Why aren't you switching jobs?

Because it's not only a matter of salary, you have to put "all in the balance" when considering a potential move. Personally, I was giving a lot of value to the mobility within the company.

I started as a computer scientist in a bank and became a trader a couple of years later.

Outside of my company, it would not have been possible because I didn't study finance.

I can work fully remote, no bullshit meetings ever. 1 or 2 phone calls a week (15-45min), otherwise I can work on with no interruptions.

Pretty hard to do better I guess

In order of importance:

1. Sizeable retention package at 1 year of employment.

2. My job is very undemanding at the moment and I get to learn a bunch of things in my spare time.

3. The optics of leaving after a short period of time.

4. Difficulties around finding a new job due to covid-19 and/or having to work fully remotely for a new company.

So I'm hanging around until the 1-year mark and doing my best to level up my skills as much as possible in the meantime.

Short answer: Because I need to grind more leetcode.

Longer answer: I like my team and manager, although not my company and org (non-tech company), and the work has become very unchallenging.

But if I make a change, I want it to be to a company that will give me a significant benefit in terms of some combo of compensation, work, culture, and prestige. If I'm only going to get a 10%-20% raise but end up with a bad team or manager, I don't feel it's worth it.

...hence, I need to grind more leetcode, because all of the companies I feel worth jumping to are heavily gatekeeped by leetcode interviews.

* Already made a lot of jumps in the past 5 years -- don't want to get pigeonholed as a jumper or mercenary or "hard to work with"; I've already gotten the 20% raises by jumping a few times, time to chill

* Apropos of the above, current salary and bennies are decent, bonus potential is great; no reason to rock the boat now

* Work teams are a mess at times but are tolerable enough. Being 100% remote at this point is cool. Better the devil you know, etc.

* Looking to buy a house and have a kid/kids soon, would rather focus on home life for now before creating additional wrinkles

* Been using a lot of different technologies over the past 5-7 years, "jack-of-all" but no mastery. I'd like to specialize a little more and go deep into a stack/language/skill-set. Easier to be at one place and focus on getting fluency and skill then throwing more complications into things.

I don't think this is true forever. I've doubled my salary in my first five years in my career through job changes, but I don't think I can do it again. I guess I have one more 20k jump (if I'm lucky) and then I will have maxed out the salary for my position and market.

45 days PTO (in the US)

Covid, childcare issues

Actually Covid may make working remotely more acceptable, so may lead to more options, if the economy does not prevent it.

Based on your argument — taking it to an absurd extreme — you’d never stay in a job and be perpetually changing.

I like my boss, team and company culture. I also care about their end product (am a consumer myself) and have a lot of say in the technical direction of the company at large.

I am likely making 1/2 of what I could be making if I moved to a FAANG and I am pretty OK with it. Is still plenty to live and save well.

Because I can't.

There aren't a ton of open positions in my area right now.

I've been in obscure/obsolete tech for too long (neoxam and filenet).

I have a family to support, so I need the pay and benefits.

Otherwise, I would probably leave tech for something like construction. I'm tired of the unrealistic expectations.

Because I've been in my career for 20 years and am in a good place. I have moved jobs, a lot.

What I wish I knew back then was that being "staff" could (and likely should) be carried over to the next company.

I really like my boss, if the trade is a known great manager v rolling the dice plus more money, I’ll pick the manager. I haven’t always felt this way, but I value it now.

With all the uncertainty of COVID, it seems worth sticking around at BigCo for a while longer.

My salary has doubled in the last 4 years at my Big tech job through raises/promotions.