
Shields Down (2016) - mooreds
https://randsinrepose.com/archives/shields-down/
======
coldtea
> _Your shields are officially down._

What's this bizarro metaphor about shields? Considering another job is not
"putting your shields down". Yes, people will start doing calculations whether
to do so or not, when they have another offer/chance/invite from a friend at
another company or not. The bizarro part is describing this as "shields down".
As if their existing job is something the person should "protect" against new
offers / opportunities.

> _To find and understand this shields-down moment, I ask, “When did you start
> looking?” Often the answers are a vague, “It kind’a just happened. I wasn’t
> really looking. I’m really happy here.” Bullshit. (...) It didn’t just
> happen. You chose. Maybe you weren’t looking, but once your shields dropped,
> you started looking._

So, not bullshit after all.

I don't get the defensive pose of the author. As the manager/HR person, he
sounds like a slave owner, where he expects people to fight ("keep shields
up") to keep working for them, and he feels betrayed if they do leave. The
article sounds like trying to guilt people.

> _Happy people don’t leave jobs they love._

Yes they do, if they'll be equally happy elsewhere and the pay is better, or
the location more convenient, or they simply want to try something new. You
don't need to be unhappy in your job to be tempted by those things.

Some people, might also perform perfectly rational calculations about the
benefits of jumping job, whether they're happy with the current one or not.
They don't just stick to a job just because they're happy there. E.g. to
advance their career. The best moment to get a new job is when you already
have one...

~~~
Frost1x
I'd argue there's no "shield" to begin with. The "shield" was thrown away when
a real employer/employee relationship ceased to exist. When, regardless of
slightly better offers, employees would stay due to such relationships. When
businesses had downturns, they sheltered their dedicated employees by
shielding with resources from past successes.

Today, pretty much every medium- to large-scale employer I've anecdotally
interacted with is focused only on efficiency and ROI. You're a tool to drive
business success and if you're not doing so or a slightly better tool is
available: you're gone.

This culture shift means people really don't care about any sort of culture
propoganda your business spews to them. They nod, smile, and play along
because everyone involved knows it's merely a facade.

It's no longer true that happy employees don't leave jobs. Employees will seek
their maximum ROI in the same fashion as businesses do and that culture was
established by business practices.

As far as "loving" a job, very few people get paid and get paid well to do
things they truly love. This alignment happens but it's not all that common.
The fact is, survival in modern life is expensive and people will do whatever
they need to do to pay their expenses. They'll do their best to find something
enjoyable in that process but the vast majority will settle for something that
doesn't make them miserable. The pigeonhole principle almost assures this
(IMHO).

The bizarre shield metaphor is part of the never-ending push you see from HR
trying to reestablish the illusion of a real employee/employer relationship.
Maybe the people in HR really are decent human beings and do care, so they
take the defensive position. What they need to realize is they're not really
in charge and really just the face of business propoganda from upper
management and investors.

~~~
PaulKeeble
Employers show zero loyalty towards their employees the world over so to have
any form of loyalty back is to misunderstand the situation entirely. Money
exchanges hands for time working. It is a contract just as the company wants
it.

Anybody who thinks there is more to it than that has misunderstood the way any
medium to large company operates. Small businesses however can and do show
employee loyalty but that is due to the owner's inexperience, it will likely
get beat out of them when the reality of a very fluid workplace kicks in. Jobs
for life have been gone for a good while.

------
PaulKeeble
I don't think you ever get full answers as to what is wrong other than the
first time it gets raised. The very first "value violation" will get raised
probably multiple times but it will usually be inconvenient to do anything
about it. It then becomes a wound that starts to fester and it is probably the
last time you hear about anything bad. All the little violations widen the
wound and make it even worse and erode the trust.

Once the trust is gone and its gone the moment that "value violation" wasn't
fixed (handled won't cut it here, a conversation isn't the solution just the
holding pattern that ensures the trust will disappear) the trust starts
eroding and so does the honest information flow. I think infected wounds is a
much better analogy because they invite further infections, the coffee with a
friend is just the result of someone offering a fresh set of skin without the
emotional pain. The wound carrier also hides them under clothing so people
don't see it, but they were still wounded and the person who wounded them
isn't getting anything honest out of them again.

~~~
conradp
This was almost exactly my experience at an old startup job.

It was inconvenient to do anything about my compensation (which was lower than
appropriate for my experience level), and the boss deflected the issue every
time I raised it.

The "value violation" there hurt, because I liked the company and the tech
well enough, I just wanted to get paid closer to market rate, but that never
happened. Eventually, I realized (after raising the issue 3+ times) I was
never going to get a meaningful raise, and tendered my resignation shortly
thereafter.

------
LeifCarrotson
> Happy people don’t leave jobs they love.

Happy people leave jobs they love for jobs they love more. That weighted list
isn't a bunch of yes and no responses, each answer is a spectrum. "Fair
compensation" is an obvious one that's so wrapped up in management-speak
(excuse me, leadership-speak) you just have to know that it's referring to
salary and benefits, which can be reduced not to "yes" or "no" but to a number
of dollars, and if someone wants to offer me more for my work that's not
unfair compensation it's just economics.

There is a cost to changing jobs. It's risky, it can be difficult, doing it
too often is a mark on your resume, and you can get comfortable with the
current rut you're riding in. Sounds like the author wants to make that rut as
deep as possible, which would be bad for their employees: Increasing that rut
through guilt and social manipulation means the author can pay less and
increase their workload.

When did I let my shields down? The moment I walked in the door on the first
day, and every day after that.

And they'll be down when I'm leaving, so if you want to change the equation to
guilt me less, compensate me "more fairly", respect me more, give me a mix of
interesting projects with time for education, and make me trust you as a
leader by getting rid of this "shields" nonsense I'd be happy to return.

~~~
glitchc
I think the OP is being harder on himself than he is on the departing
employees. He understands their motives and challenges leaders to try harder.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
Try harder _to do what?_

To change the employee/employer relationship from an economic exchange between
two parties to one where there's a one-sided loyalty from the employee to the
employer?

~~~
mlyle
Try harder to do, among other things, the stuff he listed in his previous
(linked) article:

> Keeping an interesting problem squarely in front of them.

> Let them experiment.

> They can only ‘take one for the team’ for so long.

> Protect their time. Embrace the ambiguity of their experiment.

> Aggressively remove noise. I

> Tell them what the hell is going on.

etc. He makes it quite clear over the two articles that this is not an all-
encompassing list. He is not asking for blind loyalty, but instead trying to
create environments where people will not be eager to consider other
opportunities.

------
larrik
As a counter-point, I've never flat out turned down a potential opportunity
due to being "happy" at work. I mean, if something that _might_ be better
comes along, I owe it to myself and my family to give it a shot.

When I'm unhappy, I'll seek out those opportunities, but when I'm happy I'll
let them come to me. There's no way I'll tell someone "I don't want to meet
with you" just because I'm too happy at my job, though.

Sometimes I move on, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I try to move on and then
get convinced to stay...

~~~
amflare
> When I'm unhappy, I'll seek out those opportunities, but when I'm happy I'll
> let them come to me.

This sums it up perfectly.

------
dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10825536](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10825536)

~~~
glitchc
Well, at least the answers are consistent. Not much has changed in three
years.

------
AcerbicZero
Companies are welcome to offer a multiyear contracts, with clear requirements
for early termination, and payouts in a structure that we can negotiate on, if
they desire. You know, like they do for their various C level folks?

Instead, they offer the "right" to work at X number, in an open ended format
where either party can cancel at anytime. In that system, it makes very little
sense for either side to show anything but token loyalty, as it is a purely
financial transaction.

------
at_a_remove
Impressive: this managed to be wrong in the first paragraph.

He needs to consider the enemy within. I did not resign because "my shields
dropped," I got shot in the back by the folks inside my "shield." Nobody
presented me with an opportunity, I went looking for one when I realized that
my loyalty was misplaced and my efforts wasted. At no point am I kidding
myself about "curiosity:" I wanted _out_. Then investigation happened, I did
not receive an email about coffee.

It's a strange take: we as employees are supposed to resist temptation like
some kind of monk beset by lasciviousness. Let's go with this metaphor he
loves: somehow, the burden falls upon us. Imagine standing there, day after
day, holding a thirty pound shield before you. Tiresome.

The saying goes that people tend to quit bosses, not jobs, and this shields
concept is a coping mechanism to not face the idea that bosses can screw up
and frequently rely upon employee inertia instead of trying to tamp down their
screwing-up frequency.

~~~
mlyle
Impressive-- you had such a visceral reaction to the way it was phrased that
you don't realize the whole point of what he was saying was _what you yourself
are talking about_ :

> The reason this reads cranky is because I, the leader of the humans, screwed
> up. Something in the construction of the team or the company nudged you at a
> critical moment. When that mail arrived gently asking you about coffee, you
> didn’t answer the way you answered the prior five similar mails with a
> brief, “Really happy here. Let’s get a drink some time!” You think you
> thought Hmmm… what the hell. It can’t hurt. What you actually thought or
> realized was:

> You know, I have no idea when I’m going to be a tech lead here.

> Getting yelled at two days ago still stings.

> I don’t believe a single thing senior leadership says.

~~~
at_a_remove
No, that's putting the effect before the cause.

Nobody sent me any emails about "hey come have coffee." That did not happen. I
went looking.

The shields concept has this idea behind it that employees are constantly
awash in opportunities, splashing away as we diligently oar toward the latest
corporate goal, headhunters on the phone, friendly requests in LinkedIn, and
that the shield upheld turns away these opportunities which are apparently
corrosive to the body of the company.

This was not true for me. I went looking in the complete absence of offers. I
cannot emphasize that enough. I wasn't going anywhere out of "curiosity" and
deceiving myself as to the point of meeting with someone at another company. I
had no shield to raise in defense of these offers because they did not happen.

It's a terrible metaphor on so many fronts and the use of it suggests that it
is my duty to hold my shield up. I didn't have a shield and I have no duty to
hold it up even if I had one. I'm not some soldier in a phalanx who presses on
for the glory of the Roman Empire, my shoulder straining to protect my fellows
even as I fall to my knees, spear in my gut; I did not let my guard down and
an "offer" slipped into my tender heart because I was almost willfully
unaware.

The concept is a distraction from bosses screwing up because it suggests that
an employee let their guard down.

~~~
gknoy
Right, and the reason you went looking was because you felt wronged by your
employer -- whether it be office politics, backstabby coworkers, a manager you
did't like, etc, you would not have gone looking for another job (in the same
way) had you felt valued, happy, and safe at your job.

"shields down" is just Rands' way of saying "decided to even consider another
job". It doesn't have to be defensive. It just means that that was the point
where you realized that _maybe_ this job isn't the best one for you. You might
come to that realization on your own (as you did), or after seeing things
happen to other people, or even from a recruiter cold-calling you. The
"shields down" moment was before when you started looking, or when you set
LinkedIn to "I'm looking ...".

~~~
at_a_remove
What I'm getting at is that Rand's "way of saying" is not simply a metaphor,
but one which comes with certain implications and that those implications
matter to the entire essay.

The first implication is I, as an employee, should keep my shields up. It
sounds _dutiful_. If Ensign Crusher didn't have the shields up, that's pretty
bad news.

The second implication is that it is defensive. It does not _have_ to be
defensive but if you select "shield" as your metaphor, you're bringing
"defensive" along for the ride. To suggest the use of a shield without the
defensive concept is disingenuous at best.

Both of these implications are distractions from the "what did I do as an
employer do wrong?" and the essay as a whole would be cleaner and more honest
without the shield in the essay or the title.

Listen to this part: "The moment happened a long time ago when you received a
random email from a good friend who asked ..." No. That did not happen.

He hits it again: "The moment happened the instant you decided, 'What the
hell? I haven’t seen Don in months and it’d be good to see him.'" Again,
that's not the moment.

He does it again: "When you are indirectly asked to lower your shields ..."
Blame again on the employee.

All of this is a distraction from the actual moment of employers making that
final poor decision. He keeps using "you" (as an employee) rather than "what
did the employer do?"

Cross out every bit about shields and refocus the essay on employer mistakes,
it is fine. But he follows that hint of acknowledgement ("If I’m sitting here
talking with you it means two things: I don’t want you to leave and, to the
best of my knowledge, you didn’t want to leave either but here you are
leaving. It didn’t just happen.") with an impulse to push it back on the
employee (" You chose. Maybe you weren’t looking, but once your shields
dropped, you started looking."

It's a metaphor that leads to a dishonest way of thinking about the situation
he, as an employer, is in. Someone _else_ chose, they dropped their shields
because they were indirectly asked, and maybe I as a boss was involved somehow
but the choice was still the employee's and all because they, in a momentary
lapse of vigilance, dropped their shields.

That's what I find rather grating about this essay.

~~~
mlyle
No, I don't think he ever makes it sound dutiful. There's a whole lot of other
people reading this article and commenting on it both here and the original
site and _no one has read it the way you are reading it_.

In no single point does he talk about employee mistakes.

The entire point of the essay is to analyze _where and how_ the employee was
actually lost.

You know Star Trek, when an unknown ship pops up, and they raise shields, etc?
Then they turn out to be cool bros and want to talk? That's the metaphor that
I read it as. It's a little wonky but fits the situation.

~~~
greenyoda
> no one has read it the way you are reading it

I didn't originally read it that way, but after reading @at_a_remove's
comments, I think there's a lot of insight in them and I now see the original
article differently.

I don't think the Star Trek shields metaphor fits this situation very well,
since someone trying to interest you in a new job isn't a hostile act that
needs to be defended against.

------
rubbingalcohol
I think the shields analogy is misplaced. Also, a manager blaming themself for
the choices of their employees shouldn't be a hard rule. As a manager I do my
best to create a good environment for my employees, but I'm also not
omnipotent, and the actions/inactions or simply the market position of the
company as a whole can be impossible for me to control and be a bigger factor
than anything I could do immediately for my team. Understandably the buck
stops at the manager, but we can all only do our best and sometimes that's not
good enough.

I guess to simplify:

Shitty manager ===> Employees leave

Employees leave =/=> Shitty manager

> Happy people don't leave jobs they love.

Debatable, but worth noting that some people are never happy.

------
chrisbennet
At least he didn't use the word "poaching".

Now it means hunting animals outside of hunting season. What it meant much
earlier is (unauthorized) killing the kings' deer. (Robin Hood was a poacher.)
_The employee is viewed as a possession._

If you stay in job for 10 years are you getting 10 years of experience? A
friend with a different risk profile has been at a job for 10+ years and they
pay very well but this isn't usually the case. You usually fall behind in
experience and pay.

------
kuharich
Prior discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10825536](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10825536)

