Uncertain long-term career prospects that depend on a single employer. If you pay enough to make long-term prospects irrelevant, you may end up attracting the wrong kind of people. People who can't be trained do the job well enough, or people who will quit after earning enough. And you may end up losing your existing employees. They may quit if they don't get paid as much as the new hires, or they may FIRE if they do.
How come FAANG companies don't have this same problem of people quitting after earning enough? They get paid much more, even without taking on the risk of being tied to a single employer.
The answer is that some people do quit and retire early, but even more are attracted to that career like moths to a flame, and work until they can't.
I do think they should raise pay for their existing employees at the same time. In fact, they should tie the compensation to progression in skill and experience, so that people who just came for the money and aren't cut out for the work or aren't in it for the long haul aren't attracted to the job. That's basically the traditional model anyway.
And yeah paying employees well might cost a bit of money (but really, not that much in the scope of things). If talent is their production bottleneck, it will be well worth the expense.
It's a more diverse industry with many companies and many types of jobs. If you don't like one job, you can quit and try another. Which people tend to do multiple times in their careers.
Software industry has always been plagued by attrition. Some companies pay well and mostly employ younger people. Older employees eventually filter out, either because they have already earned enough and prefer better work-life balance, or due to ageism. And then there are occasional downturns, where many people lose their jobs, can't find new ones, and end up leaving the industry permanently.
People generally prefer careers with multiple viable employers. Not just in the world, but also in the same metro area. That way you are less likely to get stuck in a job you don't like. But if you are an employer with unique requirements. Of skills that take years to learn and that people are not likely to acquire on their own. Then you may need to pay ridiculous money (more like AI than FAANG) to substantially widen your talent pipeline. And if you pay ridiculous money, you risk ridiculous consequences.
It sounds like you're arguing that Zeiss needs to pay even more than FAANG to succeed in attracting people to work for them, which is a point that I agree with.
Surely you would increase the salary of the current employees if you're hiring new people with higher salaries.
Also, it sounds like the entire premise is "people don't want to work because they're not being paid enough" which is enough of a good reason by itself.
