For the particular case I had in mind it was around 170k€, but in the Rhein/Ruhr Region, you can easily get 100k compensation for good chemical engineers with experience with very good work conditions.
Also in chemical engineering. This is usually for people having around 20 to 50 engineers reporting to them within a big company like Bayer, BASF, Covestro, Linde, etc. or for project managers coordinating large projects (10's to 100's of millions).
If you offer 100k (or 1M or whatever) you just move one engineer from another company to yours. So the other company now has a hard time finding a good engineer. If you increase your salary scale you will get an engineer who is moved away soon by another company which pays more money. In an optimal market, with p% missing engineers you will have p% of your positions open.
You can't plug holes with this strategy. The holes move around while salaries are increasing.
I've worked for a company that payed at the top 10% of salaries and we still couldn't find enough engineers.
I have a number of scientist/mechanical engineer friends who have retrained into software because of how much better the job opportunities are. So it's not just a zero sum game.
Apropos training: Good salaries also attract young people to study computer science, software engineering or a related subject. (I personally think money should not be the sole motivation but it is reasonable to consider the ROI for studying a challenging subject.)
Yes, but with average salaries already higher than most other occupations, the pull from 100k average to 120k average (+20%) shouldn't be that high, but I don't know/have numbers.
Well, with the increasing rents in German cities I think it makes a difference. For me it certainly does. I know at least one company in Berlin that already offers 120k.
But we would need to measure the elasticity of the engineering job market.
E.g. how much more people are becoming engineer if the average salary is going from 150k to 200k, as the salary scale compared to others is already high and should already pull people in.
The people in the final year of high school that are deciding what career to pursue? They will see that there's money to be made in the field and you'll get more people into the CS pipeline, which leads to more engineers 3 years later.
If people aren't choosing the field, no matter how much you are offering new grads, it's an outreach problem and you solve it by making sure people have that information when they are making the decision. Or any other information, really, do you offer relocation assistance? Are your potential hires aware of that? Etc.
It seems to work relatively well for oil companies (else they wouldn't be doing it, right?).
>You can't plug holes with this strategy.
It's too late to be looking for crew when your ship is sinking.
>The holes move around while salaries are increasing.
Yes, of course. But eventually the 'musical chairs' make people move to a higher paying position, and the hole isn't even in your region/country anymore. At least not in your company. The issue with the strategy doesn't seem to be that it doesn't work, just that it takes too long to.
>I've worked for a company that payed at the top 10% of salaries and we still couldn't find enough engineers.
As the other poster mentioned, 10% of what? If the best people from France and Germany are already in Switzerland, you need to compete with Swiss companies, not the local ones that just take what's left.
With salaries in Berlin of $80k and >$100k or $150k in the valley, they currently don't think there is money made in that field? Wow. I do consider $100k a lot of money but YMMV.
"offer relocation assistance?"
Yes everyone I know does this.
"Are your potential hires aware of that?"
Yes.
"It seems to work relatively well for oil companies"
I have no data on oil companies or any experience with oil companies and if they have problems with finding enought good engineers or not. If you have any data, would be interesting, especially on the elasticity of that job market.
I can only speak about software development and hiring people for 20+ years, no clue about other fields.
"you need to compete with Swiss companies"
So I increase the salary to compete with Swiss companies, they increase salaries, holes move around.
Aside from that I assume Swiss companies already have their own holes - at least considering all the executive search calls I get.
You only can plug the holes with more engineers, not higher salaries (above a certain point). And it's questionable you can pull in more people into CS when salaries are already very high compared to most other occupations (but I have no numbers on the elasticity of the engineering job market).
Also: If most ads do not show salary information, how can I get more good engineers interviewing with higher salaries? The problem was not getting good engineers when they showed up for an interview, the problem was getting enough resumes - a problem everyone has outside Google,FB,...
We did some A/B testing on job ads, including salary information did not help. I'm a proponent for
But yes, I would double the salary and let go of half of the people if joining a company as CTO, I'm not against increasing salaries, but they don't close holes from my experience.
Your concept of "holes" is just the state of the current job market for engineers. There are more open positions than engineers available. Hence, companies have to compete more for the available engineers. Salary is not the only but certainly a major factor to make people switch jobs. At the same time the profession gets more attractive for "outsiders". We had this the other way around a couple of years ago in Germany: lots of electrical engineers and to few jobs.
Offering 100k (or more) would also attract more people from abroad. We (I'm German too) have to compete with other regions in the world where the pay is much higher. Higher does not mean better of course (cost of living), but people seem to prefer higher numbers on the paycheck.
We've hired extensively from Poland, but the argument holds: This is creating holes in Polish companies that can't find enough good engineers (as some of my Polish clients tell me).
Of course Polish companies have to increase the salaries too. Seems a lot of developers in Poland are considerable underpaid ... or they really like to work in Berlin :)
Everyone thinks they are offering good compensation, regardless of whether it actually is. Somehow, I doubt you'd have the issue if you offered 100k.