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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

#52
The confusing thing happening over the last 1-2 years (and in previous cycles) is that many current employees are also down significantly on their stock grants in public big tech. Employers seem to see this as ok, and that’s the risk they take when taking stock, yet they are willing to go and pay a new hire with an updated price that means they make far more than you. It incentivizes leaving and wouldn’t cost the employer anything to just re-up your pay to the original goal since they’ll have to pay it anyway to a new person and lose the ramp up time

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#53
post #17

When people say they want career progression, and opportunities, what they mostly mean is they want more money. Unfortunately, most companies have fallen into the trap where if someone has a title of X they can only make up to Y, regardless of how good they are at their job or how long they've done it. When that happens then the name of the game is getting a promotion in order to keep making more money. That creates…

Mostly true but these days we have the case where regardless of capability it is sadly necessary to put a Ln person to do an Ln's job not Ln+k's job (for political reasons). This has the perverse effect of someone at Ln being punished for doing a job above their level if they are not also doing their own job. What this means is you can only get promoted if you are doing the equivalent of two levels of work at a given time but if you were hired from elsewhere you only need to do the target level job.

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#54
post #52

The confusing thing happening over the last 1-2 years (and in previous cycles) is that many current employees are also down significantly on their stock grants in public big tech. Employers seem to see this as ok, and that’s the risk they take when taking stock, yet they are willing to go and pay a new hire with an updated price that means they make far more than you. It incentivizes leaving and wouldn’t cost the emp…

In terms of number of shares or dollar amounts? Because tech has taken a massive slam in the last year in the markets.

Employees should see that like a lot of investors do, which is a discount on blue chips. It changes the calculus a bit if you don't plan on executing on vest or holding after you do for tax reasons, which makes a lot of sense. But if you're considering a role at a big tech right now and plan to last a few years it's not necessarily a hit.

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#55
post #45

I work for a tech company that promotes internally quite well in recent years. But they also only want to hire senior, principal and lead level engineers to develop a mature workforce. Unfortunately, they fail to attract enough talent to replace attrition, which is high due to increasingly paltry employee numbers. And all in all, while the promotion-to-hiring ratio is good, there is too little hiring to keep employee…

> increasingly poultry employee numbers

I think you mean paltry. Although I have seen employees who flap about, squawk a lot and shit all over everything, so perhaps poultry is apt.

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#57

Agreed - new hires always get the current market rate, which always higher than what existing employees are paid. Also on the flip side, if you've been in a role longer than say, 4 years, you should interview at other companies. You're probably getting underpaid. (Even if you've gotten a promotion). You don't have to jump ship, just see what's available.

Yes there are also additional studies on "boomerang workers" that fit this new(er) class of people. Ones who despite even liking their job and eventually coming back, seek employment elsewhere because they aren't getting what they should be or aren't fulfilling the role they see themselves fulfilling properly.

That's how intensely underrated retention is for a lot of companies, and how costly it can be when retention isn't seriously looked into.

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#58
post #42

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 o…

At my last startup, one of our employees approached this well. This is a very summarized version, but he came to me and said: "I'd like to be paid $X. I think I deserve it and I believe I can get that salary on the open market. I don't want to negotiate on this." It was a very significant raise but after a short discussion with my cofounders, we agreed and gave him what he asked for. That he was a top performer made…

Doesn’t tend to work at big tech as they have rigid very slow moving (and ill informed) HR processes that only react after they see a bunch of people leaving.

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#59

Losing institutional knowledge is a b*tch. It costs more to get new people up to speed in terms of time and productivity lost, than to just retain people who already have the institutional knowledge.

Yes. We used to work in silos. Dave was responsible for x, Cathy for y. When Cathy left, we were screwed because nobody knew much about y.

So now that I'm the project manager, after Steve builds the new feature then I alternate assigning the bug fixes between two other people who did not build it. That way, at least two other people become familiar with that part of the application while Steve is still around to answer questions and provide guidance.

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#60
post #46
post #17

When people say they want career progression, and opportunities, what they mostly mean is they want more money. Unfortunately, most companies have fallen into the trap where if someone has a title of X they can only make up to Y, regardless of how good they are at their job or how long they've done it. When that happens then the name of the game is getting a promotion in order to keep making more money. That creates…

> Pay your people well if they're doing a good job Comparing peoples performance objectively in a large organisation is essentially impossible. Only the people working closely with someone really have any idea, and even then they only see part of the picture.

> Only the people working closely with someone really have any idea

And are accused of bias when trying to get raises for their team.

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