Anyone who is doing their best is making a significant contribution, and deserves the reward... unless their "best" is quite poor, in which case they wouldn't have been retained anyway.
It will vary depending on the business, but the atmosphere in the whole place is important if you are providing a service to the general public who are paying you directly. Software engineering is surely different.
When I was working as an engineer (aerospace), anything you developed was owned by the company. Everyone signs off on this at the beginning. Your immediate financial reward above your base pay for anything you do is zero. No bonuses either. And usually you'd get pretty much nothing beyond a good review and modest raise, unless you went looking for a job and got a much bigger offer compared to what you were currently getting. Personal experience, almost 50% in this case, 3 years out of school. Even though they matched it, I took the new offer because I thought it was a shitty way to do business.
So... I'm going to guess that if your company offered to make you a partner, that was a small company, you had a good employer, and it is also not standard practice in business.
What employees make is very much tied to what they could get elsewhere. Business management in general is tasked to maximize profits, which means they are only as "generous" with employee wages as they need to be. If the "playing field" is such that overall wages are depressed (the case since ~1980), then the fortunes of nearly every wage earner will be negatively effected.
You and others keep talking about "how to make it in this economy"... and of course, many can. What you seem to fail to understand is that it has become shittier for everyone who works for a living, compared to how it was or could be... including you. Nearly all the productivity gains have been going to the mega rich demographic.
I think that we are saying much the same thing. I’ve said several times that if management wants to retain their top talent, then they need to reward them. Otherwise they’ll look elsewhere and often leave like you did. And if they want to increase their lot and can’t find work in a similar field, they’ll find some other means of income.
Very few people become wealthy solely on their income. Most obtain wealth by putting what income they have to work so they can take advantage of compounding. And it’s up to the earner to determine how to do that. Just as with a business there is a balance of money flow - either increase the revenue or controlling costs, and you need to be able to do both if you want to have long term growth.
Likewise the individual has a choice of controlling his expenses or increasing his income. He can take inventory of his expenses and eliminate things that are not necessary, or he can either find another line of work which pays more. Additionally he can start a side hustle to bring in more income, and a side hustle does not have to be a second 9-to-5 job. It could be something as simple as mowing lawns for his neighbors. Or maybe he likes to make fishing fly lures so starts selling them to friends or offers them online for sale. (On a side note I had a business trip to Bass Pro Shops headquarters when it was just starting back in the late 1990s. While there I talked with some managers and apparently that’s how the company got started. The founder liked making fly fishing lures and started selling them out of his basement.). Or maybe you’re a secretary but love to bake. So you start selling cakes to your friends.
So there are plenty of ways to use a side hustle to bring in additional income. Myself - I was trained as an organist, but transitioned to coding when I left the conservatory. My main job was as a programmer, but my side hustle was in church music. Oh that didn’t pay nearly as much as my regular job, but it did increase my overall income.
There are some steps that are needed to start growing wealth and most does not come from your first job’s salary. I think the first is to invest in yourself.
By invest in yourself, I do not mean pay yourself first, but do what is necessary to improve your skill set and marketability. In my case, being trained as a musician, I was constantly having to memorize pieces. That made me able to fairly easily remember things. As for corse work, probably the most valuable classes I had were research classes. Now this is not the same as doing scientific research, but rather learning stuff which was not covered in classes at all. So I was poring over books, manuscripts, documents from the 16th century that were written in French or German, and no I didn’t know those languages prior to then. I learned that I could learn new things. I didn’t have to have a class to learn them. And I didn’t have to fear that which I didn’t know. That was invaluable.
Later I sensed that I probably wouldn’t be successful as a performing musician, but because curious about computers. That was at the time that the field was just opening up and I felt that I could be successful there. So I found a cheap programming class (PL/1) and took it. Since I had developed my memory skills from music school and had learned that I could learn new things, then I wasn’t worried that I couldn’t do this also.
Then I got a one year replacement as a teacher at a community college in West Texas. I had a very light teaching load, but took advantage of a couple of their night classes. My first class there was in Assembly Language (BAL) and my second was in COBOL. No one told me that Assembly Language would be difficult so I found it fairly easy.
This is what I mean by investing in yourself. Never stop learning and increasing your skill set. That’s what makes you more valuable to either your existing employer, or a potential new employer.
Yes you mentioned that you switched jobs to get a 50% pay increase. Been there, done that. A lot of folks are simply too afraid of doing that, but that’s one of the steps to increasing your income. (But again, very few become wealthy solely from that salary.)
My first non-musical job was as a contractor for Xerox. That was followed by a second contract at GM working in a carburetor testing lab. Then I got employment at Sperry-Univac, La Quinta Inns, Informix, and IBM.
With each transition I invested in myself by learning new skills and adapting to new environments. In doing that I was considered more valuable to my employee which resulted in both good pay increases, bonuses, and retention option grants.
So the number 1 rule is invest in yourself. It’ll make you more valuable.
Rule #2 is don’t be afraid of change. It’s gonna happen.
I could have been fearful of the transitions I went through. A lot of my work mates were afraid to change and ignored when the evidence pointed to a decline in opportunities. Most of them ended up losing their jobs.
Rule #3 Control your spending. First of all know what you’re spending on and ask yourself if it’s necessary. If not, then eliminate it. I know that a lot of people of little means eat at MacDonalds or some other fast food place. But when I calculate how much a Big Mac meal costs per month - well. The lowest price in the US is $6.19 while the highest is $11.79. That’s roughly $186-$354 per month or $2232-$4248 per year - all for something that should really cost no more than $2.50. If I were to take the difference between a Big Mac meal and bringing a sack lunch from home, I’d be saving about $2200 per year. And If I were to just take that $2200 per year and invest it annually in an S&P index fund, over my working years I’d have over $500,000. And if I were to then turn that money into a safe utility dividend stock such as southern company (current yield at 4.21%, I’d have an extra income of over $21,000 - just from bringing my lunch from home rather than eating a Big Mac meal.
Rule #4 - Avoid lifestyle creep
Often when we get a pay raise or some bonus, be it year-end bonus or retention bonus such as company options, we end up spending everything that we just got of lifestyle creep. It’s much smarter to ask yourself first if you were doing just fine before the bonus or salary hike. If you were, then use a percentage of that extra income for yourself, but use the majority to fund your savings/investment. That way you’ll end up not only compounding your new gains, but will accelerate the growth of your future revenue stream. In my case initially the extra money would go into my bank account and as my bank account grew to a certain level, I’d transfer it into either a fund or a dividend oriented stock such as a utility or telecommunications company. I’d immediately turn on dividend re-investment for that purchase. So I’d be compounding my money as well as seeing asset appreciation.
Once I was with a company with a 401K plan, I’d just increase my annual funding when I received a pay increase.
Rule #5 - think how you can turn side hustles into income.
I had my musical skills that I could use to bring in extra income and most of that required little time during the week. Most of us have something extra they like to do that could be monetized. Like to bake? Garden? Landscape? Uber? Teach? Sew? Make YouTube videos? Dog Groomer? Dog Walk? Even something as simple as making meals for an elder person. And the list goes on.
The main point that I’m trying to make is that very few people gain wealth simply from their salary. Far more gain wealth by remaining in control of that income they have and making decision that their money is going to work for them and not just them working for their money. If you’ve decided to do this, then eventually the investments of your income can bring in more income than your regular job.
