain squatter, taking stake in a penny stock, predicting the next misspelling and correction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The same thing happened with Physicians Formula Holdings (NASDAQ:FACE) before the facebook IPO

<comment><USER7> Wow, if only you'd known about it. Great opportunity to buy a few thousand of TWTRQ and make a killing today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hilarious! I think Twitter should issue their IPO at $.05, since that seems to be the consensus.

<comment><USER9> And only issue 140 shares.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good opportunity to short, no?

<comment><USER11> Can't short penny stocks usually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is the same, "if only I had a time machine" feeling I get whenever I look at BtC's rise after the first crash.

</comment><comment><USER13> Somebody _had_ to be spamming TWTRQ as twitter. Serious prison sentences should follow if that's the case.

<comment><USER14> _Serious prison sentences_

For financial crimes? Surely you're joking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm kind of amazed that it's even possible to buy and sell shares in a defunct company like this.

<comment><USER16> Why not? If you started up a company and it was quite shit, however I still wanted to buy a piece of it and you agreed then why couldnt we transact? BTW this stock is traded on pink slips OTC.

<comment><USER15> I was surprised that a non-existent company is still listed on the exchange.

Obviously people can always sell stuff outside the public markets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It was up more than 1200%. Some people sure made a nice profit on that one.</comment>


Quora for the Enterprise: Two Contenders - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2011/01/quora-for-the-enterprise-two-c.php <comment><USER2> i'm writing a comedy novel about a startup, and one of the running jokes is how much Quora is overhyped. at one point somebody pitching a new idea says "it's like Quora with Badgeville's gamification for the enterprise!" it was supposed to be a joke ... life imitates art, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER3> As has been mentioned by many people many times before, the problems with shared communication in an enterprise are foremost political, and to some extent legal, much more so than technical.</comment>


Employees That Stay In Companies Longer Get Paid Less - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/cameronkeng/2014/06/22/employees-that-stay-in-companies-longer-than-2-years-get-paid-50-less/ <comment><USER2> Switching jobs works well when developers are in their 20's. But I've found in the 30's that a number of factors combine to make it much less attractive:

1) Each jump becomes less and less. There's an invisible salary cap for software engineers. By the time a software engineer is in their 30's, they've jumped a few times and are already close to the maximum.

2) There are costs associated with switching jobs. There's a risk that the new job could be far worse (team, boss, culture, etc.). And you start at zero reputation and connections at a new company. The lack of reputation often means less flexibility and influence since the others at the company don't trust you yet. The rewards are greater than the costs in the 20's, but usually not in the 30's.

3) It also happens to be the time when many get married and have babies. This increases the risk factor.

4) For total compensation there seems to be two tiers of companies, the top tech (google, facebook, amazon, etc.) and everyone else. I've noticed the big difference is not the base salary (top tech only pays a few % more). The really big difference is cash bonus + stock (RSU).

5) Unfortunately, the interview skills required to get into the top tech companies is biased against older software engineers. For an engineer in their 30's college is a long time ago. They could spend time getting algorithm books and studying, but there's less free time at this stage in life. So the only big jump that's worth it financially (top tech company) is very difficult to do.

<comment><USER3> Young developers should save 50% of their after tax income.

In some ways, this industry is awesome: to be able to make six figures in your early 20s is an incredible benefit and potential head start on financial independence.

In other ways, this industry is incredibly cruel: you will run into age discrimination and the other headwinds mentioned in your mid 30s, if not earlier.

I tell the folks I mentor to think of themselves as professional athletes with a 15, maybe 20 year career.

<comment><USER4> "I tell the folks I mentor to think of themselves as professional athletes with a 15, maybe 20 year career."

what terrible advice! Please stop "mentoring"

"Young developers should save 50% of their after tax income." I wonder how long it's been since you were young. While saving early is likely a good idea, it's also the time that student loans, young families, buying houses etc are all huge costs that very likely making saving much impossible. It's also a time to have fun, travel, enjoy life.

I've been a software developer for 27 years and have encountered none of the "incredibly cruel" discriminations you suggest. It's definitely true and I see this often that many as they age don't bother to stay current, they get stuck in old ways and don't want to keep up to date. But for those that do, those that stay at the forefront of their field there's no discrimination. You just have to be better than the rest, whether you're 20 or 50.

please please stop telling people this nonsense.

<comment><USER5> I actually think more people should act as if their career is going to end in 20 years. Thinking in these terms really drives home what you need to do if you want actual financial independence. Even if the goal is not realistically attainable, it shows you exactly where you stand.

Let's say you think $1M is good enough for your notion of financial independence. Well, how can you accumulate that amount in 20 years? One way would be to invest $2750/month. If you can manage an average annual return of 4%, you'll hit the $1M mark right after 20 years. If you start at 25 (giving you a buffer period after college to grow some roots), you'll be good by the time you're 45.

Note that in this case, "financial independence" doesn't necessarily have to mean that you're wealthy enough to live your picture perfect life without ever working a day again. It could simply mean that you've reached a point where you don't need to save _more_ and could take a 50% paycut without any serious long-term implications for your retirement. An example might be that you make low six figures up until age 45, surpass the $1M mark in investments, and then you get hit by ageism and your income drops by half for whatever reason. You're not going to be saving much anymore unless you make lifestyle changes, but you've still got the million bucks in the bank. The drop in income has impacted your ability to save and invest more, but it has had no effect on the savings you've already amassed, and it's still good enough to sustain your comfortable lifestyle with more modest savings.

<comment><USER6> Keep in mind software dev salaries often aren't as high in states outside of CA and NY, especially when working for smaller companies and companies that aren't tech-centered. Saving $2750 per month would be far too difficult for many software devs in other parts of the US.

I do agree that saving a lot early on is a good idea though.

<comment><USER5> One big life hack is to learn to balance salary with cost of living. It isn't always about pursuing the highest possible salary, because that might mean you're paying most of it in rent.

Consider a $75k salary in Texas. That's $4766/month net (or thereabout), due to lack of state income tax. Let's say you pay $1k/month in rent (very realistic for most of Texas). That leaves you with $3766. That $2750/month figure won't be too far off if you don't have any dependents and live frugally, especially if you take advantage of tax-advantaged savings (like a 401(k)).

The thing is, you can make more than $75k in Texas, especially once you've got a few years of experience under your belt. So while I completely agree that it's not going to be attainable for everybody, I think it's not so far off as many might think.

<comment><USER6> Absolutely. Unfortunately, I live in a state where housing costs tend to be unusually high, with salary not that much higher than average to compensate (Maryland).

<comment><USER7> What stops you from moving to Texas (or someplace else)?

<comment><USER6> I may move in the next few years. Just not practical for me right now. Plus, I generally like Maryland's other aspects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This "loyalty penalty" is far from new. It was totally obvious to me, and to many of those around me, over twenty years ago. If you stayed at one company, you'd fall behind the industry-wide trend. You'd start to see people who were more junior overall, and clearly less familiar with your product, hired with salaries above yours. If you wanted to keep up with that industry trend, you were _forced_ to keep moving. I even know people who deliberately did "out and back" jumps to leap-frog over others _at the same original company_.

Where I part ways with the author is regarding what goes through employers' heads to perpetuate this. People who decide compensation seem to be in denial about the fact that people leave, or that their actions have any impact on how often that happens. Their biggest worry seems to be that if they make an adjustment for one person then everyone else will demand one as well . . . as though the cost of making such adjustments even across the board is greater than the cost of having to re-hire half the team every year. As a result they make such adjustments rarely, and try to keep them all hush-hush so nobody finds out, but _it never works_. People who were hired because they're smart tend to figure things out.

Obviously, some companies have figured out that plain old-fashioned money is sometimes the key to employee retention. Google has sucked in _and kept_ a lot of people this way, for example. Unfortunately, the current wage inflation has its own down side. Maybe some day we'll find a place between these two extremes that doesn't either screw employees or stifle innovation by smaller competitors.

<comment><USER9> > I even know people who deliberately did "out and back" jumps to leap-frog > over others at the same original company.

This is commonly known as a valid strategy at the place I work. It's very difficult to come in giving a shit about my code when the future of my position is a dead end.

<comment><USER10> The company I previously worked at advertised a position to work alongside me at my same level doing the same work, the salary being offered was 50% higher than my salary at the time.

I took this to my manager and all he had to say was "there's nothing I can do, I don't set these things"

It's downright insulting to see this kind of behaviour.

<comment><USER11> They were obviously discriminating against you. Equal pay for equal work, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For those of us in software development, an important thing to think about is what this does to code. The industry is full of old codebases tended by people who were never involved in the planning and initial design of those systems. Knowledge transfer rarely happens sufficiently to prevent accelerating maintenance headaches.

I think that we really need to find different ways of developing software to deal with this reality. A commenter here mentions the London financials community and people job hopping < 12-18 months. I've heard terrible horror stories about some of that code.

<comment><USER13> Pair programming fixes the turnover problem

<comment><USER12> It trades it for the problem: convince people to pair program.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> HR is really a problem here (at least in the software industry). Pay is usually based on title and how many people you manage, but I think that's pathological for managing developers because developers aren't interchangeable. You have huge variances in skills and knowledge. The thing is, development skills scale in a way most job skills can't. You can have at developer that has 10x more impact than other developers. (It's not common, but it certainly happens). But those people are definitely not making 10x more. Or even really 2x more.

I think companies really need to realize that they have to compensate their best developers to get them to stay even if they're not giving them management responsibilities, because the good ones are going to realize they're good and either job hop or freelance. Saying "we can only give you this much because your title is X and we don't have an open management position, but we really value you!" is a great way to lose your best people.

<comment><USER15> > _Saying "we can only give you this much because your title is X and we don't > have an open management position, but we really value you!" is a great way > to lose your best people._

This resonates with me _so_ much. I've left a few companies after having conversations which ended with my manager saying exactly this. In most cases they have ended up hiring somebody else at a salary higher than mine.

It really confuses me. I usually don't want to leave these companies because the work is good and finding a new job can be stressful. They usually don't want me to leave because I do good work and finding a replacement is costly. I don't understand why all this bureaucracy and nonsense about job titles has to get in the way of finding a middle ground.

<comment><USER16> That is what you get when you isolate decision maker from consequences of his decisions. HR does not feel the pain of you leaving, so he does not care. However, he has trouble to find a new person for low salary, so he is forced to raise the offer.

<comment><USER17> HR may not see the loss of institutional knowledge of high worker turnover, but they do see a lot of the more monetary costs: with all that constant hiring of replacements going on, HR sure needs a bigger budget next year! We might be looking at an incentive problem, amongst others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This article should create a fun discussion, but be aware that it's most likely completely bogus. I suspect it suffers from survivor bias: anyone who is in a position to jump ship and get a 20% raise consistently is _not_ average.

If you try to change jobs every 2 years and are not great at your current position, you'll likely be sorely disappointed.

<comment><USER19> Agree with this. One of the side effects of this is your top performers are always jumping and the people who tend to stay the longest tend to be average or below average.

<comment><USER20> or they might just enjoy there jobs enough to not need to move.

<comment><USER21> Everyone has their "jump ship" price

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is fascinating that there is actually hard evidence for this, but it's not surprising to me given my own experiences.

When I first started out as an "intermediate" software developer (after a couple years as doing contract work) I was poached twice within a year of taking a position, both times the offers were at least 30% higher, an amount my existing employers where highly unlikely to match (in fact in the second case I knew this because I had already attempted to negotiate a salary increase with them before leaving).

These were, as they say, offers I couldn't refuse. To financially cripple myself for the sake of loyalty would have been stupid. Moreover I felt it would also be stupid to remain with an organization that clearly had broken retention policies for employees.

What's somewhat surprising is that this occurred in Vancouver, a city that is notorious for low pay in the tech sector. Nowadays, if I wasn't doing my own startup I'm quite certain I would have received another offer of at least a 50% increase by now.

As a potential employer now I'm trying to figure out how best to ensure that I'm not making the same mistakes I saw at the places I worked for. Best as I can figure out, at least in Vancouver, this means paying salaries that exceed expectations and typical local numbers and look more like what people would be getting if they looked outside of Vancouver. I think this also means regular raises and bonuses so people don't feel like staying is going to hurt them financially.

<comment><USER23> Have you seen any of Daniel Pink's work on what motivates people in business? It might inspire you to focus on other incentives than just pay salary increases.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y)

<comment><USER24> >Autonomy >Mastery >Purpose

That's great. Really. Then you get invited to the company holiday party at the CEO's house. Meet his six children who are in college and traveling the world. Then you realize you and hundreds of others paid for that by living in a rental townhouse. True story.

There's no amount of motivation for me that will make up for a raw deal in pay.

<comment><USER25> One is not likely to get to the same place in life as that CEO by job-hopping as a software engineer.

<comment><USER24> One is not likely to get to the same place in life as that CEO. You can stop the sentence there. The rest of your statement makes you sound judgmental against job-hopping.

Capital distribution in the US is a Paretian/long tail distribution. It is statistically very unlikely for anyone, regardless of their actions, to get to the same place in life as that CEO if they are from anywhere in the bottom 90%.

[http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1077681/thumbs/o-INCOME- DISTRIBUTI...](http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1077681/thumbs/o-INCOME- DISTRIBUTION-900.jpg?5)

<comment><USER25> Fair. I had originally wrote "One will not get to the same place...", but wanted to modify it to allow for exceptional cases. Went too far modifying it.

I agree that nearly everybody is unlikely to reach the same place in life as that CEO. If that were not the case, truly we would be living in a utopia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've known people who stay for 4 months at a new higher-paying gig and then leave. Because the paycheck and new title didn't make up for the toxic culture/culture clash that they dove into. Since you see them more than you see your real friends, the people you work with become your extended family of sorts.

"If all you get from work is a paycheck, you are underpaid" -Jim Rohn

Daniel Pink says it best. The best jobs give you autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Even better, if you create a business that does the same.

[http://deliveringhappiness.com/the-motivation-trifecta- auton...](http://deliveringhappiness.com/the-motivation-trifecta-autonomy- mastery-and-purpose/)

<comment><USER27> Beyond a certain point where a person can afford the basics, housing, food, healthcare, ability to go on vacation, provide for family. A higher paycheck might not necessarily translate to feeling better.

The little things -- bad toxic co-workers, a long commute, un-interesting projects, clueless managements, unfairness, all those things might seem minor at first in face of a large paycheck but just like water grinding a rock, those little things every day will eat your soul.

<comment><USER21> For enough money, I'm willing to bet anyone will "suck it up"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Top recruiters have known this for a long time and call it marking to market. The article nails what's going on but the implementation is a little more nuanced. You don't just switch jobs every few years to lock in pay raises.

When you're in a hot market where labor demand outstrips supply, you should leave multiple times. For example, most people are shocked at how high software salaries are when they actually take a look at GlassDoor. The market is hot, you should be using it to increase your pay. When supply outstrips demand, you should stay at your current company and your above market pay. The other thing is you should get what you can when you come in the door because some companies go multiple years without pay increases and, when they do, they use a percentage of your existing salary (1-3%).

If you're not leaving, you're getting screwed, plain and simple. At Oracle, there were high performers and they came in 5-10 years ago and only received small raises. You'd see senior developers at 100k after being there for 10 years and then you'd see a new grad from MIT hired in at 100k. You wouldn't really see VPs promoted from within but you'd see them hired in from the outside all the time. One woman left at 75-80k for maternity leave and got hired back in at 125k for the same position.

Moral of the story is be prepared to seek and get your actual market value because it's probably higher than you think.

</comment><comment><USER28> I've been saying this for years now, so its somewhat comforting to see someone else repeat it with a bit more evidence than my personal anecdata.

The main reason, in my opinion, is that corporate promotion practices have not responded to the incredible amount of intercompany competition for labor. At my current employer, the promotion process is a 3 month nightmare which requires an incredible amount of an employee's (and his/her manager's) time, including the compilation of a detailed packet which describes the reasons for why the promotion is deserved and involving an approval process through a separate committee. Meanwhile, any software engineer at one of the big guys can walk down the street to one of their competitors, say "I want a job," and probably have a seat and a 15% raise by the end of lunch time. With pay, benefits, perks, and culture being about the same at any of these companies, its easy to see why a career-focused individual would choose to jump ship every two years.

<comment><USER19> The thing is a lot of people value the security or aren't aware of the difference between market and their pay. Let's say this is 80% of people.

If you're corporate HR, you can retain 80% of your top talent without big pay increases and promotions while knowing that you'll lose the top 20%. This may be palatable whereas it wouldn't be if you were only retaining 60%.

I think Google and FB were the first to figure out that you could get the top 5%, that they would make a big difference in your org. You'd have to greatly increase compensation but those individuals are probably contributing and worth more than that.

<comment><USER29> You can retain 80% of your talent. You will be able to retain approximately 0% of your _top_ talent, which is certainly a number less than 20% of your total talent pool.

<comment><USER30> You may be surprised how many top engineers have no idea what they're worth, and can't self-promote worth a damn. I've known some _incredibly_ talented, capable people being woefully underpaid, and not ever trading up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Very much this.

In London, certainly within Financial Tech, it is almost expected that you will job hop every few years, so the employers tend to price this in, with small incremental pay rises, little training, but often reasonable bonuses, to at least keep you there for about three years.

We also saw this was more prevalent with our offshore outsourced colleagues - over there anyone with even a modicum of skill would job hop every 6-18 months. Each time to lock in a payrise.

Employers will give you the shaft without a heartbeat of second thought; never seen why they should expect more from their "resources".

</comment><comment><USER32> The one missing piece here is the age of the employee. Of course this is true when you start out. Does it still hold after you acquire 15 years experience? Isn't that when the stagnation and preference towards younger worker bees supposed to happen? The article is kind of useless without that one piece. It does not give the whole picture.

</comment><comment><USER33> > It's a fact that employees are underpaid.

I just have to comment on that line in the conclusion of the article... When Forbes, Forbes!, states unequivocally that employees are underpaid, it's probably time to sit up and take notice.

<comment><USER21> Here on HN, we would rather fully understand and rationally discuss the publishers claims rather than taking their conclusion as final word solely based on the Forbes name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is absolutely true. The best opportunity to set your pay is when you get the offer letter, after that it's all nickel and dime increases. The next best time to adjust your pay is when you announce you're leaving for a better role somewhere else. You have to be your own agent and demand the market rate for your role, skill set, and number of roles you're being asked to cover. The only time your,manager might jump your pay without asking is when they realize you are drastically underpaid and could leave any time.

</comment><comment><USER35> My best raises occurred when I went back to a previous employer after working somewhere else for a few years. Sure, job hop every three of four years, but also consider going back to work for previous explorers.

<comment><USER36> Some companies have a limit on the number of times you can work for them, in order to prevent people from hopping and coming back for more money. I think a previous company I worked at had a limit of 2 employment periods, which they instituted (supposedly) after a large number of people took voluntary separation and then came back later after the company started growing more. The next time a voluntary separation came up the policy was implemented to prevent another round of that happening.

<comment><USER37> This seems equal parts petty and self-defeating to me.

No one except the worst performers are going to stay at a place when they see market salaries rising substantially everywhere else. So what this does is hamstring the company from re-hiring the top performers who could easily get new, higher-paying jobs at other companies.

Equally bad is that the weak employees will have gained substantial organizational power, so they'll be making decisions by virtue of time served instead of skill and knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Having worked for a number of years in the Valley, I can say that the salary part is true. However, now that I work at a large tech company that's public, the big thing that's missing from this is stock / RSUs. After doing my taxes, I realized how much of my compensation came from them and it makes a difference in a couple percentage points for base salary look small. On top of that, companies give refresher stock so that you accrue more of it the longer you stay.

After 4 years and earned all of that initial grant, it probably will make more financial sense to move on as the refresher grants don't come close to the initial grant. It also is a point where salary disparity might be significantly different (depending on economic conditions).

<comment><USER39> This is only true for those rare positions (senior/upper management) that offer such equity grants, or if you lucked into one of those one-in-a-million rocketship growth companies. I've been in the tech industry as an engineer and lower/middle manager for 15+ years and equity has never ended up making up even a tiny fraction of my compensation. Often it ends up being worthless (underwater options). I suspect my situation is the more common one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is plausible, though I'd be more confident in the numbers if someone could get data on total earnings over a period. Apart from salaries, those are impacted in either direction by, at least: voluntary termination and/or signing bonuses (in the plus column) and periods of unemployment between jobs (in the minus column). I don't know if those would change the totals significantly, but it's a fairly dangerous assumption to take two different groups and assume 10-year earnings are really [10 x $avg_salary], and therefore that comparing $avg_salary gives the full picture.

</comment><comment><USER41> Companies (with middle management) work like a family... all things optimized to welcome a new kid or take care of a crying child. As a senior (outside of executives) you are expected to shoulder the responsibility. This setup may look odd in light of this article. The only reason it works and is working fine is the setup feels natural and many have accepted it. Employees who couldn't express their concerns in a smart way were seen as misfits. At the same time employees, worth even a tiny bit, who cried smart every 6 months were take care of.

There are limits on how many times you get taken care of for crying as the articled mentioned and finding another family is a perfect thing to do when you reach the limit. That new company is all ready to repeat the cycle for you.

Unfortunately, in many companies the middle management is a pack of caring elders and the people who didn't exercise smart crying. Another reason why it(accept 3% annual raise, don't expect more) became a norm. \-- from a middle manager

</comment><comment><USER42> This assumes that you are guaranteed a 10% - 20% raise with every jump, but my experience is that you operate within bands, and once you reach the top of your band, higher offers are rare. If you want to get higher offers you need to have been promoted to the next job level.

As an example, if you are a junior software engineer, you can only earn more as a senior software engineer, and again as a project manager, and again as a product / line manager.

And the only way you get promoted to the next band is by staying for a set amount of time at a company to get promoted. Outright offers from a lower job level to a higher one is rare without demonstrated ability to do the job.

So yes over the short term, jumping ship often is more lucrative, but you'll hit a glass ceiling and have difficulty breaking through to the next level.

</comment><comment><USER43> You know, reading this thoroughly - the statistic is alittle unclear in the title.

The real stat is -- Over the course of a 10 year career, if you don't stay at any jobs for more than 2 years, then you make 50% more. This becomes a larger number if the career length increases.

</comment><comment><USER44> I found this absolutely true in my short stint as a software engineer so far (1 1/2 years) - I have switched jobs twice, the first switch giving a 50% raise, and the second giving an 80% raise.

Companies don't seem to be interested in retaining quality talent these days (or developing it), and get used to paying a certain amount for that talent, even if he/she is worth a lot more. It is in each person's self-interest to then seek out the compensation & promotion the person deserves, assuming all other things being equal.

<comment><USER45> My experience is the absolute opposite, but maybe that's the difference between the US (or CA) market and the German one. Germany seems to pay people by seniority, not by their abilities (which, I think, sometimes causes unemployment for older developers). Maybe it's an "equality" thing - so all developers your age will make roughly the same.

Even with excellent reviews by my bosses (not to mention being a well- respected team member and the go-to guy of choice for technical questions), they wouldn't even give me a 10% pay increase. Switching jobs also didn't help (I got maybe 3% more), but at least a single company didn't get to reap all the profit from having me around.

Right now, I don't even bother anymore. All public job offers are for consulting companies, which seems to be very profitable (basically: you get paid less than the internal employees at companies that hire you, and the consulting company keeps 70% of the hourly rate they get paid; you get maybe 30%).

Sometimes there are article what nice salaries you're supposed to get, but if there aren't even jobs available?

<comment><USER46> Start a consulting company with one employee.

<comment><USER45> Lots of people actually do that, but it involves lots of work that you might not want to do if you're interested in (and really good at) software development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I feel like the ability to job hop like this will be in fairly small, concentrated geographic areas. In areas that aren't as concentrated it'll end up being pretty hard to do this.

<comment><USER45> It's also a culture thing.

In the USA, selling yourself like you're the absolute King is ok, but in Germany many people would consider you an arrogant snob that's full of it, if you pretend too hard. They'd also consider someone who job-hops every year to apparently not be able to take responsibility and do their job well, and maybe to be problematic to work with (or they'd not need to run so often).

Switching jobs after 3-4 years is pretty normal, though. It shows that you can keep a job, and if you can show that you also learned something, that's good.

<comment><USER48> Must be very comfortable for employers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> To me it's pretty obvious and it's because of a simple, logical dynamic. If you apply for a better role within your firm, your current boss works against you. They may either block your move completely, or delay it. If you apply for a better role in another firm and get an offer, there's no way for your current employers to act against your interest.

Companies can foster better internal mobility but they can never change this basic dynamic.

<comment><USER11> Dead men's shoes, this is called. You can only get promoted if the guy above you, for whatever reason, goes away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> My dad figured this out in the 80s. Changed jobs every couple of years for a bigger title and more money. It seems obvious to me anecdotally.

</comment><comment><USER51> The article alludes to data backing up what they're saying, but (as far as I can tell) doesn't actually reference any. It is just a collection of anecdotes.

I have found that as I've been at companies longer, I'm more able to make certain things happen and I'm more capable of making a difference. That ability corresponds to an increase in my pay.

</comment><comment><USER52> Longest job 2.3 years..

This is the best thing about contracting. With every new contract, you get to adjust your rate :)

</comment><comment><USER53> I know few people who are working for company more than 5 years and are underpaid. But when I asked them, they were more concerned about seniority not about paycheques.

</comment><comment><USER54> Or maybe just "the kind of employees who get paid less also are the kind of people who have a harder time getting new jobs." Correlation != causation.

</comment><comment><USER55> "You don't go anywhere and for more money seated in the same seat".

</comment><comment><USER56> Job hopping worked for me, the only time I've done so.

Back in 2011, a friend of mine offered an opportunity to switch from where I was working (a small community college in Southern California) to eBay in San Jose.

The jump in pay was pretty good (I believe I was making about $70K at the college at the time and the new job at eBay was starting me off at $90K, along with some RSUs and a bonus potential). (Sidebar: the pay was actually better initially when they first called me at $105K, but then they called me the next day and told me they had made a mistake and dropped it down to $90K...even though that really ticked me off, I ended up accepting anyway because it was still a pretty awesome opportunity for a small-town guy like myself to work for a big company like eBay).

I'm pretty risk averse so while I was there I was looking at a number of things, such as benefits (health / retirement), longevity / raise opportunities in the future, rent prices, work enjoyment etc. (looking at some of the comments people have made related to doing stuff in your 20's versus your 30's...I'm in my mid-20's but I probably act as risk-averse as a 40 year old). Even more so now that I'm married with a little one (and a bun in the oven).

Even though in $$ I was making considerably more, once I included the increased cost of rent in to live in San Jose (versus Imperial County, CA), I actually didn't seem to be making a whole lot more. Plus, I didn't quite feel like I had the same amount of responsibility / enjoyment out of the work I was doing compared to the projects I was able to direct / build at my old job.

So shortly after starting at eBay, when I found out my old job was getting upgraded into a management position (primarily due to the inability to upgrade a "regular" position to a higher salary) I opted to go back, even though my new salary would be a bit less than the eBay one ($80K) overall it'd be a decent jump since my overall costs were the same.

Since then, I've been able to complete all of those projects I came back to finish, along with a slew of new ones that have come up since then, but at the same time, I've had to start letting go of some of my development duties and replace them with management ones (mainly because my staff are non- developers...I'm really the only one handling online services and my other staff handle printing, publications/copying, and mail duties for the campus). It's been enjoyable, but at the same time I still want to become a better developer and it gets harder to do that at work now (and as someone else has mentioned, free time starts dwindling too).

Recently, after staying at the same salary for about two years, the management pay scale at the college was revamped, and as a newer manager I was able to receive a sizable increase because of it to my current salary of about $89K. For where I live that sort of salary is hard to find (i.e. it's damn near impossible).

Fast-forwarding to today, I like to keep my eye out for jobs (either in Craigslist or in the Who's Hiring threads each) in the Bay Area or closer, in San Diego, that would offer the "full package": a great location, environment / team, salary and while I've seen a few good options, it seems the most difficult thing to get across in an email or resume is demonstrating how much of an asset I could be as an employee.

I'm not really complaining (things are definitely in the good-great range currently) but I'm always looking for additional opportunities to continue learning and become better at writing software (and being able to focus on that full-time again would definitely be great, and I could still bring my additional skills as an entrepreneur/manager to the table).

In the meantime, I went ahead and scraped our local Chamber of Commerce websites and sent out some old-fashioned snail mail letters to local businesses asking if there were any pain points or tasks that take up a lot of employee time that could potentially be automated or solved with software. I figure if I can get some interesting projects out of that it would be worth it and give me an enjoyable coding project to work on that solved a problem. So far, I've only received one response from a local liquid fertilizer / trucking company so after finishing this message I'm going to go take a closer look at the info that business provided me on Friday to see what I can do for them :-).

P.S. I'm always willing to go and try out for a company...and luckily, I just happen to be on vacation for the next two weeks _hint_ _hint_.

</comment><comment><USER57> because people who don't ask for a raise have more chances of getting a job, for longer.

ask for a raise, expect to get fired.

</comment><comment><USER58> The conclusion of the article- that the easiest way to ensure you secure large raises every few years is to job hop, is probably true. But I think it takes a very defeatist attitude towards negotiating raises with present employers:

"In 2014, the average employee is going to earn less than a 1% raise and there is very little that we can do to change management's decision. "

Most good managers know that it costs much more to find a new employee than to retain an experienced one- it takes a lot of time and effort to find a suitable candidate, and then to train them. I believe that given an opportunity, they'd rather pay up a larger raise than originally budgeted, to keep a good performer, than to have to find a replacement. But this rarely happens.

Why? I blame poor communication and avoidance. Most employees are loath to negotiate with their employers, and they're usually not very good at it when they do. Negotiating is hard- it can be scary, uncomfortable and awkward to "demand" hire pay from your manager. It's easier to just think "there's nothing I can do to change their minds, so I'll just have to go find a new job elsewhere". That path allows you to avoid negotiating and still be offered a 10%-20% raise.

What would happen if, before any employee decided to leave for a new job, they met with their manager to discuss the situation? And really thoroughly discuss it- meaning a well prepared case for a solid raise: An outline of the employees successes during the year, details of how they've contributed to the company's bottom line (even in a tangential way), hard stats on what the current job market pays for a someone with their experience, and a soft/gentle reminder of the costs of finding/training a replacement. All done in a calm and professional way.

Would every single manager just hand them a 20% raise and an apology? No. But managers are business minded, and are usually evaluated based on the costs and revenues associated with their team. I'd like to think that given a convincing argument like the one above, a good number of them would respond logically and offer larger, more reasonable raises.

Ideally a high performing employee shouldn't have to do that- management should recognize their contributions and the costs of find a replacement. But that's not reality. Pushing for a 10-20% raise for employees at the annual budget meeting would be met with responses that a manager is prematurely trying to solve a problem that hasn't yet presented itself.

So I believe the best solution is for employees to have those difficult negotiation meetings before they decide to jump ship. It won't work every time, but it'd work more than not having those discussions at all.

<comment><USER37> Or, I could send out a resume on Monday and have a new job offer by Friday, one that includes a 20% raise and a hiring bonus.

Grueling, painful negotiation processes are, well, grueling and painful. The revealed preference of software engineers shows that the concrete benefits of jumping ship quickly outweigh the merely potential benefits of negotiating a raise at considerable stress.

I can see how it makes business sense for companies in the industry to try to make negotiation easy and the norm, and when they decide to, they'll find plenty of willing partners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> And H1Bs are cheap.

</comment><comment><USER60> TL;DR - this is explained by: 1\. Sociopathic corporate philosophies 2\. Risk- mitigation against lack of competence and/or integrity of the parties involved in the transaction (HR, low-level manager, employee).

My initial response to this was cynical and pithy: if corporations were people, they would be sociopaths (in far larger proportions than the actual human population). In this case, they seem to have zero regard for fairness, but rather only how they can use others to maximize the benefit to themselves.

Upon further reflection though, it is more complicated, and there are many factors and actors in play.

There is a misguided but universally accepted belief that corporations' supreme obligation is to maximize shareholder returns, and that it would be immoral to NOT take any lawful action that would increase profits. The net effect of this is equivalent to having a single sociopathic business owner who will do anything to maximize their own profits without regard for fairness except when a deficit of fairness begins to negatively impact this end. The effects of this philosophy impact decision makers directly and indirectly throughout the organization, and this phenomenon is one of the results. Being fair or rational in treatment of employees is not mandatory or even the primary driver of decisions.

One way this manifests itself is that management justifies its large salaries and bonuses by minimizing costs, of which employees are often a significant portion. Thus, incentive structures throughout the organization will likely reflect this. It doesn't hurt that executives are likely to be sociopaths to some degree, and this just helps them justify their natural inclinations.

Even in a hypothetical case where all levels of decision makers in a company are benevolent and fair minded, there still remains the difficult problem of determining fair salaries for each employee. Developers aren't truly fungible, but they are difficult to value (especially by those further removed from that role). So, in a sense it is rational to treat them as fungible unless you have a reliably accurate means of differentiating. If an HR person is 100% certain they don't know what is fair outside of averages, it would be a rational decision to let an employee's market price be determined by a public auction process among other companies (aka job hopping), rather than granting a request for a large raise outside the normal range.

Of course, this end could be mostly satisfied merely by matching an offer made by another company (aka job shopping) without requiring the employee to leave and return later. However, that is a very low-friction and low-risk proposition for the employee compared to an actual job hop, so inevitably would see much larger participation if accommodated universally. As HR has no way of knowing what the market rate is for all of its employees, it would also have no way of knowing how much this policy would increase the company's costs if it implemented it and every employee utilized it. If a worst-case scenario would cause substantial destruction profits, this would be a high-risk change to implement, and likely would need other coordinated actions to ensure acceptable long-term profitability and approval from shareholders.

Additionally, there is the risk that the employee had no desire to actually accept the other offer, or even colluded to be given a non-genuine offer (from a friend, for instance) under the condition they had zero intention of accepting the offer. Only once the employee terminates employment and spends a substantial amount of time at another company have they proven the offer was genuine, and that their previous salary truly wasn't sufficient to keep them. That is, without a high level of trust in the employee regarding the offer. It also helps if a trusted party (manager, co-workers, etc) confirms their exceptional value to the company, both in justifying the raise and in indicating there won't be cascading impacts upon the rest of employee salaries.

Diverting from this policy requires additional risk and lower profits, mitigated only by a high degree of integrity and competency in all involved in evaluating fair compensation and the long term cost/benefit of granting a raise vs. hiring someone else. The larger the organization, the less likely it would be a rational decision for upper management to assume this to be the norm. Integrity and competency are impossible to objectively quantify or measure, so for those who manage by metrics, I can see how this would pose a problem.

</comment><comment><USER61> nowadays where got such thing as loyalty?

every man for themselves already</comment>