I've seen an example of this...
A company I contracted for had a technical career path for programmers, system architects, et al so that, up to a certain level, a person could follow a progression of raises and promotions as a techie. So far, so good.
The problem came because the comapny capped the top end of the techie career path. You reach a certain pay grade or promotion level, you can't go any higher in the company.
The system architect on our team was an extremely smart guy. Really knew his stuff. Over his years with the company, he worked his way up the technical career ladder to the point where, as a system architect, he was capped out on both money and job level.
To earn more money, he would have had to convert to the management pay ladder and would have jumped in somewhere around the vice-president level. Certainly, the company's vice presidents didn't like the idea of having a non-management tech-wonk jump into the middle of their pay pool, so the system architect was blocked from doing so.
For the rest of his career...up until retirement...he would have had to stay locked into his pay rate, with no incentive for trying harder, innovating new ideas, etc.
Why would he stay?
In fact, he did not. No surprise, there. He jumped to a company that *did* offer an open-ended technical career path...complete with a salary structure that wasn't constrained by the petty, "someone's making more than me" attitudes of management executives. He, at least, got a happy ending. The company did not. The team lost their most experienced technical resource and did so ugly, with the rest of the team fully aware that the company pushed the guy out the door, leaving them largely unsupported. And they were surprised when I didn't want to convert to a full-time employee... |
