What to do when employees quit • Hacker News Board

Re: What to do when employees quit

#31

Post by jdbernard » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 9:31 PM UTC

xyzzy4 wrote: post #16

taurath wrote: post #9

This part is key: > Take the time, on a regular basis, to talk to your employees about their lives, goals and challenges. Ask them what they hope to accomplish, not just in the next week, but in the next year, five years and ten years in their careers. Listen intently to what they say, and think about how you can help them achieve that. And then act. Anyone who asks me those questions will get double the loyalty out…

> Take the time, on a regular basis, to talk to your employees about their lives, goals and challenges. Ask them what they hope to accomplish, not just in the next week, but in the next year, five years and ten years in their careers. Listen intently to what they say, and think about how you can help them achieve that. And then act. Ah, the dreaded one-on-ones. This would actually make me want to leave the company if…

You shouldn't have to, but it makes a lot of sense to discuss your professional aspirations with the company who is currently a part your professional career. The only reason I wouldn't want my boss to know what my professional goals would be if I don't trust him/her to help me achieve them. If that trust isn't there then I'm already looking for a new job and this topic is one I make sure we discuss at some point if interviews get serious.

Re: What to do when employees quit

#32

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 9:31 PM UTC

throwavay_java wrote: post #29

xyzzy4 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Take the time, on a regular basis, to talk to your employees about their lives, goals and challenges. Ask them what they hope to accomplish, not just in the next week, but in the next year, five years and ten years in their careers. Listen intently to what they say, and think about how you can help them achieve that. And then act. Ah, the dreaded one-on-ones. This would actually make me want to leave the company if…

You should divulge your personal aspirations because your company might actually help you achieve them. It pays to start thinking about how your interests which you are a little bit afraid to share might help your career... because this is how you get your employer to pay for them. It depends on the employer. I wouldn't say "I want to quit this dump and become a water colour artist and photographer". But I /would/ sa…

[deleted]

Re: What to do when employees quit

#33

Post by forgottenpass » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 9:38 PM UTC

Quanticles wrote: post #21

gohrt wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would an employee feel honest telling their boss their 5-year goals? What if it isn't "leading a larger team at this company" ?

Not everyone can be a manger, strong technical people are very valuable too.

OK, but that doesn't change the point of their post. It can easily be rephrased as something like...

"Would an employee feel honest telling their boss their 5-year goals? What if it isn't "leading a larger team at this company" or "designing and developing more and/or more-important portions of the company's projects"?

Re: What to do when employees quit

#34

Post by cryptica » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 9:38 PM UTC

If an employee is so valuable that it hurts when they leave, maybe they should have been given more incentives to stay.

You can't say that an employee is selfish when they're the ones doing all the hard, laborious technical work and getting almost nothing out of it aside from a below-average startup salary.

This might come as a shock to some, but engineers have feelings and ambitions too. In this highly competitive market, it makes sense to give your employees more equity if you want to hold on to them. When you consider supply and demand, the ratio of founders to engineers is now much higher than it ever was. Great engineers are rare.

I've left quite a few companies, even a promising startup - Would I have left if I held even 5% equity in that company? Probably not.

If you don't give your 'valued' employee decent equity then you are the selfish one and I hope that they do leave (if only out of respect for the profession).

I've seen too many self-important founders who think that they deserve twenty times more equity than their best employee (just because they're friends with a rich investor). Taking risks is easy (and kind of fun), doing mind-numbing programming every day for 10 years is not (and working for a single company, in a single problem domain for that long IS mind numbing).

Also, let's not pretend that engineers aren't taking risks. 5 years of a young engineer's life is a huge risk especially when you consider that a lot of engineers start to slow down as they get older.

Re: What to do when employees quit

#35

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 9:41 PM UTC

jdbernard wrote: post #31

xyzzy4 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Take the time, on a regular basis, to talk to your employees about their lives, goals and challenges. Ask them what they hope to accomplish, not just in the next week, but in the next year, five years and ten years in their careers. Listen intently to what they say, and think about how you can help them achieve that. And then act. Ah, the dreaded one-on-ones. This would actually make me want to leave the company if…

You shouldn't have to, but it makes a lot of sense to discuss your professional aspirations with the company who is currently a part your professional career. The only reason I wouldn't want my boss to know what my professional goals would be if I don't trust him/her to help me achieve them. If that trust isn't there then I'm already looking for a new job and this topic is one I make sure we discuss at some point if…

[deleted]

Re: What to do when employees quit

#36

Post by codingdave » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 9:43 PM UTC

o_nate wrote: post #5

Seems like "pay them more" should be at least mentioned as a possibility here.

Tech people (in general) do not make job decisions based solely on money. They want recognition, good work, good teams, good leadership, a meaningful product, etc. If your solution to morale problems is to increase salaries, you have already missed the mark in some of these other areas.

Re: What to do when employees quit

#37

Post by forgottenpass » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 9:44 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #23

angersock wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a particular failure mode that bears pointing out with regards to compensation: Suppose you have a person you've brought on, and they agree to do some amount of work at a salary and tiny equity split. After some amount of time, they realize that they've produced a good deal more value than you have compensated them for. They're going to feel jilted. It's not enough to say, "We'll take advantage of you less in…

"And sadly, the optimal capitalist strategy is to just lay them off and enjoy the surplus they unwittingly made for you." Maybe for a dumb capitalist. The optimum strategy is to pick a level of compensation that works for them and you while realizing there is a transition cost to new people and talent is worth something.

No, the optimum strategy is to determine if compensating them to a mutually agreeable level is more or less expensive than losing their expertise and rolling someone new in.

Just because parent said optimal strategy is to lay them off doesn't mean you have to act like that's _never_ going to be the case.

For the given hypothetical, the 'ol "get them to unknowningly train their replacement by pretending like you're rewarding them with more compensation and a direct report" could be the "optimal" strategy.

Re: What to do when employees quit

#38

Post by unabridged » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 9:44 PM UTC

kafkaesq wrote: post #30

davidgrenier wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to make the assumption that just throwing more money at the individual is fair compensation. Perhaps I misunderstood your statement.

Founder equity is typically on a completely different scale than that of employees (even first hires). So we shouldn't be surprised that their loyalty is on a completely different scale, as well.

Exactly. My main problem is that the CEO's stance is entirely hypocritical, because he would demand real equity or quit (probably even faster) if he was in the employee's position.

Once you have access to millions in funding its tough to see people who have to work for a living as human just like you. You expect them to lovingly accept terms that you would be insulted at.

Now if your talent is so great that you dwarf all your employees it might be justified. But when you are pained at losing productive workers chances are your favorable terms exist mostly because of your connections.

Re: What to do when employees quit

#39

Post by tikhonj » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 9:52 PM UTC

kafkaesq wrote: post #19

Imagine getting punched in the stomach. And then, instead of recovering in a few minutes, imagine the shock and pain slowly turning into disappointment, anger and dread. Don’t you realize how important you are to the team? How could you do this to me? It was what I felt right then and there. Betrayal. Sadness. Despair about the future. Umm, companies pull the plug on employees all the time. In most cases with vastly…

That quote is really out of context. His point is that this is the wrong reaction, but a very natural one. Here's what directly follows this quote:

> It doesn’t matter that these questions weren’t the right ones to be asking.

It doesn’t matter that they weren’t even remotely accurate, and frankly, incredibly selfish.

It doesn’t matter that they run counter to everything I’ve learned about managing employee exits since then.

It was what I felt right then and there. Betrayal. Sadness. Despair about the future.

It's pretty easy to get overly emotional on anything that you've put significant amounts of time and effort into. The point of the article is that you shouldn't actually follow these feelings and that there are much better ways of handling it.

Re: What to do when employees quit

#40

Post by lgleason » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 9:54 PM UTC

The way you treat exiting employees is just as important as how you treat them when they are still there from a recruiting perspective. If you treat someone well when they decide to leave, they are more likely to recommend your company to others looking for a job.

There have been places I left for various reasons that were great employers that I still recommend to this day for others looking for a job.....and might even thing about joining if the right opportunity came along.