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Ways to Minimize Employee Retention

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Re: Ways to Minimize Employee Retention

#41

Post by AndrewKemendo »

amputect wrote: post #10

> 14. Humiliate people in public. If you have to choose only one item from the list, this one is really, shockingly effective and easy to implement. My wife was in tears the other day because she made two trivial, easily-fixable errors on some paperwork she was doing as a stand-in for someone who was out sick. She fixed the errors and resubmitted it when they were brought to her attention, but her boss still sent the…

There is saying in the military that is pretty good rule of thumb for these kinds of things:

Praise in public, punish in private

Re: Ways to Minimize Employee Retention

#42

Post by drawkbox »

Another - Reward hard work and delivery with another project quickly and as scattered. When one delivers a touch project in an impossible timeline, rather than changing anything management side, deem them the "saver" and give them bad project after bad project with shorter and shorter timelines.

This could be reposted as Business/Management 101 in the office for most managers, or apparently the guide many have been using.

I have experienced almost all of them and could feel the pain in each line item that would come from developers that care or product developers that know what it takes to ship a successful product, well written and thorough.

Re: Ways to Minimize Employee Retention

#43

Post by dasil003 »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #23
dasil003 wrote: post #5

If you have to write this post to vent because you are stuck in a job you can't afford to leave and you are scared you'll be fired if you raise these issues to management, then so be it, write the bloody post and I hope you feel better. However in terms of practical changes, this post can neither benefit you nor anyone else. We all know about broken management cultures that this post describes, but none of those mana…

> I would probably be too nervous to ever hire someone who posted this vitriolic of prose publicly, it just comes off as unprofessional. I'd be curious then, about what you think about this? http://loup-vaillant.fr/articles/suboptimal-processes (Disclaimer: this one is totally sour grapes. I left. Though I did learn afterwards, that this project was a significant net loss to the company.)

Yours seems constructive to me and I don't read it as unprofessional in any way.

After reflecting on the responses here and amazingly balanced upvotes and downvotes I've received (it's hovering between 2-4, but changing frequently), I think actually what's going on is that I'm just annoyed by the OA's particular strain of satire. I guess when I read this heavy handed yes-is-no satire it just makes me angry that the author isn't just giving it to me straight. Whereas great satire has a unique thought-invoking quality, this type just feels like an overdone trope.

Re: Ways to Minimize Employee Retention

#44

Post by bowlofpetunias »

Only two ways are needed:

1. Create a constant state of uncertainty. Make promises you don't keep, and never explain why. Announce stuff that never materializes.

2. Don't give people any chance to successfully complete anything they start. (Simplest way: keep moving the goalposts.)

In my experience, people can take any kind of abusive crap, but uncertainty plus the inability to do anything worthwhile will either get people to quit or put them on the shortest route to a burn-out.

And the worst part is, these two ways are often not applied by malicious douche bags, but simply incompetent management. In the start-up world these are often entrepreneurs with no idea of and a total lack of empathy with what it's like to be an employee.

Re: Ways to Minimize Employee Retention

#45

Post by grecy »

amputect wrote: post #10

> 14. Humiliate people in public. If you have to choose only one item from the list, this one is really, shockingly effective and easy to implement. My wife was in tears the other day because she made two trivial, easily-fixable errors on some paperwork she was doing as a stand-in for someone who was out sick. She fixed the errors and resubmitted it when they were brought to her attention, but her boss still sent the…

> she's also stopped helping other people when they're out sick, because it can only possibly lead to either 1) Her doing more work for no recognition,

This rings especially true for me at my current company. Everyone says around here that the most important skill you can learn is "expectation management".

When given a task that is supposed to take 1 week, the absolute worst thing you can do is complete it in 2 days. Actually, 1 day, or 1 hour would be even worse.

Doing that will only open the flood gates to dump an ever increasing workload on you, while receiving zero recognition.

Re: Ways to Minimize Employee Retention

#46

Post by [deleted] »

S4M wrote: post #28
jaggederest wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And honestly, even breaking the build, you get a pass on the first one or two times, everyone has to learn somehow, and tests can be heisen-buggy. Not so much on pushing broken builds to production though.

You should not be able to push broken builds to production. Shame to your manager if you are.

[deleted]

Re: Ways to Minimize Employee Retention

#48

Post by winslow »

Appending my own personal pain point

22. Allow IT, regulatory, & quality to inhibit your productivity to the point that you work on side projects just to know what it's like to ship something.

Yeah, I'm currently interviewing else where.

Re: Ways to Minimize Employee Retention

#49

Post by hawkice »

philsnow wrote: post #33
beloch wrote: post #8

22. Hire antisocial self-declared "rock star" employees who can't stand other human beings. 23. Encourage sociable, pleasant employees to read Machiavelli and Sun Tzu. 24. Peer reviews and stack ranking! 25. Stress that everything must be done in-house. If your employees want a wheel, they must reinvent it themselves. 26. Play video games in your office during crunch-time or, heck, just take the day off. You deserve…

> Peer reviews I've had nothing but positive experiences from years and years of peer reviews. It's not even that I've had "nice" / overly-charitable peers who don't call me out on things: I've gotten good, actionable feedback that improved my career. It's a pain in the ass to write them but I always put in a good effort because of the benefits I've received from them.

I think the problem with most peer reviews in practice is that they typically are not actionable or even concrete. I used to have monthly 1:1's where I got feedback that wasn't "keep it up" less than 10% of the time. Not a negative experience, very positive actually, but a huge waste of time that seemed to exist just so the person I reported to could see he was in-charge.

Re: Ways to Minimize Employee Retention

#50

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Already__Taken wrote: post #37
psaintla wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With #22 I really believe that you should be careful. Introverts can easily be confused as anti-social. Now if they're a dick to everyone for no reason that's a different story.

Is asocial free for coining?

I think Robert Heinlein used that term in one of his stories. (Another character applied it to Lazarus Long.)
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