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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

#91

Post by quickthrower »

ryandrake wrote: post #65
maxxxxx wrote: post #6

"But the CEO never noticed that the payoff had ended for the other 95% of his company." It seems a lot of C*Os forget this after a while. For a lot of rank and file employees the stock price makes no difference.

Those awkward moments at medium-sized growing companies when the CEO gets in front of the company for an all-hands and says "The company is doing so well! Our stock price, as you have noticed, is way up!" The response being a couple of "woooo"s from the long-timers and senior execs and the rest of the room shrugging their shoulders looking at each other.

Got that tshirt. (I'ze the shoulder shrugger)

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#92

Post by sokoloff »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #75
quotemstr wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. You have to create a culture where it's okay to fail. And it's not enough to just say that: you have to actually practice it. You have to let people make mistakes, then do nothing so that other people don't feel afraid to take risks. Hell, reward people for failing. Highlight them as exemplars of people who do things. If you don't fail once in a while, you're not moving fast enough.

Yeah, but this is at odds with virtually every big company. No one has the power to affect that kind of change except the CEO, and the CEO is rarely interested or involved enough to do that. Is there any way around this problem?

If your CTO or VP of engineering or VP of ops can't make this change, your company likely has other problems.

I admit to inheriting a fairly smart-risk-accepting technical culture, but also worked to extend and cement that by holding regular blame-free post-mortems on production problems and reporting them weekly to our business operations meeting. Making failure and the analysis/correction thereof a regular part of company operations makes it normal, accepted, and less scary. We would also pretty regularly respond to asteroid-type production problems with "no preventative action intended; cost of prevention exceeds expected losses". (We held a view that there is [conceptual process] green tape and red tape; make sure if you're fixing problems with process that it's actually green tape and if fixing a problem required adding red tape to the system, we were very skeptical and tended to avoid adding that process/step/gate/check.)

Couple that mindset and transparency with a metrics-supported track record of making things better overall and management will support. I'm not sure our CEO ever saw any of that sausage-making, except for the very largest or most damaging problems and even then, it was mostly a courtesy message to him. He cared about the overall pace and metrics, not how many outages or bugs we had along the way.

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#93

Post by quickthrower »

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 liked that. Literally a meme.

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#94

Post by beachy »

el_benhameen wrote: post #52
kbos87 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a hunch that you've never worked at a growing mid-sized or large company that is clinging to its startup roots and is averse to any sort of process at all. Being unwilling to adopt a necessary amount of structure and process is just as much of a hindrance once you hit a certain size. That may be a newer or less common problem, but it's a very real one.

Agreed. I've often found that those who are resistant to any amount of (reasonable) formal process are those (usually long timers) who were most empowered by the implicit process and rules. In the end, they're also saying "nothing should change unless I say so".

Very insightful.

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#95

Post by quickthrower »

mnm1 wrote: post #46

This attitude of "you really have to want to work here or you ought to leave" justifies a lot of insanity. I've heard it from companies who make potential employees jump through ridiculous hoops to even get a chance at a job. Here's reality for people who suffer from this delusion: most people don't give a fuck and are just looking for a job. They're applying to dozens or hundreds of jobs (yes, even in software), and…

I love how it's "change the world". Would an oil fracking company count in that description?

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#96

Post by quickthrower »

sokoloff wrote: post #85
mnm1 wrote: post #46

This attitude of "you really have to want to work here or you ought to leave" justifies a lot of insanity. I've heard it from companies who make potential employees jump through ridiculous hoops to even get a chance at a job. Here's reality for people who suffer from this delusion: most people don't give a fuck and are just looking for a job. They're applying to dozens or hundreds of jobs (yes, even in software), and…

People are applying to dozens or hundreds of jobs at once? How is that possible? I'm generally only considering 1 new employer at a time, and the most I've ever done concurrently was applying to two companies in CA at the same time. How could there even be dozens of companies that you'd want to work for at any given time?

Yep I've done that. As a C# monkey I line em up, often using recruiters, get concurrent offers and choose a good one. It's just a sales pipeline.

Then get the hate mail from the recruiters whose clients I rejected. Nevermind those guys move around and forget and next time I'm looking I'm dealing with different recruiters.

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#97

Post by ratbr »

hkmurakami wrote: post #59
mnm1 wrote: post #46

This attitude of "you really have to want to work here or you ought to leave" justifies a lot of insanity. I've heard it from companies who make potential employees jump through ridiculous hoops to even get a chance at a job. Here's reality for people who suffer from this delusion: most people don't give a fuck and are just looking for a job. They're applying to dozens or hundreds of jobs (yes, even in software), and…

As an aside, my 20-something-SF-resident-friends are flabbergasted when I tell them that I, as a person who's spent his whole life is this start up la-la-land that is SV, have absolutely no interest in "changing the world". I just want to work on interesting business problems, just like many others just want to work on interesting technical problems.

In my experience, the notion of "change the world" has no age bar sadly. Also, "change the world" is often thrown about in arguably shallow contexts. But then look at how Facebook got started, and it is fair to say that it has changed the world. My point? I agree with you, but I am not sure if that's just cynicism because arguably "shallow" companies have changed the world for real.

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#98

Post by wes-k »

hkmurakami wrote: post #61
khazhoux wrote: post #37

Executives: "You should care about the mission, not the money!" (as they keep all the money to themselves)

It's fascinating how in the recruitment process, hiring managers who expect potential hires to act logically and methodically all but demand the recruit to suspend his or her logic and mental methods when considering their personal financial interests. The dichotomy would be humorous if it weren't so sad.

Yes! Entering the job market I was offered x amount of stock. I had no way to know what this was worth and essentially asked my manager who said "you should feel good about this amount". He was honest and fair but the fact is that most places are trying to hire bright people and they offer x amount of stock without providing how much stock is out there. Here's a # that we know is meaningless to you, do you accept? What a crazy norm we've accepted!

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#99

Post by RealityNow »

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 those "below" them, and how important politics is even in a field like engineering that you'd expect to be meritocratic. Sweeping decisions are often made in a small room of a few "higher-ups" without any input or regard for those "below" them. Providing counter-arguments that question the decisions of the executive caste is often seen as a threat (how dare you question your leader?). The shy and humble rockstar coder who kicks ass gets little recognition while the smooth-talking sycophant gets accolades and climbs the ladder.

Corporations are authoritarian tyrannies with strict hierarchies. America was founded on the principles of democracy, but we tolerate tyranny in our workplace. The only way to change this is to remove the asymmetric dependency of the employee on the employer (eg. UBI).

Re: Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies

#100

Post by Leilani45 »

danek wrote: post #48
andrewstuart wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, companies can use "level of enthusiasm for working here" as an excuse for their poor recruiting practices. "OH, the candidate dropped out of our recruiting process? But he was only at interview four after 6 weeks.... well it doesn't matter because clearly he didn't want to work here enough - we want people who really want to work here and are willing to do what it takes to get a job with us." Even worse: "But h…

Yes this too. Someone I know was interviewing at google (his first choice, he did a few rounds), and then later at some other places. Google took three months to get back to him and gave him a really good offer, but by that time he had already accepted somewhere else.

I quit working at shoprite and now I make $35h - $80h...how? I'm working online! My work didn't exactly make me happy so I decided to take a chance on something new…after 4 years it was so hard to quit my day job but now I couldn't be happier.

........... www.joinmate2.Com

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