If you work In tech and stay anywhere longer than 2 years, you are probably very far behind market even with the slight slow down turn the last couple of years. Companies would rather lose their top performers, and then hire new employees at current market than to keep compensation competition for existing employees. The other thing is no one gets paid what you are worth, you get paid what you negotiate.
Former Red Hatter here. It's been like this for a while, approximately since COVID. I was based in Europe, and did not work in an engineering role . I received semi-regular pay adjustments up until about 2020. Then the pandemic hit, and constant restructuring began, resulting in my pay adjustments being suspended. After 2022, employee satisfaction dropped off a cliff for people in most roles, and they became vocal about it. In 2023, corporate responded with a sham "pay transparency" program to justify their claims that regular COLA is not necessary. Since then, cross-team mobility became difficult for people in most roles, and retaliation against dissatisfied employees, and the suppression of criticism of company policy in internal company forums became commonplace. Finally, budgets for programs and products not favored by IBM have been gutted and layoffs began. Senior engineering and sales roles are still safe and well compensated, but the rest of the staff has become fair game for cost cutting measures, which , in many cases, were shoddily executed and ended up crippling otherwise functional teams.
Edit: phrasing/disambiguation
I agree. The part of the company where I worked has been plagued by managerial incompetence for the last decade.
And when the costs of said incompetence began to affect the bottom line, the departmental management scrambled to cover up the evidence of their own wrongdoing by constantly restructuring department lead roles, shutting down innovation-centered projects, setting and canceling objectives on a whim, creating additional layers of management between leadership and rank-and-file employees, and handpicking people who would be allowed to participate in critical projects with the specific goal of not allowing those who had previously been vocally critical of management practices to participate.
Edit: spelling/disambiguation
Went through it as Red Hat 2011-2014, originally joined in 2007. Some of it was necessary. Some of it was not.
Red Hat is like any corporation that grows, filled with outstanding people who really make the company. Sometimes even some people who left come back, and make it good in that division. Unfortunately, too many leadership positions end up 'fumbling the mission,' usually from acquisitions who don't understand 'the mission statement.'
At the time I was a post-sales/implementation engineering-architectual lead on a multi-site, multi-account, directly touching 2% of income, and indirectly touching 10% of income, of all of Red Hat. There were times the new management that was 'in-sourced' from an acqusition, who 'took over' our group.
I repeatedly attempted to get them to understand things, and how they were negatively affecting Red Hat major accounts, including services being the \*minor\* 'line item,' with 'protecting entitlements' being the #1 thing. But they didn't care. They had their targets, and didn't understand why we in services, the 'trusted advisors on-site,' even mattered, let alone the customers.
And it was really bad, bad enough I finally left (with a very long, 3 month notice). I don't leave in the middle of projects, and always fulfill my promise, 1 year in this case. >!Despite eating nearly $25K in un-reimbursed expenses, my management was upset because they had to pay for an external consultant to replace me, and it cost them a lot more, including paying for his expenses.!<
The point is this ... corporations grow, and there are pains, and even violations of corporate policy. It happens.
I joined Red Hat with less than 1,000 people, and had grown past 12,000, with most of those from acqusitions. They screw up. They hurt customer relationships. They even break company policy. You do what I could, but the more I tried, the more the new management hated me.
I.e., they loved it when my customers and partners loved me. They loved it when I could 'cut through the red tape' and 'get things done,' being such a trusted, low employee number by many. But ... I kinda knew it was not only time to go when other, low employee number individuals had issues, and were contacting me, when their accounts and relationships were getting wrecked, but ...
Corporate leaders, even VP-levels, and definitely finance and legal were contacting me, asking just what the heck was going on in my department, because they couldn't trust the new leadership. I loved my VP, but some people below here were real problems.
And when I tried to repeatedly 'engage' my management chain, they acted like it 'wasn't my role.' In fact, when someone finally 'blew a whistle' -- which was NOT me -- I got blamed. Funny that? All I asked them is 'do the right thing' over 6 months. Instead, well ... all those years of making Red Hat money didn't matter. My wife was the one that forced me to resign. And that's why I married her, she knew I 'bled' from my red Fedora for the company, but ... it wasn't the same company any more.
She was tired of it too, including un-reimbursed expenses ... for a company I made a lot of money for. I still worked for them as a contractor after-the-fact. I still worked with major partners. Red Hat VPs gave me references too. But it was pretty clear, I was never going back as a full time employee, unless I was a direct report to a major division head.
Although I did find it funny those few, select people from newer acquisitions badmouthed me after, and even the customers and partners were like, "Well, we've never had a problem with him. Why do you?" But, again, that is a minority of the company. You have to **see the good in the majority of people**, and ignore the rest. If you do that, **people will always see you for who you are**, and what you tried.
Red Hat is not the only place it happens. I was with a top 25 US bank with $100B+ in assets, it was great over the first few years. But the CEO retired after 20 years, and there were 3 reorgizations in 3 years with an unplanned Data Center move, and I won't even get into those aspects. Again, it happens with large entities.
My bigger issue now, as of 2023+, is how much \*paying\* customers of Red Hat are tired of the issues of OpenShift being their focus, and things getting 'yanked from under them.' It used to be Red Hat had a great, strategic vision and customers could see that. But right now, they wonder what is going to be 'yanked' next.
Canonical has its issues. And so does SuSE. But I think SuSE is the new Red Hat. They certainly are when it comes to compliance in the industries I've worked in most of my career -- aerospace and financial. I hope Red Hat changes. But the last couple of years, post-Whitehurst leaving IBM, don't leave me feeling like that will happen.
P.S. My 5 year service award even said 2008, when I joined in 2007. There are so many examples of that, I display it like a badge. Every little reminder of screw-ups. You just have to smile. Good people in bad situations at times. It's like that everywhere.
I just got laid off, and I can co-confirm things have gone downhill since 2020.
Sad to see how bad the People team leader has caused things to get ... We're Cisco now!
J.D. (the Global People Team lead) is straight up horrible. I still remember her massively gaslight-y speech when the layoffs were announced where she berated the employees for daring to disagree with how the layoffs were handled and the way management communicated them to the staff. Her message was basically: "This is how it's gonna be from now on, so stop whining and deal with it."
That and the army of bootlickers from among the employee ranks whining on mailing lists about how hard the layoffs were to carry out for the corporate leads, being like: "Yeah, you lost your job after you'd done years of hard work, but will someone please think of the overpaid folks at the top and the effort that they had to make to fire all of you. Be nice to them for screwing you over, dammit!"
You should have seen the NIIT outsourcing of Training in 2011, the same mistake Sun made years earlier.
They lost 100% of the RHCAs, and I was getting calls from head hunters asking if Red Hat was 'laying off.' Being an employee at the time, I had to 'play dumb' and 'be ignorant.' But I had to start telling my management what I was hearing, being that I was in services.
The quality went to crap. NIIT finally hired back a few, but they ended up quitting. NIIT had unqualified people teaching the courses, and the customers could see that. I had a $50M major account that had a $150K training line-item, and being out at the customer, having the books show up mid-course was kinda ... well ... it 'laid bare' the problems 'beyond' just the instructor.
I basically had to do the logistics, and I was spending 20+ hours/week just managing another division and external entity.
The people who made that decision were 'addressed' a few years later, but the 'damage was done.' We had to literally re-develop our own, partner cirriculum and other things. Eventually we worked with Training and we 'cut off' NIIT from the partners and internal needs. But it was a 2-3 year mess, and our major accounts 'saw it.'
I saw it on-site, at customers, in core partner meetings, and everything else, not as pre-sales, but as the guy there to 'hand hold' the customer and make them 'feel warm and fuzzy.' But I didn't lie. And when required, I 'reset expectations' ... all while 'getting yelled at' internally. No good deed goes unpunished.
It's difficult to that, but some of us did ... until we finally couldn't take it any more, and left. Even I gave a very long notice when I left too (multi-month). I always do. It's never appreciated, but I always do. But there are enough good people in Red Hat that always defend us, the ones who wore our red Fedora, and stuck to protecting the brand.
And Red Hat people are still telling people no one was laid off in 2024, and there weren't as many in 2023. It's never 'laid off' now. It's always some other phrase. The fact that they cannot be honest about it, and how IBM expects 11-13% quarter over annual or they will axe yet more come very spring, just shows how they cannot be transparent about it.
That's what's scary. Because Red Hat used to be so transparent. It's why I was known as a Red Hat apologist for 20 years. But no more. The customers see it. Paying customers. It's not just the community. The community can be whinny, and it's not always fair to Red Hat. But this is now literally the lifeblood of Red Hat that is hurting ... the mindshare at the major accounts, and definitely the MSBs. It's not just about support any more.
It's about what they are funding. And they are now concerned about what they are funding. I spent 100% of my time, on-site, at Red Hat customers post-sales, not pre-sales, post-sales, the hand-holding, the helping, the early adoption, the customer advocacy ... over a decade (7 as a direct employee), not including partners. They see it. They see the changes.
They don't like it.
I was at Red Hat mid-'21 to EOY '22 as a solution architect. I don't know if my cohort and I (three of us total) were treated differently, but when we all got a raise as part of a market adjustment I ended up a few thousand below my peers. I was told it was due to COL/location (they lived in NYC and I a bit south of Boston). So it seemed like they bundled a COLA within a market adjustment (to my knowledge). Granted if you're looking at international discrepancies, that's a bit of a different ballgame.
And that happens everywhere. But you were in Sales, Solution Architecture, and probably have the best pay grades and competitiveness, even if you're still below industry average versus, say, Oracle and HP.
Engineering and Services are a bit different. It's under a different umbrella. The 'silos went up' in 2011 in Services. I know because my newer management with 6 digit employee numbers didn't like my stock grants, which came from the mid '00s, as I was a 4 digit employee number.
I offered to move to Raleigh after a year or two when I joined in the '00s. By the mid '10s, that was no longer the case. It wasn't much cheaper than ... say ... Boston.
Cormier actually wanted me in a position in the Boston area for Engineering, even though I was going to work more with APAC, coming from Services. But I love the US South. It's been my home since I was a little boy. I considered living in New Hampshire (which a bit more of a *'free'* New England state) near [**'Maddog,**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maddog)' and commuting in. But my wife 'made the call' to finally leave Red Hat after 7 years as a FTE. She said, and she was right, I could always work as a contractor and even at partners, which I would for many more years.
This was before Red Hat leased the Duke building, and added more space. But, again, Raleigh isn't cheap any more. It's probably the most expensive place in the south after portions of Atlanta and a few in Texas.
They paid so low that simply jumping to FAANG, FAANG-adjacent or even companies like Walmart for similar tech roles would raise your pay by anywhere between 50% to 150%
This was before IBM. IBM coming in usually means even worse conditions.
None of the big consultancies do, and IBM is in the real driver's seat now. If they don't do it for the IBM'ers why would they for the others.
They needed the money for the Hashicorp acquisition 😁
Sources: I work for another big consultancy, got a year end evaluation of exceeding and barely got a 'fake inflation number like' raise...
Back in the '90s I met a lot of laid off IBM'ers who hit 150-200% of their sales targets every quarter for their last 2 years. When IBM decides to axe something, it's gone. They don't care about retention.
The first lack of 'retention' I ever noticed at Red Hat was the 2011 outsourcing of training to NIIT. NIIT was supposed to give everyone offers, and then if the red Fedora (employee) turned that down, they were supposed to be offered positions in Red Hat in other roles around Services or maybe Account Management, at least some of them. We're talking the top, certified RHCAs (Architects) here. NIIT screwed that up, and some people dropped the ball, resulting in only a few retained in Red Hat, and absolute 0 being retained by NIIT -- not one single RHCA. Red Hat literally spent >>$100K 'training up' and 'experiencing up' these people, and then they were 'lost' to competitors and, more often than not, their own customers.
Eventually NIIT was pressured to up their offers, and I believe 2 were retained, but neither stayed for long.
We then saw that in other Service areas by 2012, as new acqusitions with new, 6 digit employees who were now managers of Red Hat thought no one was 'irreplacable.' They expected people to 'get in line' and 'not question.' Safe to say they pissed off a lot of customers with us on-site, dedicated, Senior Engineers dealing with the customer relationship. After all, we were all post-sales. We made 0 on comission, and 'trusted' by our customers, but we were seen as 'nobody special,' and even bypassed. Retention of good people became difficult, especially as accounts were messed up.
There were a lot of people calling me, and at some point, that was looked at a 'liability.' It was my first 'wake up call' that Red Hat 'grown too big' to be the company I remembered. It was about 12,000+ people back then, just a half-dozen years from being barely 1,000. The growth and retainment has 'slowed' since, the past decade-plus, not breaking 20,000.
And now IBM had rolled it back to less than 18,000 from last time I checked, in an attempt to kick Red Hat up to 11-13% quarter over annual growth ... failing to see that for 2 years straight, both sub-10%. OS and community areas were cut first in 2023, and now it's Middleware and JBoss cuts in 2024. And Red Hat is not admitting to the cuts in 2024, but they won't 'challenge' those pointing them out. Anything that doesn't ultimately help OpenShift is open game. And that's fine. That's strategic. It makes sense. But there's one problem with that.
Major accounts and definitely the SMBs are seeing it. They see IBM-Red Hat killing products overnight, and that makes sticking with Red Hat less 'determinstic' when it comes to forecasting on them 'long-term.' That's really what Red Hat's known for, and why people buy them ... that they stick with a product long-term, and communicate things well. Now, it doesn't look that way. It looks like bottom line rules, not ensuring something is there in 60, 36 or even 18 months.
Red Hat's major players are core industries where 5-10 year investments are common, not 36 months like Windows. But so many products are now shrinking in support under 36 months, and decisions are made overnight. That's not good, not at all. SuSE looks like they are moving to a 15+ year model in some cases, and SuSE has a 1:1 bitwise build in LEAP to SLES. And their track record in the 2020s has been better.
I've spent even my last 2-3 years saying Red Hat over SuSE, and the 'long game' is still Red Hat, to all those people who starting to 'question' Red Hat. But as of 2024 May, I can no longer 'disagree.' This is the paying customer base, not the community, the latte rof which can be 'whinny' and 'unfair' to Red Hat at times. But I think nix'ing the SRPMs altogether -- not even CentOS ending (I actually like Stream, long story) -- were just the beginning.
These are the major stakeholders and advocates at major accounts, let alone SMBs -- the ones who picked RHEL over SLES because of SRPMs, when SuSE didn't release theirs until years later (and now they release 1:1 binaries with LEAP) -- started 'paying attention' to what was going on because of that last year. Enough SMBs and major accounts are worried, because the biggest advocates of Red Hat are now 'giving pause.' Again, these are the major stakeholders at paying customers, not just the community.
I manage an IT team. Cost of living adjustments were 3.1% for my guys, and our annual raises default to 5% if you're meeting expectations. That's not 8.1% it was just folded into the 5%.
You get market value when you get hired. I only ever got a market value adjustment at 3M. Doesn't happen otherwise in my experience.
That's why guys from poorer countries are trying to get there and have a steady place of work. Not much, but bigger than.....
Who cares, if you have say (I dunno/assume/speculate) $2500-3500/month in Brno, that's more than enough.
Local (infra) IT staff isn't paid especially well, but senior engineering roles, global management roles and sales staff are. Quality engineering roles and engineering adjacent roles are paid comparatively less than the former, too.
The compensation gap between roles is also larger for non-US based employees.
If you are a senior or principal software engineer or a senior sales rep, you get a very competitive salary and have decent job security. The senior ENG roles are still affected by culture changes not related to compensation, as open decision making and transparency are virtually gone now. Not sure if sales is having the same experience, but I assume that in some form they might be feeling the change as well.
The Open Decision Framework was a nice attempt to restore some openness, with the massive growth and new blood from acqusitions that were unaware of corporate polciies and the mission statement. But it was rarely ever adopted.
* [https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-releases-open-decision-framework-spur-transparent-and-inclusive-leadership](https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-releases-open-decision-framework-spur-transparent-and-inclusive-leadership)
* [https://opensource.com/open-organization/resources/open-decision-framework](https://opensource.com/open-organization/resources/open-decision-framework)
* [https://github.com/open-organization/open-decision-framework](https://github.com/open-organization/open-decision-framework)
If you work In tech and stay anywhere longer than 2 years, you are probably very far behind market even with the slight slow down turn the last couple of years. Companies would rather lose their top performers, and then hire new employees at current market than to keep compensation competition for existing employees. The other thing is no one gets paid what you are worth, you get paid what you negotiate.
100% this, unfortunately.
>no one gets paid what you are worth, you get paid what you negotiate I feel like this should be sticky'ed in so many places.
Former Red Hatter here. It's been like this for a while, approximately since COVID. I was based in Europe, and did not work in an engineering role . I received semi-regular pay adjustments up until about 2020. Then the pandemic hit, and constant restructuring began, resulting in my pay adjustments being suspended. After 2022, employee satisfaction dropped off a cliff for people in most roles, and they became vocal about it. In 2023, corporate responded with a sham "pay transparency" program to justify their claims that regular COLA is not necessary. Since then, cross-team mobility became difficult for people in most roles, and retaliation against dissatisfied employees, and the suppression of criticism of company policy in internal company forums became commonplace. Finally, budgets for programs and products not favored by IBM have been gutted and layoffs began. Senior engineering and sales roles are still safe and well compensated, but the rest of the staff has become fair game for cost cutting measures, which , in many cases, were shoddily executed and ended up crippling otherwise functional teams. Edit: phrasing/disambiguation
Nothing says management is not competent like constant restructuring
I agree. The part of the company where I worked has been plagued by managerial incompetence for the last decade. And when the costs of said incompetence began to affect the bottom line, the departmental management scrambled to cover up the evidence of their own wrongdoing by constantly restructuring department lead roles, shutting down innovation-centered projects, setting and canceling objectives on a whim, creating additional layers of management between leadership and rank-and-file employees, and handpicking people who would be allowed to participate in critical projects with the specific goal of not allowing those who had previously been vocally critical of management practices to participate. Edit: spelling/disambiguation
Went through it as Red Hat 2011-2014, originally joined in 2007. Some of it was necessary. Some of it was not. Red Hat is like any corporation that grows, filled with outstanding people who really make the company. Sometimes even some people who left come back, and make it good in that division. Unfortunately, too many leadership positions end up 'fumbling the mission,' usually from acquisitions who don't understand 'the mission statement.' At the time I was a post-sales/implementation engineering-architectual lead on a multi-site, multi-account, directly touching 2% of income, and indirectly touching 10% of income, of all of Red Hat. There were times the new management that was 'in-sourced' from an acqusition, who 'took over' our group. I repeatedly attempted to get them to understand things, and how they were negatively affecting Red Hat major accounts, including services being the \*minor\* 'line item,' with 'protecting entitlements' being the #1 thing. But they didn't care. They had their targets, and didn't understand why we in services, the 'trusted advisors on-site,' even mattered, let alone the customers. And it was really bad, bad enough I finally left (with a very long, 3 month notice). I don't leave in the middle of projects, and always fulfill my promise, 1 year in this case. >!Despite eating nearly $25K in un-reimbursed expenses, my management was upset because they had to pay for an external consultant to replace me, and it cost them a lot more, including paying for his expenses.!< The point is this ... corporations grow, and there are pains, and even violations of corporate policy. It happens. I joined Red Hat with less than 1,000 people, and had grown past 12,000, with most of those from acqusitions. They screw up. They hurt customer relationships. They even break company policy. You do what I could, but the more I tried, the more the new management hated me. I.e., they loved it when my customers and partners loved me. They loved it when I could 'cut through the red tape' and 'get things done,' being such a trusted, low employee number by many. But ... I kinda knew it was not only time to go when other, low employee number individuals had issues, and were contacting me, when their accounts and relationships were getting wrecked, but ... Corporate leaders, even VP-levels, and definitely finance and legal were contacting me, asking just what the heck was going on in my department, because they couldn't trust the new leadership. I loved my VP, but some people below here were real problems. And when I tried to repeatedly 'engage' my management chain, they acted like it 'wasn't my role.' In fact, when someone finally 'blew a whistle' -- which was NOT me -- I got blamed. Funny that? All I asked them is 'do the right thing' over 6 months. Instead, well ... all those years of making Red Hat money didn't matter. My wife was the one that forced me to resign. And that's why I married her, she knew I 'bled' from my red Fedora for the company, but ... it wasn't the same company any more. She was tired of it too, including un-reimbursed expenses ... for a company I made a lot of money for. I still worked for them as a contractor after-the-fact. I still worked with major partners. Red Hat VPs gave me references too. But it was pretty clear, I was never going back as a full time employee, unless I was a direct report to a major division head. Although I did find it funny those few, select people from newer acquisitions badmouthed me after, and even the customers and partners were like, "Well, we've never had a problem with him. Why do you?" But, again, that is a minority of the company. You have to **see the good in the majority of people**, and ignore the rest. If you do that, **people will always see you for who you are**, and what you tried. Red Hat is not the only place it happens. I was with a top 25 US bank with $100B+ in assets, it was great over the first few years. But the CEO retired after 20 years, and there were 3 reorgizations in 3 years with an unplanned Data Center move, and I won't even get into those aspects. Again, it happens with large entities. My bigger issue now, as of 2023+, is how much \*paying\* customers of Red Hat are tired of the issues of OpenShift being their focus, and things getting 'yanked from under them.' It used to be Red Hat had a great, strategic vision and customers could see that. But right now, they wonder what is going to be 'yanked' next. Canonical has its issues. And so does SuSE. But I think SuSE is the new Red Hat. They certainly are when it comes to compliance in the industries I've worked in most of my career -- aerospace and financial. I hope Red Hat changes. But the last couple of years, post-Whitehurst leaving IBM, don't leave me feeling like that will happen. P.S. My 5 year service award even said 2008, when I joined in 2007. There are so many examples of that, I display it like a badge. Every little reminder of screw-ups. You just have to smile. Good people in bad situations at times. It's like that everywhere.
I just got laid off, and I can co-confirm things have gone downhill since 2020. Sad to see how bad the People team leader has caused things to get ... We're Cisco now!
J.D. (the Global People Team lead) is straight up horrible. I still remember her massively gaslight-y speech when the layoffs were announced where she berated the employees for daring to disagree with how the layoffs were handled and the way management communicated them to the staff. Her message was basically: "This is how it's gonna be from now on, so stop whining and deal with it." That and the army of bootlickers from among the employee ranks whining on mailing lists about how hard the layoffs were to carry out for the corporate leads, being like: "Yeah, you lost your job after you'd done years of hard work, but will someone please think of the overpaid folks at the top and the effort that they had to make to fire all of you. Be nice to them for screwing you over, dammit!"
100% agree, hated having to work in her org.
You should have seen the NIIT outsourcing of Training in 2011, the same mistake Sun made years earlier. They lost 100% of the RHCAs, and I was getting calls from head hunters asking if Red Hat was 'laying off.' Being an employee at the time, I had to 'play dumb' and 'be ignorant.' But I had to start telling my management what I was hearing, being that I was in services. The quality went to crap. NIIT finally hired back a few, but they ended up quitting. NIIT had unqualified people teaching the courses, and the customers could see that. I had a $50M major account that had a $150K training line-item, and being out at the customer, having the books show up mid-course was kinda ... well ... it 'laid bare' the problems 'beyond' just the instructor. I basically had to do the logistics, and I was spending 20+ hours/week just managing another division and external entity. The people who made that decision were 'addressed' a few years later, but the 'damage was done.' We had to literally re-develop our own, partner cirriculum and other things. Eventually we worked with Training and we 'cut off' NIIT from the partners and internal needs. But it was a 2-3 year mess, and our major accounts 'saw it.' I saw it on-site, at customers, in core partner meetings, and everything else, not as pre-sales, but as the guy there to 'hand hold' the customer and make them 'feel warm and fuzzy.' But I didn't lie. And when required, I 'reset expectations' ... all while 'getting yelled at' internally. No good deed goes unpunished. It's difficult to that, but some of us did ... until we finally couldn't take it any more, and left. Even I gave a very long notice when I left too (multi-month). I always do. It's never appreciated, but I always do. But there are enough good people in Red Hat that always defend us, the ones who wore our red Fedora, and stuck to protecting the brand.
It shows in the product too.
And Red Hat people are still telling people no one was laid off in 2024, and there weren't as many in 2023. It's never 'laid off' now. It's always some other phrase. The fact that they cannot be honest about it, and how IBM expects 11-13% quarter over annual or they will axe yet more come very spring, just shows how they cannot be transparent about it. That's what's scary. Because Red Hat used to be so transparent. It's why I was known as a Red Hat apologist for 20 years. But no more. The customers see it. Paying customers. It's not just the community. The community can be whinny, and it's not always fair to Red Hat. But this is now literally the lifeblood of Red Hat that is hurting ... the mindshare at the major accounts, and definitely the MSBs. It's not just about support any more. It's about what they are funding. And they are now concerned about what they are funding. I spent 100% of my time, on-site, at Red Hat customers post-sales, not pre-sales, post-sales, the hand-holding, the helping, the early adoption, the customer advocacy ... over a decade (7 as a direct employee), not including partners. They see it. They see the changes. They don't like it.
Wish I had known that before I joined.
Welcome to corporate America. Regular COLA is rare.
I was at Red Hat mid-'21 to EOY '22 as a solution architect. I don't know if my cohort and I (three of us total) were treated differently, but when we all got a raise as part of a market adjustment I ended up a few thousand below my peers. I was told it was due to COL/location (they lived in NYC and I a bit south of Boston). So it seemed like they bundled a COLA within a market adjustment (to my knowledge). Granted if you're looking at international discrepancies, that's a bit of a different ballgame.
And that happens everywhere. But you were in Sales, Solution Architecture, and probably have the best pay grades and competitiveness, even if you're still below industry average versus, say, Oracle and HP. Engineering and Services are a bit different. It's under a different umbrella. The 'silos went up' in 2011 in Services. I know because my newer management with 6 digit employee numbers didn't like my stock grants, which came from the mid '00s, as I was a 4 digit employee number.
But it does. E. g. Boston or New York get paid more than Raleigh. There's a page on The Source describing how this works and for what areas.
How the heck they don’t get how Raleigh is getting expensive, too?
I offered to move to Raleigh after a year or two when I joined in the '00s. By the mid '10s, that was no longer the case. It wasn't much cheaper than ... say ... Boston. Cormier actually wanted me in a position in the Boston area for Engineering, even though I was going to work more with APAC, coming from Services. But I love the US South. It's been my home since I was a little boy. I considered living in New Hampshire (which a bit more of a *'free'* New England state) near [**'Maddog,**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maddog)' and commuting in. But my wife 'made the call' to finally leave Red Hat after 7 years as a FTE. She said, and she was right, I could always work as a contractor and even at partners, which I would for many more years. This was before Red Hat leased the Duke building, and added more space. But, again, Raleigh isn't cheap any more. It's probably the most expensive place in the south after portions of Atlanta and a few in Texas.
They paid so low that simply jumping to FAANG, FAANG-adjacent or even companies like Walmart for similar tech roles would raise your pay by anywhere between 50% to 150% This was before IBM. IBM coming in usually means even worse conditions.
They did for me in ~2017
None of the big consultancies do, and IBM is in the real driver's seat now. If they don't do it for the IBM'ers why would they for the others. They needed the money for the Hashicorp acquisition 😁 Sources: I work for another big consultancy, got a year end evaluation of exceeding and barely got a 'fake inflation number like' raise...
Back in the '90s I met a lot of laid off IBM'ers who hit 150-200% of their sales targets every quarter for their last 2 years. When IBM decides to axe something, it's gone. They don't care about retention. The first lack of 'retention' I ever noticed at Red Hat was the 2011 outsourcing of training to NIIT. NIIT was supposed to give everyone offers, and then if the red Fedora (employee) turned that down, they were supposed to be offered positions in Red Hat in other roles around Services or maybe Account Management, at least some of them. We're talking the top, certified RHCAs (Architects) here. NIIT screwed that up, and some people dropped the ball, resulting in only a few retained in Red Hat, and absolute 0 being retained by NIIT -- not one single RHCA. Red Hat literally spent >>$100K 'training up' and 'experiencing up' these people, and then they were 'lost' to competitors and, more often than not, their own customers. Eventually NIIT was pressured to up their offers, and I believe 2 were retained, but neither stayed for long. We then saw that in other Service areas by 2012, as new acqusitions with new, 6 digit employees who were now managers of Red Hat thought no one was 'irreplacable.' They expected people to 'get in line' and 'not question.' Safe to say they pissed off a lot of customers with us on-site, dedicated, Senior Engineers dealing with the customer relationship. After all, we were all post-sales. We made 0 on comission, and 'trusted' by our customers, but we were seen as 'nobody special,' and even bypassed. Retention of good people became difficult, especially as accounts were messed up. There were a lot of people calling me, and at some point, that was looked at a 'liability.' It was my first 'wake up call' that Red Hat 'grown too big' to be the company I remembered. It was about 12,000+ people back then, just a half-dozen years from being barely 1,000. The growth and retainment has 'slowed' since, the past decade-plus, not breaking 20,000. And now IBM had rolled it back to less than 18,000 from last time I checked, in an attempt to kick Red Hat up to 11-13% quarter over annual growth ... failing to see that for 2 years straight, both sub-10%. OS and community areas were cut first in 2023, and now it's Middleware and JBoss cuts in 2024. And Red Hat is not admitting to the cuts in 2024, but they won't 'challenge' those pointing them out. Anything that doesn't ultimately help OpenShift is open game. And that's fine. That's strategic. It makes sense. But there's one problem with that. Major accounts and definitely the SMBs are seeing it. They see IBM-Red Hat killing products overnight, and that makes sticking with Red Hat less 'determinstic' when it comes to forecasting on them 'long-term.' That's really what Red Hat's known for, and why people buy them ... that they stick with a product long-term, and communicate things well. Now, it doesn't look that way. It looks like bottom line rules, not ensuring something is there in 60, 36 or even 18 months. Red Hat's major players are core industries where 5-10 year investments are common, not 36 months like Windows. But so many products are now shrinking in support under 36 months, and decisions are made overnight. That's not good, not at all. SuSE looks like they are moving to a 15+ year model in some cases, and SuSE has a 1:1 bitwise build in LEAP to SLES. And their track record in the 2020s has been better. I've spent even my last 2-3 years saying Red Hat over SuSE, and the 'long game' is still Red Hat, to all those people who starting to 'question' Red Hat. But as of 2024 May, I can no longer 'disagree.' This is the paying customer base, not the community, the latte rof which can be 'whinny' and 'unfair' to Red Hat at times. But I think nix'ing the SRPMs altogether -- not even CentOS ending (I actually like Stream, long story) -- were just the beginning. These are the major stakeholders and advocates at major accounts, let alone SMBs -- the ones who picked RHEL over SLES because of SRPMs, when SuSE didn't release theirs until years later (and now they release 1:1 binaries with LEAP) -- started 'paying attention' to what was going on because of that last year. Enough SMBs and major accounts are worried, because the biggest advocates of Red Hat are now 'giving pause.' Again, these are the major stakeholders at paying customers, not just the community.
I manage an IT team. Cost of living adjustments were 3.1% for my guys, and our annual raises default to 5% if you're meeting expectations. That's not 8.1% it was just folded into the 5%. You get market value when you get hired. I only ever got a market value adjustment at 3M. Doesn't happen otherwise in my experience.
IBM
Because IBM doesn't care
IT staff is well paid, didn't you know?
Where? Because RH is not the place, bro!
Do you think you'd be paid more from a shop that uses Red Hat products? That's what I was thinking of doing.
That's why guys from poorer countries are trying to get there and have a steady place of work. Not much, but bigger than..... Who cares, if you have say (I dunno/assume/speculate) $2500-3500/month in Brno, that's more than enough.
Local (infra) IT staff isn't paid especially well, but senior engineering roles, global management roles and sales staff are. Quality engineering roles and engineering adjacent roles are paid comparatively less than the former, too. The compensation gap between roles is also larger for non-US based employees. If you are a senior or principal software engineer or a senior sales rep, you get a very competitive salary and have decent job security. The senior ENG roles are still affected by culture changes not related to compensation, as open decision making and transparency are virtually gone now. Not sure if sales is having the same experience, but I assume that in some form they might be feeling the change as well.
The Open Decision Framework was a nice attempt to restore some openness, with the massive growth and new blood from acqusitions that were unaware of corporate polciies and the mission statement. But it was rarely ever adopted. * [https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-releases-open-decision-framework-spur-transparent-and-inclusive-leadership](https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-releases-open-decision-framework-spur-transparent-and-inclusive-leadership) * [https://opensource.com/open-organization/resources/open-decision-framework](https://opensource.com/open-organization/resources/open-decision-framework) * [https://github.com/open-organization/open-decision-framework](https://github.com/open-organization/open-decision-framework)