
Why big companies fail to keep talent - vm
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2011/12/14/top-ten-reasons-why-large-companies-fail-to-keep-their-best-talent/
======
bhousel
VladRussian, if you're reading this, you've been hellbanned. You just
commented on this story an hour ago, so I figure maybe you'll pop back in here
and see my message.

You probably don't know me, but you are someone whose name I recognize, and
whose comments I've enjoyed over the past 2 or so years. Very sorry to see
this happen to you, and for no apparent reason that I can tell. Maybe you'll
get reinstated, or maybe you'll leave for greener pastures -- but either way
thanks for trying to make this place a little better.

~~~
VladRussian
thanks for letting me know, and i appreciate your kind words. When HN pages
started to load slow - "slowban" - i guess it was a "big T" for "time to go"
:) for me which i didn't recognize.

> for no apparent reason

When i downvoted several PG supporters and upvoted several opponents - zedshaw
and the likes - in the yesterday's "Trolls" thread it seems it was the last
drop :)

~~~
pg
Actually you got autobanned for including a link to a site that spammers had
been promoting in comments.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3350300>

Someone just sent me an email pointing out your account had been banned,
presumably by mistake, and I just unbanned it. Sorry about that.

~~~
VladRussian
Thank you. Sorry for the ban reasons guesswork in GP.

------
yummyfajitas
Another biggie is a failure to pay market rates for existing employees.

If you stay at a company, they will give you some fixed pay increase, perhaps
tied to your annual review. After a few years, your pay could get seriously
out of whack with the market.

Many companies have a policy of only fixing such problems after the employee
gets an external offer. Of course, by the time the employee gets the external
offer, they are pissed at their current employer about being underpaid, so
they leave.

tl;dr; pay your employees market rates, or plan for turnover of employees
experienced in your own practices.

~~~
stusmith1977
Oh boy that's a biggie here. Last year the raise given for "exceeds" was
around 1% - 3%. For comparison, inflation is running at about 5% in the UK, so
effectively if you work as hard as you can, you still get a pay cut.

Currently, I'm interviewing new hires who will be roughly a paygrade below me.
They will start with a 10% higher salary than my current.

Needless to say, I'm not a happy bunny. Sadly, there aren't that many software
companies here, so I can't easily move jobs.

------
InclinedPlane
A pretty decent list. In addition I'd add that company's often find it hard to
detect when they've changed in a way that drives away top talent. A company
can make a few boneheaded changes in a single year that has already caused all
of their top talent to irrevocably make the decision to leave. But it may take
months or years for them to follow through on that. And it may take years for
the impact of losing top talent to be felt. In the meantime the company could
still continue growing and even increasing its profits. It's only when the
company finds that it can no longer execute on new projects nearly as
effectively as it once did that it feels the impact of that lost talent.

------
thebrokencube
So here's a question I have been battling with for weeks. Some of these things
are definitely things that are wrong with the system, but how reasonable are
some of these other points? Like wanting to work on interesting projects,
wanting to work with smart people, etc. Is it selfish to want a lot of these
things? I quit my job a few weeks ago because of some of these reasons, and I
can't help but think that maybe sometimes you have to just live with some
stuff.

I guess what I'm asking is where is the line between being that guy who's
always fighting management and being a yes-man? And are all of these things
really actionable issues?

~~~
memset
One thing that has happened with me is, as I progress, my expectations about
what is reasonable have changed.

I used to get really unhappy about being asked to just "get a quick fix" out
the door. At my next job, I wasn't nearly as internally angsty about this,
given that there is a tradeoff between what the business needs ("this bug
needs to be fixed now so that merchandise can arrive by Christmas") and core
engineering.

I often wonder, then, if my previous position would have been less stressful
to me had I a different expectation about the tradeoff between engineering-vs-
business needs. To me, working with smart people was something I wouldn't
compromise on. But doing non-interesting bugfixes? Less of an issue than it
was previously.

------
rickmb
Let's not pretend this only happens in "big" companies. Any company who's
headcount grows to more than five tends to make the same mistakes _especially_
if they're run by inexperienced start-up entrepreneurs.

------
jrockway
I don't really agree with any of these things. I'll go over them point by
point and then add my reasons.

First is the issue of bureaucracy. This doesn't matter to me; it's hard to get
individuals to do things, and it's hard to get big corporations to do things.
If you want something done, do it yourself. Remember, the same bureaucracy
that won't upgrade your Linux kernel is the same one that would be in charge
of punishing you for doing it yourself. So don't fear the consequences of
actions; if something feels right, just do it. (The one procedure that we can
get our sysadmins to do here is to reboot a machine. So we have a "firewall
rules" script, writable by developers, that is run from rc.local. If we really
need some package installed, we do it from that script and then request a
reboot. Against "change control policy"? Probably. Do I care? No.)

Next is having good projects. I suppose this matters for some people, but at
the end of the day, I find pretty much everything programming-related
interesting. If someone wants me to manually edit a billion records, or
something, that's simply not going to happen, so nobody asks. You can't be
afraid to push back if someone wants you to do something that you'll hate
doing. Nobody wants you to hate your job, after all.

Performance reviews are always stupid. I've never seen the point of them. The
people doing the reviews don't know how to program and don't take input from
programmers, so the review boil down to random guessing. Which is fine,
because a good review gets you no raise, and a bad review gets you no raise.
It's just a big waste of time. (I get "meets expectations" every year, because
they can only give out one "exceeds expectations". I mostly find it hilarious
because I'm consistently in the top of the list of edits to our company-wide
source repository. If being the top 10 in a 75,000 person organization is
"meeting expectations", the expectations are a little high, I'd say. But
that's OK, because management doesn't even know what edits or source control
is.)

Strategic priorities are amusing. A bunch of people that know nothing about
business or software will make lists of important-sounding things. The reason
you are considered "top talent" is because you know this is bullshit. Ignore
the todo list and work on what you think is important. (Same goes for the next
point, being told how to do your job. If your management can't do the job, how
can they check that you are doing it their way? They can't. So do things
right.)

"Top talent likes top talent." That I can agree with. I know people can't be
fired from big companies, but I wish they could be indefinitely suspended with
pay. ("We'll pay you to STOP CHECKING IN CODE.") Then the three people with a
clue wouldn't have to waste their time reverting the mistakes of the people
trying hard for a good performance review.

The next three things boil down to how management works at big companies. If
you are a really amazing programmer, they're not going to make you a manager.
That's because they need programmers, not managers. So managers end up being
blown-up programmers with enough people skills to get promoted. That means
they make decisions with people skills rather than with programming skills. In
order to get buy in, you have to "play the game", that is: don't treat it like
your glibc mailing list, treat it like you're trying to get someone to date
you. Be nice, say how your idea will unify teams, etc. People that can't
understand details don't want them. Play to their people skills side, and
everything will work our for the best. "I heard about this project and
implemented it over the weekend" also works.

Anyway, I think the biggest problem is work environment and pay. I can get a
50% raise if I quit and go somewhere else. I can get a 2.5% raise and 20%
bonus if I stay. The economics tell me to leave. You can't beat the economy.
Same goes for work environment. I don't really believe that a top 5
corporation can't afford a 30" monitor for me. Stop lying and buy me the shit
I need to get my job done. (The reason they don't want to buy people expensive
equipment is because most people don't do any work. If those people see the
three good programmers with bigger monitors, they'll want them too, just to
feel good about their dick size. This goes back to the problem of not being
able to do performance reviews properly.)

~~~
BenSS
I'm guessing that you haven't worked at a place where it can take months to
get a single line change implemented in production. This kills creators with
the huge lag time between fix and implementation. I won't even go into meeting
abuse.

~~~
jrockway
Yeah, you've got to get those rules changed. It seems to be popular around
here to call everything an "emergency fix".

(But the rules are changing. Right now, I only have to click one button to
deploy to production, and it requires no manager sign-off. We hired a new CTO
and that was the result :)

~~~
absconditus
Obviously your employer sucks at bureaucracy. My employer has a "project and
quality management system" (PQMS). Basically we have a group that sits around
and thinks up more useless things that we could be documenting. Some
documentation that they wanted last week is not good enough this week.

We have "phase reviews" before anything is released, no matter how minor. A
"phase review" is essentially a long meeting with a dozen or more people
(including one or more people from development) where the PQMS people bicker
about the wording of something but no one cares that the thing does not work
well. Then half a dozen people have to sign the documentation.

At the end of each sprint (we do something that we call Agile but is actually
its antithesis) developers have to sign off on their peer reviews, which have
been printed out. QA people have to create several documents (this seems to be
QA's main function) and sign them and then everything is signed by multiple
managers who know very little about what went on. We also have daily "stand-
up" meetings that all development and QA people must attend. These meetings
usually last 15-30 minutes but can last an hour or more. Before each sprint we
have a "design review" meeting where people who know nothing about software
development try to create user stories in our ticket system while everyone
watches. A few days later we have a retrospective meeting and then we do
sprint planning where we watch the same people who created the user stories
try to enter sub-tasks for developers. Most of these meetings must be
documented and of course people must sign the documents.

There is also a large repository of documents which supposedly describe every
process that we use. These documents are of course inaccurate and rarely
useful. A few of them are updated each week and everyone is required to read
the updates.

No one, other than top executives who do not care, has any real power to
dispute any new policies that PQMS creates. I should also mention that the
people in the PQMS group have no understanding of software development.

~~~
narag
Your company surely makes a ton of money. Otherwise it would burn to the
ground in mere weeks. The story you're telling sounds terribly expensive.

~~~
jrockway
BofA has all these dumb processes, and as a result, the stock market values
the company at less than the total of its assets. CEOs do not make the
connection between stupid policies and utter financial failure. "More
policies," they say, until one day, the company is gone.

------
wyclif
I boil the reasons why down to two primary issues:

1\. Failure to offer competitive pay. 2\. Failure to provide a great work
environment

~~~
jonnathanson
True, but those are further reducible to: failure to understand the nature of
employees.

Companies that look at their employees as "resources" (read: commodities) will
not see the value in competitive pay, a good work environment, or anything
else on the article's list. It all stems from a fundamental misunderstanding
of the role of talent in an organization.

Something tech companies have grokked for awhile, which a lot of other
industries really haven't, is that human resources is a _strategic_ discipline
when it's done correctly. Good HR strategy recognizes that employees/talent
are the lifeblood of the company, and that the loss of great ones is as
potentially catastrophic as the loss of millions of dollars. When an employee
who's capable of generating millions of dollars' worth of innovation,
technology, productivity, insight, and opportunity to a firm leaves the firm,
the total opportunity cost of his or her departure is precisely those millions
of dollars.

More employers should endeavor to understand that equation.

------
Poiesis
"However, [big company bureaucracy is] usually a reason that masks the real
reason. No one likes rules that make no sense. But, when top talent is
complaining along these lines, it’s usually a sign that they didn’t feel as if
they had a say in these rules."

Well, no, not really. This strikes me as patronizing, as if they're saying,
"those silly employees _say_ they mean X, but they _really_ mean Y." Well, no,
I mean X. When I say I don't like bureaucracy, it's not because I can't get
along with rules I didn't have a hand in. I can deal with other people's
rules. Big companies have certain disadvantages in communication and
coordination, and things like rules and processes and standards can help. I
totally get that.

But what I keep seeing is that nobody's looking at what the rules are trying
to accomplish and trying to make it easier to follow them. You want every
change to be accompanied by a requirement or bug reference? Great--not a bad
idea; make it dead simple to do. I remember filling out _paper forms_ for code
review documentation as recently as a few years ago. That's just silly. Code
reviews aren't bad, but paper forms?

There's hundreds of little friction points that add up, though. The ubiquitous
second/large monitor. Stock machines with slow, small drives and RAM. More and
more network resources moved offsite, accessed via a slowish WAN. Limits on
email storage, and auto-deletion. Limitations on what software you can
install. It goes on and on, down to the breakroom amenities, office supplies,
and so on.

Every little (needless) obstacle between me and the work getting done just
pushes me closer to the door. Any difficult work is going to have obstacles,
sure. But why make more?

------
cramaswamy
One additional challenge for large companies is the dilution of all actions
due to the multiple layers. Many companies including Yahoo/GE have initiatives
at the highest level that are aimed at correcting the issues highlighted, but
the vision and the message gets completely diluted by the time the first line
managers act on it. This dilution has to be stopped first for successful
implementation of any retention initiatives.

------
superrad
Perhaps big companies are around long enough for people (talented or not) to
grow older until their priorities have changed enough to no longer fit within
the company.

Unless you're in quite a large amount of control of a company's direction,
it's likely after enough time (if you're talented) you'll want to move on to
working on something that is outside the scope of that company's focus.

------
VladRussian
the longer talent stays in (kept in) the less of a talent it becomes. Been
there myself and when interviewing people who've been long term with a big
company, it is very noticeable how one sided their experience and thinking is.
Changing jobs once in at least a couple of years keeps your mind open and up-
to-date for the current technological developments.

Following the Adams logic of the opportunity costs, all these "stupid boss,
performance review, process" reasons are there to help you to not get
comfortable, to help you by providing a motivational nudge to make a move.

------
dustingetz
i don't think they're failing anything. most big companies don't need or want
superstar. those big companies who do, don't have these problems.

"bigco isn't willing to pay for [superstars] -- they are executing an
established business model quite effectively without superstars, and it makes
sense to continue to do that while its economically feasible."[0]

[0] [http://www.dustingetz.com/the-unnecessity-of-superstar-
middl...](http://www.dustingetz.com/the-unnecessity-of-superstar-middle-
management-in-bigcos)

------
orthecreedence
My biggest thing when working at AOL was no upward mobility. If I wanted to
manage developers, literally 70-80% of my time would be sucked into the ether
with meetings and product reviews. There is so much management overhead there
that it's a nightmare to actually get anything done. Once you manage even just
one person, you're going to have no time left to do what you actually like
(and are probably good at): programming.

So why not go to a smaller company where people listen to your ideas _and_
you're able to do what you love and make a difference? I think the thing
people want the most is to know that they're making a difference. This is
nearly impossible at a large company.

------
chrisbennet
I think that top developers may be like explorers - once the frontier is
settled, its time to explore further afield. It's not that the settlers aren't
nice, it's just not exploring.

------
tomkarlo
Do big companies really fail to keep talent? Yes, talented people leave. And
in particular, attention-seeking, talented people leave. But I've also met
lots of very talented engineers within large companies that have been there
5-10 years or more. And I've been at startups where the talent was running out
the door like the place was on fire.

The article fails to support the theory that big companies are any worse at
retaining top talent than companies in general. Not surprisingly, people who
are highly talented tend to be in more demand, they tend to get more offers,
and they tend to have more mobility between jobs. When they want to move (for
whatever reason - personal, boredom, etc) - they can.

There are a number of good tech companies that recognize this and make sure
that if a valued employee is leaving, they leave on good terms and it's made
clear they can come back later if they want to. That makes a lot more sense
than trying to figure out how to prevent talented people from ever leaving.

------
teyc
I think the author is making assertions based on dubious assumptions:

    
    
       Whether it’s a high-profile tech company like
       Yahoo!, or a more established conglomerate like
       GE or Home Depot, large companies have a hard time
       keeping their best and brightest in house. Recently,
       GigaOM discussed the troubles at Yahoo! with a flat stock 
       price, vested options for some of their best people, and 
       the apparent free flow of VC dollars luring away some of 
       their best people to do the start-up thing again.
    

Firstly, these companies are in trouble. It doesn't matter whether it is a big
company or small. Financial troubles tend to lead to cuts in headcount.

Places such as DuPont have a lot of long term scientists. They offer the best
unprecedented freedom as well as a lot of facilities and support. In startups,
a worker has to wear many hats, and not all wish to do that.

------
danko
Good list -- I think it hits the essentials.

Most of these issues can be traced to a single cause, which is that as
companies grow, there's a growing 'diffusion of responsibility' effect that
takes place in terms of people's responsibilities towards one-another. Bosses
and managers are clustered and have an ever-changing set of direct reports,
ergo they see the responsibility of engaging and keeping talented people as a
'company' problem and not their problem. Similarly, talented people see the
company as an uncaring monolith, and not a set of individuals that can help
them get to where they want to be.

In the end, there is no 'company', there are only the individuals that compose
that company. Their decisions make things happen. The less agency you give
those individuals (or perceive those individuals to have), the harder it's
going to be to keep the most talented around.

------
njhwang
Overall, the article generally reeks of employees that are too
lazy/complacent/comfortable to pull out the big guns and aim for what they
want in a big company. Obviously if you've had your big guns out for
months/years and you still feel ungratified, then yeah, probably time for a
change.

There are my initial reactions to all the points.

1) Bureaucracy getting you down? Tear down/bypass useless red tape.

2) Can't find an interesting project? I'm sure there are hundreds of
interesting teams nation/worldwide you haven't met yet.

3) Poor annual performance reviews? Learn the system and work it, even if you
have to play kiss up every now and then to important people. It's your money
in your bank, after all.

4) No discussion around career development? No lead is going to turn you away
if you go into his or her office and ask for it.

5) Feeling jerked around? Stand your ground and don't be a yes-man (or woman).

6) No one holding you accountable? Call for your own brainstorming sessions
and peer reviews.

7) Can't find smart people? See note above about finding an interesting
project.

8) Don't understand your company's vision? Either take ownership and try to
influence it if it's that important to you, or keep your head down and keep
doing awesome work.

9) Encountering closed-minded imbeciles? See note above about getting jerked
around.

10) Don't like your boss? See note above about finding an interesting project.

The reason why I generally dislike working at my big company (wonder if
they'll see this!) simply boils down to a lack of challenge. Not intending to
come off as arrogant, but if I can dedicate 20% of my brainpower and
consistently get rave reviews from everyone around me, something is seriously
wrong with the picture. So I generally wait until the last minute, code
sprint, say "check please," and go home and do something more interesting with
my life.

~~~
davros
_The reason why I generally dislike working at my big company (wonder if
they'll see this!) simply boils down to a lack of challenge_ To me this
encapsulates the problem we're talking about. The fact that you're coasting
and not challenged is exactly the problem. You sound smart and energetic, but
the system has still got you down by failing to enable you to find challenges
that would benefit the company. Fighting an entrenched bureaucratic culture is
a lot harder than you might think (I've spent plenty of time recently doing
this!).

------
sambeau
This can be summed up with the words 'middle managers'.

Middle managers are like giant herbivores who multiply like crazy. You need to
cull them once in a while or they will eat the whole place.

------
Autre
The interesting thing here is: why do big companies don't need to keep their
talents? Does bureaucracy compensate for lack of talent? And vice versa? Does
this also mean that you can innovate without talent?

~~~
dustingetz
big companies exist to execute a well known business model. they invest in
lobbyists to keep the business climate stable so they continue to execute
their business model. it usually makes more sense to outsource innovation --
e.g., invest in and acquire startups.

------
neduma
Why nobody mentioned 'Netflix culture' - That seems to ideal to me.

<http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664>

------
zalew
offtopic: does forbes page look to you like this
<http://i.imgur.com/8ZF4S.png>? soemething is wrong...

------
CPlatypus
Most of the reasons are good, but how can anyone keep a straight face while
they present changing strategic priorities as a big-company problem? Don't
startups do 90-degree "pivots" of the entire darn company just as often? The
ten startups I've been in all got jerked around far more than the two big
companies, and I get the impression this is even more true in today's startup
culture.

~~~
kuviaq
I think the issue around this is in big companies you rarely see the reasons
for the shift in priorities. At least this has been true in my experience.
When priorities shifted in my last job all we got in explanation was some
buzzwords and a 'trust me'. At my current startup job, when priorities change
I get all the information that lead to the decision, and can also participate
in making the decision.

------
darwindeeds
I actual wish I could send this link to my Boss.. Spot on!!!

------
mason55
As someone who just left a big company for a startup I think 8/10 of these
things apply to me. I'm half-tempted to email this to my old boss.

------
jarjoura
Wow, this list is pretty spot on, can't really think of anything else to add
to it.

