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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

#151

Post by giantg2 »

maxerickson wrote: post #127
giantg2 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"most companies have fallen into the trap where if someone has a title of X they can only make up to Y," Eh, most of the people in the established pay range tend to be at the low or mid range, so the company likely has the ability to pay more. Once they're at the top of rhe range, that shouldn't be much of a problem either... but that assumes the range was created using good industry data. If so, then there shouldn't…

A lot of problems seem like they go away if you assume that you've solved them correctly.

Sounds universally applicable.

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#152

Post by xkcd-sucks »

errantmind wrote: post #34
woeirua wrote: 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…

While I broadly agree with your point, rewarding seniority is at odds with rewarding people based on how good they are at their jobs, from the perspective of incentives. The two are not always correlated and this is often why some companies hire externally instead of promoting from within. That said, companies are often wrong to hire externally as they misattribute their problems to their employees instead of to thei…

>as they misattribute their problems to their employees instead of to their own leadership

In my own very limited experience of mid-size companies, it seems like senior leadership is first on the chopping block when dissatisfaction becomes real. However, the expected value of those positions is much larger due to compensation (i.e. $2e6 x 1 year = $2e5 x 10 years, better assuming execs can find jobs within a few years)

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#153

Post by mytailorisrich »

kazen44 wrote: post #43
mytailorisrich wrote: post #30

Margaret 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).

Thatcherism has little basis in actual sociology in my opinion. Societies do exist, and humans are not purely selfish rational beings either.

Humans are not rational but you can bet that they will act in their perceived self-interest more often than not. They will always do in the workplace, which is the point here.

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#154

Post by bigmattystyles »

fluidcruft wrote: post #150
bigmattystyles wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean isn’t that why vesting cliffs exist? I’d extend them to be for far more money but over far longer if I was the employer, but the job market won’t bare it.

There's also the military approach where there's a clock and you either get promoted or you are out. And then it repeats. Languishing isn't really allowed as an option. If a job/task only requires entry level skills, why are senior employees doing them?

Isn't that what Netflix does - or at least doesn't really permit for having an off-year?

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#155

Post by jbmsf »

bentlegen wrote: post #124
andrewflnr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost like you need to identify which employees are key contributors and pay them appropriately. Imagine that.

In my experience this is a challenge because everyone believes they are a key contributor.

Not just that, but few people have both the depth to recognize competency and the breadth to know which competent people are key.

In practice, most places I've been have a few people who are "obviously" key and then a lot of ambiguity.

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#157

Post by dilyevsky »

localhost wrote: post #148
dilyevsky wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s WAI - lots of managers would rather call all the shots.

I don't know what WAI means, but note that I said discovered above. There's a separate conversation to get that work funded and that's where the managers come into the picture. Managers don't discover the work - they decide whether to fund the work.

Works as Intended.

> Managers don't discover the work

I disagree. Have you never seen a manager hired from another place already come in with a bucket list they want to do bc “that’s how we done it at X”? That’s a classic. There are less nefarious examples of this ofc but ime managers absolutely do and even want to discover the work. Now whether they’re the right people to do it is entirely different question =)

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#158

Post by eftychis »

I think an article trending earlier yesterday is a big point to strengthen this.

Forgetting the Asbestos – how we lose knowledge and technologies [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33320294]

Especially in startups losing knowledge is a huge problem -- I claim -- and a fundamental management issue as productivity models and other resource management models (theories) do not account for memory.

Who had someone left or themselves left only for X system to start dying in production? Or for a lot of info to have been lost because it existed on slack or on the conversation participants heads?

Startups can simply not afford to lose some/most people. Best case that knowledge is at the hands of competition.

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#159

Post by gsibble »

pixl97 wrote: post #81
gsibble wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all of the companies I worked at hired senior positions from outside the company instead of promoting from within. The other issue I ran into was being so good at the position I was in that I was "unpromotable". Got told that a lot as an IC. Was then told even though I was fully qualified for the promotion, I would not get it nor the accompanying salary.

That's when you know it's time to leave.

And I did.

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#160

Post by mattgreenrocks »

paxys wrote: post #68
woeirua wrote: 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…

The worst part is that after a point in your career there's no path to promotion just for doing your job really well. You are expected to always take on new roles and responsibilities, some of which may not be suited for your personality or interests, and the net result often is that you get promoted and make more money but your overall useful output decreases. I know so many amazing engineers who had to essentially…

It's dysfunctional on the part of the org.

But it's also a Faustian bargain that many engineers knowingly enter into. They are trading their professional coding passion in for more money and status. For some, this isn't much of a loss. For others, it is. It really depends.

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