The big announcement is they are giving everyone one extra day off around a national holiday as a reward. We already have "unlimited" PTO but of course can't really use it. So their reward is letting us use a benefit we already supposedly had.

As you become more senior, the success metrics for your role change significantly. Mentoring only goes so far because there is a large element of self-awareness and a willingness to change. Some people never recognize this and many never successfully adapt to what seniority entails. It is the career equivalent of trying to raise a Series B with a Series Seed pitch deck.

There are a much smaller number of senior roles than people who can be promoted into them. Above a certain level promotions are highly competitive. You are being stack-ranked against everyone else that can do the same job and tenure is only an input into that calculus to the extent it gives you unique domain expertise. A successful strategy for avoiding hyper-competitive promotions is to create a new promotion-like role that doesn't really exist. However, this requires a level of initiative and agency that most employees never exhibit, and these opportunities only exist at specific moments in time.

Raises, on the other hand, are largely impacted by complex financial and economic considerations. Many companies could do much better at this but even then I think employees significantly underestimate the network of opportunity costs that must be considered.

The world has literally become the people vs corporations. There is no soul in working any more.

They forgot the “More work, Constant threat of Unemployment” part

I personally find the US setup where often the longest serving and oldest workers would be earning the most, strange. Even when those oldest folks are clearly past their prime and themselves admit so.

There are always exceptions. I worked with a fantastic colleague who was a highly knowledgeable technical expert and a capable PM, always punching above his weight at work. One day in a chance conversation with him I was shocked to hear that he wants to retire soon because, now that he is on the wrong side of 90, he is not that interested anymore. My jaw dropped -- I never paid attention to his age. But I suspect many folks in the last quarter of their productive life will be happy to slow down. My 2c.

Not trolling, genuine question.

There's a larger issue with that though: At some point, successful engineers _need_ to become examples or leaders if we are to continue exponential growth. If you are happy discontinuing exponential growth, then that's fine.

Thankfully, my company is pretty good about still giving me raises.

It's fake bottom-line thinking that optimizes a few items while ignoring second and third-order effects.

Innumeracy with a finance vocabulary.

Virtually all of that happened in the first 8 years. In the last 2 years I also stalled and saw minor inflation corrections of 2% a year, so I quit.

In my experience it had everything to do with me. In the first 8 I was very hungry, and always willing to take on something more or different. In the last 2 I was very much set on just coasting and doing what I was already doing, and it translated in them paying what they had always paid me, plus a little for inflation correction.

I think the truth is usually that if others don't stall and you do, that the solution probably sits with you as well. That having been said, I think now with AI the value-add of an employee sees so much pressure, that I think stalling will be a major trend.

Unionizing is just part of the fighting back. Only splitting the big monopolies can bring back competition and healthy salaries and promotions.

Monopolies are bad for consumers, but they are also bad for employees when that monopolies control most of the jobs of the industry.

UNIONIZE

It's an international market and everybody's using the same skills and tools. It's insane to think that 6 digit salaries would forever be sustainable when the rest of the world is doing the same stuff.

Developing tech to knock down barriers also paves over moats. I think the west is going to be in for some very trying times in the coming decades. The UK is a fascinating place to look at in this regard.

ALDI is great though!

The baby boomers have been a serious "clog" in the system at a lot of levels. It will be interesting to see how things play out once they're no longer actively involved.

The only times Ive gotten promotions was to get hired elsewhere. Better title, more money.

Its well known that retention budgets are laughable or nonexistant, and new hire budgets are well stocked. That means that if you want to grow from what youre doing, you gotta leave.