

17% leave their job due to insufficient recognition - jsatok
http://blog.rypple.com/2010/11/17-leave-their-job-due-to-insufficient-recognition/

======
Construct
17% may leave their job, but I'm sure many more simply stay put without truly
being engaged, all the while collecting a paycheck.

Recognition arbitrage, employees claiming credit for the work of others, by
corporate-climber types is probably to blame in many cases. From my
experience, credit usually goes to whoever delivers the results or the news
first. Smart corporate climbers will go to great lengths to be the first to
take credit for new ideas or inventions within a company, and they will work
hard to maintain a high profile.

I've tried to do a modest amount of self-promotion to stay visible within my
companies after a few very bad experiences early in my career. Just as
importantly, I try to go out of my way to call out another person's
accomplishments whenever I get an opportunity.

A company that fails to recognize valuable people isn't likely to succeed.
When self-aggrandizing people are promoted faster than the get-it-done types,
I take it as a red flag that management has no clue how things are actually
done within the company. Companies who instead go out of their way to
recognize valuable team members and promote those who work hard will end up
with competent and motivated management. Now if only I had identified this
pattern earlier in my career I could have avoided some train-wreck companies.

~~~
AgentConundrum
It's not only corporate-climber types stealing credit though, it really can be
just a complete failure to understand worker motivations.

At my last job, I was part of a major migration project that had taken
something like three or four years total (I was only with them for the last
two years). Because the project had come in so late and so overbudget, the
powers that be set a seemingly arbitrary go-live date and told us to just get
it done.

We all worked long hours for a long time to get this done, and when it finally
went live we were told they wanted to take the team out for a celebration.
That later morphed into "well, everyone else on the project (meaning client
project, not my migration team) had to learn the new system too, so we should
take _everyone_ out to celebrate everyone!" completely minimizing just how
much my team had done, since we had not only learn and adapt like everyone
else had, but we learned it first and had to _teach it_ to everyone else.

That celebration, btw, never ended up happening. Instead, there was an
announcement at around the same time saying there would be no raises across
the entire (10,000 person) company.

I got fed up and left (read: snapped and was fired) a few months later, but I
heard from a friend that they had the same announcement this year ("no
raises") on the same day that the company sent out an email saying "you should
watch the Indy 500 this year, since we spent an assload to sponsor it".

That ended up as much more of a self-entitled rant than it was intended to be,
but I think my underlying point still shines through.

~~~
lotusleaf1987
Just curious, but do you care to elaborate on the snapping incident. I have
come close to "snapping" myself so to speak, so I'm curious what exactly
happened.

~~~
AgentConundrum
It paints me in a bad light, I know, but sure... why not?

For background, suffice it to say that the manager in this story, who was my
boss at all times except my time with the migration project I mentioned, was
not well liked, and for good reason. This is a man who micromanaged absolutely
everyone and everything, was insulting (called me and my "whole generation" -
I was 23 at the time - a bunch of slackers, told me I was "getting too big for
my britches" when I made a fairly innocuous suggestion, and repeatedly talked
about other employees behind their backs), and seemed to only care about
making himself look good.

Anyway, my firing:

I had been working on a fairly high profile assignment, lots of pressure, etc.
and had worked on my own time until 4am the previous day. I was running on
maybe 3 hours of sleep, so I was more on edge than usual. I mentioned this
extra work to the boss, and asked if I could go home at 4pm that day (1.5hr
early). Anyway, the day progresses and I was finally able to finish my tests,
get peer reviews done (a story unto itself), and passed my work off to be
installed my the clients production control team right at 4pm, so I had to
wait to confirm they hadn't screwed up the install - a very real concern, btw.

Anyway, around 4:30 the boss calls, asking me about a "post-implementation
review" (something was installed and had run for the first time, so the
programmer needs to confirm initial results) that I was supposed to do a few
days earlier. Genuine mea culpa here, as I had just plain forgotten about it
and didn't realize it was even installed yet, and had been distracted by the
"OMG GET IT DONE NOW" assignment being installed in this story.

He told me that since I was "overbudget" (I had logged about 54 hours on a 50
hour estimate), I was not to charge any more time to that ticket. This
essentially means "work for free." He also told me to have it done by 9am the
next morning, so my choice was either stay late or come in early and work, so
I told him since I was already staying late waiting for prod control, I'd do
it right then.

So, my install was completed a few minutes later, so I spent 10-20 minutes
confirming the install before starting the requested post-implementation
review. This review, btw, was estimated as an hour of work, for good reason. I
had to go through a week or so of production runs to try to find data that had
actually ran through the logic I changed.

I hadn't actually found any runs through my changes by 5:30, when the boss
left for the day. He stopped by my desk on the way out, and "joked"

> What are you still doing here? Didn't you ask to leave early today?

I explained, calmly at first but steadily angering, that I had wanted to leave
early but since he had told me to get this thing done by the morning, not to
charge time for it, etc. I was stuck here. He told me to just go home and do
it in the morning, but I explained that if I have to work extra hours for
free, I should do it at night so I don't fuck up my billable hours for the
next day and be forced to stay late to make that day balance.

There was a bit of back and forth, but I ended up visibly angry and yelling a
bit. He told me, forcefully, "go home."

I left, choosing to take the stairs to try to burn off steam, but the anger
overflowed and I yelled "Stupid fucking piece of shit job" about a floor and a
half down.

I went home, beat the shit out of a couch pillow, and broke down crying.

The next day, I went in and started to work on that same post-implementation
review, and the boss came over and took me to a conference room. My new
project manager, first day on the job, was there already. They told me I was
suspended for three days, and they took my badge, etc.

On my way out, I passed my HR rep, which made me think she was supposed to be
there for the meeting, but who knows. I went home and wrote my side of the
story to that same HR manager. I got a response that afternoon (around 5pm)
thanking me for my side, and giving me a formal letter of suspension.

I heard reports from a friend that my phone was disconnected around 2pm that
day, so clearly I was fired before I got the letter of "suspension." This was
even confirmed by another friend who talked to a guy in IT who said that same
HR woman called them to _terminate_ my accounts around 2pm the day I was
suspended. She apparently called back a few minutes after it was done,
panicking, saying she had only meant to suspend me. I still think I was
accidentally fired, then actually fired to cover for it.

Anyway, that's the story. AMA.

~~~
lotusleaf1987
At least you're honest, I honestly think bad managers and bad working
environments have a way of breaking even the best individuals. At a certain
point everyone snaps or breaks.

~~~
AgentConundrum
Yeah, I definitely have to take my portion of the blame (I wasn't exactly a
model employee, at least when I was working for that manager), but I really do
think that manager and the environment he cultivated really affected me. I had
actually been on a couple of two-week stress leaves about six months prior to
my leaving the company.

I used to dream about leaving that job, and I guess I just finally reacted in
a way that got me out of it, even if it wasn't ideal. After I lost the job, my
girlfriend explained that "for as much as you bitched about that job, you were
never actually going to quit." and she was absolutely right. The fear of
quitting and having to find a new job was too much for me.

I've been out of a job for a bit more than a year now. I see ads all the time
that maybe I could do, but I don't always apply because I don't feel qualified
for them. It's really starting to get to me.

~~~
tjarratt
You should probably ask yourself why you're avoiding applying for these jobs
you mentioned. If it's because of rejection, well there are a lot of people on
here that will tell you better than I can that you shouldn't be afraid of
being rejected.

I had the same problem for a while, until I realized that the worst that could
happen is either you get no response, or they will tell you "thanks but no
thanks". If you do get an interview, then that is an opportunity to meet
interesting people, and possibly learn something.

The key here is approaching interviews less as a time for some people you
don't know to judge you and more as an opportunity for you and some other
people to learn about each other. You can learn an awful lot about business,
the market, people's technical and non-technical problems, if you make an
effort to go on interviews. You may even learn something about yourself, or
have a brilliant idea for a project.

Besides, "unqualified" isn't the right word at all. It's more accurate to say
that you have a different skill set (based on your horrible migration story) -
and skill sets are easy to change, given time and motivation.

~~~
AgentConundrum
_You should probably ask yourself why you're avoiding applying for these jobs
you mentioned._

Simple. I'm tired of spending an hour on a cover letter, tailoring my resume,
looking up contacts at the company, etc. only for all my work to be piped
directly to /dev/null.

When I first lost my job, I sent out a bunch of resumes to places hiring for
jobs I wanted to do. A .Net developer here, a Java developer there. I never
heard back from anything I wanted.

I gave up and applied for a job similar to my last one, and got an offer. They
ended up not getting the contract, and I was left with the bill for calling
their number across the country for the technical interview, and the bill for
a scanner/printer (didn't have one then) that I needed to sign and send back
the offer.

I went through a series of phone interviews about a month ago for a junior QA
position. After three weeks and three phone interviews with HR, a technical
interviewer, and a manager, I got a message from noreply@company.com with a
PFO form letter.

I still send resumes to things, but I generally limit that to jobs explicitly
marked "entry level" that rarely come in.

If you know anyone hiring in Canada (I'm living 500km from "home" right now,
so I don't much care where in Canada) for an entry level position, let me
know. I'll work my ass off to get up to speed, I'll work long hours, whatever
it takes.

------
devmonk
My guess is that when some chose "insufficient recognition", a possible reason
was that someone else was taking that recognition. Having a site that allows
people to recognize others for their achievements could just as easily
compound the issue. For example:

Susan wants a new application, so Jim tells Bob to write it. When the
application is complete, Jim shows it to Susan, and Susan praises Jim rather
than Bob, because as far as she is concerned, Jim made it happen. Yet, Jim did
little more than tell Bob to do it and show the result to Susan. If
recognition requires little work, Susan will praise Jim more often (if she is
not aware of Bob, or chooses not to recognize him). If Bob sees this praise of
Jim by Susan for his work enough times, he may leave the company one day
citing "insufficient recognition", when, in fact, more recognition was being
given, albeit to the wrong person.

~~~
sokoloff
I hear a common theme that I've seen among tech folks (and probably a theme
that I subscribed to early in my career).

If Jim "made it happen", he has actually earned some of that praise. As a good
manager, his very next step should be to transmit and amplify that praise so
that Bob also can bask in it, but also to educate/remind Susan that Jim has an
entire team that is delivering behind the scenes. It's quite effective to
accomplish both of those in one communication (when praise is in email form),
by forwarding on to Bob, cc'ing Susan, adding his own praise and reminding
Susan (in the clear) that Bob is the one who actually did the programming.

I don't believe that there's some natural conservation of credit/recognition.
By sharing as above, Jim doesn't reduce his standing in Susan's eyes, because
from her point of view, it's still Jim that "made it happen" and he's being
gracious in recognizing his team. Bob now sees the praise that he's earned,
may realize that Jim probably added some value along the way, and even if Bob
is hardcore "only coding matters", at least Jim has set the record straight.

When done even halfway well, I don't think that pattern results in employees
leaving over recognition.

~~~
pbourke

       I don't believe that there's some natural conservation of credit/recognition.
    

I think this would be a function of the promotion/performance evaluation
process and general company culture.

------
notahacker
Does "insufficient recognition" as a reason for leaving a job mean simply not
getting praise, or does it mean employees not getting the changes to their
responsibilities, workload or perks that reflects what they feel their
strengths and contributions are? Praise is all well and good but no amount of
"good job" and wizard clipart is going to make up for the feeling of being
stuck in a silo and/or burdened mainly with the stuff other people don't want
to do.

~~~
nollidge
This. I have left jobs because "recognition" meant decent raises and praise,
and then being assigned to rewrite shitty applications without the opportunity
to redesign them.

Now, to be fair, I probably had enough clout (and they probably had enough
sense) to make noise and get myself reassigned, but at that point I started
looking elsewhere, and found something new to try. But I didn't start looking
until I perceived my needs being neglected.

------
d4ft
This phenomena was described to a t in Dan Ariely's The Upside of
Irrationality. In it, he first describes a situation in which one would be
paid a high salary (I think a million dollars) for creating power points that
were immediately deleted. He asserts that most people would not be able to
handle the job. To test, he does some interesting experiments wherein students
are paid for assembling simple lego figures. If the figures were then
disassembled in view of the student immediately after their completion,
students on average, constructed far fewer figures. Worth a read.

~~~
GFischer
If you're heavily in debt, you would stay. I know - I'm in a job that's not
quite as bad as that, but it's far from rewarding, and extremely political,
with other people taking the praise and few willing to do what's needed.

I would quit, but I have to work off my debt first.

The environment is not doing me good - I'm slacking off (like here at HN),
working worse and feeling tired and burned out even when doing little actual
work.

~~~
airfoil
Why not try and find another job? In your situation I'd even make a lateral
move to something I enjoyed.

Ultimately your current attitude will catch up with you could set your career
back. Getting labeled as a slacker could result in you getting crappy projects
where you can't grow professionally and personally. You'll become even more
bitter/jaded and eventually hit a death spiral. Crappy projects <=> more
bitter and jaded. It's very tough to get out of this death spiral once you're
in it....

~~~
GFischer
Thank you for your advice. I thought about that. I'm trying to get out in
another way - I'm starting a Master's (MBA) :) and reducing my debt at the
same time.

The thing is, here in Uruguay job security is king - if you switch jobs you're
a kind of pariah for a couple of years (OTOH if I get fired it's like winning
the lottery, about 6 to 8 salaries plus benefits plus 6 months unemployment
which for my sector is very good).

So I have to endure another 2 years while I do the MBA - and it's very likely
that I'll get a significantly better job offer while I'm doing the MBA due to
connections - I'll try to network heavily on the MBA, it's my number one goal
from it.

Ironically I haven't been labeled a slacker (and I used to be a top student
and respected worker) - my boss is too incompetent to even realize I'm
slacking. My projects can't get any crappier though (ever heard of
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forte_4GL> ? Not a marketable skill ).

I hope to either get into a project management / CTO position, or start my own
company.

~~~
airfoil
Interesting. Best of luck!

------
alexophile
I think "Insufficient Recognition" translates into a lot of different things -
overly competitive internal structure, poor lines of communication, ill-
defined job descriptions, etc.

For example, I work at a company with ~50k people. My immediate boss is the
"Sales Executive" for our division and, as such, is charged with establishing
sales goals by region for our national sales force. Usually, he makes them up.
When he realized that I was kind of a data geek, he decided to bump that
responsibility to me (at this point I had been here less than a month.)

I did what I could with incomplete information and sent him a huge spreadsheet
annotated with problems I expected him to correct based on an in-depth
understanding of the situation. Turns out he doesn't really know how to use
excel.

Long story short, my painstaking work to come up with rough numbers is passed
off as somebody else's work to come up with great numbers (they weren't great
numbers.)

This conveys a few things: A) My boss is fine taking credit for my work - this
is obviously a problem; B) Nobody really noticed that my numbers were really
bad - this is a bigger problem.

In an exit interview, this would be easy to categorize as "insufficient
recognition," but the real problem is "nobody has any idea what the hell is
going on and I'm getting off this boat before somebody puts my name on it."

------
RBr
Recognition is a function of management. If a manager is truly engaged in the
day-to-day activities of a team, that manager can (and will) naturally
recognize work properly.

The problem however is that for whatever reason, management isn't as effective
as it should be. A function of time, burn out, or simple inadequacies, if
people are leaving a job because they aren't recognized, chances are good that
they would also say their manager wasn't very good at his or her job.

~~~
lancewiggs
It's something we all need to do - not just "management." A great company
culture will, almost as a byproduct, see people genuinely complementing each
other on great work, and supporting each other to do even better work. There
is no us and them.

~~~
bmj
This is something my employer has instituted--any employee has the ability to
call out another employee for a job well done.

This is on top of an employee of the month program. Upper management takes
this program very seriously (the award is a reasonable bonus, plus the winners
for the year are given the opportunity to win an expenses-paid weekend
vacation. This program is driven by employees as well--upper management cannot
vote.

I'm not particularly driven by this sort of recognition, but it is comforting
to know that folks genuinely want to reward others for a job well-done.

~~~
j_baker
"any employee has the ability to call out another employee for a job well
done"

Erm... why do you need management's blessing for this in the first place?

~~~
bmj
Because management provides a monetary award with such recognition.

------
Encosia
In my experience, people that feel chronically under-appreciated are also bad
at self-promotion, and would be more appreciated if all of their contributions
were actually known. Especially when you go above and beyond (the sort of
thing you most want recognition for), it's often a proactive effort that may
not have an obvious cause-effect benefit that's visible to anyone outside the
situation.

~~~
gchucky
I'm trying to wrap my head around your comment. How would one self-promote
without coming off as arrogant or obnoxious? (And I'm not asking this
snarkily; I'm genuinely curious.)

~~~
Encosia
There's definitely a fine line to walk. However, it's not arrogant to keep
whoever you report to apprised of what you're doing, why it matters to the
business, and how you're accomplishing those things. Definitely no need to be
a gloryhound or grandstand, but there's a lot of middle ground between
arrogance and not taking credit for what you do.

Maybe self-promotion wasn't a good choice of words on my part. Effective
professional communication might be a better way to put it.

------
TedBlosser
I was on a sales team of ~12 enterprise engineers and account managers that
was always a top performing region in our operation. I think this was due to
the fact that our boss consistently recognized team members publicly (in group
emails or voicemails) almost on a daily basis. It made me want to work harder
for him every day. Still the best boss I've had.

------
poet
Another (frankly more likely) possibility is that people think they deserve
more recognition than they actually do. This post is based on the premise that
it is the employer's fault and that doesn't necessarily follow.

~~~
dpritchett
I imagine it's more common to be underutilized or misapplied. Humans tend to
grow and change much faster than their corporate job descriptions can keep up
with. There's always a mismatch, it's just a question of whether or not the
key players acknowledge it - and of how much indulgence is afforded to the
employee in terms of personal growth that may not perfectly align with current
business objectives.

~~~
dpritchett
Google apparently has a system in place for enabling this truest form of
employee engagement:

 _Google has set up an environment that makes it pretty easy for people to
transfer between groups, and even between sites. You have to be a grown-up
about it, of course, and not ditch your team during some critical crunch time.
But provided you exercise mature judgment in the matter, you can pretty much
switch teams whenever you want, and it doesn't cause the company to grind to a
halt, as such a policy would at other places I've worked or visited._

<http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rhino-on-rails.html>

~~~
christkv
Does that not assume that somebody else is switching with you. What if you got
a sucky group and nobody wants to switch ?

------
jswinghammer
Speaking for myself at least I think that when I had a better opportunity I
filled in reasons for leaving that made me feel more justified about my
decision. You can extend the recognition reason pretty far if you're looking
for reasons to dislike your current job.

For example: "I'm recognized on my team but what about the company at large"?
or "Everyone at the company knows I'm great but our customers don't know me."

------
joezydeco
Peggy Olson: "You never say thank you!"

Don Draper: _"That's what the money is for!"_

~~~
derefr
The more I read Economics blogs, the more I get a sense that this is actually
the right thing to do. Don't give your employees perks; just turn every perk
into a dollar in their pocket, and be very flexible to how they use the money.
If _they_ want to use part of their paycheck to buy a dual-monitor setup, let
them (in fact, just give them an empty desk and $2000 and tell them to buy
their own workstation.) If _they_ want to pay their boss to thank them when
they do good work, let them. If they want to buy a foosball table for the
break room, let them set up a WePay arrangement with the other employees to
get one. Otherwise, if they don't care about those things, let them remain
dollars, rather than being unappreciated sunk costs.

------
jacobroufa
This isn't just a facet of the tech scene but jobs all over. I left my
restaurant job for this very reason. I gave my managers ample opportunity to
tell me where I needed improvement and give constructive criticism. Yet they
continued to mess with my hours and not give reason, hiring more people
instead of giving the hours to people who needed them. My managers would
rather stay non-confrontational, not recognizing that confrontation isn't
necessarily a bad thing but a way to improve relationships between coworkers
and employees as well as improving quality across the board. It was this lack
of communication that drove me away.

It was a tough decision for me, because I not only left the job but a steady
paycheck. While the check may have been smaller than I'd have liked (or
needed) there's something to be said for reliability. Being a contract dev has
given me much more freedom and the ability to write my own paycheck, but it's
definitely not easy. Some days I'd much rather be working for someone... but
finding management that are willing to put themselves out there and
communicate on the level needed to keep me happy is tough. I demand a very
high level of communication because that's the way I've found to be able to do
the best job I can. Make no mistake, I may be tough to get along with but I
always strive to do the best job I can. I suppose the only one that really
understands that and can deliver on those demands is me.

------
rjurney
As an employee for the first time in the last year, I've struggled with this
at times. I spent 6 years as an entrepreneur, where validation was with
customers, or as a contractor or consultant - where validation was hourly. It
was always very clear and direct.

Employee validation is more complex. You can accomplish a lot, but piss a lot
of people off and you've done wrong. You can make a lot of people happy but
not get much done and only the standouts will notice.

Nobody wants it to be the care bear cousins, where everyone gets a gold star
sticker and a cookie. On the other hand, when you work twice as hard as others
to go above and beyond, you do want that to matter or you will burn out.

I don't really have a point. Maybe if they're oatmeal cookies?

------
mitrick2
We recently implemented a new recognition program for and by employees called
the "EmploYAY" Program (yeah, it's cheesy on purpose). Anyone in the company
can nominate a peer for the award, and based on the particular event or effort
that inspired the nomination, the recipient gets different levels of awards.
It's definitely helped recognize people for their awesome contributions, and
made it fun for all involved.

~~~
tallanvor
I don't know if I'm an outlier, but cheesy recognition programs (there's one
where I work now) really demoralize me. I've worked hard to get where I am,
and I want my employer to treat me like an adult and a professional, not a
child.

Some people enjoy public praise or having their picture posted, but not all of
us do. --Knowing that we're doing a good job and quiet/low key recognition on
occasion is enough. And if our employer wants to give us a bonus, well, who's
going to say no to that?

~~~
BigZaphod
I agree. I don't mind actual public recognition. In fact, I sorta desire it
sometimes - but only when it's actually earned and the people being told of
the achievement recognize why it was an achievement in the first place. There
has to be real meaning behind this stuff, IMO. Things like "employee of the
month" just feels like cheap pandering and no one really cares.

~~~
tallanvor
If you really go above and beyond, then public recognition can make sense. I
just hate it when companies try to make a big deal out of things I think are
(or should be) just a normal part of the job.

------
christkv
What do you do when someone wants recognition and support for a skillset or
r&d project. Gets it from his manager but does not support the manager in
selling the organisation on the skillset or project letting the manager
hanging in limbo. Then complains that they are not recognized ?

------
absconditus
How many employees desire recognition for simply doing their jobs? I work with
several people who feel that they should be promoted because they have managed
not to be fired.

------
swah
If everyone is recognized, does it still keep its value?

------
jason
and 17% stay at their job due to generous recognition.

