Many engineers are on their way out when they announce their departure. If they said: "hey, I'm thinking about joining this other company for a better compensation", that would be a topic of discussion. Most engineers instead tell me: "hey, I signed a contract with this other company. This is my last day".
The other point is that money is not the only motivator (esp. in our industry). People just like change, either more responsibility, or less responsibility, maybe more autonomy or more direction, maybe different leadership, etc.
Especially for younger engineers (I'm thinking of software engineers in this case), it isn't just about money, but also experience. It is really easy to get type-cast into a specific role in the company and it can be hard to break out. One developer I interviewed spent 10 years maintaining one pearl script. Just one. He wondered why he was having trouble finding a job. Don't be that guy.
But it is also about the money. When you can get a 20% bump by switching jobs...hard to pass that up.
It's like being in a relationship and breaking up because one is unhappy but refusing to talk to the other person about it. If you're unhappy with your pay and that's the only reason you're thinking about quitting, bring it up, what's the worst that could happen? To the people that say "retaliation", I find that highly unlikely. Every single place I've worked at, at least tried to accommodate me.
It's more like: you realize your SO for the past year has been putting in the bare minimum effort into the relationship and decide it's not even worth the conversation.
Missed opportunity really. That's a year of not having a conversation about something that's bothering you. Sure people can live their lives however they want, but talking about issues, for me, on average resulted in better outcomes than not talking. That applies to romantic relationships as well as professional ones.
Somehow people seem to think it has to be one sided when it comes to professional relationships with your employer. Maybe it's a lack of structured, routine, two sided feedback that makes people not bring up issues around compensation. Maybe employers should ask proactively if the employee is happy with their compensation.
A company is not out there comparing salaries with salaries at other companies (not all, anyway). That would be too much pressure on a company to determine what compensation should be for that specific person. Not everyone can get into the top companies, so it's up to the employees themselves to determine what it means to be underpaid.
Yeah, programers move around a lot. I'm not saying don't pay them competitively, but a) you can't compete with Google, and b) there is a huge delta of salaries in the industry.
Unless the outcome of that conversation is a systematic review of how reward works for all employees & a counter-offer with no risk that breaking the kayfabe about the company mission harmed my future aspirations within the company, the conversation is too risky to have. The problem will be back in a year.
I didn't know about this until working in the US. Yeah, engineers here are royalty. They are better paid than doctors and lawyers. In other countries, a programmer is like a plumber.
The other point is that money is not the only motivator (esp. in our industry). People just like change, either more responsibility, or less responsibility, maybe more autonomy or more direction, maybe different leadership, etc.
Last, signing bonuses are quite large...