Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

programmers.stackexchange.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 72 posts

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#11

Post by w1ntermute »

Dystopian wrote: post #8

Back to the topic - (not SO) - I'd agree with some of the other commenters on SO that high-turnover isn't the engineers' fault; it's obviously a management issue. Most engineers that I've worked with would trade a good work environment & office culture for more pay / "room to advance" any day.

Yep, if it's happening many times, it can't be blamed on the individuals. There's definitely a tendency among managers to do this though instead of looking at oneself in the mirror and assessing any shortcomings.

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#12

Post by jlarocco »

davidlumley wrote: post #7
antidoh wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really the most bizarre thing. They built a site with affordances for discussion (although the mods might call them attractive nuisances). It looks every bit like a discussion site. The users clearly want to have discussions, and not just factual Q&A. And yet when you use these affordances to engage with like minded people, you get shut down. It's become a game with myself when I go to an SO page to guess whethe…

The most confusing thing for me, is that this _isn't_ Stack Overflow - it's Programmers. While SO is meant to have objectively correct answers, and that's why they are so quick to close threads, Programmers is meant to be more open and allow more general questions.

Honestly, I have no idea what programmers.stackexchange.com is for.

When I found out about it, I thought it could be interesting, so I made a habit of visiting a few times a week to see what it was all about.

I stopped visiting after a few weeks because nobody knows what the point is. 90% of the interesting questions are closed as off-topic, closed because they "belong on Stack Overflow", or are closed because the answers are debatable.

It's kind of silly, really.

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#13

Post by wpietri »

davidlumley wrote: post #7
antidoh wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really the most bizarre thing. They built a site with affordances for discussion (although the mods might call them attractive nuisances). It looks every bit like a discussion site. The users clearly want to have discussions, and not just factual Q&A. And yet when you use these affordances to engage with like minded people, you get shut down. It's become a game with myself when I go to an SO page to guess whethe…

The most confusing thing for me, is that this _isn't_ Stack Overflow - it's Programmers. While SO is meant to have objectively correct answers, and that's why they are so quick to close threads, Programmers is meant to be more open and allow more general questions.

Yep. There was a question on Programmers that was something like "What is the good/bad decision you made in your mid-20s about your career". There were a ton of great answers, and I was so proud of my heavily upvoted answer that I linked it on my website. Only to get a note a couple of months later that the link was 404ing.

I looked, and guess what: Not only did the mods close it out of some insane sense of tidiness, and not only did they hide it from normal viewing; they apparently deleted it entirely. All our writing, all the good comments, all the voting: gone forever, without warning or apparent recourse.

So fuck them and their petty, arrogant bureaucracy. I will never write an answer for them again.

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#14

Post by grueful »

This is tangent to the idea of a "truck number" - the number of people who can be hit by a truck before your org is endangered.

Orgs with a low truck number really shouldn't be offering significantly below-market compensation to critical staff in high-demand professions.

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#15

Post by bragh »

wpietri wrote: post #13
davidlumley wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most confusing thing for me, is that this _isn't_ Stack Overflow - it's Programmers. While SO is meant to have objectively correct answers, and that's why they are so quick to close threads, Programmers is meant to be more open and allow more general questions.

Yep. There was a question on Programmers that was something like "What is the good/bad decision you made in your mid-20s about your career". There were a ton of great answers, and I was so proud of my heavily upvoted answer that I linked it on my website. Only to get a note a couple of months later that the link was 404ing. I looked, and guess what: Not only did the mods close it out of some insane sense of tidiness,…

There was a discussion on stackexchange about Java books or such that was always linked to in case of duplicate questions. Then it got entirely deleted and so all the links to it from dupes got worthless too - and yet the dupes remained and still point to the 404 page.

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#16

Post by notimetorelax »

bragh wrote: post #15
wpietri wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. There was a question on Programmers that was something like "What is the good/bad decision you made in your mid-20s about your career". There were a ton of great answers, and I was so proud of my heavily upvoted answer that I linked it on my website. Only to get a note a couple of months later that the link was 404ing. I looked, and guess what: Not only did the mods close it out of some insane sense of tidiness,…

There was a discussion on stackexchange about Java books or such that was always linked to in case of duplicate questions. Then it got entirely deleted and so all the links to it from dupes got worthless too - and yet the dupes remained and still point to the 404 page.

Mods are getting too trigger happy? In fairness if you give random "trusted" strangers power to delete anything they deem inappropriate they will start abusing their power, that's in human nature.

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#17

Post by antidoh »

BadassFractal wrote: post #9

I've had more than one question closed for being too close to a discussion on Programmers. It's very tiresome. What's a good alternative for asking meaningful questions and having a quality discussion with people who have words of wisdom to spare? Quora? Reddit? HN?

I like HN best, some of the subreddits second.

I just can't come to like Quora, which is odd because it seems exactly the sort of thing I'd like. The interface is either confusing to me, or I think of it in a way that conflicts with its reality.

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#18

Post by antidoh »

Andaith wrote: post #2

I recently read on HN about how Stack Overflow is being taken over by the editors and that questions are being closed all too often. Is this an example of that? "this might cause debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion." is a bad set of reasons to close a question. Surely that's the desired result? If people start behaving like children, close the question, but until then, let the discussion grow... I thin…

> I'd be leery of joining a company with such high turnover.

But how do you find out if turnover is high? Just ask, I suppose, but a manager is going to try to downplay it, since he's selling the company to you. Hit or miss whether workers will be truthful about it, between wanting to be team players and not telling tales out of school.

I'm leaving a place with high turnover now. I had no idea. Although I could have entertained some suspicion when my agency told me how much they love this place; churn is lucrative for some people.

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#19

Post by Peroni »

Actual response to the original question:

Do some research. It's surprisingly easy to find out what the rate of attrition is with your competitors. If the competition have a noticeably lower rate of attrition then it's time for some introspection.

Exit interviews are drastically underrated. Done right they can reveal a huge amount about why your attrition is higher than most.

Post reply on HN