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Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

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Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#2
Too many times in my career have I seen an employer lose an employee, who has a ton of institutional knowledge and performs adequately or even excellently, only to replace them them with someone that ends up costing much more money, and then takes a lot of time to get up to speed (which also slows the folks who help get them up to speed).

It is like they haven't taken the time to even make a rudimentary calculation on the costs involved in keeping the employee versus replacing them.

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#4
The weird thing is, if you, as an employee start to show feint signs of wanting to leave, e.g. by complaining a lot to colleagues, or having an upset look on one's face, usually it is not acted upon, or even not picked up by any manager. If on the other hand you make it very clear that you are unhappy or that you might want to leave, it is understood as you are going to leave anyway, so they don't bother fixing any of the things that you have a problem with. At least that is what I experienced a few times. Instead they start to act as if you don't belong to the team anymore or give you boring or strictly defined tasks. So no wonder, you leave and they find some other employee, in which co-workers need to invest time and effort during a period of about half a year to get them up to speed. Rinse and repeat.

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#5
When I was at a FAANG, it felt like they had this down to a science. Promotions every 2-3 years. Raises once a year, a few spot bonuses throughout the year, ad hoc equity grants. People still quit of course, but looking back it felt very retention focused and scientific.

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#7
This is definitely the opposite of what most of my employers have done. Gotten denied raises countless times which has forced me to find new employment to advance my career while they are 100% focused on hiring new talent. Lots of turnover which cost the companies a tremendous amount of time constantly bringing new hires up to speed.

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#8

Too many times in my career have I seen an employer lose an employee, who has a ton of institutional knowledge and performs adequately or even excellently, only to replace them them with someone that ends up costing much more money, and then takes a lot of time to get up to speed (which also slows the folks who help get them up to speed). It is like they haven't taken the time to even make a rudimentary calculation o…

But accounting and HR will time your bathroom breaks. I guess the watchers don't like being watched, which is why retention isn't a bother for them.

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#9

When I was at a FAANG, it felt like they had this down to a science. Promotions every 2-3 years. Raises once a year, a few spot bonuses throughout the year, ad hoc equity grants. People still quit of course, but looking back it felt very retention focused and scientific.

Bonuses at all, nevermind a few a year, sound great. Time to send out resumes.

What's the workload at the typical FAANG?

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#10

Too many times in my career have I seen an employer lose an employee, who has a ton of institutional knowledge and performs adequately or even excellently, only to replace them them with someone that ends up costing much more money, and then takes a lot of time to get up to speed (which also slows the folks who help get them up to speed). It is like they haven't taken the time to even make a rudimentary calculation o…

Oh, I've quit 3 companies where I was the CTO/lead engineer where they had to replace me with 5-10 people (backend and frontend devs, QA, devops, plus a manager or two, etc.) costing them enormous amounts of money.

Many times they've hired me as a consultant where I make 5-10x my hourly rate for several months after bringing the new hires up to speed.

Companies place very little emphasis on retention and retaining institutional knowledge. They don't seem to understand that employees who have worked at a company for years developing systems and architecture know where all of the secrets are.

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