I don't think that's necessarily the case. If you're looking for very talented programming, chances are they'll already have a somewhat decent job. To pull them from that job to yours, you'll have to offer at least as much as they're already making. Sure, 60,000 USD a year may be plenty, but someone making 65k will probably immediately subconsciously ignore the ad (unless of course they're very displeased with their current job and desperate for another, which probably is also rare for very talented programmers).
Well, you'll have to offer them equivalent worth to what they're making. I left a high-paying job at a company that didn't appreciate its geeks to go to a lower-paying job whose entire staff (except for three project managers and the accountant) were geeks. The founder started the company doing websites in Perl in the 90's, and grew it into a small-scale hosting/app dev company. It's still private, it's still owned by the two original partners, and they still work their asses off every day at the company. The result is an environment that is not only geek-friendly, but geek-run.
Did I miss the large paycheques? Sure. Did I miss the stress? Or people breathing down my neck for results, a week after they said they'd get me the information I needed but never did? Or being denied my vacation pay because my previous management-approved sick days (most of which I spent working from home) were suddenly 'excessive'? I didn't miss that at all.
It isn't about offering people a better salary, it's about offering people a better package. If you only offer $60k to someone who's making $70k, but give them 4 weeks paid vacation, let them work from home three days a week, and let them expense their cellphone data plans and home internet, they'll be more interested.
Especially once you interview someone, you can sometimes figure out what kind of perks will most appeal to them. Mac fanboy? Offer to buy them a new iPhone on launch day every time one is released. You've just gone from $60k to $60.7k, but the employee is going to appreciate it a lot more, since he'll never have to budget for it again.
Does he like to travel? Offer up extra paid vacation, and then add to that $3000 of 'travel expenses' per year, for personal use. That's usually enough to fly two people anywhere in the world, return, so he and his girlfriend can take a nice long trip to Europe after you ship version 1.05 and everyone's ready to unwind. The idea that he won't have to budget for it - that he can just suddenly decide to go to Laos or Mumbai or Morocco, even if his bank account is on empty - will be appealing. It's like a 'get out of town free' card.
Tell all your employees you'll pay an accountant to do their taxes for them. It's a huge hassle for most people, and if you take that away tax season gets far less stressful.
So many programming jobs I've seen offer high salaries, but with minimal benefits. You get a stock health package, minimal vacation, and MAYBE you get to expense PART of your phone bill, if you're an admin on call. Take away all the junk that people don't want to worry about and let them focus on being geeks.
It's hard to offer this sort of thing in a job posting, but if you can lure the good people in to an interview, this is how you get them on board.
Exactly. Perks are a method of control really, to make the employee dependent on the company for their lifestyle, knowing it will be hard to negotiate their salary up to an equivalent level at another company. Reminds me of one company some friends of mine worked for, fantastic perks (like the entire company being flown to NYC for a movie premiere) but the salaries were awful, none of them could have afforded that trip themselves.
My attitude is, look, I have friends, I have a life, I have things I want to do, I don't need the company to fill in these gaps. The only "rewards" I want are cash and time to spend it.
Um, does your cash lower your tax burden? You should look at your marginal tax rate. I'm personally pushing 40% marginally, which means that any "perks" that the company can offer me which don't show up on my final W-2 are worth almost twice as much as if I'd had to pay for them out of pocket. Once you reach a certain salary level, you're wasting money not negotiating down your salary for things you value more.
In your experience, is it actually as easy to get unpaid time off as you make it sound? Certainly, not being paid for not working is entirely possible, but it's much less desirable if you lose your job for it...
(My job allows you to "buy" extra time off, so it's not an issue for me; but I figured this was uncommon, especially in the States.)
If I make it sound as easy as taking paid vacation, then yes, but with a small sample size.
The much larger sample size I have for a related question: is it any easier to take vacation at a company which offers 3 weeks instead of 2 weeks annually? To this, I've found the answer is "no."
Both situations have a simple explanation, which is that, except for the smallest companies, the person(s) setting the PTO policy is not the same as the one approving absences. That is, my manager cares about my availability, whereas HR and/or Accounting cares about how much I get paid during such absences.
This just begs the question, though. If you assume that talent chases money and nothing else, then it follows that talent chases money and nothing else.
Particularly your second point about developers ignoring jobs salaried at less than their current pay. Working in a toxic environment, or doing meaningless work, or staying where one's range of expression is limited, all have a cost. You won't know until you get there, but when you do, you will.
