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Employee Retention

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Employee Retention

#41

Post by Apocryphon »

mahyarm wrote: post #31
Apocryphon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dating is absolutely horrible for men in the south bay. That 1 hour barrier puts many brakes on even getting a date with all the single women live in SF and the north east bay area. SF is where all the other young people are. The south bay is suburban families.

It's chicken and egg, innit? If there was an economic incentive for people to live in San Jose (say, the tech scene was revitalized from actual startups as opposed to the Adobe/Cisco/eBay/Yahoo!/IBM dinosaurs, and Pinger), then there would be greater demand for SJ to densify, and have attractions, and thus invite more young people to live there. But because young people don't want to live there as it is, companies are not going to move there. Infinite loop.

Re: Employee Retention

#42

Post by VLM »

humanrebar wrote: post #14
johnrob wrote: post #4

if 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…

Exactly. Try keeping your senior engineers when they really need another bedroom for the baby. Many of your young, hip engineers will want more room and a family-friendly lifestyle in ten years. And if you're going to allow extensive work-from-home, how do you keep from diluting the benefits of your Silicon Valley location?

Isn't that about the time to fire them all and replace with cheaper recent grads? A CRUD app doesn't need a decade of experience.

Re: Employee Retention

#43

Post by pg »

normloman wrote: post #15

The author recommends having a mission so employees feel like they're working for a greater good. So is this why every job on Hacker News goes something like "Help us change the world of [industry]," where [industry] can be something as banal as t-shirt printing or pizza delivery? If you don't believe me, here are some examples from the jobs board: Mobile Hacker? Come work with the team that's reinventing farming Sim…

The prospect of changing something is often what attracted the founders to the idea in the first place. The most successful founders are not usually in it just for the money. If they were they'd have taken that $50 million acquisition offer on the way up.

Re: Employee Retention

#44

Post by slashCJ »

gdubs wrote: post #12
michaelochurch wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The risk is turning Silicon Valley into Los Angeles.

Los Angeles is actually a much better place to live now for people in tech than the bay area. All the young people want to live in overpriced SF and the ones with families want to live in the south bay.

In LA the thriving tech community is all in west Los Angeles, where Venice is the hip San Francisco (but waaay cheaper) and Santa Monica / West LA has great homes (also much cheaper than say Palo Alto [if you exclude beach front]). And these 2 neighborhoods are 10-15 minute commute, very different than the hour commute between most of the south bay and SF.

Re: Employee Retention

#45

Post by jayp »

pg wrote: post #43
normloman wrote: post #15

The author recommends having a mission so employees feel like they're working for a greater good. So is this why every job on Hacker News goes something like "Help us change the world of [industry]," where [industry] can be something as banal as t-shirt printing or pizza delivery? If you don't believe me, here are some examples from the jobs board: Mobile Hacker? Come work with the team that's reinventing farming Sim…

The prospect of changing something is often what attracted the founders to the idea in the first place. The most successful founders are not usually in it just for the money. If they were they'd have taken that $50 million acquisition offer on the way up.

While I agree with your premise, the didn't-take-early-offer-and-run seems doesn't provide strong enough evidence.

For a super successful startup (a la dropbox, stripe, etc.) -- why take only $50 million and leave the rest (possibly hundreds of millions) on the table? Especially with investors chewing their ears out about going for the home run. And, possibly, with an opportunity to cash out partially (a la Groupon, airbnb, etc.)

Re: Employee Retention

#46

Post by ultrasaurus »

You either have a retention problem or you have a problem with your hiring process. If you're getting great people and enabling them to do awesome things, you'll always have other companies sniffing around.

Re: Employee Retention

#47

Post by [deleted] »

jayp wrote: post #45
pg wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The prospect of changing something is often what attracted the founders to the idea in the first place. The most successful founders are not usually in it just for the money. If they were they'd have taken that $50 million acquisition offer on the way up.

While I agree with your premise, the didn't-take-early-offer-and-run seems doesn't provide strong enough evidence. For a super successful startup (a la dropbox, stripe, etc.) -- why take only $50 million and leave the rest (possibly hundreds of millions) on the table? Especially with investors chewing their ears out about going for the home run. And, possibly, with an opportunity to cash out partially (a la Groupon,…

[deleted]

Re: Employee Retention

#48

Post by physcab »

nostrademons wrote: post #28
physcab wrote: post #18

I think the author misses one important factor in employee retention - work / life balance. If a start-up hires a bunch of employees, everyone will be tempted to trade work for life in favor of "rocketship growth". In essence, they believe in the mission of the company so much that they are willing to sacrifice their mission for themselves. Companies who are empathetic to employee needs stand a much better chance of…

All 3 of your points are achieved if the startup is growing fast and its product is succeeding. It seems like you'll optimize employee retention by making sure the work is worthwhile, even if it's hard, rather than by making sure people don't do too much of it. (I don't disagree with work/life balance in general, but I'm pointing out that your data supports Sam's point that you should give people generous equity for…

You're right, I do need to support my hypothesis with more data. Consider another data point:

My dad works for a government contractor where the profit / margins are fixed, so essentially a "limited" growth company. He's been employed for over 30 years.

Why has he stayed? Because he can work 40 hours a week. His pay is good (EOY bonus is tied to a project success). He holds a position of value (to him not just to the organization). In his career he has seen more product failures than successes, but his successes were large, and he uses the knowledge from each to consult other projects in the organization (eg, he feels valued).

My takeaway is to look at your career in totality - it goes beyond equity and a worthwhile project because in a long career, you'll have many worthwhile projects and many that are not. And for the vast majority of startups, equity is worthless. It also includes interaction with team members and how you want to shape your company's future, and how your company wants to shape yours.

Re: Employee Retention

#49

Post by reledi »

physcab wrote: post #18

I think the author misses one important factor in employee retention - work / life balance. If a start-up hires a bunch of employees, everyone will be tempted to trade work for life in favor of "rocketship growth". In essence, they believe in the mission of the company so much that they are willing to sacrifice their mission for themselves. Companies who are empathetic to employee needs stand a much better chance of…

Some other things that should be considered in work-life balance are flextime, working remotely (even if just for one day of the week), and (paid) maternity/paternity leave. Many companies still don't offer any of these.

Re: Employee Retention

#50

Post by enraged_camel »

VLM wrote: post #42
humanrebar wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Try keeping your senior engineers when they really need another bedroom for the baby. Many of your young, hip engineers will want more room and a family-friendly lifestyle in ten years. And if you're going to allow extensive work-from-home, how do you keep from diluting the benefits of your Silicon Valley location?

Isn't that about the time to fire them all and replace with cheaper recent grads? A CRUD app doesn't need a decade of experience.

I don't know if you are being sarcastic, but I find your attitude despicable. I hope I never get to work for you.
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