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

41–50 of 72 posts

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#41

Post by streptomycin »

simonh wrote: post #34
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.

If talented youngsters expected their company to be around in 40 years and still want them, after 15% raises every year (or even 10%), more would stay at one company. But there's no long-term loyalty on either end, for better or worse. So you have to get money while you can.

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#42

Post by mgkimsal »

Peroni wrote: post #19

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.

"done right".

Except most people will say "skip them" or "don't say anything bad". I've had this advice from a few people, and there was an HN thread some time back suggesting the same things. "Don't burn any bridges by badmouthing anyone in an exit interview", etc. Certainly there's a difference between "being honest" and "badmouthing", but when that info reaches certain ears, the distinction may be lost. For people that care about having good references, a whitewashed exit interview seems the easiest thing to do (I don't think it's the correct thing to do, but it seems that's a common enough thought process).

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#43

Post by JoeAltmaier »

simonh wrote: post #34
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.

Why not? Its not the same engineer expecting cost-of-living increases. Its an ever-more-experienced engineer growing from newbie to architect. Quadrupling every 10 years seems about right to me.

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#44

Post by JoeAltmaier »

ollysb wrote: post #25
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.

Who exactly does closing questions benefit? I can't remember the last time I went to stackoverflow to search for an answer. I always find the pages through a google search. Google does a great job of finding me relevant material on stackoverflow and the voting mechanisms on stackoverflow do a great job of letting me know which content the community value. In the early days of stackoverflow I seem to recall they had a…

Yeah, I cannot recollect getting a useful answer there. Google rarely links to it; the links are often questions without answers (I searched for my question terms after all, not knowing the answer).

And why delete anything? Surely they are not running out of space. I'll volunteer $100 so they can buy another Terabyte to store those deleted discussions.

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#45

Post by potatolicious »

praptak wrote: post #29
vetler wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone once told me that the easiest way to get a higher salary will always be to get a new job, and I believe this to be true - either your salary at your new job will be higher, or your current employer will increase your salary to keep you since you have another job offer.

> ... or your current employer will increase your salary to keep you since you have another job offer. Accepting a counter offer is almost never a good decision. The old employer is probably only buying time before replacing you. Even if this is not the case: You stay at a company that only pays you fair money when you threaten to leave. You look disloyal to the old company (see point 1, even if not now you might get…

> "The old employer is probably only buying time before replacing you."

A bajillion times this. I've even had HR people admit it off the record that this effect exists and is extremely deliberate - i.e., they get direct instructions from management to "manage out" an employee.

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#46

Post by potatolicious »

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…

> "Just ask, I suppose, but a manager is going to try to downplay it"

And it will be fairly evident when he does. A place with low turnover would be one where the manager can confidently look you in the eye and declare he has low turnover.

It is rare for hiring managers to be effective bald-faced liars (HR on the other hand suffers from no such weakness), so they will try to dodge the question instead. Dodgy hiring managers is pretty much the signal for "run for the hills".

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#47

Post by bunderbunder »

megablast wrote: post #40
therealarmen wrote: post #5

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

Maybe http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/ is a better place for this sort of question.

It's a sad day for nerds everywhere when we have to start thinking of Reddit as a better place than Stack Exchange to ask this sort of question.

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#48

Post by bunderbunder »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #44
ollysb wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who exactly does closing questions benefit? I can't remember the last time I went to stackoverflow to search for an answer. I always find the pages through a google search. Google does a great job of finding me relevant material on stackoverflow and the voting mechanisms on stackoverflow do a great job of letting me know which content the community value. In the early days of stackoverflow I seem to recall they had a…

Yeah, I cannot recollect getting a useful answer there. Google rarely links to it; the links are often questions without answers (I searched for my question terms after all, not knowing the answer). And why delete anything? Surely they are not running out of space. I'll volunteer $100 so they can buy another Terabyte to store those deleted discussions.

My pet theory is that it's something I've come to think of as the "WELL effect". Named for the famous online community which I was a member of for approximately one month in the early 2000s, and which is still talking itself up for how vibrant it was 20 years ago but hasn't been vibrant for any time during this century.

It works like this: The oldsters perceive that they enjoy a certain elite status by virtue of how long they've been there, and begin to think of themselves as the "keepers" of the community. They also develop a measure of contempt for newbies, perhaps because they (being new) want to talk about things that the oldsters have had a chance to discuss many times before. And perhaps because they (being new) represent a slightly different culture, which triggers stereotypical "kids these days" instincts.

So they begin taking measures to protect the site from junior members. A positive spin is put on it by calling it "upholding community standards", but it would be just as fair to negatively characterize it as "telling those damn kids to get off my lawn." I suppose which one you think it is depends on whether you're the one yelling or being yelled at.

Either way, the terminal point is that everyone has gone to have fun somewhere else, essentially because that's precisely what they had been told to do, and all that's left is a hoary old collection of ossified cucumbers fondly remembering how much fun they used to have and wondering where the magic went.

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#49

Post by antidoh »

bluedanieru wrote: post #33
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.

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. T…

"There are many (I've lost count) StackExchange sites"

To me there's only one, and the answer pages sometimes look different when I get sent in from DDG or Google.

My bad, I guess.

Re: Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs

#50

Post by pc86 »

billswift wrote: post #36
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…

"The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy."
Post reply on HN