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Cost of Attrition

benjiweber.co.uk

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Re: Cost of Attrition

#151

Post by gigaflop »

rs999gti wrote: post #143
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? :)

I worked at the US hq of a .DE manufacturing company, and can attest to this.

My team was about 3 people (Americans, with our manager having worked in the German HQ for a few decades), who worked mostly on separate projects, and most of the headaches I had were due to change being opposed. I would try to do something, or request some sort of access to perform some task, and would get blocked by red tape that wasn't made visible until I was being told that I wasn't following a process that wasn't explained to me in advance.

There was one person whose sole task was managing the company-wide JIRA instance. If you wanted your team's board structured slightly differently, good luck. When I requested permissions to create a Component, the denial went to my manager instead of me, and I got a stern talking-to about 'the way things need to be done'.

On top of that, for a team of 3 people working on projects that are exploratory in nature, I'd expect that the local SQL server install (We didn't have the license key anymore, btw) would allow for us to have admin or developer rights. It originally did, until someone decided to change it, and I was the only member of the team who lacked that access.

I tolerated it for about 2.5 years (First job), but Covid gave me a great reason to quit!

Re: Cost of Attrition

#152

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

focus2020 wrote: post #150
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seriously. I have no idea what you are talking about.

Re: Cost of Attrition

#153

Post by Atlas26 »

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…

> 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.

Should be noted, this is applicable to the same position specifically, not any one company. Some of the best engineers in the world have only ever worked at places like Google, Microsoft, an academic institution, etc, but they make sure they're constantly learning, working with new teams, switching to new positions once they've mastered their previous one, etc. In many cases these folks actually have a big leg up vs new external hires due to product and institutional knowledge, while also constantly learning new technologies.

Re: Cost of Attrition

#154

Post by soheil »

grayfaced wrote: post #108
jeffrallen wrote: post #29

Nice. But remember: the cost of non attrition can be keeping idiot coworkers around. Who actively destroy work with their anti-work, and waste time with idiotic discussions.

Attrition usually loses the top-performers because they can get much better offers. The poor-performers don't have any good options to leave. Proactive management would reward the top performers and reprimand/fire the poor performers. That's the opposite of attrition.

Wait so according to your model of the world top-performers become idiots in their next job? Where are all these top-performers who do get compensated enough and what companies do they work for that have no attrition?

Re: Cost of Attrition

#155

Post by soheil »

The cost of attrition is very real, probably higher than the cost of keeping low-performers on the team for large companies. For small startups the cost of attrition is probably negligible. Maybe the solution for big companies is to break them up into small independent startup like entities.

Re: Cost of Attrition

#156

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #64
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s an interesting logical leap.

I am confused what you mean by “the right thing” and why the government needs to be involved.

Here's an example. Maybe it only applies in the US, but Japan has something even more stringent.

If you live/work in a building with several floors, and a stairwell, go down the stairwell, until you get to the ground floor.

If the building has a basement, there will be a door to the basement, and it will be facing the stairwell, and will open inward (towards the stairwell). The ground floor (at least), will have a "panic bar," to unlatch it (this is a horizontal bar, at waist level, on average-sized people, that can be pushed, to unlatch the door, and push it open). The door will also open outward (away from the stairwell).

This is because of government regulations. Developers would not choose to do this, if given a choice. It's not cheap. I believe that some older buildings may be "grandfathered in," where they might not have to do it.

The same goes for lighted exit signs.

If they didn't have this, a lot of people would die in fires and emergencies. Before these types of regulations, there were constant stories about dozens of people dying in workplace fires. It still happens, in some places.

Re: Cost of Attrition

#158

Post by myownpetard »

hwbehrens wrote: post #105
tombert wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My perspective is (and always has been) that I am working for a for-profit entity. There's nothing wrong with this, most people do it, and that's pretty much how society is built. But I feel that the for-profit aspect applies both ways: if the company is going to work to maximize profits, why shouldn't I do the same? If another company is offering me a substantially higher salary than I would get with a normal raise,…

The parent's loyalty isn't to the company, it's to their direct reports (I assume). After you've been shielding people from the shitstorm for long enough, it can feel very difficult to fold up your umbrella and leave. Even if it's strictly better for you , it might violate your utilitarian instincts or personal ethics. Of course, companies know this and use it as one of the many tools to suppress wages.

But it sounds like they didn't do great by their reports:

"I was a manager for over 25 years. I feel that I was a good one. My employees seemed to agree. I kept many of them on board for decades, and these were folks that could walk out the door, and get huge pay raises (my company paid "competitive" salaries)."

It sounds like they did great by the company shareholders who captured the value from below market salaries.

Kindness, respect and trust should be table stakes but it's not going to pay for my kid's college fund, keep up with 7% inflation, or help me build my rainy day fund for a pandemic driven recession.

Re: Cost of Attrition

#159

Post by lotsofpulp »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #156
lotsofpulp wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am confused what you mean by “the right thing” and why the government needs to be involved.

Here's an example. Maybe it only applies in the US, but Japan has something even more stringent. If you live/work in a building with several floors, and a stairwell, go down the stairwell, until you get to the ground floor. If the building has a basement, there will be a door to the basement, and it will be facing the stairwell, and will open inward (towards the stairwell). The ground floor (at least), will have a "p…

I meant in regards to how long an employee works for an employer. That seems like it needs no government intervention.

Re: Cost of Attrition

#160

Post by tangjurine »

Jensson wrote: post #2

Doesn'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…

Think about having a robust network like being able to fly.

You don't develop the ability to fly by placing yourself in positions that require flying...

Most companies that have lots of attrition have bad processes in place and are suffering due to attrition, although I think there are some companies that are developed enough to benefit from attrition like you described.

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