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Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

thinkgrowth.org

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Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#251

Post by amiller2571 »

danek wrote: post #119
jmspring wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a boss like this. Talked with his bosses multiple times, no change. When I left a couple of weeks prior to my one year vest and another colleague did the same a couple of months later (both of us key/senior people), they noticed a little bit. Eventually said individuals behavior and reputation impacted his own goals when seeking funding. That said, upper management didn't do anything until after the fact.

Yeah I've noticed that usually you need at least 4 people to quit before anything happens to the boss. Even if they know he sucks they're gonna try and keep him on. No idea why, but it has the appearance of "he's part of the mgmt club and you aren't"

I've had a boss like that and his boss didn't want to remove him because he would have to admit that he made the wrong choice in promoting him.

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#252

Post by lifeisstillgood »

sgt101 wrote: post #173
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the same argument kings and emperors used. But over time the abuses, and the frequently stupid decisions, became too much. It's faster in an business but no different. Democracy is coming to the last bastion of dictatorship in modern western world. It won't be pretty - but it will lead to better companies

Public companies are somewhat a democracy of ownership; they publish accounts and the board is accountable to the owners - the shareholders. Privately held companies are quite different, and there is a strong argument that they simply should not be allowed above a certain capitalisation - say $40m because they create an uncontrolled risk to the economy. For example; if five of the top 10 unicorns fail in the next thr…

I worked in a company selling equity research to large pension funds - and one thing that I tried to push was it was possible to give everyone of their pension-holders a vote at every AGM (sonfor exampleninstead of one investment manager block voting 10% of coca-cola shares, the 10 million fire fighters of America could decide for themselves which way to have their 1.4 shares voted).

It still is a feasible idea imo. And would lead to an lot of new agm items !

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#253

Post by lifeisstillgood »

sanderjd wrote: post #234
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the same argument kings and emperors used. But over time the abuses, and the frequently stupid decisions, became too much. It's faster in an business but no different. Democracy is coming to the last bastion of dictatorship in modern western world. It won't be pretty - but it will lead to better companies

But businesses aren't states. If a business makes the wrong decisions, it can fail and be replaced. It is too dangerous for states to go through failure and replacement, but as you note, it's also bad for there to be no mechanism to punish of bad decisions. The goal of a republic is to bring the fail-and-be-replaced mechanism to state governance, but in a controlled way. But this is less efficient, so if it's ok (wit…

Interesting comparison of business vs states. The thing is there are an awful lot of businesses larger than states.

Just take simple comparisons of population (I know I know) and the smallest states like islands have tens of thousands - of the 233 nations in the UN we reach only 100k people at 200, and companies like Bank of America employ more people than "real I have heard of them" places like Iceland.

So I like the idea of just letting companies fail - but putting half a million people out of work is pretty bad.

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#254

Post by danek »

amiller2571 wrote: post #251
danek wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I've noticed that usually you need at least 4 people to quit before anything happens to the boss. Even if they know he sucks they're gonna try and keep him on. No idea why, but it has the appearance of "he's part of the mgmt club and you aren't"

I've had a boss like that and his boss didn't want to remove him because he would have to admit that he made the wrong choice in promoting him.

Excellent point. I'm pretty sure this is a thing, I vaguely remember reading something about how getting promoted gives you some "invisible leverage" (my words) because now the company has decided you are valuable and special and they don't wanna look like they made a mistake. Thanks, this actually helped me understand an instance of where several not very good managers got further promoted and it made no sense to me.

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#255

Post by sgt101 »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #252
sgt101 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public companies are somewhat a democracy of ownership; they publish accounts and the board is accountable to the owners - the shareholders. Privately held companies are quite different, and there is a strong argument that they simply should not be allowed above a certain capitalisation - say $40m because they create an uncontrolled risk to the economy. For example; if five of the top 10 unicorns fail in the next thr…

I worked in a company selling equity research to large pension funds - and one thing that I tried to push was it was possible to give everyone of their pension-holders a vote at every AGM (sonfor exampleninstead of one investment manager block voting 10% of coca-cola shares, the 10 million fire fighters of America could decide for themselves which way to have their 1.4 shares voted). It still is a feasible idea imo.…

Yes - it's now a lot more feasible. I'm not sure it'll work though as my guess is that this will lead to end-game democracy quite quickly a-la activist investors vs bunches of equity managers now. I would prefer measures that increase the diversity and long term stake of the decision making groups and diffuses the complexity of the individual decisions that they make. Most of all I would like the short term benefits of financial engineering (and financial engineers) to be better balanced against the long term impact of reduced investment and loss of capability. People capital and data assets should be on the balance sheet.

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#256

Post by gaius »

jmspring wrote: post #114
mrbill wrote: post #108

When I worked for a large multinational energy services firm, one of the bosses I had (they changed every 2-3 years) was a huge bully. One of those "great coworker, bad manager" types. My wife had passed away, and as a result, my performance had dropped. One of his lines (verbal in person, not on paper) was "If you don't want to work here, there are plenty of people that do." He was the only boss I've ever had that m…

I had a boss like this. Talked with his bosses multiple times, no change. When I left a couple of weeks prior to my one year vest and another colleague did the same a couple of months later (both of us key/senior people), they noticed a little bit. Eventually said individuals behavior and reputation impacted his own goals when seeking funding. That said, upper management didn't do anything until after the fact.

The people at level n+1 to you in an organisation are there because they have the support of people at level n+2. Your issue has to be serious enough to get the attention of someone at level n+3 or nothing will happen. And the problem of one employee not getting on with his or her line manager, isn't serious enough in reality.

The only power you have in this case is to go elsewhere.

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#257

Post by gaius »

zebraflask wrote: post #244
sokoloff wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've seen people be passed for the wrong version of jQuery on the resume Well, those people dodged a bullet, then...

If you're putting jQuery on your resume, you might have bigger problems than versioning.

I interviewed someone recently with FTP on their CV. Now, running a big FTP site, that's CV-worthy. Contributing to an open-source FTP client, that's CV-worthy. But no, this person literally listed being able to FTP a file as one of their "skills"...

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#258

Post by jackgolding »

supergeek133 wrote: post #112

Ugh. So much this. Story time. Doing work with a 3rd party firm on some simple dev work (integration into a few partner APIs). We're a big Azure customer, 3rd party knows this. Gives us ARM templates for resources needed to deploy. Get on the phone with the IT folks internally, state we need these ARM templates deployed and monitored. Queue two week (plus) process, 100 questions, and department to department costs (a…

Wash any from your side or the partners? If the other company sees this as a breach of trust you could be cutting your company out of future partnerships with this company (or even worse have to undo your code and getting black listed in the industry.)

Best of luck either way, just remember humans aren't rational agents by any use of the word.

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#259

Post by lifeisstillgood »

sgt101 wrote: post #255
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in a company selling equity research to large pension funds - and one thing that I tried to push was it was possible to give everyone of their pension-holders a vote at every AGM (sonfor exampleninstead of one investment manager block voting 10% of coca-cola shares, the 10 million fire fighters of America could decide for themselves which way to have their 1.4 shares voted). It still is a feasible idea imo.…

Yes - it's now a lot more feasible. I'm not sure it'll work though as my guess is that this will lead to end-game democracy quite quickly a-la activist investors vs bunches of equity managers now. I would prefer measures that increase the diversity and long term stake of the decision making groups and diffuses the complexity of the individual decisions that they make. Most of all I would like the short term benefits…

Ha-Joon Chang is a economist and writer with similar views - just reading the last few chapters of his 2010 book and he says very similar things

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#260

Post by sgt101 »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #259
sgt101 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - it's now a lot more feasible. I'm not sure it'll work though as my guess is that this will lead to end-game democracy quite quickly a-la activist investors vs bunches of equity managers now. I would prefer measures that increase the diversity and long term stake of the decision making groups and diffuses the complexity of the individual decisions that they make. Most of all I would like the short term benefits…

Ha-Joon Chang is a economist and writer with similar views - just reading the last few chapters of his 2010 book and he says very similar things

Fantastic tip - thank you I will read his work. Amusingly I am watching a documentary called "The Mayfair Set: part 3" by Adam Curtis which is describing the idea of technostructure as developed by JK Galbraith as a response to the robber barons of the depression and how it was dismantled in the 1980's...
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