What do you consider a fair pay for junior engineers in order for them to contribute at the capacity they're expected to? Our fresh college grads are paid a total compensation higher than $200K. Is that not enough to expect working, at minimum, 8 hours a day?
> What do you consider a fair pay for junior engineers in order for them to contribute at the capacity they're expected to? Our fresh college grads are paid a total compensation higher than $200K. Is that not enough to expect working, at minimum, 8 hours a day
No good lead assumes hours per day is equal to quality of output.
I think the distinction being drawn here is that there is a disconnect between hiring managers and workers.
A hiring manager has an expectation that 200k will incentivize someone to work for 8 hours a day consistently and constantly where work is the point, not the tasks themselves. They expect the worker to figure out what additional tasks are to be done for that price and work at the upper limit of the time expectations (8 hour a day).
Whereas the average worker is coming to the workplace to complete a set of tasks defined by the manager, not to figure out more tasks to do in their free time. They expect the manager to know what tasks needs to be done and understand that their results need to be tracked.
As jobs become more and more compartmentalized it becomes less of an advantage for an employee to be hungry for more work, when their chance for promotion diminishes the better they are at their job, as in my anecdotal experience, management is loathe to lose that efficient cog in the system in that specific point. Which then reinforces the employees becoming jaded and resorting to the least amount of work possible.
I believe it’s because in todays corporate world more often than not, most employees have no skin in the game. That is, they are not privy to the more long term planning for their companies and are not usually compensated based on performance (outside of sales anyway).
This is on point for me. I don't come into work to "invent" my own work. Management is expected to know what workers should work on, make sure it has the right ROI for the company, and that the rewards of that work flow to the workers.
At many FAANG-like companies, engineers are supposed to find "scope" themselves to keep their own job? Are you crazy? What the fuck is management doing in these companies?
I believe management has in many cases lost focus on strategy because they are either not driven as well since they also are not fully invested in the company’s overall vision or are so overwhelmed with meetings that they simply don’t have time to even understand what their subordinates actually do in technical terms, much less strategize.
But they are overwhelmed because they are spending too much time on performance evaluations than on project management. If they actually cut down performance evaluations by 80%, time will reappear magically.
> What do you consider a fair pay for junior engineers in order for them to contribute at the capacity they're expected to? Our fresh college grads are paid a total compensation higher than $200K. Is that not enough to expect working, at minimum, 8 hours a day?
I consider fair pay = $200k + a management that makes $600k pulling their weight by solving cross-team problems instead of pushing everything down to engineers.
Juniors want "leadership" to act like leaders and take responsibility. Get laid off first for your own poor decision-making.
Software engineering isn’t like manual labor. Only results should be measured. A programmer in a flow state who is completely focused will get more accomplished in 2 hours than they would in 8 if they were feeling uninspired and disengaged.
Our job is foremost to think and solve problems. She might very well be thinking about solutions to her coding issues while walking the dog. You are not a very deep thinker if you think butt-in-seat time = results.
I wonder why those managers who think butts in seats == productivity aren't fired first. They literally don't understand the business of managing Software.
Pay = hour expectations isn't reality, and we only pretend it is when we want to abuse juniors. Effort and time are not strongly connected to pay, in office jobs. It's not even clear that they should be (but if so, and we made effective reform that direction, oh boy, it's not the juniors who are gonna feel the most pain).
These juniors are savvy if they've realized this without having to experience work getting easier, more pleasant, and more laid-back the more money they make, directly.
[EDIT] Oh, your pay may actually be connected to this, now that I think about it. If you're leetcoding and such (guessing, based on $200k+ for juniors) you're selecting for a certain culture and set of expectations. "Play the game, get the fat paycheck". Effort not connected to playing said game is just wasted, with the way rewards are dolled out in that world. Not laziness, just rational behavior based on hiring & such being batshit crazy and favoring a rather "prep for the test, the most efficient way possible—the score is all that matters" mindset—which isn't the fault of these folks, they're looking at the system and doing exactly what it demands they do for maximum reward. If they're coming up through prestigious universities, they may well have lived their whole life like that. Check the box, get the reward, prep for checking the next box, and you'll go absolutely nuts from over-work if you don't optimize each step (if you try to do it all in the spirit of the thing, rather than the minimum required by the rules, explicit or implicit). Results focused, just not the results you want... but the ones you're accidentally asking for!
If they're smart, they're doing as much as they need to keep the job, while planning their next, career- and comp-advancing move. Try framing things in terms of the "impact" they'll get to claim if they complete steps X, Y, and Z, and see what happens, LOL. I bet they'll jump at it—that's exactly what they want to be able to talk about when they're looking for the next job in 18-24 months. May be hard to frame, say, maintenance work and minor bugfixes and such that way, though. You probably need to change how you're hiring, if you want people who'll be happy to do those things.
If you're seeing these folks leave for better (higher paid, if nothing else) roles, after a short time, and shaking your head in confusion because you thought they were bad at their jobs—I'd say the above is exactly what's happening. You're getting what you're selecting for. Worth considering, perhaps.
[EDIT EDIT] Above section most-relevant if they're also underperforming according to what you expect. If they're actually getting stuff done but just taking walks... then there's no real problem.
