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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

#211

Post by GoblinSlayer »

JustLurking2022 wrote: post #185
dbcurtis wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying for equal performance on the measurable aspects of the job is easier to do than putting a value on institutional knowledge. As an old bird that has had time to internalize the tech stack, I can make one comment along the line of “Don’t do that, and here is why...” — getting that kind of contribution noticed and valued is harder. Parent comment is really saying to find a way to put a value on institutional know…

From my experience, I see institutional knowledge as a double edged sword - it can save you from some mistakes but, very often, it's also the thing standing in the way of progress. I don't think I can count how many times I've seen a really poorly designed solution causing real pain, and everyone even knows it's bad, but it will never change until X leaves the org, which they have no intent of doing until they're rol…

Usually in such cases institutional knowledge has a better chance of answering the question what causes the pain and how to fix it and what are tradeoffs.

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#212

Post by ragazzina »

fuzzzerd wrote: post #102
waboremo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm one of those boomerang employees. It was the best thing I ever did. Left on good terms, learned a ton of new stuff at a few other companies, and ultimately came back a much improved employee, despite being a high performing worker to begin with. Didn't realize there was a name/term for it, but it makes a lot of sense.

Where I'm currently working, a coworker left a couple weeks ago. He really wanted to stay, he LOVED the company, but his position wasn't a great fit for him and he found something else.

He told me that when he told HR "I hope I will come back some day", HR replied: "until I'm head of HR, no one that leaves will ever be considered again".

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#213

Post by INTPenis »

Yes they should. They should also prioritize ops over sales, and yet they don't.

After 11 years in Enterprise IT it's been my impression that we are very short sighted. We give everything to our sales and they sell everything between heaven and earth without a thought on how we can deliver it. And once the contract is signed, no effort is made to deliver or manage, just move on to the next big contract signing.

So just as they prioritize hiring and ignore retention, they also prioritize contract signing and ignore lifecycle management. It's the same short sighted thinking in another area.

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#214

Post by cebert »

JustLurking2022 wrote: post #185
dbcurtis wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying for equal performance on the measurable aspects of the job is easier to do than putting a value on institutional knowledge. As an old bird that has had time to internalize the tech stack, I can make one comment along the line of “Don’t do that, and here is why...” — getting that kind of contribution noticed and valued is harder. Parent comment is really saying to find a way to put a value on institutional know…

From my experience, I see institutional knowledge as a double edged sword - it can save you from some mistakes but, very often, it's also the thing standing in the way of progress. I don't think I can count how many times I've seen a really poorly designed solution causing real pain, and everyone even knows it's bad, but it will never change until X leaves the org, which they have no intent of doing until they're rol…

> From my experience, I see institutional knowledge as a double edged sword - it can save you from some mistakes but, very often, it's also the thing standing in the way of progress.

I can’t agree with you more. Having a combination of individuals with historical knowledge and new individuals with fresh perspectives can be so refreshing. We recently hired an external architect on the team. She’s great technically. However, I would argue her greatest contribution is fresh perspectives. She suggests ideas others (include me) hadn’t considered due to past negative experiences with team X or Y. By not being as aware of past histories or projects gone bad, she can encourage us to rethink things.

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#215

Post by chiefalchemist »

Whom you retain (or might want to retain) is a function of whom you hire. Having just finished a job search it's amazing how bad many outfits are at hiring, most it seems can't read CVs. And I'm the one who needs to have attention to details?

I have a phrase that sums up the process:

How you hire is whom you hire.

Put another way, if recruiting / hiring is off target, that's only going to magnify going forward.

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#216

Post by GoblinSlayer »

larrymyers wrote: post #122
errantmind wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Rewarding seniority works if you have a fair system of performance management in place. Assuming your tenure at a single company is directly correlated with your ability to perform well, and grow and improve your value to the company over time, it would make sense. That being said, when somebody finds that fair system sustainably in place at a company, let me know. Fair and accurate measurement of an employees perfor…

False dichotomy. It doesn't need to be free of bias, just bias shouldn't be completely insane like "you must change job every month". In fact there should be bias for merit, but instead employees are uniformly undervalued.

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#217

Post by eschneider »

neilv wrote: post #20
mindvirus wrote: post #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.

I prefer to think of it like flowers from an SO, just because. "Hey, my valued employee, just thinking about you, and I wanted to send you these additional United States Dollars."

SO's (usually) like flowers. I advocate this approach, mostly because it works. Nothing says 'valued employee' more than periodic raises. And yeah, in the absence of money, additional stock grants have the same flavor.

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#218

Post by a_c »

There is a saying that in any organization, there are people doing the job, and there are people keeping the organization (admin). In the long run, the organization is left with the admin. [0]

In terms of compensation and hiring, commonly the package is defined by HR while the performance is reviewed by your team manager. There are even places where the criteria of evaluation is defined by HR.

That's also why I'm very optimistic about start-ups. Company can never dominate a market forever. And the end of the day, all companies implode

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33298158

Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests

#219

Post by jokethrowaway »

FredPret wrote: post #137
Beldin wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> millions of tiny startups. Sounds a bit like what Google does internally for promotions. Except their execution is failing so badly it is starting to affect the company. And also that I have no faith in this concept any more.

I meant actual companies so that engineers can get the long term benefits of their performance

That's a great idea and honestly I'd love that.

But at the same time you could have the same with bonuses based on how much money your team made. The more granular, the better (albeit there are limits).

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