Original title: Stop thinking tenure gets you promotions — it doesn’t. A former senior leader at Amazon explains what actually works.
I don’t understand today’s companies that don’t recognize their longevity in their employees. When they hire someone to do a job, it’s at the current hiring rate. Looking back at history, my grandparents went to work for the same company that their parents worked at. My parents only worked for 2-3 companies during their professional careers. I have only a handful of employers that fills my resume. Yet, my children need to change jobs every 2-3 years in order to ensure that they are making what they are worth. There are only so many reasons why today’s worker will stay at the same company for longer than a few years: belief in the company/product/cause; comfortable life; fulfilling job; or feeling stuck in the situation and unable to move to better opportunities.
Per the article, “To get a raise or promotion, you’re going to need more than tenure — you’re going to need to create additional value or increase your scope of work.” The they go on to state “For example, if you’re currently paying $50 for someone to mow your lawn, you wouldn’t likely be willing to pay that person $60 to do the same job, simply because they’ve been mowing your lawn for the last three months or the last three years. This is because they didn’t provide you with any additional value.” Unfortunately this just doesn’t ring true to me. If I hire a new lawn person each time, the cost of the job goes up, even though it’s the same lawn. It should be the same of the employers. If it would cost more to hire a new employee to do the same job, then the pay rate should rise too.
Maybe I have a tainted view of the situation. The company I work for is very formulaic about pay. Every job has a defined pay scale with a defined start and end point. Every year, the company reinvests in it’s employees equally. Everyone from the lowest and newest employees to the CEO all get a pay raise on the same date at the same percent. In addition, the pay scale also moves to acknowledge the face that it would cost more to hire someone new, yet seniority earns you just a bit more. If this years annual increase is 3% per person, then the pay scale (cost to hire someone new) will go up by 3/4 of that rate, 2.25% increase. We also perform regular audits to make sure that we are at/above median pay for the surrounding area. There are no lowball starting wages. There are also no merit raises because the company believes that you are performing your best every day.
What do you think? Should you get paid more to stay longer at a company or should you have to demonstrate how you’ve provided a significant increase in value to the company? Or do we need to follow in the footsteps of the younger generation and job hop to to the next company that will pay us today what we’re worth, stagnate, then job hop again?
