
Let’s Admit Why There Are So Many “Job Hoppers” In Startupland - AndrewWarner
http://mixergy.com/lets-admit-why-there-are-so-many-job-hoppers-in-startupland/
======
grellas
My thoughts based on years of representing such companies:

1\. Non-funded startups typically don't have employees or, if they do, they
are employee-founders. If the cash isn't there to support salaries, you won't
have payroll. People can and do get misled in non-funded companies, though it
is the rare exception and by no means the rule, since most of those involved
understand they are taking a flyer and that nothing may come of their efforts
unless and until the startup gains sufficient traction at least to get
funding.

2\. Most of the abuse involving outright misrepresentations concerns _funded_
companies that hit hard times and then tell their employees that they must
stick with a failing situation, and endure the accompanying hardships (missed
paychecks, etc.), in the name of deferring their reward until the company can
rebound. In such cases, employees are in effect being asked to take the risks
of founders and yet are often given nothing more than their deferred pay in
case the company does bounce back - that is, having taken on an indispensable
role to enable the company to save itself, they get no additional equity or
other reward for the hardships they undertook.

3\. Funded companies also are more prone to mislead employees with tall talk
about what the company will supposedly do and why the options held by
employees will be worth so much. Yet, in doing so, they don't tell their
employees anything about the capitalization of the company itself, thus
leaving the employees with a sense their 50,000 options or whatever will make
them rich while in reality they may represent only a miniscule percent of the
company and have only a small upside even in a success case. At the same time,
no one is ever told about VC liquidation preferences, which can easily be used
in many cases to wipe out the interests of the employee-shareholders in an
instant as soon as anything goes wobbly with the company.

4\. Opportunities come and go rather quickly in the startup world and it may
just be a simple fact of life that employee tenures will tend to be shorter in
such an environment for reasons having nothing to do either with flakiness or
opportunism on the part of employees or with deception or abuse on the part of
employers. I think it is a mistake to overstate this in either direction in
seeking to ascribe generalized motives to one side or the other.

~~~
cedsav
minor, but I object to your "Non-funded startups typically don't have
employees" statement. Or perhaps profitable startups don't qualify as startups
anymore?

~~~
grellas
I could say that I just had my Silicon Valley blinders on but even then this
was a stupid oversight on my part, as I represent a good number of profitable
self-funded ventures as well as the prototypical bootstrap ones - I was
obviously thinking only of the typical bootstrap startup in making the
statement as I did. Thanks for the clarification.

------
ziadbc
I think this debate can be summed up as:

Flakes are often Job Hoppers. Not all Job Hoppers are Flakes.

Correlation, not causation.

Also, I'd like to see some objective stats here like "do companies with lots
of job hoppers do better or worse, here is the data"

Vivek Wadhwa cited in his studies job hopping as an aggregate positive for the
economy of silicon valley and its emergence as the prominent startup hub.

[http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/the-valley-of-my-dreams-
why...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/the-valley-of-my-dreams-why-silicon-
valley-left-bostons-route-128-in-the-dust/)

~~~
CodeMage
_Flakes are often Job Hoppers. Not all Job Hoppers are Flakes._

Finally, someone taking a shot at that misconception. Just because some people
advance their career and improve their conditions by changing employers
doesn't mean they're unreliable or incompetent.

Quite often it's the competent people who get sick and tired of a crappy job,
widespread incompetence, excessive office politics and stuff like that and
they decide to move on. They tie the loose ends, dot the i's, cross the t's
and start looking for a better opportunity.

It's not just the startups that mislead people, either. It's just that a big
company will lie to you about other kinds of stuff.

~~~
smallblacksun
"doesn't mean they're unreliable" Well, from the point of view of an employer,
it kind of does. They never know when you will leave for a new job.

~~~
potatolicious
I disagree - if the hoppers are hopping because they are not getting the
professional growth they need, or that they think they're being taken
advantage of, then that's highly predictable for you as an employer.

Are you treating your employees fairly? Do they feel like they're
contributing, or are they writing dead-end code?

You know when they will leave for a new job - when you start treating them
like trash.

~~~
raganwald
Here's a prediction: If a company's environment is shitty...

1\. The best people will quit.

2\. The median people will whine and make the office a miserable place.

3\. The worst people will put their heads down, terrified that they will get
fired or laid off.

Consequence? The best people still in their chairs will be the ones with the
lowest morale.

------
tptacek
Turnover rate: a FANTASTIC question to ask at your next job interview. Keep
them on their toes.

We _love_ the people who ask hard questions. If the person interviewing you
doesn't: don't work there.

Thanks for that post.

~~~
dschobel
I've never had any luck getting a serious answer to that question. It's always
hand-wavy fluff.

It's the employer's equivalent of "what is your biggest weakness". It just
tests their ability to BS.

~~~
icey
You can keep asking the question in other ways:

    
    
      "How long was the person before me here?"
      "What's the average length of time someone stays here?"
      "How long have *you* been here?"
    

If you really want to know the answer, you just have to keep asking. Turnover
rate is the first real question I ask. (Also: the lack of an answer is an
answer on its own.)

~~~
pw0ncakes
Mentioning a "person before me" in an interview is a bad idea, because it
brings forth associations you might not want. Also, there might not be such a
person.

The second and third questions are good, but short tenures could also signify
a rapidly growing company (which is something to be wary of, but not for the
same reason) like Google in 2006.

~~~
mendriacus
"short tenures could also signify a rapidly growing company"

Sure, but if _everyone_ interviewing you are less than a year in, where are
all the people who worked here before?

And why are you being interviewed mostly or exclusively by junior team members
who haven't proved themselves yet? Is the company entrusting the selection of
successful employees to newbies who haven't yet proved they can be such?

An interviewer for a company in the middle of a growth spurt should be able to
explain that, quote some enticing growth figures, and mention that "almost all
of the original team members are now project leaders and executives... in
fact, if this goes well, you'll meet some of them shortly".

------
mendriacus
This whole discussion about "job hoppers" is so bogus.

Employment is a relationship. It has two sides. When one party decides to end
it, the most common reasons are:

1) Other party's chronic inability to respond and satisfy the breaker-upper's
needs. 2) A competitor coming along who satisfies those needs much better.

Employers _regularly_ break up employment relations for those two reasons. But
now some CEOs and VC managers will have us believe that it's wrong for
employees to do the same to them.

Employers are expected - nay, obligated! - to fire employees who fail to meet
performance expectations. But if an employer fails to meet your compensation
expectations, and you leave, the Susters and Calacanises shall publicly insult
you and announce they will not hire you, and nobody else should either.

It is telling that only very specific employers and very specific dream-
dealing businessmen are among the mob shouting indignantly about loyalty and
morality. When was the last time Google or Palantir blogged petulantly about
"Generation Y" and "trophy kids"?

Suster, Calacanis et al are reacting to their own failing at keeping
employees, with all the grace, maturity and effectiveness of that girl you
dumped, who went out on the street and shouted about what a terrible person
you are to leave her, and how nobody else should ever trust or date you.

Mature, successful employers do not waste their time on that. They're too busy
making great products with their happy, motivated, tenured employees - or
bidding polite farewell to those who should or want to move on.

This article is spot on. Startup executives are world-class dealers of dreams.
They need to be more weary of selling to their own employees. Too many bright
engineers work insanely hard for a year or two, then discover all they're
getting is fairy dust, and quit. Why don't Suster and Calacanis write an
article about that?

It's most striking when a top employee leaves for a company that's not a
startup. Take that engineer that left Mahalo for Yahoo recently. Suster and
Calacanis call him a flake, yet how much you want to bet he'll stay at Yahoo
longer than a year?

And since when is it acceptable to attack an ex-employee that way, sleazily
keeping his name out, when everyone on the internet knows who the epitaphs
refer to?

These people are sore losers, and they'll keep losing until they figure out
what that "dying company" is doing right that makes their best engineers "hop"
there rather than labor at their own enterprises.

All they do right now is poison and taint an otherwise healthy, open and
mature dialogue between employees and employers.

~~~
msuster
You're way off base. \- I haven't lost any employees so painting me with that
brush is wrong \- I never made any commentary on the guy who left Mahalo - I
wrote him a private email making it clear that my commentary had nothing to do
with him (I didn't even know that story when I wrote my post) \- I never
publicly insulted anybody \- I made a balanced argument that if people leave a
few employers early in their careers it's fine. If they make a career out of
changing jobs they'll find it hard in the long-run to wind up in senior
positions.

And while we're on the topic of insulting posts or people on a rant, why don't
you re-read your text and think about how IT sounds

------
ad93611
As PG says, "Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress
your whole working life into a few years."[1] The time scales that people use
to define "Job Hoppers" is wrong. At most big companies you cannot learn or
accomplish much in a short time-frame because things move slower. However, in
a startup 6 months is a long time to do something concrete.

[1] - <http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html>

------
gamble
The best thing an employee can do is ask themselves "Will I be happy _right
now_ if I take this job?" Working for a company because they've promised you
stock, or career advancement, or a mission in life is a surefire way to
guarantee disappointment when the promises fail to pan out. Even the best-
meaning managers tend to be grossly optimistic when pitching their companies
to a new hire. If the job is satisfying from day one, nothing that fails to
happen down the road will be a cause for bitterness and regret.

~~~
mattm
"Even the best-meaning managers tend to be grossly optimistic when pitching
their companies to a new hire"

I've learned to view a job interview more like a sales-pitch. Once you view it
this way, you become a lot more thorough with your questions.

------
euroclydon
What if I want a new and large challenge every two years? Your efficient is my
stagnation? Just asking.

------
xconfig
At my last job it took me 3 months to find out that the strike price my
options received was 3x what my offer letter hinted it would be. That
gradually affected my motivation until I left, and I never exercised my
options. Not intentional, but misleading.

------
geebee
This is an aside, but I'm starting to realize how many gripes, on both sides,
are the result of a very poor hiring system.

Kathy Sierra, a while back, wrote a truly eye-opening blog post on "the
hollywood model". You're fired at the end of every job, and your job security
is your reputation.

I don't love everything about the way hollywood works, of course, but one
thing's for sure - they give credit. They _list_ credits. Of course, people
can grab credit they haven't earned, and I'm sure that people who have
succeeded don't always get the credit they are due... but at least the system
_intends_ to give credit.

As a dev, when was the last time you got a by-line? If you release an
excellent product, is there a "credits" list where the UI designer, the
"producers" (proj managers?), developers are listed? Maybe in the code itself,
but that's proprietary.

So instead out industry relies on these stupid indicators, which lead to
articles about how "job hoppers are bad". Well, some job hoppers are people
who opportunistically abandon a good team that doesn't deserve it, and others
are people who people who are too good to waste any more time on a crap
situation.

Job hopping, code tests, three minute phone call reference checks, university
degrees... hey, I use these things too when I'm hiring. That's what you do
when you interview unknown people whose work you can't immediately identify.
And I do the monkey dance when I'm interviewed too, because that's what you
have to do.

But man, there has got to be a better way... a big goal of my career is to get
to the point where the people who interview me have better ways of knowing
what I can contribute.

------
kadavy
Its simply a byproduct of being in an emerging market. I don't know much about
The Gold Rush, but I'm guessing people involved with it weren't staying at
their jobs very long.

------
jamesshamenski
Genius = "TheFunded.com for employees to _privately_ rate their employers"

~~~
petekazanjy
This is actually one of the use cases we're most proud about on Unvarnished (
Community-powered professional reviews <http://www.getunvarnished.com> ): the
ability for information about hiring managers to float as well as information
about employees.

So if a boss has high turnover rates under him, the idea would be that the
reason why could float on his Unvarnished profile, such that would-be
employees can get this information from the market _before_ signing up to work
for him.

Awesome hiring managers should get credit for being awesome. Bad hiring
managers should not be able to hide behind information asymmetries. So too
with employees.

Information liquidity is a powerful thing!

~~~
btilly
I heard about you guys on NPR, but didn't call in because I was driving. I
have a few concerns.

1\. Your basic value proposition rests on getting people to pay money to have
the ability to respond to things said about them. That's going to leave a bad
taste in people's mouths.

2\. Many people (like me) have deliberately chosen to not join facebook. We
can't even try to address issues we see.

3\. Identity is much more complicated than you acknowledge. My name is Ben
Tilly. I'm at Google. People by the same name can also be found in a US
college, doing graphic design in New Zealand, and being a nurse in England.
Just to name a few that come up off of the top of my head. How do you tell
which Ben Tilly should be able to respond to a bad comment about someone named
Ben Tilly at Rent.com?

4\. Anonymity is not so easy to protect. Only a small fraction of people
comment online. A given manager only manages a small number of people. If a
negative comment appears, frequently it is surprisingly easy to make an
educated guess. If the comment is at all detailed, an analysis of writing
style will usually confirm that guess. Unless a large fraction of people in
your environment are commenting, the level of anonymity is limited.
(Particularly if the boss can get access to proxy logs saying who was visiting
getunvarnished, when.)

~~~
randallsquared
_Many people (like me) have deliberately chosen to not join facebook. We can't
even try to address issues we see._

I wouldn't call this "can't". If you actually _couldn't_ use their preferred
identity provider, that would be different (and it could happen; I had a lot
of trouble getting a Facebook account at all a few years back, due to my
unusual name). But choosing not to sign up is not the same as not being able
to sign up.

~~~
btilly
In NPR they said that they had checks that your Facebook account was
sufficiently well established. They didn't say the exact criteria, but my
impression was that it needed to have existed for a certain time, and have had
certain levels of activity on it. This is to prevent people from creating
throw away accounts, commenting libelously, then disappearing.

The unintended consequence, of course, is that people who don't have a
Facebook account can't just create one. Instead you have to create one, use it
until you have a sufficiently well-established identity, and only then can you
use their service. Which is a high barrier for people who actually don't have
a Facebook account.

------
derwiki
I think I'm a bit naive, but how can a high dollar exit leave your vested
shares worthless?

~~~
mendriacus
Many, many ways.

First of all, "high" is relative. The exit may be high, but still not cover
the funding, so all the proceeds go to the funding entities (the VCs) and
maybe a few top executives / founders. That happens in countless startups that
sell for $50m after raising $30-40m. Even "senior" employees get basically
nothing.

Another common issue is dilution. Your vested shares can and will be severely
diluted. Again, the VCs and maybe the founders are the only ones with any
control or protection over this.

A lot of other interesting things can happen at or around that all important
payday. You may want to read about how things like IPO and other liquidity
events are actually handled by law. Surprisingly few startup employees do, and
this stuff is far from trivial - there's a reason why Goldman et al pay the
best and brightest to figure this stuff out.

All of this is doubly true if the founders / execs are untrustworthy / morally
indifferent and actually strive to dilute or otherwise deprive you.

~~~
arethuza
Our very first investment agreement (3i as main investor with a local VC doing
the legwork) had a table of equations defining various things that would
effect how much founders and option holders would get in the event of an exit.
Working out what these actually meant was non-trivial and we argued strongly
against them - no luck.

Ironically when we went public we made a chunk of money from the very ratchet
agreements we had argued so vigorously against (combined with help from the
taxman).

------
temptemptemp
Can anyone please explain to me what he means when he says that 'most' stock
options become worthless even when the startup is sold for a hefty profit? I
am quite confused by how they could be devaluated like that.

~~~
minalecs
I think stock dilution, is a big concern. With each round of funding, and the
more stock they issue, this makes your stock worse less unless they can
guarantee it. Im not an expert ( please someone expand), but my simple
understanding , is something like lets say you get options to buy 10 stock out
of 100 total shares, thats a lot. But then next round of funding they issue
more stock and now you still have the option to buy 10, but there are 1000
outstanding now. What you had before is worth a lot less.

------
dalore
You also forget the other factor, startups fail often.

------
alttab
Let me take a moment to rebut this.

"Stick with me and you'll get rich kid" _I've heard of CEOs who actually sat
their employees down and showed them how rich they'd be based on what price
the company is sold for. ("If we sell for a billion, I get a jet and you get a
yacht.")_

I've had someone tell me this before (read my iStoleYourStartup post) and I
sort-of got the feeling from the beginning it was a sham. I played along
because I wasn't losing anything as I was doing it on the side, but I knew
this speak was shady from the start. Not looking twice at this is type of
mentality and behavior is a failure on one's own part.

"I'll mentor you." _Most startup CEOs aren't ready to mentor anyone. They're
still trying to figure things out for themselves. Even if they could, where
would they find the time to mentor?_

What type of history does this CEO have? Are they a serial entrepreneur? Have
they made multiple exits or IPO'd other companies in the past? Are they
mentoring you under the pure prospect of being a mentor? Again, this takes
intuition and judgement.

"We'll change the world together, you'll see" _that's when changing the world
gives way to "just increase page views!" and the job becomes more about the
mechanics of SEO and link-baiting._

Every CEO of a distruptive start up will want to "change the world." Just
because most of them are wrong doesn't make them liars or criminals. When the
default to "increase page views," they simply don't have the experience to
perform under pressure. This goes back to the second point about CEO career
history.

To the point about why he is writing the article in the first place, saying
employees are trained to behave that way is removing accountability from the
employee who could very easily provide value on his own terms.

I don't believe there is any sort of "solution" as it in the end every
developer is accountable for how much of their career they are responsible
for. Ever heard the phrase, "its not the jobs you are given, but the jobs you
take."

Every single developer in the world has the ability to make their own image,
brand, expertise, and career. Real job hoppers know this - employers that
don't provide their vision get left behind to ones that _will_ cater to _their
own_ demands.

This article is attempting to protect any negative _job hopper_ image with
malfeasance on the part of the employer - but only re-enforcing the
"employer"/"employee" relationship in the process.

I guess my entire point to this mini-rant is that job hoppers make their own
careers, choose trust selectively, and provide value at a level that they can
make their own terms.

Downshifting to accusing that the second party is intentionally misleading
(even though this can and does happen sometimes - as it did to me), and
avoiding taking accountability for one's own actions is delaying the learning
process and avoiding change.

If you "hop jobs," let _you_ be the reason why you are leaving, not someone or
something else. Take responsibility for your own career, and only give people
trust who have earned it.

~~~
alttab
My message of "take responsibility, accountability, and ownership of your own
destiny" gets voted down. When you're 40 and still a worker bee and wonder why
it didn't work out for you come back to this post.

------
dnsworks
When I was still a wage-slave, I hopped jobs because most start-ups are run by
people who have never done this before, and they create lousy work
environments.

I also like to leave other peoples' companies every year because I'm a systems
engineer, and most of my work is front-loaded. After I've been at a company
for a year, my systems are automated well enough that I have little to do but
maintain or grow, and I want to be more in life than a systems janitor.

Plus, start-up compensation sucks. If I took a job tomorrow, I would make
roughly $200k doing SRE or equivalent at an established company .. or $100k
and 15 basis points of stock options vested over 4 years at some me-too start-
up whose business model looks a lot like that south park underwear gnomes
episode.

Not to mention that most companies do their best to over-hire because they
really feel that their problems are incredibly complex and unique, just like
all the 6 other companies who got funded in the same marketplace that year.

And, it's just a good investment strategy. Leave a start-up every year as soon
as you've gotten your first 25% worth of stock options vested. In a decade you
might see $100k for your trouble.

------
pw0ncakes
I don't think the misleading of employees is endemic to startups, at all. It's
also not always intentional; people overestimate what they can do for the new
hire in terms of mentoring and support, and business tends to reward those (at
all levels) who make big promises.

~~~
hga
Yeah, but about the second time you realize you broke your promise to a new
hire you should be changing what you promise (or fixing the real problem, if
that mentoring and support is indeed needed).

~~~
pw0ncakes
I agree wholeheartedly. One issue is that every "promise" is a bit unique. HN
posters are big on mentoring and interesting work, which are subjective
qualifications, but this is not the case for everyone. Some people just want a
salary and a chair-- much easier to promise.

The incentive to mentor is long-term. It benefits the company later on, and
loyalty is an asset for the person doing the mentoring (his proteges might
move with him if he gets sacked). Unfortunately, few people think this far
ahead. In the short term, mentoring is an expense.

