> This counter offer reeked of skeeze. He was trying to buy my dreams from me. When someone tells you “I’ve been given the opportunity to live my dreams, I’m leaving” the decent human thing to do is to congratulate them and send them on their way. (With a security escort out the building, of course. You dont know what these dream heads are gonna do on the way out.) What you don’t do is tell them you think so little of them, their lives and their goals that you think can buy them off.
Personally I don't feel that they meant any disrespect. They're just desperate to keep you longer. It is hard to find good developers.
It is a sign of disrespect. If they actually thought of the author as a good developer or good <whatever X> position is, they would have already paid him the 2X salary increase beforehand, or at the very least not gone to war over what the author calls a "pittance" of a raise relative to what he was earning.
While it's true that they're desperate to keep him longer, it's because they're trying to stall, not because they think its a good developer.
It depends on how large the company is. A big large corporation has a lot of protocol and rules for determining raises.
At some of the past places I've worked, the best raise you can get is 10%.
> While it's true that they're desperate to keep him longer, it's because they're trying to stall
This is most likely true.
Based on the anger in his post, I'm guessing the real wrong was done in the past. It didn't seem like he was treated well. I still don't see the counter offer as bad. If anything it's flattering.
If an inadequate raise (thus inadequate compensation) is a sign of disrespect, then creating a rule which causes inadequate raises is institutionalizing disrespect. What I'm trying to say is, it isn't better, it's worse. By creating pre-commitment not to give raises in excess of a certain amount, if they make it more expensive for them to do so.
quoting: ``Here we find the manager striving to achieve his goal by eliminating opportunities, contracting his set of alternatives, although discussions of bargaining often rule this out axiomatically. [...] The resolution of the paradox is that the manager, by his tactic of "tying one hand behind him" hopes for a favorable effect on his employee's expectations.``
from The Theory and Practice of Blackmail by Daniel Ellsberg (http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2005/P3883....), I swapped blackmailer/manager and victim/employee. The document is a really insightful take on negotiation I think except for the fact the it used the loaded terms blackmailer/victim.
There are plenty of organizations which are unable to recognize and/or reward high performance, and plenty of organizations which create compensation plans as if employees were fungible with infinite supply at their set salaries, and then depend on the psychological comfort of certainty and corresponding fear of the unknown to retain the workers, so although it isn't rare or even uncommon, that might be the sort of thing that made him angry.
This may be true, though unless I misread his old company is in finance. Based on my experience, it's really hard to find good developers in this area.
Personally I don't feel that they meant any disrespect. They're just desperate to keep you longer. It is hard to find good developers.