Expecting an 8% increase to keep apace with inflation? How about an overdue promotion? You might be waiting longer than you think.
Many Americans think job loyalty pays off. Most are unaware of how much mental health and money they are leaving on the table by putting the power in their boss’s hands instead of their own.
Want a more effective solution? Quit. Take your toys and go play somewhere else. Not only will your work stress level rest to zero; your wallet will increase twice as much.
The numbers don’t lie. Take a look at how much more job hoppers increased their salaries in 2022 vs job stayers.
Quitting is the norm, not the exception
It’s no wonder then that the average American changes jobs 12 times in their career. The pace has only accelerated since Covid, with the US quit rate up nearly 2X, and 70% of surveyed workers actively considering changing jobs.
What if you are part of the 30% planning to stay put? Even if you like your job, these staggering numbers should be tingling your spidey senses. Job hoppers do more than leave empty registers at Walmart – they also suck up companies’ excess money and leave their workloads to their overworked peers to absorb.
If not money, what then does job loyalty buy, aside from short/medium term security? Nothing. In fact, stunting your income growth by staying put is riskier long term. Once you reach 50, your chances of keeping your job are a coin toss.
If you put all your eggs into a single job employer/basket, the only network you can leverage to find similar work is peers from the same employer that canned you. On the other hand, if you jump jobs multiple times, not only can you collect multiple signing bonuses (and invest!) over a career, but you’ll have built a wider cross-company, perhaps even a cross-industry, network of peers you can leverage to extend your career runway and opportunities.
Here is a simple comparison on the pay/stress/job prospects of the average job stayer vs the average job hopper:
Why job stayers get slammed with more work and less pay
Single company career Americans have been dwindling for years and the pandemic and remote work have accelerated the rate of worker burnout and attrition. This leaves seemingly every private sector employer with two problems:
- Worker shortages
- The need to attract new talent / back fill empty positions
Fair or unfair, these two problems have two obvious solutions that most companies pursue. Neither are kind to the job stayer.
- Dump the piling up work load on the remaining workforce
- Go on a spending spree to attract new talent
Consider this. There are two chairs at your company. One is filled by a 10 year vet who is the catch point for every dumpster fire. The other is an empty chair just filled by a job hopper, sitting on a sweet hiring bonus and a fraction of the job stayer’s workload. The new hire’s diminished accountability will evaporate after a few years, at which point the job hopper leaves for the next hiring bonus and work stress reset. The workload they leave behind will pile up and likely be dumped on the job staying vet again, and the cycle repeats.
Money is finite; deserving workers are infinite
The solution to breaking worker attrition seems obvious: pay up to reward loyal employees.
But is this feasible?
Can you imagine a large Fortune 50 titan like Apple paying its workers what they want to be paid? How much do you think this would cost?
Consider this: Apple directly and indirectly supports 2.4M jobs and $350 Billion in business annually (link). Let’s say instead of a general 2-3% raise most job stayers get every year, Apple instead gave a 10% raise every year for 10 years. That would roughly double a person’s salary every decade.
Sweet deal for the workers! Not so much for Apple customers or Apple itself. Either the cost of Apple products will have to go up dollar for dollar to recoup the 2x cost in payroll, or Apple will have to slash profits, which will tank the stock market.
Of course, what if Apple wasn’t the only one raising wages and customer prices? What if all companies did it? Wouldn’t this lead us into a prosperous utopia where money rains down like manna from heaven?
Sounds a lot like 2022, where accelerating wages and consumer prices are causing this pesky little thing called inflation. All us living through this nightmare in 2022 know this is no solution.
Why you can’t rely on your boss to pad your wallet
Think you can pull an end around, a sneak more money away from your company by working like a crazy person and cozying up to the boss? If it were that easy, all hard workers and suckups would be millionaires.
No matter how much you trust your boss or how well intentioned they may be, they can’t be relied upon to pay your top potential salary year after year. They are mere acolytes serving the same golden goddess of capitalism as the rest of us. In fact, your boss is probably going through the same thing as you but with even more stress to perform for unclear rewards. They don’t make the rules – they just abide by them.
It’s as simple as the laws of supply and demand. Where there is scarcity the price goes up. Where there is abundance, the price goes down. The job hopper commands a price to fill a need, whereas the job stayer costs nothing to keep around.
If they want to save their own bacon and please their own schmuckatella bosses, people managers have no choice but to milk existing loyal performers for every last drop while slow dripping the rewards.
Some years, your loyalty may seem like it pays off. Your boss may be able to even give a raise or bonus that is slightly higher than your peers some years.
Don’t be fooled. This is tantamount to a pet owner tossing a Scooby snack into a kennel and slamming the gate as soon as you chase it.
Just like the pet owner, your boss probably has conflicted emotions about taking advantage of loyal employees. Sometimes, you feel bad for your too-trusting animal now stuck behind a cage wondering how it fell to the same trick; sometimes, you are probably amused at how easily you outwitted poor Fido.
Trust me on this, I spent a half decade as a people leader for a Fortune 500 company. I have personally had to dump workloads on loyal people, and was forced to hand out what I believed to be unethically low pay raises year after year. I watched as the same performers got overlooked every year, while their workloads and accountability piled up.
At first it seemed like a game of musical chairs, where one person got all the work and one person got all the money – always a winner and a loser. After a while, I realized I was not a voyeur of this cruel game, but in fact both a victim and perpetrator.
It was recognizing this dynamic that led me to become a job hopper myself. I turned in my manager badge as well as my loyal worker badge and decided to become CEO of one: me. If given a do-over, I would have started job hopping earlier.
Some advice for early or mid-career workers. Make sure your employer is paying you a market competitive rate for your job. If they don’t, research it and demand they bring you to market competitiveness, and be prepared to walk if they balk.
If you expect to accelerate pay raises and promotions by staying, ensure your company provides clear documented paths/timelines and delivers on promises. If they do, by all means, let your loyalty shine. Go buy a fleece with your company’s emblem, and litter Linkedin with effusive praise for your company. Go total fan boy and harvest the rewards.
But . . . if like most employers, there is no process and no clarity on your next career or pay increase steps, then it’s time to dust off your resume and go shopping. Staying will only result in less salary growth and more stress. You don’t work for your boss – you work for yourself. If you don’t act and behave like you are worth more, no one else will.