Here is the MIT Technology Review report the article is referencing but doesn't bother to actually link to:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/09/15/1059470/customer...
Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
21–30 of 247 posts
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#22When 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?
Mine is heavy. Working hard and barely meet the expectations. Lot of competition and colleagues are good. Passing the interview is one thing, but staying there is also challenging as they get rid of low performers. (at least my experience).
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#23The hazard of retention is creating dependency. Dependency means, not just high bus factor, but opening yourself (the business) up to being vulnerable to another person's superior negotiation position. Then CEOs/boardmembers would have to spread their wealth rather than hoarding it all for themselves. Without a way to force CEO/boardmembers to spread their wealth (unions), I think we can expect companies to do what is in their best interest, maintaining a monopoly on power by ensuring no dependencies.
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bonuses at all, nevermind a few a year, sound great. Time to send out resumes. What's the workload at the typical FAANG?
From what I've heard, depends upon the FAANG. Google apparently has good work/life balance. All of them are all about making it through the interview process, which is a nightmare.
lot of preparation, and a bit of luck.
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#25Too 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.
> 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.
Maybe they should tune the company food to reduce bathroom occupancy. :P
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#26Too 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…
This is a common response to this issue, but I think there is a logical flaw in it.
Employers don't know ahead of time which employees will leave and which will stay. In order to improve their employee retention, employers have to pay _all_ of their employees more, not just the ones that eventually will leave. This changes the math entirely.
For example, suppose it costs 50% extra to replace someone who leaves. In retrospect, sure, giving the sole employee who leaves a 10% raise each year to retain them makes sense. But if you have to give all of your employees a 10% raise per year, just to retain that one person, it doesn't make financial sense anymore.
To be clear I'm not endorsing this system at all! But from a pure financial perspective it makes sense to me and is why, I suspect, it persists.
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#27Pay people well.
Most companies will pay people the absolute bare minimum to get them to work there while barely being angry enough not to quit.
Correct. If your optimization horizon is two weeks to a quarter, this short termism makes sense. But if your horizon is further, pay people well.
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#28Too 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…
Not to mention the social load on integrating a new person to a team. Depending on the depth, breadth and number of interactions with other individuals, this causes others to have to also get up to speed on the new person's strengths, weakness, quirks, etc.
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#29Here is the MIT Technology Review report the article is referencing but doesn't bother to actually link to: https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/09/15/1059470/customer...
Even that is a summary, and if you request the full report you're bounced to a third party Genesys that demands your contact information, while popping up an unsolicited chat bot window. I killed that chat, made some fake info and was sent to a page that was functionally broken... except for the chat bot which had another go at me.
MIT Technology Review should be ashamed of themselves.
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#30Margaret Thatcher (in)famously said that there was no such thing as society. By that she meant that, actually the only thing out there is individuals looking after their own self-interests.
Well, it is the same with companies.
In both case this leads to suboptimal results at 'system level' (a well-known problem in system optimisation).