Great article, but I got a really good laugh out of this. "But very often, the hard technical problems are important to the world (e.g. Google, Palantir, Facebook)." Let me know when Facebook starts doing something important to the world.
Helping people stay in touch socially is important to humans. The engagement figures alone tell me that it's important (to them). My parents and grandparents see more pics of my kids and feel more connected to their grandkids' random life experiences. That's important (to me and to them). Jzw's point on narrowing your focus is worth mentioning here: http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html Facebook isn't helping me ther…
Employee Retention
91–95 of 95 posts
Re: Employee Retention
#92Consequently people don't seem to quit companies, as long as the company isn't falling apart of course, as much as they quit bosses that don't take care of them. That are negligent - either through incompetence or absence - or abusive with respect to their needs.
If someone's leaving the company, it's often worthwhile to try and find out why - preferably talk to them a long time before they leave the company, so it never gets to that point. Try to find out what's going on in their lives, what their problems are, what they want to do, what they enjoy. Try to make sure you can offer that to them.
Some people want to feel like they're changing the world - that's your story group. Others want to learn to be better programmers. Others want a boss who can be flexible around their lives. Some people want to teach others. Some people just want days off for their kid's plays. Whatever their needs, most people seem to want to feel like they're important; like their opinions and their problems matter to you. Like they're not just another cog in the machine.
Things built on that sort of platform are a form of personal loyalty, that they can't easily get at other companies. They go to another company, they may talk to them about a mission, they'll probably be growing, they'll want to have a good team (whether they do or not's debatable - again, see people don't quit companies as much as managers...). But they won't have that relationship you've built. And their future bosses might be awful, it's a gamble for them - and it's not clear their winnings will be significant, at least provided you're not stiffing them on pay or something like that.
Re: Employee Retention
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or even more simply, their investors offer to let them to cash out a few million worth of shares as idiot insurance. This still doesn't really explain why a 22 year old Mark Zuckerberg had the cojones to turn down $1 billion. Very few people in the world would have done that.
He didn't turn it down, according to Andreesen Yahoo reduced the offer with the financial crisis to $200m http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2013/11/21/marc-andreessen...
Re: Employee Retention
#94The 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…
>> 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: Maybe I am misreading your post, but not a single one of the YC companies is solving a problem as easily mocked as "pizza delivery" (which, in reality, is really simplifying food acquisition to reallocate those hours to something more productive than waiting in line…
I suppose I'm most skeptical about the claim that they are changing the world somehow. I can't believe that every startup is transforming an industry, or even trying to do so. Imagine some idealistic young hacker gung ho about disrupting farming, completely changing the way people grow food forever. And then on their first day, they realize they're job amounts to maintaining a mediocre iPhone app.
Now I don't doubt an iPhone app could make farmers' lives better. But how much are you gonna change farming? Maybe software can make farming a tad more data-driven or a tad more organized. But the way we grow food won't change because some YC startup wrote an app for it.
Yet clearly, startups want job candidates to believe they will change the world, or else they wouldn't put it in their ads. So what motivation could they have?
1. Like someone else mentioned, perhaps "changing the world" is code for "making lots of money." Could be.
2. My hypothesis: Startups use their "change the world" mission to justify low pay, long hours working conditions. People won't work under those conditions unless they believe they're working for a higher purpose.
3. Maybe delusional founders say "change the world" because they actually think their mobile/web-app/cloud crap will disrupt an industry. Sometimes that happens, but nobody should be foolish enough to think they know what it takes.
Re: Employee Retention
#95The 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.