

Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs - lx
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43409/dealing-with-engineers-that-frequently-leave-their-jobs

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Andaith
I recently read on HN about how Stack Overflow is being taken over by the
editors and that questions are being closed all too often. Is this an example
of that?

"this might cause debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion." is a
bad set of reasons to close a question. Surely that's the desired result? If
people start behaving like children, close the question, but until then, let
the discussion grow...

I think the question is relevant for programmers though. I'd be leery of
joining a company with such high turnover.

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antidoh
> I'd be leery of joining a company with such high turnover.

But how do you find out if turnover is high? Just ask, I suppose, but a
manager is going to try to downplay it, since he's selling the company to you.
Hit or miss whether workers will be truthful about it, between wanting to be
team players and not telling tales out of school.

I'm leaving a place with high turnover now. I had no idea. Although I could
have entertained some suspicion when my agency told me how much they love this
place; churn is lucrative for some people.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"Just ask, I suppose, but a manager is going to try to downplay it"_

And it will be fairly evident when he does. A place with low turnover would be
one where the manager can confidently look you in the eye and declare he has
low turnover.

It is rare for hiring managers to be effective bald-faced liars (HR on the
other hand suffers from no such weakness), so they will try to dodge the
question instead. Dodgy hiring managers is pretty much _the_ signal for "run
for the hills".

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therealarmen
An interesting question on a relevant topic? Let's close it. Thanks, SO mods.

~~~
billswift
>Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic
organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the
actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization
itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to
teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher
including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the
second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will
always write the rules under which the organization functions.

\- - Jerry E Pournelle

Any large enough organization tends towards bureaucracy, and the tendency is
even stronger on the Web, where direct person-to-person interaction is more
limited. And the evolution to "iron law" conditions tends to be faster there
also, once the bureaucratic (rule-following and rule-enforcing) mindset is
formed. Wikipedia, Google, and Amazon are other examples, they have all been
getting worse to use over the last few years. Web-based organizations probably
need to remain smaller than similar real-world organizations, if they want to
avoid the effect.

~~~
pc86
"The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy."

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Peroni
Actual response to the original question:

Do some research. It's surprisingly easy to find out what the rate of
attrition is with your competitors. If the competition have a noticeably lower
rate of attrition then it's time for some introspection.

Exit interviews are drastically underrated. Done right they can reveal a huge
amount about why your attrition is higher than most.

~~~
mgkimsal
"done right".

Except most people will say "skip them" or "don't say anything bad". I've had
this advice from a few people, and there was an HN thread some time back
suggesting the same things. "Don't burn any bridges by badmouthing anyone in
an exit interview", etc. Certainly there's a difference between "being honest"
and "badmouthing", but when that info reaches certain ears, the distinction
may be lost. For people that care about having good references, a whitewashed
exit interview seems the easiest thing to do (I don't think it's the correct
thing to do, but it seems that's a common enough thought process).

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grueful
This is tangent to the idea of a "truck number" - the number of people who can
be hit by a truck before your org is endangered.

Orgs with a low truck number really shouldn't be offering significantly below-
market compensation to critical staff in high-demand professions.

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Dystopian
Back to the topic - (not SO) - I'd agree with some of the other commenters on
SO that high-turnover isn't the engineers' fault; it's obviously a management
issue.

Most engineers that I've worked with would trade a good work environment &
office culture for more pay / "room to advance" any day.

~~~
w1ntermute
Yep, if it's happening many times, it can't be blamed on the individuals.
There's definitely a tendency among managers to do this though instead of
looking at oneself in the mirror and assessing any shortcomings.

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pungoyal
i think the title of this question ought to be - Dealing with a workplace
where engineers frequently leave for other opportunities.

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chrisbennet
The question title should have been: "Dealing with management that drives off
our engineers"

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BadassFractal
I've had more than one question closed for being too close to a discussion on
Programmers. It's very tiresome.

What's a good alternative for asking meaningful questions and having a quality
discussion with people who have words of wisdom to spare? Quora? Reddit? HN?

~~~
antidoh
I like HN best, some of the subreddits second.

I just can't come to like Quora, which is odd because it seems exactly the
sort of thing I'd like. The interface is either confusing to me, or I think of
it in a way that conflicts with its reality.

~~~
BadassFractal
The problem with HN is that threads in the New section can get ignored too
easily. In my exprience, 4/5 posts I make are never answered.

------
tyrmored
<http://leisuretown.com/library/qac/8.jpg>

~~~
davvid
The original comic is quite entertaining (if you don't mind
silly/inappropriate humor). It's called "QA Confidential", and tells the story
of how to get a job in QA and milk it for all it's worth. It was written
during the heyday of the dot-com boom and nicely captured some of its
irrational exuberance.

<http://leisuretown.com/library/qac/>

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rorrr
I was offered raises at only one company, ever. At every other company I had
to ask for them after positive annual reviews, and I mostly got what I asked
for.

If you look at the amount of raise, it's usually ridiculously small, maybe
5-10%. When I switch jobs, my salary has grown 30-40% pretty much every time.

And that I never understood. When I leave, you have to spend money hiring a
good developer, you have to spend money training him, all while possibly
losing money because the work is not being done.

~~~
simonh
Ok, but with 'only' a 15% raise every year, your salary would quadruple every
10 years. That's not really a normal career trajectory.

Pay growth as a percentage tends to be higher for talented youngsters, but
then again a lot of the value in an older engineer comes from experience,
which often means experience in different work environments.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Why not? Its not the same engineer expecting cost-of-living increases. Its an
ever-more-experienced engineer growing from newbie to architect. Quadrupling
every 10 years seems about right to me.

~~~
simonh
So by retirement a 20 year old starter on $50k (a little low) should expect to
be on $200k by age 30 (which I accept isn't at all impossible for a smart
kid), and retire on around $12.8 million a year....

I'm clearly doing something wrong, or the job market here in the UK is a lot
more different than in the US than I assumed.

~~~
rorrr
First of all, I don't expect a raise of 15% annually. 5-10% would do, if it
does happen every year (assuming they like my work). Second, you forgot the
inflation.

$50K -> 200K growth in 10 years is possible, there's nothing extraordinary
about it, but currently the only way to do it is to switch jobs.

