Cost of Attrition • Hacker News Board

Re: Cost of Attrition

#111

Post by jurassic » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 4:13 PM UTC

I’ve come to think a certain amount of attrition is needed to keep a product and the individuals working on it healthy. Back in my consulting days I worked with a few enterprise software companies that had a lot of highly tenured employees (think 10+ years). All the long-timers I met were skilled fiefdom builders with a strong bias toward opposing every change and maintaining the technical status quo because a lot of their value was in their vast knowledge of the way things already are. Without attrition you end up accumulating people you don’t want. Overall it seems like a path to ossification/stagnation for your people and product.

From the individual perspective, staying too long slows down your rate of learning because you aren’t coming into contact with new people and technology at the same rate. Anecdotal, but lately I’ve interviewed some 8+ year tenured candidates that I wouldn’t rate above SWE II because it was literally a “one year of experience 10 times” situation. I try to change things up every 4 years or so to avoid ending up this way myself.

Re: Cost of Attrition

#112

Post by warcher » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 4:13 PM UTC

Moodles wrote: post #93

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #23

The author's points are absolutely correct. However, I don't think that it makes any difference. The entire industry has now shaped itself into a transient, mercenary, loyalty-free community. It will take a long time to change that. A lot of the trouble is the "You go first." mentality. Who will be the one to stay at a company for many years, getting only 3% raises; regardless of their performance, as their company's…

> So that generally means that governments need to step in, and help the people and companies to do the right thing. That sounds pretty ominous. What policy would you suggest? Why would you be confident the government would be at all competent?

Honestly it’s already been done- release the wage numbers publicly. The only way screwing over long term team members works is if you can keep a lid on it. Wage secrecy enables all kinds of bad behavior.

Re: Cost of Attrition

#113

Post by mathattack » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

jurassic wrote: post #111

I’ve come to think a certain amount of attrition is needed to keep a product and the individuals working on it healthy. Back in my consulting days I worked with a few enterprise software companies that had a lot of highly tenured employees (think 10+ years). All the long-timers I met were skilled fiefdom builders with a strong bias toward opposing every change and maintaining the technical status quo because a lot of…

Can companies get around this by active transfers? This doesn’t work everywhere.

Re: Cost of Attrition

#114

Post by lotsofpulp » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 4:20 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #109

lotsofpulp wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxpayer funded defined benefit pensions, aka Social Security in the US, is the solution for people not earning enough money to save. There is no reason to have a ton of employers get involved in the wealth transfer system. It adds so much unnecessary complexity, bureaucracy, agency risk, not to mention the longevity risk of a single employer surviving for 50 more years. And on top of that, the only thing the employe…

>not to mention the longevity risk of a single employer surviving for 50 more years There are various protections in place. I'll be collecting a pension from a long gone employer. I'm not really going to argue for defined benefit pensions. There's a certain paternalistic attitude to them that your employer is at least partly responsible for looking after your retirement savings. And you're on the hook for being a loy…

The only protection is the PBGC, which is woefully underfunded, and could not even handle the recent multi employer pension fund failures. They just got bailed out again Mar 2021 in the American Rescue Plan legislation:

https://www.pbgc.gov/american-rescue-plan-act-of-2021

The real bailout is the backstop the federal government provides on asset prices at the expense of purchasing power of the currency.

I understand that you are not arguing for DB pensions. I am just trying to make it clear that US society has moved past DB pensions because we now have an explicit promise of bailouts at the expense of the dollar, and if we are going to do that, then cut out all the actuary and investment fund fees, and just drop it in social security or target date funds.

Re: Cost of Attrition

#115

Post by dan-robertson » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 4:20 PM UTC

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #23

The author's points are absolutely correct. However, I don't think that it makes any difference. The entire industry has now shaped itself into a transient, mercenary, loyalty-free community. It will take a long time to change that. A lot of the trouble is the "You go first." mentality. Who will be the one to stay at a company for many years, getting only 3% raises; regardless of their performance, as their company's…

On the employee end, I think it’s obviously fine to leave for somewhere else for more money/better perks/whatever.

For companies, certainly some do value retention and this is obvious from things that can be observed (eg the turnover rate) and incentive structures (ie being willing to pay to avoid attrition).

So I think it isn’t true that no companies value attrition. Even Amazon which usually have a reputation as a bad place to work as an engineer seem to do things to reduce attrition (an alternative way of looking at their ‘weight vesting schedule towards later years’ is that they are trying to encourage people to stay for longer, rather than that they are trying to save money on a high turnover rate).

It feels to me that a lot of it is cultural. For example, lots of people in senior positions may believe that a certain level of attrition (or ‘unregretted attrition’) is good because it is like an easy way of firing people. But regretted attrition can be a lot worse than not having so much I regretted attrition. I say it’s cultural because opinions in management could change—certainly other countries can be different—just like other aspects of company management have changed over time too.

I think another aspect is that if your company is growing very quickly, like many of today’s big tech companies did, then most people will be recent hires and it is perhaps hard to have a culture that values or takes advantage of people with a lot of internal experience.

Re: Cost of Attrition

#116

Post by streblo » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 4:23 PM UTC

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #53

throway453sde wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So that generally means that governments need to step in, and help the people and companies to do the right thing. Then its not democracy any more. Its slavery. If People want to leave let them leave.

That’s an interesting logical leap.

"governments need to step in" was a pretty big leap to begin with

Re: Cost of Attrition

#117

Post by dan-robertson » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 4:24 PM UTC

jurassic wrote: post #111

I’ve come to think a certain amount of attrition is needed to keep a product and the individuals working on it healthy. Back in my consulting days I worked with a few enterprise software companies that had a lot of highly tenured employees (think 10+ years). All the long-timers I met were skilled fiefdom builders with a strong bias toward opposing every change and maintaining the technical status quo because a lot of…

What is your argument that encouraging attrition would cause these people to leave rather than the employees you might value more? That is, why wouldn’t doing things that lead to higher attrition lead to having a all the people you want leaving and the people you don’t want continuing to stay because e.g. it is harder for them to go elsewhere.

Re: Cost of Attrition

#118

Post by ghaff » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 4:25 PM UTC

jurassic wrote: post #111

I’ve come to think a certain amount of attrition is needed to keep a product and the individuals working on it healthy. Back in my consulting days I worked with a few enterprise software companies that had a lot of highly tenured employees (think 10+ years). All the long-timers I met were skilled fiefdom builders with a strong bias toward opposing every change and maintaining the technical status quo because a lot of…

Depending upon the specifics, there probably tends to be some happy medium (from both a company and employee perspectives) between constant churn and very little change over the course of a couple decades. There are exceptions of course.

Re: Cost of Attrition

#119

Post by angarg12 » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 4:37 PM UTC

The article doesn't mention the double whammy of losing well connected engineers: morale and ripple effect. When a high performed with a good network leaves a company, it usually encourage others to leave as well.

Re: Cost of Attrition

#120

Post by travisjungroth » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 4:38 PM UTC

dan-robertson wrote: post #117

jurassic wrote: post #111

I’ve come to think a certain amount of attrition is needed to keep a product and the individuals working on it healthy. Back in my consulting days I worked with a few enterprise software companies that had a lot of highly tenured employees (think 10+ years). All the long-timers I met were skilled fiefdom builders with a strong bias toward opposing every change and maintaining the technical status quo because a lot of…

What is your argument that encouraging attrition would cause these people to leave rather than the employees you might value more? That is, why wouldn’t doing things that lead to higher attrition lead to having a all the people you want leaving and the people you don’t want continuing to stay because e.g. it is harder for them to go elsewhere.

I think you have to fire them. If you just non-selectively "do things that lead to higher attrition", you're right, you're going to lose the best employees and just make things worse. It's painful and it's actively painful in a way that "let's just not pay so much everyone sticks around forever". You'd have to yank out someone that has convinced everyone they're essential to the company, but they're mostly essential through a situation they created.

I wouldn't overapply this though. I think terminal mid-levels might be undervalued in a way. A separate conversation, but I think "developer assistant" could be a role in the way "dental assistant" is (but not as much based on gatekeeping).