> Just look at FAANG: Retain developers at (almost) any cost.
That isn't true at all. FAANG pays a lot for you to join them and give good raises, but they don't pay extra to make you stay instead of leaving for another FAANG. So there is still a lot of churn at FAANG.
Well, you've reduced competition for employees from THE REST OF THE WORLD to a handful of companies, the executives of which you met for golf and sherry last Tuesday.
> FAANG pays a lot for you to join them and give good raises, but they don't pay extra to make you stay instead of leaving for another FAANG
No, they just choose who to reward according to whatever their metrics are and how someone's management chain chooses to apply those metrics. These rewards are explicitly stock-based to help with retention.
Some examples:
- Have a "top talent" marker, managers get N% of their headcount to distribute each year. Anyone with the marker get more comp than their peers.
- Create stock and bonus bands based on your rating and level, then heavily reward high senior bands compared to others.
- Create a special retention program for specific areas of tech (eg ML) or for senior engineers who "cap out". Anyone in these programs gets a boost to comp.
These things can be combined such that you can have 2x-5x differences in compensation for two engineers in the same department at the same nominal level, sometimes with small differences in performance ratings.
When used correctly as intended programs like this reward people who work the hardest, are the best at what they do, or who will cause the most pain if they leave the company. If used incorrectly they become a tool for managers to reward their friends/sycophants. If a manager doesn't think about how to use them at all then it becomes a random walk, biased toward whatever you happened to do around review time.
But no the FAANG companies are absolutely aware of the effects of retention and deploy resources to retain employees they think are important, at least at a high level. Sometimes those efforts don't reach the right people and sometimes your estimation of who is important is not aligned with the company's view.
That isn't true at all. FAANG pays a lot for you to join them and give good raises, but they don't pay extra to make you stay instead of leaving for another FAANG. So there is still a lot of churn at FAANG.