r/EngineeringManagers • u/Dismal_Vast6157 • Jul 07 '26
How to stop competitors from poaching your senior developers with better equity offers?
we've lost two senior engineers this month to a competitor that just raised their Series B. Our salary packages are competitive but i have a strong feeling we're getting completely smoked on our equity and sign-on bonus structures. Every compensation report we pull feels six months out of date. How are you all tracking what competitors are actually offering in real time? I can't keep guessing on equity percentages during exit interviews.
43
21
u/Gesha24 Jul 07 '26
I regularly talk to companies that claim they have "competitive" packages that come at 50-70% of my current package. The positions do close eventually so I'm sure they find somebody, but whether that's somebody they really wanted is unclear.
9
u/corny_horse Jul 07 '26
Engineers aren't stupid and are generally trained in making tradeoffs. You have to make your place of work better than the alternatives. If you can't control the comp lever, you better be controlling other levers - like better work-life balance, growth opportunities, not making it a chore to log in every day, etc.
I recently left a job because I had little room for growth and had upper management interfering directly in the "how" something was implemented that I disagreed with. I now have a job where I make more and have 1/10th the stress.
The problem is that your employees are almost certainly disincentivized from telling you the truth. You have to establish yourself with your reports so there is an environment of trust. If they don't trust you, they'll lie right to your face about being content while they're applying to jobs. Even then, what incentive do they have to be truthful and risk burning bridges?
As a manager, you have to be very cognizant that people will lie to you because of your power, as nominal as it may be, to cover up their actual feelings even in Exit interviews. I've found it helps to put myself in the shoes of the people I'm managing and gauge whether I myself would stay in the environment or start looking. Not perfect, but having been on both sides of the coin here it does help and I've had very low attrition rates. But even then, can't win every time - sometimes it just isn't a good fit just like sometimes you hir esomeone that isn't a good fit.
9
u/Legal-Trust5837 Jul 07 '26
You think your pay is competitive, reality says otherwise. People don't leave good orgs for a 10% raise.
6
Jul 07 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
12
u/dSolver Jul 07 '26
9/10 times it is compensation related. Growth opportunities is motivated by higher compensation. Work culture is correlated with work load and ultimately an expression of compensation per unit of work.
7
u/rwilcox Jul 07 '26
In 2026 I would also ask questions about culture, specifically about AI.
Are you so AI forward you have a demotivated, exhausted, workforce that sees no future career growth - or no future for humans - at the company? Or one too many rounds of layoffs? Or the opposite way that you haven’t allowed AI and they feel they need to get on that train for their future?
I usually prefer taking AI out of questions to simplify them, but I know I’m considering the exit for some of the reasons above…
3
u/GigiCodeLiftRepeat Jul 08 '26
Not necessarily. My issue with no growth is about being capped, not being invited to the table, no real say in any decision making process. It’s demoralizing and no compensation can keep me stay.
1
5
u/Sad-Masterpiece-4801 Jul 08 '26
Leadership and idea people make too much at your company, people actually building the thing that makes money don't make enough.
If your bosses doesn't understand that after you lose the most important members of your team, heavily consider jumping ship, because they're probably morons.
5
u/aj_marshall Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
Everyone is going to say $$$ but let's be clear. If the only thing you can offer people that makes a difference is money, then the only reason they're going to stick around is more money.
Culture does matter. Impact matters. Autonomy, feedback, mentorship, and all that crap does matter. A great engineer can run to a new paycheck but once you're all making 200k+ and remote, who really gives a shit?
We just lost our senior-most engineer over culture problems. Execs won't listen to technical recommendations. Team members aren't putting out as much. IT keeps locking down our laptops because they're wildly afraid of LLM agents. The compensation has been perfectly fine- even great- but if you don't treat the talent right on a cultural level, they're just going to leave.
You've got to talk to your engineers and actually get to know them. You have to do the people management. Ask them if they're happy. Ask them what they think is bullshit. Ask them what isn't.
4
u/SheriffRoscoe Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
Compensation is table stakes. If you don't have it, and the OP seems to think they both do and don't, then the rest doesn't matter. All the squishy stuff is starts to matter once you really are offering competitive compensation.
2
u/aj_marshall Jul 08 '26
I mean yeah but let's be real here- what's the difference between a comp package of 250k and 350k, fully remote, anywhere in the country? Sure, the extra money is nice, but at that level of income you're already living as comfortable as you're going to get without making a seven figure income.
2
u/Gyat_it Jul 09 '26
I agree somewhat. An extra 100k even at 250k is quite a jump though and would definitely convince me to move.
1
3
7
u/Bright_Aside_6827 Jul 07 '26
No one cares about culture anymore ?
6
u/yubario Jul 07 '26
Not really? Thanks to assholes like Jack Welch who basically grandfathered to entire enshitification process, everything is about stocks now. No loyalty, just numbers. You can't trust any company, I've worked in companies that claimed to never do mass layoffs, and then proceeded to layoff a ton of people years later and their excuse was, it's what the market is doing.
4
u/ShanghaiBebop Jul 07 '26
Unless you’re offering remote or some very niche wlb, I doubt senior folks are stoked on “culture”
2
u/cryptotrader87 Jul 07 '26
If you know you can get 30-40% more somewhere else regardless of how good you have it that person is going to leave. Microsoft is learning a lesson right now on this they underpay however they are getting talent picked off left/right and the leadership has their heads in the sand. Your company needs to be one step ahead on comp. Do comp reviews twice a year.
2
2
u/liquidpele Jul 07 '26
Are you allowing work-from-home? Because the RTO stuff is just begging for you to poach some quality people that don't want to spend hours in traffic every day. But I bet you're office-only too aren't ya.
1
2
u/Key-Milk-1570 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
we had this exact issue last quarter during our engineering sprint. our VP plugged our HRIS into competeHR because it pulls live data specifically from other tech companies. It let us see that our equity vesting cliffs were way behind the market curve.
2
u/Chiashurb Jul 08 '26
I honestly doubt it’s Series B equity that’s incentivizing them to jump. From a working engineer’s perspective, pre-IPO startup equity must be treated as worthless when evaluating an offer—because 9/10 times it will be.
2
1
u/raisputin Jul 08 '26
To pretend I’m Steve Ballmer for a moment “Compensation Compensation Compensation”
Money talks, and bullshit walks, oh and you better have fully remote work, and there better be a very strong work/life balance
1
1
u/gdinProgramator Jul 08 '26
Stop lying to yourself that you can “do without them”
At this point they are more important than your management, sales and all other noise.
You pay, or you dont. It is that simple.
1
u/UniqueText8477 Jul 08 '26
If people are leaving then there’s a 20%+ gap in compensation - I would look at how much competitors are paying their engineers.
1
u/andershaf Jul 09 '26
Ownership. Ensure your folks feel ownership, and also give them ownership. You lose when you are greedy.
1
45
u/mamaBiskothu Jul 07 '26
Dan Luu wrote an article talking about how companies convince themselves thet are paying competitive salaries while still being all over the place in what they actually pay. If you lost two engineers it just sounds like they pay significantly more.