Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#131

Post by jaggederest » Sat, Jul 22, 2017, 5:09 AM UTC

sitharus wrote: post #121

sanderjd wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take the unpopular position of supporting a small room of a few "higher ups" making decisions. This is exactly what you want: a small number of people with a lot of skin in the game making important decisions. Good leaders gather feedback and counter-arguments beforehand, but then make a firm decision, and it's diminishingly rare for that decision to please everyone. The people who are not pleased should still f…

It's the feedback and counter arguments that are often lacking, and being unwilling to admit the decision was wrong. I've been in this situation a few times and it's very hard to push back on a decision that's been 'made' even if it's not appropriate for the team you're on.

Yes. I think it's critical to define three things when making a decision:

a) What was decided (obvious, but you'd be surprised how often people disagree)

b) Why it was decided - Now you can construct a basic "Given X, Y, and Z, it seems like a good idea to A and B"

c) The criteria for success or failure - how would someone who did not make the decision know whether it was successful or not?

Without all three, you can't make empirical decisions and then follow up on them. Decisions without any of those three are unmoored from reality.

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#132

Post by RealityNow » Sat, Jul 22, 2017, 5:16 AM UTC

sanderjd wrote: post #116

RealityNow wrote: post #99

This post rings eerily true. Recently had a company all-hands where the CEO said basically the exact same lines. The whole "if you don't love working here, then you should leave" bit made me cringe. Easy for you to say when you've got a significant equity share in the company. The saddest realization I've had working at companies is how power-hungry people are, how little respect the people in power often have for th…

I'll take the unpopular position of supporting a small room of a few "higher ups" making decisions. This is exactly what you want: a small number of people with a lot of skin in the game making important decisions. Good leaders gather feedback and counter-arguments beforehand, but then make a firm decision, and it's diminishingly rare for that decision to please everyone. The people who are not pleased should still f…

You like people telling you what to do and having no control over those decisions? Personally I absolutely loathe such environments, especially when the decisions are made haphazardly without proper rationale, which they often are (executives are human too).

At the end of the day, the "subordinates" are the ones actually doing the far majority of the work, and they far outnumber the managers. I don't see why the workers shouldn't at least have a seat at the table when the decisions are being debated that would affect them. Often the managers are so removed from the work that they lack a lot of the insights from the front lines.

The most common rebuttal I hear when I bring this up is, like you said, "too many people makes things inefficient". Bullshit. Sure a decision ultimately needs to be made, but there's no reason one shouldn't be allowed to provide input.

And in my experience, I do think it's more about people wanting to feel powerful, and fear of losing this power (eg. like the other commenter who mentioned fear of "power inversion"). The people in power are generally the most sycophantic, and thus have the least interest in interacting with or relinquishing power to subordinates because it doesn't personally benefit their position of power or ladder-climbing question.

If a bunch of executives make a bad decision, then "oh well, there's no way we could've known". If a bunch of executives make a bad decision after a meeting with subordinates who questioned their decision, then it makes the executives look bad and threatens their judgement and position of authority. So from a selfish perspective, it's better to keep the minions out.

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#133

Post by chrisbennet » Sat, Jul 22, 2017, 5:18 AM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #41

AVTizzle wrote: post #34

>> "I was visiting with an ex-student who’s now the CFO of a large public tech company." >> "(By coincidence, the CEO was an intern at one of my startups more than two decades ago.)" Admittedly, this isn't adding to the discussion at hand. Just one amateur writer picking apart another's writing style, but... Is it just me, or do those lines serve no purpose except to boost the author's own ego and sense of self-impor…

Later on in the story it's become apparent that the line that the CEO is touting is the exact same one that the author told him 20 years ago, so I'd say that part is pretty relevant :)

I noticed that but I didn't understand what he was getting at. Was he saying that the CEO/former student was:

A) Repeating what Steve told him and Steve had changed his mind about that advice?

B) Repeating what Steve told him but in the wrong context?

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#134

Post by mercutio2 » Sat, Jul 22, 2017, 5:24 AM UTC

scdoshi wrote: post #12

maxxxxx wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why they don't hand out options on a more continuous base the way executives get them. It seems everything is geared towards staying 1-4 years and then jumping ship.

Many (if not most) companies do stock refreshes annually, don't they?

Some companies do small refreshes to almost everyone.

Others do performance based refreshes, so job hoppers often think they’re never getting more stock, because they had their eye on the next gig or their side hustle or whatever.

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#135

Post by bastijn » Sat, Jul 22, 2017, 5:28 AM UTC

I can't entirely follow the article. What I read is a CEO of a 10k+ employee company had to relocate to grow and sustain growth. A team of 70 people was affected. He made the (right|wrong, pick as you like) decision 70 people leaving now is better than 10k+ having to miss out on the future opportunities.

That is what I read from this article. Though all is speculation as there is no real information in there apart from a quote you can be for or against.

This is not "why good people leave large tech companies". It a sole example of a very small group in a very specific situation. Relocation loses people yes. But not amass and not as a hidden thing. The company is well aware of it. The quote itself was there for years and it is not why people left.

Large tech companies that loose good software people for instance often do so because they apply their hardware processes to software teams as well. In addition they don't want to spend money of software, software has to come for free right! The hardware is expensive but the software is a thing we had to add as cheap as possible. That means deny requests for fancy work setups; my hardware guys can work with one 19" monitor why do they need 2 24"?

Have no separate career ladder for the technical people, I.e. You can only grow into exec or fellow if you switch to the people's route and forget the technical (I.e. General managers, directors etc but no levels above lead software architect of a (smaller) department).

Now that loses people.

P.s. I work in a large tech company. 100k+. We recently resolved the last part but not yet entirely the former. Coincidence is that I'm being relocated in January 2018. It brings about 20 minutes additional travel time for me, but for most others it doesn't. Like the article. However, I'm not seeing how losing me (and some others) would outweigh the benefit of having the entire NL software group in a single location.

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#136

Post by RealityNow » Sat, Jul 22, 2017, 5:29 AM UTC

sitharus wrote: post #121

sanderjd wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take the unpopular position of supporting a small room of a few "higher ups" making decisions. This is exactly what you want: a small number of people with a lot of skin in the game making important decisions. Good leaders gather feedback and counter-arguments beforehand, but then make a firm decision, and it's diminishingly rare for that decision to please everyone. The people who are not pleased should still f…

It's the feedback and counter arguments that are often lacking, and being unwilling to admit the decision was wrong. I've been in this situation a few times and it's very hard to push back on a decision that's been 'made' even if it's not appropriate for the team you're on.

Our CEO has flat out told us that it's incredibly hard for him to get honest feedback from anyone (except for maybe the board and investors), and another executive echoed this. Nobody wants to question the almighty CEO to his face.

Nothing against the CEO. He's an extremely friendly and approachable person. Most people just fear questioning authority and power, and the CEO in a modern day corporation is revered similar to a king in a monarchy. It's always been like that at every company I've worked for.

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#137

Post by ehnto » Sat, Jul 22, 2017, 5:39 AM UTC

RealityNow wrote: post #132

sanderjd wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take the unpopular position of supporting a small room of a few "higher ups" making decisions. This is exactly what you want: a small number of people with a lot of skin in the game making important decisions. Good leaders gather feedback and counter-arguments beforehand, but then make a firm decision, and it's diminishingly rare for that decision to please everyone. The people who are not pleased should still f…

You like people telling you what to do and having no control over those decisions? Personally I absolutely loathe such environments, especially when the decisions are made haphazardly without proper rationale, which they often are (executives are human too). At the end of the day, the "subordinates" are the ones actually doing the far majority of the work, and they far outnumber the managers. I don't see why the work…

That would be the idea behind a technical lead no? Having a voice for the tehcnical team.

Everyone should have a voice but not everyone needs to literally be at the table. Seeing companies go from small to larger and seeing how the flat structure begins to show caveats as a team grows, I agree everyone should have a voice, but ultimately a decision needs to be made and a big group of people are never going to agree on everything. You can bikeshed all day on which CI platform to use for example but ultimately a decision gets made by someone that there has been enough discussion and this is the platform to use.

That process can be horribly perverted and have the wrong people making terrible decisions but that is a separate problem, not a problem with the idea of consolidating many voices into a decision.

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#138

Post by RealityNow » Sat, Jul 22, 2017, 5:40 AM UTC

bastijn wrote: post #135

I can't entirely follow the article. What I read is a CEO of a 10k+ employee company had to relocate to grow and sustain growth. A team of 70 people was affected. He made the (right|wrong, pick as you like) decision 70 people leaving now is better than 10k+ having to miss out on the future opportunities. That is what I read from this article. Though all is speculation as there is no real information in there apart fr…

"Too bad, but we need the space. They’re lucky they work here. If they leave at least they’ll have ‘name of our company’ on their resume."

It's not merely about the decision to relocate, it's the indifference towards the engineers and viewing them as dispensable minions who are lucky to have the privilege of working for this company, often without the equity and earnings potential of early employees. Treating your workers as disposable pawns is a sure-fire way to generate disillusionment and cause valuable engineers to leave.

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#139

Post by Clamhead » Sat, Jul 22, 2017, 5:42 AM UTC

RealityNow wrote: post #136

sitharus wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the feedback and counter arguments that are often lacking, and being unwilling to admit the decision was wrong. I've been in this situation a few times and it's very hard to push back on a decision that's been 'made' even if it's not appropriate for the team you're on.

Our CEO has flat out told us that it's incredibly hard for him to get honest feedback from anyone (except for maybe the board and investors), and another executive echoed this. Nobody wants to question the almighty CEO to his face. Nothing against the CEO. He's an extremely friendly and approachable person. Most people just fear questioning authority and power, and the CEO in a modern day corporation is revered simil…

It's not possible to implement some type of anonymous feedback system?

My company sends out periodic anonymous surveys as an attempt to garner feedback from the employees.

The only problem I see is if employees, for whatever reason, don't believe such a system is truly anonymous and thus refuse to give honest feedback. I don't see that being a common trend though.

If so, it probably signals more serious problems between employees and the higher-ups ...

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#140

Post by bastijn » Sat, Jul 22, 2017, 5:48 AM UTC

RealityNow wrote: post #138

bastijn wrote: post #135

I can't entirely follow the article. What I read is a CEO of a 10k+ employee company had to relocate to grow and sustain growth. A team of 70 people was affected. He made the (right|wrong, pick as you like) decision 70 people leaving now is better than 10k+ having to miss out on the future opportunities. That is what I read from this article. Though all is speculation as there is no real information in there apart fr…

"Too bad, but we need the space. They’re lucky they work here. If they leave at least they’ll have ‘name of our company’ on their resume." It's not merely about the decision to relocate, it's the indifference towards the engineers and viewing them as dispensable minions who are lucky to have the privilege of working for this company, often without the equity and earnings potential of early employees. Treating your wo…

That has been there for years. Sure it is nice and people object when they hear it but I think in actual daily life people just ignore them as long as they don't manifest in daily work. The people left because of the relocation, not because of any other reason. The article doesn't explain the tradeoff the CEO had to make. So blaming the quotes is jumping to conclusions. So I say these quotes are overvalued in the article. Sure the popular thing is to fret about them and blame them for this it seams but in truth it had nothing to do with the people leaving in this article. They left because of travel times (most likely, I don't pretend I can look into their minds).

In a big company most people don't like all of their exec and HR statements yet they continue to work there because they know 90% of those statements is bullshit anyways and will not manifest. Very different from a small company mind you! Big companies change their bullshit slogans every 5-10 years. It's a pattern. Go through twice and you know the drill. So you smile when your department name changes and know the rest will stay the same no matter your objectives containing some new fancy words.