How much does employee turnover really cost? • Hacker News Board

Re: How much does employee turnover really cost?

#301

Post by solatic » Wed, Jan 18, 2017, 10:39 AM UTC

Reading this made me think - maybe the work to live / live to work personality divide isn't actually real. Maybe people are divided more into two categories of those who are pessimistic that work will help them achieve self-actualization, and those who are optimistic about achieving self-actualization at work, or perhaps have already found it at work.

Does a work-to-live kind of person become a live-to-work kind of person if his workplace is genuinely happy? Does he forgo attempting to find happiness at work because he doesn't have the expectation of finding it, thus being more likely to accept poor work conditions in exchange for higher salary?

Interesting questions.

Re: How much does employee turnover really cost?

#302

Post by cmdrfred » Wed, Jan 18, 2017, 12:32 PM UTC

ktRolster wrote: post #286

stephen_g wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a fairly clear misunderstanding here. I think it's absolutely true to say that money doesn't motivate people. For most people, giving them raises won't make them work harder, stay longer, be more creative, etc. - at least, not long term. And if there are problems making them unhappy, throwing money at them isn't going to help much long term either. But if you're underpaying people or not giving raises, people…

I usually interpret being underpaid as, "The company doesn't care about me." When the company doesn't care about me, I start looking elsewhere.

I also factor in inflation to this estimation. "The company thinks I'm worth less this year than last year, I think I'm worth more, lets see what the market says"

Thus far the market has always agreed with me.

Re: How much does employee turnover really cost?

#303

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 18, 2017, 12:57 PM UTC

beat wrote: post #123

phaus wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming you are correct, which I suspect you are, that means the group of people that aren't really motivated by money make up a tiny percentage of the work force. Therefore anyone running a business can safely disregard any idiot making the claim that money isn't a motivator, except on the rare occasions which they find themselves hiring executives that make north of $500k. For normal people, its infuriating to hea…

I was strongly influenced in my thinking by Jason Cohen's "Rich vs King" article, he talks about the S-curve of wealth utilization. Once you hit a few million in the bank, you have enough money to fund a reasonably lavish lifestyle, without working, for the rest of your life. At that point, how do you motivate someone?

[deleted]

Re: How much does employee turnover really cost?

#304

Post by falsedan » Wed, Jan 18, 2017, 1:35 PM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #267

jimbokun wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're making $500k and not financially independent, or about to be very soon, you are doing something wrong, I think.

It only makes you independent for chunks of 6 months per month worked. You still have to work some 5-10 years before you are independent for the rest of your life.

People generally refer to that as 'retiring'; financial independence usually means, "don't need to ask parents for small loans/handouts".

Re: How much does employee turnover really cost?

#305

Post by nihonde » Wed, Jan 18, 2017, 1:35 PM UTC

beat wrote: post #85

_yosefk wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing few would book a management consultant simply telling to pay people more money - consultants who want a job instead have to explain how to motivate for free. But the people who share a lot of the blame for this idiocy and who have no good excuse are "heterodox economists" and TED talk presenters telling us how money doesn't motivate people past a certain point, or how it actually makes people less creati…

Money doesn't motivate people past, oh, a half million or so a year, maybe.

Anecdotal, but when I left my last big law firm (to start my own company), I was making around 3/4 million dollars per year. None of my peers who left ever went to jobs that paid more--they all went "in house" for a lot less money and maybe some moonshot equity, but mainly they sought a less horrible lifestyle.

Re: How much does employee turnover really cost?

#306

Post by falsedan » Wed, Jan 18, 2017, 1:47 PM UTC

EpicEng wrote: post #259

mavelikara wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was expecting to be paid the same as his colleagues and the industry standard. That sounds like a fair expectation, irrespective of the percentage raise that implied.

Then he shouldn't have taken the low offer to begin with. That's on him at least as much as the employer. He's free to leave of course, but complaining about it after the fact?

The company has more information than the candidate when making salary offers. If they negotiate in bad faith, that burns up goodwill. It's their decision to do it! I've never heard someone ask if their salary is in-line with the other members of their team (adjusted for performance/experience): it's a given assumption that _the company isn't going to pay you massively less than your peers_.

Plenty of companies do, because HR does the negotiations & their motivation is to minimise employee costs. If you're not negotiating with the recruiter/hiring manager, you're likely to get a poor offer.

Re: How much does employee turnover really cost?

#307

Post by falsedan » Wed, Jan 18, 2017, 2:00 PM UTC

bagels wrote: post #298

joshyeager wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We buy market data from two sources every year. They get their data by collecting it from the companies that buy their data. Obviously that's not perfect, but it's more objective than most other methods. That hardest part is figuring out which generic categories match our specific positions, since every company in the survey has different definitions and requirements. Our employees seem pretty happy with the results,…

What sources?

Towers Watson is the big one in the UK.

I worked at a place which got the salary data, and then announce that everyone was underpaid and that salaries would be adjusted 'soon'. When is 'soon'? Why, it's inaudible mumbling.

Re: How much does employee turnover really cost?

#308

Post by humanrebar » Wed, Jan 18, 2017, 2:02 PM UTC

Bartweiss wrote: post #89

makecheck wrote: post #45

Software development has some “special” traits that are not necessarily covered by this analysis. For one thing, you can’t just measure what a developer has done ; you need some sense of how easy maintenance is going to be. Given two brilliant solutions that required an extraordinary developer to create, one may be an indecipherable mess and the other may have been built in a way that makes typical maintenance tasks…

Maintenance (and maintainability) are definitely key questions for software development. The first point, about keeping people who write maintainable code, I agree with 100%. The second one, about keeping codebase expertise, seems complicated. On one hand, we all know there are weird bugs and edge cases best handled by knowing the code intimately. What's 20 hours of QA and engineering for an unfamiliar team can be a…

It's possible to write bug or enhancement requests against the system if it takes too long for new contributors to come up to speed. I do this from time to time.

It's important to remember that specify specific exit criteria, like "it should take one command instead of fifteen to add a new request to the XYZ endpoint."

Re: How much does employee turnover really cost?

#309

Post by falsedan » Wed, Jan 18, 2017, 2:03 PM UTC

ionwake wrote: post #245

withdavidli wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, exactly the one. personal note, it's bad form to have published the candidate's salary. at the 3 mil level, not even Google has many employees making that. probably narrowed it down to a dozen or so people since they even mentioned that it was a "programmer" (which I interpret as high IC level).

What does ic mean?

Integrated circuit

actually it's the sound a manager makes when they have to talk to their staff: "another round of one-on-ones, ic!"

Re: How much does employee turnover really cost?

#310

Post by falsedan » Wed, Jan 18, 2017, 2:05 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #238

ajmurmann wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of stories like this I am generally against publicly praising individual employees. Whenever you do that there is gonna be somebody who did something great you don't know about and aren't praising. There might even be people who think that what the person you are praising did something bad. I remember a all-hands meeting where somebody got praised for working all weekend. Later in private several people were…

I don't think I agree; I think that your examples show that it's important to know your employees' accomplishments, and to praise people accurately. Public praise matters; I like it when my managers and coworkers acknowledge good work I do, and it's nice hearing that my coworkers are doing good work, too. Why should we all labor in the shadow? Why should we be afraid of praise?

Public praise and recognition, yes.

Public announcements of awards and raises, hell no.