They needed a study over this?
Duh. Most people learn the job on the job.
Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
161–170 of 247 posts
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#162Too 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 re…
"Employers don't know ahead of time which employees will leave and which will stay."
That is their fault. I used to work in a well managed company. It was never a surprise when someone left as career progression was always an open topic between colleagues and supervisors.
You don't know when people are going to disappear if they are crouching and ducking around every corner to avoid management.
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#163When 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…
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.
Also known as sociopaths ensuring there are losers to do the work
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#164When 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…
“ That said, companies are often wrong to hire externally as they misattribute their problems to their employees instead of to their own leadership. It is easier for them to blame others instead of themselves.”
After talking to a lot of managers it really seems that a lot of them are deeply skeptical of the people they themselves have hired.
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seniority has a very real value in tech, though. It probably doesn't have much value if you're say, a doctor, working with different systems each time that look similar. But in programming, you deal with systems, you know the undocumented gotchas of the system, and understand the flow of it better than someone who's completely new to it. You know when Chesterton's fence applies and when it doesn't. I often tell start…
I agree with your general point, but medical doctors are the very last example I would have ever picked.
I think the point is that doctors are mostly interchangeable.
A reasonably experienced surgeon in one hospital in NYC is likely to be almost exactly as great on day one if he moves to the hospital across town.
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Some companies have a concept of “terminal levels”, which means if you get to this level and keep doing a good job and have no desire to keep chasing promos, that’s totally fine and they’ll keep increasing your comp according to your value, which does increase as you stay and accumulate institutional knowledge, experience, and reputation (and owed favors, political connections, friends in senior places, accomplishmen…
Until the next reorg.
If this is your path I'd strongly recommend tenure in a core revenue generating project. Avoid projects in cost centers, especially those that serve small / non-critical business needs or have potential off-the-shelf replacements that could be purchased and integrated into the business. Don't assume that leadership will be rational about replacing an internal system with an off the shelf one, if someone comes along with a mandate for change all bets are off.
Don't assume you can rely on political capital when your area of work is being turned down, odds are there are a dozen other people that are trying the same thing. Leadership would likely want to retain lower cost junior employees with the rationale that they have potential in addition to being cheaper.
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#167When 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…
and you'll also have an easier time hiring new people when you need to!
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#168Margaret 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.
> Thatcherism has little basis in actual sociology in my opinion.
The entire basis of Thatcherism is dodging tax on riches made by selling the entire society.
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#169When 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…
Well said. But my counter argument is: why does Netflix do a revert course and introduce titles back to their job lines? At the beginning, Netflix used to just have senior SDE title. Now, they are starting to introduce more SDE titles into the company.
If focusing on retention has been working great for Netflix, what made them change their mind?
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#170Agreed - 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…
That's the problem though, there are zero incentives in place for managers or recruiters to retain talent. No one gets a bonus when employees stick around, so no one optimizes for it.
I recently interviewed with Stripe for a leadership position and was asked about some of my most impactful contributions with my previous employer. I described several anti patterns that I identified with the development process that would lead to burnout and turnover, then I described the changes I put in place to prevent this outcome. Things like sprint retrospectives, tracking technical debt, prioritizing automation, clearly defining tasks before starting development, validating progress with the various stakeholders, upskilling and managing the career development of engineers, and a host of other QoL improvements to smooth out the development process for everyone involved.
It was immediately obvious that this was a dud in the eyes of my interviewers. Eyes glazed over almost instantly once I started talking about preventing burnout. And I can read a room, so I could have easily switched topics until I found something that received a positive response, but I was so shocked at the response that I doubled down. Needless to say that I did not make it to the next round. But in my view that's a true negative for both of us, because I can't work at a place that doesn't value their employees enough to design a healthy workplace for them to operate in.