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Cost of Attrition

benjiweber.co.uk

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Re: Cost of Attrition

#141

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

streblo wrote: post #116
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s an interesting logical leap.

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

Not really.

In the US, we have many government agencies, like OSHA, and the NLRB, and others, like the SEC, etc., not to mention the AGs and other law-enforcement people.

Business owners love to hate on them, but they are a big reason that we don't have poorhouses any more.

I have found that there is absolutely no bottom to the depths that people will sink, if they can make money. This seems to be true of folks that graduated from Yale, or from Jail.

The idea that any industry will "self-regulate," is a laughable and naive myth.

Re: Cost of Attrition

#142

Post by lotsofpulp »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #137
lotsofpulp wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are binding until the money is not there decades in the future, and you do not have enough political power to get a full bailout, and end up having to take a haircut. I would take a defined benefit pension from the federal government (or any other entity that can print money), but any other payout promised decades in the future is just as, if not more, risky as investing in an index fund, because you give up con…

When I left my company, after 27 years, I chose to take my pension in a lump sum. I had plenty of money in other investments, so I wasn't too worried about it. I used the money to fund one of my companies, and tossed the rest into an index fund. I made back the money I used to fund the company in a couple of years; just from the portion in the index fund (it's been crazy). Earlier this year, my ex-employees told me t…

You made the smart choice. In a political environment where purchasing power is constantly being eroded, the only option is to stay ahead or on top of the wave by keeping assets invested and investing in new cash flow producing ventures.

A non COLA adjusted defined benefit just means you will continuously lose purchasing power, and even the COLA adjustments are subject to understatement due to political influences. Even Social Security is not immune, because at the end of the day, a smaller proportion of labor suppliers to labor buyers means less supply of labor per buyer, which means it has to get rationed somehow (for whatever amount does not get offset by automation/immigration).

Re: Cost of Attrition

#143

Post by rs999gti »

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…

> 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.

So all German IT organizations? :)

Re: Cost of Attrition

#144

Post by mikeholler »

ishmaeel wrote: post #62
oerpli wrote: post #5

While 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.

I appreciated the visualisation. My CPU fan, on the other hand, was not a big fan.

Most CPU fans are little.

Re: Cost of Attrition

#145

Post by mym1990 »

travisjungroth wrote: post #120
dan-robertson wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I believe in early days Amazon(and possibly even now) Bezos did not want employees to stay for more than 2 years, for the hope that Amazon was a stepping stone to other places for people.

Re: Cost of Attrition

#146

Post by ericmcer »

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…

That’s maybe why most stock starts vesting after a year (when employees become very effective) and stops after 4 years.

Re: Cost of Attrition

#147

Post by mym1990 »

disambiguation wrote: post #136

Arguments of attrition aside, I don't agree with this model. Maybe I'm not understanding what an edge is supposed to be, but the author implies that "something" is lost when the edge disappears. That doesn't make sense. Knowledge live in the node, not the edge. You don't just forget a project you worked on just because someone left. If you lose access to knowledge when someone leaves, that's because you did a bad job…

Unless every piece of knowledge is documented in a clean and understandable fashion, then the edge represents the ability for team members to collaborate with the node to either resolve issues or develop future improvements on the project. While you don't forget a project you worked on, it is unlikely that you worked on the specific pieces that others in your team were assigned to.

Re: Cost of Attrition

#148

Post by travisjungroth »

nonameiguess wrote: post #133
travisjungroth wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is only necessary for single-product companies. Otherwise, just do mandatory career broadening assignments like the military does. You have to learn about and work on many parts of many stacks and regularly change teams and product lines. There is no need to fire people to keep them working in one position forever and building fiefdoms. Heck, militaries even have interbranch and even international exchange progr…

That handles the specific problem of people not broadening their skills and I certainly wouldn't say that firing people is the best way to get more perspectives in your company. There's a general question of how to get rid of employees that are entrenched, want to stay, but aren't providing enough value.

Re: Cost of Attrition

#149

Post by KittenInABox »

beaconstudios wrote: post #43
mooreds wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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; ... If the author's premise is correct, there should be a lot of money to be made in retaining talent. Some of that should filter down to more than 3% raises. So if you believe in humans as rational economic actors, there is "$20 bills lying on the street" if you build a tech compa…

In companies, perception is more important than reality - this is why easily measured variables are treated as more important than difficult-to-measure ones - you can justify decisions by pointing to hard data even if that data is barely related to the problem at hand. Imagine trying to justify giving a developer a large raise (a measurable impact) and justifying it with an argument that retention is probably more pr…

I think right now it is vital to double-digit raise your engineers if needed, because hiring is super difficult right now. You not only stand to lose an employee, you stand to lose the profit of having any employee there for months.

Re: Cost of Attrition

#150

Post by focus2020 »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #141
streblo wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not really. In the US, we have many government agencies, like OSHA, and the NLRB, and others, like the SEC, etc., not to mention the AGs and other law-enforcement people. Business owners love to hate on them, but they are a big reason that we don't have poorhouses any more. I have found that there is absolutely no bottom to the depths that people will sink, if they can make money. This seems to be true of folks that…

Enforcing staying at job via law enforcement is the definition of slavery. If people want to quit for higher wages let them. Market will move to equilibrium.
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