
British challenger platform Monzo wants higher staff turnover - calewis
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/monzo-turnover-fintech-talents-bobbi-nicholson-151510038.html
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Traster
There's something that makes me feel very uncomfortable about this article.
It's a fact of life that companies change and sometimes they need to focus on
different technologies/projects/challenges. That's fine and it causes problems
you have to face and it's not going to be good for the people you no longer
need. Especially if the people you no longer lead took a risk to join your
company and have a vesting schedule.

So let's break it down >Something we could do better at is making it really
possible and a really great experience

First thing: It's not going to be a great experience to be redundant or have
the company you've helped build to no longer need you or you're no longer
contributing.

> for people to leave when they know that it’s time

What is that even meant to mean? 'they know it's time'? How do they know it's
time. Is it time because you've fired them? Is it because they're redundant.

They say they've got great management, but it sounds less like they've got
good management, it sounds like they've got management that's been lucky. The
company has grown quickly and hired quickly and their options scheme means
people are massively incentivized to stay. But if you don't want people to
stay why don't you just modify their vesting schedule, or offer them
redundancy? Or retrain them? Or move them a different project. The reason
you're having a problem getting rid of the people you don't want is because
your management team is failing to make the decisions that are best for the
company because they prefer feeling popular. This seems like a bizarre thing
to brag about.

I think what it comes down to is that I really object to this disingenuous
double speak where the company is trying to say "Isn't this great! This is a
great thing we're really happy trying to solve this challenge" \- when
actually it's not a good thing, and it's fairly obvious to anyone with a
brain, so it's quite insulting to have someone to lie to your face like that.

~~~
jka
Something about it does seem a little odd - and it's tricky to read between
the lines to figure out what caused this (exactly as you say, because they've
phrased it entirely within positive messaging rather than just stating the
problem).

My guess would be that they feel (or some employees feel) that they've over-
rewarded some early employees who are now motivated to stay at the company
largely for the purposes of vesting stock options rather than to engage fully.

That said, there are a whole slew of really tricky things around options and
compensation here. What's the comparative stock/option holding granted to
executive/C-level staff, and are they under the same scrutiny to measure their
performance and output?

Generally I think it's typical for there to be an order of magnitude
difference between stock holdings for investors & high-level executives
relative to even the first few full-time hires.

To play devil's advocate, it's 'understandable' that if you want to run the
fastest, cheapest ship that you would simply want to get an employee in a
seat, have them build/ship/market/sell the product for a few years and then
have the employee move on if & when their productivity drops.

Continuing that idea (and I'd hope that Monzo nor many other tech startups are
culturally this cynical) - it reduces the need for career growth planning,
management expertise, and reduces the risk of pesky situations like the
employee remembering bad company decisions or gaining too much access or
influence within the organization, etc.

There are more successful ways to handle those cases (although they require
effort from the company, and their results should be scrutinized by staff),
and employers that want to retain knowledge workers will find ways to
incentivize them to keep their staff on-board and effective.

There are few better incentives than continued business success (particularly
where the employee can engage in force-multiplying their own success via
building the company/product) and challenging technical or business problems.

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mattcrail
Lots of employees at Monzo today asking themselves if their HR person was
subtly telling them they should quit

