Cost of Attrition
benjiweber.co.uk
Cost of Attrition
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Re: Cost of Attrition
#2Doesn't mention the benefits of attrition. A network can be robust since none of the pieces leaves, but what is even more robust is a network that constantly renews itself and gracefully handles the process of swapping out parts. Constant attrition means that your company never starts relying on individuals, instead the process survives and thrives on its own, hiring new people who then hire new people before they leave etc. Such a process isn't very attractive to individuals, of course, but they are very attractive to the owners.
Re: Cost of Attrition
#3Doesn't mention the benefits of attrition. A network can be robust since none of the pieces leaves, but what is even more robust is a network that constantly renews itself and gracefully handles the process of swapping out parts. Constant attrition means that your company never starts relying on individuals, instead the process survives and thrives on its own, hiring new people who then hire new people before they le…
Do you have any evidence to your claim? It’s possible to ad hoc rationalize pretty much anything.
A real statistic against your claim is one of the highest predictors of defects in a code base is whether or not the original team is still working on it.
Re: Cost of Attrition
#4Doesn't mention the benefits of attrition. A network can be robust since none of the pieces leaves, but what is even more robust is a network that constantly renews itself and gracefully handles the process of swapping out parts. Constant attrition means that your company never starts relying on individuals, instead the process survives and thrives on its own, hiring new people who then hire new people before they le…
Do you have any evidence to your claim? It’s possible to ad hoc rationalize pretty much anything. A real statistic against your claim is one of the highest predictors of defects in a code base is whether or not the original team is still working on it.
Not to mention vision that will change due to new ideas or influence that new staff brings to the team. It's not always beneficial for the project.
It can go wrong in so many ways that it ends up being dead.
Don't get me wrong, change is good but too much change is just too much to handle sometimes.
Re: Cost of Attrition
#5While the point seems worthwhile, the animations don't help at all.
Stuff moves around for no reason (some graph layouting algorithm with easing I guess), the looping is bad and it's annoying to wait for the changes and as they happen instantly
A simple picture for each transition would have been simpler to implement and actually showed something.
Re: Cost of Attrition
#6Doesn't mention the benefits of attrition. A network can be robust since none of the pieces leaves, but what is even more robust is a network that constantly renews itself and gracefully handles the process of swapping out parts. Constant attrition means that your company never starts relying on individuals, instead the process survives and thrives on its own, hiring new people who then hire new people before they le…
In order for a part to be entirely interchangible, you should choose the smallest common denominator of all parts to rely on as the highest value that you can get from one. I think that one must find an equilibrium but it requires active management and careful thinking to be executed properly.
Re: Cost of Attrition
#7Doesn't mention the benefits of attrition. A network can be robust since none of the pieces leaves, but what is even more robust is a network that constantly renews itself and gracefully handles the process of swapping out parts. Constant attrition means that your company never starts relying on individuals, instead the process survives and thrives on its own, hiring new people who then hire new people before they le…
I don't think it works like that. Constant attrition does not prevent your company from relying on individuals. You don't fire you good employees and they won't leave if it's a worthwhile job. With constant attrition you get a core group you rely on. However that group is not as productive as they could be because they spend a lot of time training and integrating new employees that don't stay.
Re: Cost of Attrition
#8Doesn't mention the benefits of attrition. A network can be robust since none of the pieces leaves, but what is even more robust is a network that constantly renews itself and gracefully handles the process of swapping out parts. Constant attrition means that your company never starts relying on individuals, instead the process survives and thrives on its own, hiring new people who then hire new people before they le…
That sort of anti-fragility isnt a guaranteed outcome of attrition though. You can just as easily be left with a pool of under-performers that can't/won't leave, while talent moves to organisations that invest more in staff vs processes.
Re: Cost of Attrition
#9Doesn't mention the benefits of attrition. A network can be robust since none of the pieces leaves, but what is even more robust is a network that constantly renews itself and gracefully handles the process of swapping out parts. Constant attrition means that your company never starts relying on individuals, instead the process survives and thrives on its own, hiring new people who then hire new people before they le…
In order for a part to be entirely interchangible, you should choose the smallest common denominator of all parts to rely on as the highest value that you can get from one. I think that one must find an equilibrium but it requires active management and careful thinking to be executed properly.
Or to have great onboarding, people learn a lot, are effective quickly, and leave after learning enough. The know-how is then embedded in the process not in people, which guarantees stability, while people are guaranteed to change.
Re: Cost of Attrition
#10Doesn't mention the benefits of attrition. A network can be robust since none of the pieces leaves, but what is even more robust is a network that constantly renews itself and gracefully handles the process of swapping out parts. Constant attrition means that your company never starts relying on individuals, instead the process survives and thrives on its own, hiring new people who then hire new people before they le…
> very attractive to the owners
And yet I’ve worked at software companies that will go to great lengths to avoid attrition. For exactly the reasons mentioned in the post, they encourage people to move to other teams to build up the inter connectedness of teams while keeping employees motivated and engaged. In fact, even if you weren’t looking HR would reach out and ask if you were interested in looking at other teams within the company because you had been in your current team for 18 months.
Side note I don’t know if I’ve just been lucky but I can’t relate to this talk of “companies are evil and act maliciously against their employees at every opportunity”. That hasn’t been true in my experience.