git payed

Hello and welcome to March! If you are presently working at a public company, you are probably getting your end-of-year review and corresponding financial bonus. It generally takes some time for these things to work their way through compensation committees, HR review, and planning. As you put your well-earned benjamins in the bank and mark your stock grants, this is an important time for reflection. Am I getting paid enough for this? If not, what is your BATNA?

Record scratch noise.

What is a BATNA? A BATNA is a Better Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement. That means “another job offer”. It could be inside your company, or from an entirely new employer. It is important for you to look at your total compensation package, your time at your current company, and the time you have spent in your current role holistically. If things do not add up to your satisfaction, maybe you should figure out if the market agrees with your assessment.

When figuring out the numbers, here are some important things to think about.

Do you like your boss?

If you like your boss and they are helping you move forward in your career, you should give that a high premium towards keeping your butt in your seat. It is important for both of those things to be true. I have met many people who loved their boss despite the fact their boss was essentially just sitting on them and preventing them from growing. It is hard to assess this personally—sometimes it helps to get a third-party perspective on this.

Do you like your team?

The more clever among you will notice that I am putting the people first in a conversation about numbers. This is on purpose. If you love the people you work with, you should really hold onto that!

Do you like your work?

Once you have established how much you like the people, you should evaluate how much you like your work. Are you doing enough interesting things day-to-day? Are you getting to learn new things? If neither of those are true, then you should consider what you want to do professionally for the next five years and maybe contemplate a change.

Have you been in your current role for too long?

Many software engineers in the bay area are experiencing title inflation as a cheap retention tool. A Senior Software Engineer in Menlo Park means something different now compared to six or seven years ago. Most employees really like a clear and fancy title. When you get to Staff Engineer and Principal Engineer levels, this process slows down. You can expect substantive level ups to happen every three to five years, assuming you are keeping pace with your career progression. If you talk to your manager and they are not conducting a “gap analysis” with you on what it takes to get to the next level professionally, you might want to consider exploring an alternative role.

Have you been at your current company for too long?

If you have been at the same employer for many years, you might develop some fear or anxiety around interviewing elsewhere. Let’s face it—interviewing sucks. Most companies are bad at recruiting and the people conducting interviews are often worse. It is a painful process and people hate it. Interviewing elsewhere every once in a while is a great way to practice being uncomfortable as well as understanding what the marketplace looks like for skills, tools, and processes. If you are using five-year-old tools at your current company, it might be harder for you to interview for a new role elsewhere. It is good to know what people are looking for even if you are happy with your job—you never know when you might have that choice taken out of your hands.

Have you been at your current company long enough?

This is another one that I think is very important. I recommend that you spend two or more years in your current job or role if you can. I suffered from itchy feet early on in my career and I would often bounce shortly around the one year mark for various reasons. If you really need to change your role after one year, you have made a significant mistake of some kind and you should think really hard about it.

Are you getting compensated well enough in base pay?

People talk about their compensation more and more now. I think this is great. It is good for you to know what you are worth. FAANG, or whatever that acronym changes to with company names changing, have a tendency to compensate people very highly to get them in the door and keep them for two years. Use this to your advantage as a tool to price your talents, and make sure you are getting paid. If you are going to a startup, make sure you are getting sufficient equity to cover the “opportunity cost”.

Are you getting compensated well enough in equity?

This is the part of the equation that most people ignore. If you are at a public company, your equity is generally stock grants or restricted stock units. This is a cheap way to compensate you for your efforts. Most of these come in four year grants and have one year cliffs.

If you are in the third year of your grant and you are not getting re-upped for stock, then you are experiencing a pay cut—even if they come close to matching it in cash via a cash bonus for a year. If you are not getting a decent drip feed of equity, you are not getting to participate in the company’s upside and it also probably means there is someone else in your organization that received some that you did not. If other people are receiving strategic awards from your leadership, that usually tells you something.

Those are some questions you should ask yourself about your current job and your current compensation. I am not going to open up Google documents and make you a pretty, pretty flowchart. It is important to note that this is the best moment to make sure you are getting paid what you are worth. If you are not getting compensated well in stock, or not getting much of a bonus, your boss is gambling that they have a year to make it better somehow—if they want to make it better at all. If that is the case you might want to vote with your feet.

I have seen a few people defer conversations on changing roles or changing careers due to their end of year bonus—the math is not hard. Now that moment has arrived, it is time to take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask yourself what your goals are for the next few years, and maybe now is the time to entertain a BATNA.

If you are having trouble figuring out what you should do, by all means reach out. I have made this decision, both well and poorly, many times over the course of my career. I can share my experiences and perspective. It might also be the case that I can make an introduction to someone who is hiring, who might value your work and creativity more than your current boss does.

What do you have to lose?