Redgate celebrates its 25th birthday with community support initiatives - What About The Employees
EdCarden
Posts: 138 Silver 2
I just want to say great job to Red-gate for their initiatives announced in an email I got today about it's 25th anniversary. The email says that Red-gate "..reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue..". That ls great news as you guys make some fantastic products. I have been a SQL Prompt user for close to 20 years and I love it still and depend on it daily. So kudos and great job to all at RG who made this possible.
That said I also want to say that I do hope that management at Red-Gate are also properly rewarding employee's and by that I mean genuinely rewarding them and not just giving token rewards believing you are doing what you should. I have been in the Dev/IT field for over 20 years and I've worked at every size company from a single owner where I was the only employee to a large international corporation. What I've seen too many times, primarily with the medium to large size businesses, is that the executives aren't really doing employees right; let me explain.
I'm not going to name companies, just provide some examples. At company X, new hires are paid well because company X want's the best talent they can get. The problem with company X is that the longer the employee stays at X the less they are actually paid due to inflation. The management at X realized that and so they implemented a policy where all employees pay is increased annually to offset this. Sounds like a great policy right? The problem is that it never covers the real cost of living increase; only a portion of it. This is because they use the data the Federal Government releases annually on the cost of living increase but that data is never correct. Typically around 3 months later the government revises the numbers to reflect the true cost of living increase. I'm not going to get into the reasons why the government does this but they do it and they have been for decades.
The longer you stay at X the less you are paid unless you ask for a raise. The problem with asking for a raise is that management doesn't give raises unless you are moving up to a higher position. The other issue is when an employee says they need a raise or they will have to seek work elsewhere, management at X provides a counter offer to keep the employee and it's always a small percentage of what the employee said they need because management at X always tries to low-ball employee raises. This seems crazy since they pay new hires the wage the employee is asking for. It causes unnecessary churn; employee turnover. I have found that if you work at a successful small business (around <=20 employees) where everyone is connected enough (i.e. they see and interact with all regularly) they tend to have very low churn because management values them and does what is needed to retain them.
Social after hour events/employee gatherings aren't the rewards management thinks they are, not today due to inflation. I can promise you that the majority of your employees would prefer you didn't spend tens of thousands of dollars for these kinds of social events but instead gave everyone a raise with that money. Most non-executive level employees' would rather get a pay bump then the annual expensive Christmas party. They don’t dislike being social, they just need money more today than the social events. I've seen more than a few employees leave company X only to return a few years later because that's the only way the employee can get a fair wage. When it comes to inflation, X raise’s the price of its products/services based on actual inflation yet when it comes to employee pay, X doesn't do the same as it does when raising it's prices.
It is the lower and mid-tier people at a company that make it possible for the company to meet or exceed its goals. When those same employees see lay-offs while those at the executive level are simultaneously getting their annual bonus it looks bad, real bad. Former Nintendo executive Satoru Iwata was the CEO of Nintendo during the launch of the Will U, a product which failed spectacularly for Nintendo. It was bad enough that cost cutting measures were needed. Instead of doing what most companies normally due, lay-off low and mid-tier employees, Iwata took a %50 pay cut and the rest of the executive team took %20 pay cuts so not one single employee had to be laid off. When asked why he did this, Iwata said "If we reduce the number of employees for better short-term financial results, employee morale will decrease, and I sincerely doubt employees who fear that they may be laid off will be able to develop software titles that could impress people around the world". You can bet that man ensured that Nintendo had some of the most dedicate employees of any company because he recognized it was those employees and not the executive team that were the engine of the business. The executives steer the company but it is the lower level people who are the engine. A company cannot exist without employees. Employees however can exist without a company/employer; it’s how society use to function.
I hope at Red-Gate that the employees cranking out the code, fixing the bugs and dealing directly with your customers are being treated and paid fairly and not just upon hiring but with every year as things become more expensive as they are the front line of your business; it’s engine. As a customer I want to ensure the next 20 years of using your products is as great as the last and that will only happen if the engine of your business is fine-tuned and kept running.
Thanks
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