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Why Good People Leave Large Tech Companies
- walshemj 9y agoAh the tail wagging the dog again sounds like facilities and I suspect hr have got to much power. I know that the CEO when facilities where pushing for people to move to some industrial estate near Heathrow with zero pubic transport links "word class Telco's don't have a head office in a F%^king shed at Heathrow"
- arcanus 9y agoAnyone have a guess as to what company this was?
- majestik 9y agoTesla?
- taurath 9y agoClearly.
- user5994461 9y agoAre they public?
- Simon_says 9y agoYes.
- throwaway7645 9y agoThat seems to fit: 1.) move from Palo alto to east bay 2.) manufacturing company with software engineers 3.) lots of people leaving 4.) CEO changing the world. However, I'm sure many companies meet that.
- maxxxxx 9y agoWasn't there the story where Musk scolded someone who took off to be at the birth of his child?
- PeterisP 9y agoThis somehow seems relevant - http://nypost.com/2017/05/21/coachs-viral-response-when-asked-why-star-missed-game-for-kids-birth/ http://nypost.com/2017/05/21/coachs-viral-response-when-aske...
- phonon 9y agohttps://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/597982078374817794 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/597982078374817794
- conanbatt 9y agoIt really sounds fake. Even if Elon really believed that to be true, it would be very dumb to say it.
- gwern 9y agoBingo. The company was Rocket Science Games. https://web.archive.org/web/20121113115319/https://engineering.stanford.edu/profile/sblank https://web.archive.org/web/20121113115319/https://engineeri... says Blank was involved, and one of Musk's internships was also there according to the Musk bio and a few sites listing his internships (simultaneous with Pinnacle, apparently).
- pinewurst 9y agoThat really makes me feel old - I used to work for another gaming company at that time that was pals with Rocket Science. It was not exactly a model of how to run a business - and where I worked was hardly GE. :) From dubious acorns doth startup management gurus grow.
- huac 9y agoMusk is also notorious for underpaying his engineers.
- dkhenry 9y agoWhile it may fit most of the criteria, I wouldn't say Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpennin were the visionary founders mentioned and Elon Musk and company tried to bring in adult supervision before Elon sunk enough of his own money into the company to just start running it himself. Most of the narrative doesn't fit as this article presents it ( it might still be tesla, but you can assume the details are pretty one sided )
- drudru11 9y agoThat was my first guess too.
- jtmarmon 9y agoMy guess is square. The CFO went to stanford for an MBA, where the author taught. Neither CFO Tesla has had went to Stanford. Can't find anything about Dorsey working at one of the startups listed on the author's wikipedia page, but he seemed to have been involved with many so it would be unsurprising if it just wasn't listed there.
- Denzel 9y agoMusk worked at Rocket Science Games, a Steve Blank startup, almost two decades ago.
- tdeck 9y agoSquare was never located in Palo Alto (although there is/was a small South Bay office where people could work one day a week) and is not, as far as I know, moving to the East Bay.
- blackguardx 9y agoI worked at Square on the hardware team. Sarah Friar (CFO) and Jack Dorsey (CEO) aren't like that and Square doesn't do any manufacturing. They use contract manufacturers.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- maxxxxx 9y ago"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.
- cbanek 9y agoBut the vesting schedules sure make a difference. It's amazing how things change once you've made it past that cliff, and how people jump ship once they've got their first year. Also a year is pretty standard to get a signing bonus and relo package covered.
- maxxxxx 9y agoI 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.
- scdoshi 9y agoMany (if not most) companies do stock refreshes annually, don't they?
- cbanek 9y agoThere's refreshes and then there's the speed of the vesting schedule. Some places offer a bunch to start, but very little after that, which means people tend to leave once they have vested all their options/RSUs. After the first year, sometimes your vesting schedule will be monthly, quarterly, twice a year, or once a year. As to why they don't allow everyone to be monthly - it's probably because they get to claw back a fair amount of the equity if people leave.
- objclxt 9y ago> As to why they don't allow everyone to be monthly - it's probably because they get to claw back a fair amount of the equity if people leave. I may be being a little cynical, but if you vest annually or bi-annually you can get a pretty good idea of when your employees are going to leave and use that to plan your crunch periods accordingly. People are rather unlikely to quit the month before the annual vesting date.
- andrewstuart 9y agoThis is why its always possible to hire great developers - because some companies and hiring managers think that people should be not just great developers, but willing to jump through ridiculous hoops to work there. If you want to hire people, drop the attitude of "we don't want people who aren't willing to prove how much they want to work here". Instead, give them every reason to want to work for you.
- danek 9y agoFwiw, one "advantage" of "wanting to work there" is that counterproductive management practices can survive longer. If I'm your boss and am treating you like trash, and you complain, I can just say "oh it sounds like your commitment to this company isn't very high, shall we discuss your future?" That will work a multitude of times with a gaslit employee who really drank the company kool-aid.
- andrewstuart 9y agoAlso, 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 he'd only done our coding test after 5 weeks, there's still three interviews to go." The recruiter usually gets a phone call at this point "Got anyone else, this time someone who actually wants to work here?"
- Eridrus 9y agoDespite the overall theme of this interaction, opening an office in the East Bay seems more employee friendly than keeping them in Palo Alto.
- theoracle101 9y agoYou're missing the point of the article, its not an East Bay vs. Palo Alto debate
- tootie 9y agoIf the company is still succeeding, then it doesn't seem to be an unreasonable move. The company doesn't operate for the benefit of employees commutes. If they can still attract and retain talent and have a more practical work space, then great.
- petre 9y agoAny company/CEO who wastes 45 x 2 minutes of my life on a commute is bound to get a quit notice.
- ghaff 9y agoA company that isn't either all-remote or encouraging of significant WFH is going to satisfy some people and not others with respect to commuting.
- tootie 9y agoThen they'll get people who live closer. Like I said, their business isn't built to give employees short commutes. Certainly retention is in their interests, but it's a means to an end. Moving their office is also a means to an end.
- TulliusCicero 9y agoThen why'd most of them leave?
- 9y ago
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- coretx 9y agoHmm. Really?! I worked for various large corporates, studied for a MBA after my IT career; found out about ethics and other ontologically speaking really valuable things in life hence left. But really, besides personal spectives and/or ego's. :: Henry Mintzberg basically said it all in 2004 already: https://books.google.nl/books?hl=nl&lr=&id=zsYAeVgwHDQC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=Mintzberg+managers+not+MBA%27s&ots=nG2VlR0jSj&sig=rjMofuNE8G8ldQWnM96O6phzAaA#v=onepage&q=Mintzberg%20managers%20not%20MBA's&f=false https://books.google.nl/books?hl=nl&lr=&id=zsYAeVgwHDQC&oi=f... ISBN-13: 978-1576753514, ISBN-10: 1576753514 " Managers Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development"
- AVTizzle 9y ago>> "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-importance? I feel like they don't serve the reader in taking away the lesson in the least. They really strike me as an attempt to remind the reader of the writer's own value and importance. Maybe I'm being too cynical...
- andrewstuart 9y agoIts Steve Blank - he's just pointing out facts that support the story, it happens that he works with lots of successful people and companies.
- Aeolun 9y agoLater 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 :)
- quickthrower 9y agoI liked that. Literally a meme.
- chrisbennet 9y agoI 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?
- lovich 9y agoTo me it sounded like the author had truly believed that advice at the startup stage but now in a large company he saw how those words rang hollow as the employees were no longer benefiting from the companies growth. He seemed embarrassed that his words were being used to justify adding 45 ×70 minutes of commute time to a team that wasn't getting early employee equity
- quotemstr 9y agoThe most important lesson for people in power in big tech companies: FORMAL PROCESS IS THE ENEMY. Don't let the accumulation of gatekeepers and approvers and other capital-P Process let things become 100x harder than they need to be. Do not confuse difficulty with prudence. Your organization will become slow and ossified by default unless you take specific steps to maintain flexibility. One of these steps is to install a culture of change. Things that are easily undone should not require approval to be done in the first place. Do not allow long-timers in your organization use "caution" or "good engineering practice" as an excuse to slow everyone else down. Emphasize that the most important part of software development is moving fast. Let new people try new things. Minimize the number of people who can say "no". Most of all, do not just _believe_ people who talk about best practices and software "quality" and stuff like that. Most of the time, they're just finding fancy-sounding ways of saying "nothing should change unless I say so".
- kbos87 9y agoI 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.
- el_benhameen 9y agoAgreed. 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".
- abraae 9y agoVery insightful.
- 35bge57dtjku 9y agoThis and the parent comment describe exactly what happened at the company I just left. I wonder if the newly hired TPM will ever have any real power there.
- khazhoux 9y agoExecutives: "You should care about the mission, not the money!" (as they keep all the money to themselves)
- hkmurakami 9y agoIt'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.
- geofft 9y agoI care about the mission. In fact, I care about the mission so much that I know that it'll do the company a disservice to train me and lose me a year later to another company with a similar mission offering me more money. Therefore, it's in the company's interest to pay me a competitive salary!
- hkmurakami 9y agoThe best startup CEOs I know overpay their key people BC they know that losing their best people hurts so much more than the same people helping whatever company they might join next
- MrMorden 9y agoSo it sounds like they're paying over market, but not overpaying—they recognize the cost of these people leaving and provide a salary that takes said cost into account.
- choward 9y agoDwight Schrute said it best: “Would I ever leave this company? Look, I’m all about loyalty. In fact, I feel like part of what I’m being paid for here is my loyalty. But if there were somewhere else that valued loyalty more highly… I’m going wherever they value loyalty the most.”
- frozenport 9y agoI'd like to remind people that large companies are the only ones capable of hiring junior engineers who might not be at full productivity at day 0. This is especially true of the C++ ecosystem.
- jeff_marshall 9y agoHow large is large? Hiring junior engineers or developers definitely happens in companies smaller than FB or GOOG. Perhaps you mean something specific by "capable"? I won't disagree that c++ (as a technology) can be a minefield, but this also holds for many technologies and markets (civil aviation being a great example). I may have missed an implicit /s, for which I apologize in adavance...
- jdbernard 9y agoNot true. Counterexample: the last company I was with was 40ish people (total). One of our devs (out of 4) was a junior with I think less than a year of experience when he started. He was smart and worked hard. He was a solid member of the team.
- YZF 9y agoGood junior engineers can be productive at day 0. They just can't do the stuff a senior engineer can do. They definitely can contribute though. A well balanced team is a good thing for small or large companies.
- toast0 9y agoWhen where I work was small, we still hired a fair number of junior people, although I think all (or most) were conversions from interns. One thing we were able to do, that is much harder at large companies is hire smart, technically minded people for customer support, who were able to help with automation, and eventually become full time developers. At a larger company, they would have automated their job, and nobody would have noticed, now they've been able to build skills and experience and should be able to get a developer job when they're done with us (may need to learn interview problems though).
- linuxray 9y agoyou did not mention something in this article. check again and re-post.
- sumedh 9y agoCan you be more specific?
- mnm1 9y agoThis 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 expecting them to know everything there is to know about your company just to apply (like providing a detailed cover letter) is downright insane. This is how companies with such an attitude problem attract "yes-people," suckups and other undesirables and miss out on real talent that isn't going to stand on its head just to get a chance at an interview. Likewise, as the article points out, this toxic attitude is just as bad at retaining employees as it is at getting them in the first place. What I'd like to see is the second part of this story. How these people then hired another 50 software engineers with actual talent in the bay area. Most companies I speak to have trouble finding one or two, let alone 50. And all because of an incredibly naive and stupid attitude of the company's execs. This is indeed a case where the founders should have been replaced with proper executives, though I'm not sure 'proper' executives would have made a better decision. As an aside, one shortcut to weeding out shitty companies is to simply filter out companies that say shit like, "we are on a mission to change the world." That's a guaranteed bad time.
- hkmurakami 9y agoAs 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.
- ratbr 9y agoIn 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.
- jsmo 9y agoI left a large tech company for very similar reasons.
- partycoder 9y agoBecause companies grow not only horizontally but vertically. Vertical structures create encapsulation of individuals and that leaves room to exploit information asymmetries. e.g: stealing credit, favoritism, etc... rigging the game to their favor. At the late stages of this game, people like this can get away with anything: hiring and promoting their friends, openly insulting people, just openly lie knowing nobody can do anything about it, etc.
- mc32 9y agoSiloes is a big reason good people leave; a somewhat corollary is people think that with experience at bigco and an alphabet soup of technologies they can take that to another co and impress. Some do impress but others have limited lateral experience and so don't fit very well into any place but at prev bigco. But, but, I have five years of experience in X at bigco Y.
- dba7dba 9y agoMy buddy told me a story of what he saw at his company. It was an interaction between a CFO and a new lead developer at a small tech/startup company that actually had been around quite a while. It went something like this. Dev: Can we get 2 21" monitors for developers? CFO: Why? Laptop LCD and that old 19" monitor seem to work together just fine. Dev: Yeah, but we can be more productive if each dev can get 2 x 21 inch monitors. CFO: Uhh, no. I get more year end bonus for every dollar I save for the company. So maybe we will revisit this later?
- RealityNow 9y agoThis 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).
- dleslie 9y agoAvoidance of power inversion is, IMHO, the greatest contributing factor to this state. Management have little to no incentive to assisting the upwards mobility of their subordinates as it is, but the social stigma of someday possibly answering to those you have authority over can drive individuals to undermine the aspirations of others.
- jmspring 9y agoA colleague at a former company asked his then manager about the track for promotions. Said manager basically laughed and said "if you got that promotion, then you'd be competing with me". This was a company that had bands that were lumped together for purposes of evaluation.
- dleslie 9y agoAFAICT, the best route to promotion is a transfer to a separate administrative unit altogether, and so avoid this situation; and the best route to a raise is to leave to another company. Relying on your loyalty to be rewarded is a fast track to being played for a sucker.
- omot 9y agoOmg this sounds exactly what happened at Uber.
- mrbill 9y agoWhen 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 made me consider leaving a job I'd had for 7+ years (at the time) simply because of who my manager was. Needless to say, about a year later when he called a meeting to announce that he was leaving for a competitor, my back popped as my shoulders un-tensed.
- kchoudhu 9y agoI had a manager like this. I scheduled a 1:1 with his boss. Half hour meeting, didn't tell my boss what we talked about beyond "a discussion about my career". My manager didn't even come up in the meeting. Instant improvement in manager's behavior. Assholes know they're assholes, and the appearance of connectedness (along with deliberate efforts to keep them off kilter) is usually enough to keep them in line.
- ThrustVectoring 9y agoOh, I like this. When your boss talks to his boss about the meeting, his boss doesn't have any specifics about him, which looks way scarier. If you brought up the manager, it'll more likely wind up looking like something manageable.
- kchoudhu 9y ago"Managing up" doesn't just involve sucking up. Your knife may be smaller than your boss's, but it's still a knife -- a lot of complaints about the modern workplace would disappear if more subordinates learned to use the tools at their disposal.
- jmspring 9y agoI 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.
- supergeek133 9y agoUgh. 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 (all of it is outsourced) which are quite outrageous. The costs are so high that they probably wash any revenue/profit from the partnership. You know what? I have access to one of our Azure subscriptions. I'll just do it myself guys, to hell with the consequences. Usually this results in noise later, but screw it, I made us money now versus incurring additional cost and made some money later.
- pmontra 9y agoThis is probably the right thing to do but... Do you realize how many people you're going to piss off because with reduced work and costs they don't get their share of the cake? Some of them might be in the management above you. I wish you good luck.
- supergeek133 9y agoHaven't been fired yet. :-) Thankfully I work for someone who thinks making money is more important than self-imposed rules that in most cases just slow us down.
- isaacremuant 9y agoIt won't be the first or the last time someone uses their own resources to jump start something while the bureaucracy does its thing. Problem is that, without that bureaucracy sometimes ,'defectors' as Bruce Schneier would call them, will take advantage of those systems and use them for their own personal gain. The "this is why we can't have nice things" rings true for a lot of things related to purchase, money, benefits, etc.
- supergeek133 9y agoVery true, but on paper everything relies on everyone not "being an asshole". Same is true for many of these processes that are put in place. Everyone just needs to remember once in awhile that we all work for the same place, and all want to make money.
- drawkbox 9y agoJust another revolution of the wheel of the infamous "How Software Companies Die"[1] which has this balancing note: "The environment that nurtures creative programmers kills management and marketing types - and vice versa." When a product innovation company turns to medium size, the process comes in with the executives and soon after innovation dies, but the product market value is realized and efficient. The problem comes if the leadership isn't repeating the cycle. A company can thrive if they stay innovative and invest in new products always though, most of those companies are engineer led because it leads to happy development/value-creation: Amazon, Google, Microsoft (except for the Ballmer era), Valve/Epic in the gaming industry etc. [1] http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/jokepg/joke_19970213_01.txt http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/jokepg/joke_19970213_01.txt
- watwut 9y agoGood management is fundamental to environment that nurtures creative programmers. Such environment does not appear out of nothing - it is result of a managers work.
- jcrben 9y agoIt's good that big companies do dumb stuff like this. Otherwise the world would be even more dominated by oligopolies. Hopefully they don't wise up.
- bastijn 9y agoI 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.
- RealityNow 9y ago"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.
- 9y ago
- iends 9y agoAt my current company we have an inverted, but similar problem. Startup A got bought by Company B. Company B doubles down on technology from Startup A, which ultimately leads to a big acquisition by private equity for the combined A/B. Private equity firm cuts out RSUs and focuses on eeking out high margins without raising salary compensation to offset changes. All the senior people from Startup A and a number of senior people from B all jump ship within 6 months.
- iamleppert 9y agoAfter years of working at a big tech company, I left primarily because there was no interesting work left to do, and the place had become very political. Another sign its time to leave: when the company starts doing "reorgs". Get out as soon as you can!
- known 9y agoGood people leave their Bad managers;
- krylon 9y agoMy first job after my training was at a really small company, about 10 employees plus the CEO/owner. And he was just like that CFO, too. The size of the company does not necessarily make a difference. Still, having done my training at a slightly Dilbert-esque multinational corporation, I made a point of working for small-ish companies since. Of course, small-ish companies bring their own share of problems, but all in all, I prefer that smaller companies tend to be less bureaucratic. And I like the personal touch - at one company (~15 people), the CEO/co-owner walked up to each employee every morning and greeted them, shaking their hand. He was in some aspects a fairly difficult boss, but that little gesture made up for most of the difficulty. The problem with a company treating employees like they were arbitrarily replaceable is that employees will treat the company the same way. If a company wants employees to identify with the company, to want to work at that specific company, it has to do better than that.
- erikb 9y agoI'm surprised that Steve is working for such a long time in the start-up industry and seemingly hasn't caught on that the in-company politics won't evolve, because the meta-company politics of the start-up world are already efficient. If you don't consider jobs and companies as something that should live longer than you, it's totally fine as it is. Switching jobs is not a big deal, if you have lots of new options and get paid well. When small start-ups get the next innovation loop better than the current set of big companies it's fine, because people still make money, just a set of different people. People who want to make money by working, still make money. People who want to make money by investing, still make money. New innovation really happens, no matter if the current people on top get it or not.
- ck425 9y agoThe company I work for at the moment has two values/myths that have worked really well at preventing situations like this. Early on, just before I joined at around the 150 person stage, the employees self organized values. One of these was Daytime is Precious. Interestingly it was applied equally to the idea of don't waste time (meetings etc) and to the idea that everyone has a life outside of work. The second was the idea that teams are anonymous, and decide themselves what they work on. In reality these are ignored at times when required. But they're so embedded in company culture that you need a pretty good reason to do so and more importantly most employees are comfortable challenging management when they do. I'm not sure how to replicate this but letting employees set the company values once you get to a certain size is likely a good call.
- andrey_utkin 9y ago> teams are anonymous, and decide themselves what they work on. Could you please elaborate how that worked technicall? Does that affect git log authorship metadata? What about discussions on company chat/maillist about the issues being worked on, are they also anonymous? Does this make tracking real contributions of individuals impossible?