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Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

programmers.stackexchange.com

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Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#31

Post by intellection »

antidoh wrote: post #6
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…

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…

/ users clearly want to have discussions, and not just factual Q&A.

Equally, Quora users clearly crave questions and discussion, but Quora moderation/admins police grammar, content and direction so close people can't type free.

It feels hard to think. It feels hard to question.

Remember kids fight to feel free and talk free, in grown-up good-rooms of adults saying we need talk more appropriate and legal?

Little mind is given to little minds, and big minds in hiding.

What do you do, if someone else networked high tells you to change your mind, online?

Feels really hard typing free thoughts, stacked with questionable questions questioning questions.

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#32

Post by mtoddh »

antidoh wrote: post #18
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…

But how do you find out if turnover is high?

It would be interesting if you could measure this with LinkedIn - as in looking at the profiles of all developers who worked for company X and determine how long they stayed on average. Of course it would rely on people actively updating their profiles. But if you could it would be interesting to see how much high turnover at a company correlated with bad reviews for said company on sites like Glassdoor.

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#33

Post by bluedanieru »

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.

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/faq

It's not 'anything goes', however.

This is a close call, but I agree with the closing in that the post conflicted with the rules. It's possible it could have been worded better to avoid being closed, but even general employee retention strategies don't belong on that site.

The problem isn't that they don't allow discussion, it's that the range of topics allowed is so narrow. There are many (I've lost count) StackExchange sites, and each one has a very narrow, well-defined (but, importantly, poorly-communicated) breadth of allowable topics. And, if you get the wrong bucket it's closed and that's that.

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#34

Post by simonh »

rorrr wrote: post #26

I was offered raises at only one company, ever. At every other company I had to ask for them after positive annual reviews, and I mostly got what I asked for. If you look at the amount of raise, it's usually ridiculously small, maybe 5-10%. When I switch jobs, my salary has grown 30-40% pretty much every time. And that I never understood. When I leave, you have to spend money hiring a good developer, you have to spen…

Ok, but with 'only' a 15% raise every year, your salary would quadruple every 10 years. That's not really a normal career trajectory.

Pay growth as a percentage tends to be higher for talented youngsters, but then again a lot of the value in an older engineer comes from experience, which often means experience in different work environments.

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#35

Post by simonh »

notimetorelax wrote: post #16
bragh wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But to them they're not abusing it, they're just interpreting the rules very literally and strictly.

The problem is that any gameified system, like a karma or reputation system, attracts people good at interpreting rules strictly and finding efficient ways to exploit them. So you're actually selecting for literalist rules lawyers.

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#36

Post by billswift »

therealarmen wrote: post #5

An interesting question on a relevant topic? Let's close it. Thanks, SO mods.

>Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.

- - Jerry E Pournelle

Any large enough organization tends towards bureaucracy, and the tendency is even stronger on the Web, where direct person-to-person interaction is more limited. And the evolution to "iron law" conditions tends to be faster there also, once the bureaucratic (rule-following and rule-enforcing) mindset is formed. Wikipedia, Google, and Amazon are other examples, they have all been getting worse to use over the last few years. Web-based organizations probably need to remain smaller than similar real-world organizations, if they want to avoid the effect.

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#37

Post by jt2190 »

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.

Yes. In addition, I wonder who in that organization benefits from the high-turnover of engineers. For example, in the question, the manager's boss had a theory that three new engineers were worth one seasoned one. Perhaps all of the seasoned engineers leaving is supporting his point, in a bizarre way.

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#38

Post by S4M »

simonh wrote: post #35
notimetorelax wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But to them they're not abusing it, they're just interpreting the rules very literally and strictly. The problem is that any gameified system, like a karma or reputation system, attracts people good at interpreting rules strictly and finding efficient ways to exploit them. So you're actually selecting for literalist rules lawyers.

Apart from giving them a feel of a power, what does the fact of closing a thread (whether legitimately or not) give to the mods? Do they have some karma incentive to do so?

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#39

Post by jwarzech »

eckyptang wrote: post #22
therealarmen wrote: post #5

An interesting question on a relevant topic? Let's close it. Thanks, SO mods.

Yes it's annoying. Perhaps there needs to be another alternative on the web which actually values users. People with useful information don't bother with it any more. Its also incredibly fragmented - its impossible to pick the right instance for a question without getting in trouble. its a proper power struggle.

I think thats why Quora is doing as well as it is. At first I didn't get how they were differentiating but I find myself going there more and more for hight quality answers from people who know what they are talking about.
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