Employee Retention
blog.samaltman.com
Employee Retention
1–10 of 95 posts
Re: Employee Retention
#2One way to lose great employees is to run out of money to pay them. I've done this.. don't do this. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to get them back now that we are better capitalized but it is much more difficult than recruiting them in the first place, and maybe not realistic until a later stage.
Re: Employee Retention
#3This reminds me of the main points of Built to Last, mainly that you need well-defined, consistent cultural values that go beyond profit, growth, or perks. That will create buy-in from all stakeholders, from employees to shareholders to customers. There will always be a company with faster growth or cooler perks or higher pay, but no matter how big your company is, you can have the best sense of mission and strongest values.
Re: Employee Retention
#4if something causes the bay area monopoly on startups to weaken in the near term, I expect it to be around retention challenges or costs.
We have a fundamental problem in Silicon Valley: there are not enough places for people to live in. This manifests itself in many ways (higher rent, higher salaries, higher turnover, etc) and is probably going to be a hard limit on how big the local tech industry can get. It's a certainty that other significant startup hubs will arise unless something changes.
Re: Employee Retention
#5if something causes the bay area monopoly on startups to weaken in the near term, I expect it to be around retention challenges or costs. We have a fundamental problem in Silicon Valley: there are not enough places for people to live in. This manifests itself in many ways (higher rent, higher salaries, higher turnover, etc) and is probably going to be a hard limit on how big the local tech industry can get. It's a ce…
We have a fundamental problem in Silicon Valley: there are not enough places for people to live in.
Transportation is your problem, along with NIMBY regulations (fought-for by limousine liberal hypocrites) that prevent proper growth. Silicon Valley is not Manhattan, with its daytime population density of 170k per square mile. It should not be expensive and congested. It's just badly planned, with a lot of regulatory corruption keeping housing scarcer than it should be.
Re: Employee Retention
#6if something causes the bay area monopoly on startups to weaken in the near term, I expect it to be around retention challenges or costs. We have a fundamental problem in Silicon Valley: there are not enough places for people to live in. This manifests itself in many ways (higher rent, higher salaries, higher turnover, etc) and is probably going to be a hard limit on how big the local tech industry can get. It's a ce…
I agree. It wouldn't hurt for SV to allow some focus on fixing local issues. Housing being the most important problem in my opinion.
Re: Employee Retention
#7This guy might be a VC that I can actually like.
His point on terrible equity allocations is spot-on. If you're giving a dime and a half (0.15%) to your first employee engineer, at a valuation of $5 million, you're not going to get someone good.
If you account for equity at-valuation, bad people become cheaper if you're a startup but good people become more expensive (i.e. you'd have to offer $75k per year of equity to make up for a $40k salary drop).
Re: Employee Retention
#8if something causes the bay area monopoly on startups to weaken in the near term, I expect it to be around retention challenges or costs. We have a fundamental problem in Silicon Valley: there are not enough places for people to live in. This manifests itself in many ways (higher rent, higher salaries, higher turnover, etc) and is probably going to be a hard limit on how big the local tech industry can get. It's a ce…
I agree. It wouldn't hurt for SV to allow some focus on fixing local issues. Housing being the most important problem in my opinion.
Why oh why aren't more companies returning to the South Bay, specifically San Jose? Downtown SJ is tiny compared to San Francisco's. And there are plenty of tracts for office parks in the suburbs. Sure, all of the hip young hackers want someplace cool to go to, but it's only an hour away to the north.
Re: Employee Retention
#9Do people really pay $250k to engineers right out of college, or is that an exaggeration?
Re: Employee Retention
#10The second good retention strategy is rocketship growth.
Wow, the answer was right there under our noses all along! You guys out there losing employees, it's because you're not successful! Fix that!