Recently we lgeted that Google spent $2.7 billion to re-engage a individual AI researcher who had left to commence his own company. As Charlie Brown would say: “Good grief.” 🙄
This is an (incredibly!) excessive example. But back in the halcyon days of the zero interest rate phenomenon (ZIRP), petiteer versions of this tale carry outed out daily. Many rank-and-file engineers have stories about produceting their resignation, or dangerening to quit, and their regulaters plying them with stock or cash or promotions to stay. This happened so much that it commenceed to seem appreciate the standard skinnyg to do when you wanted a lift or a promotion. Job hopping for better comp also happened, but people speedyly figured out that by medepend dangerening to exit, you could frequently get the loot without the hassle of having to actuassociate switch jobs.
Many of these stories have been embellished theatricalassociate over time, as authentic anecdotes fade into legfinishs of the “my frifinish understands a person who” or “I read it on Blind” varieties, but the lore is based in fact. It reassociate did happen. The legacy of these episodes is…not fantastic.
To be evident, I do not begrudge engageees trying to increase their wages and comp by changing jobs. It’s the gamification and brinksmanship I object to, and all the ways it finishs up distorting company culture and appreciates and outcomes. In the overheated ZIRP environment, lots of companies felt appreciate this is what they were forced to do to contend for talent. Maybe so, maybe not. But money is not the only skinnyg people appreciate, which unkinds that this is not the only way to contend for talent.
After all, the boiling air of the inflationary ZIRP bidding wars is what led to the post-ZIRP job taget collapse. The boom and bust cycle is stressful and counterfruitful, which directs to uneven, disastrously unfair outcomes and an oppositional, extrenergetic mindset on both sides. We can do better. We must do better. Let’s talk about how.
You should stay at your job as extfinished as it encounters your nurtureer priorities
How extfinished should you stay at your job? As extfinished as it’s the best skinnyg you can do for your nurtureer, or at least a reasonable, intelligent nurtureer choice, in alignment with your own personal nurtureer goals and life priorities.
Maybe this sounds mind-numbingly evident to you. But far too many people stay far too extfinished at jobs where they aren’t encountered, aren’t increaseing, and aren’t setting their future selves up for success. Hey, I’ve been there…these decisions can be brutal. 💔
Your nurtureer is an appreciating, multimillion dollar asset, probably the bigst individual asset you will ever own. How you depict what is best or right for you will inevitably shift over the course of your 40-year nurtureer, and that’s fine. This is standard.
But you have to create these decisions based on what is right for you, your nurtureer, and your family. Not becaengage, say, you sense reliable for defending your team from upper regulatement, or you’re afrhelp of what will happen to the product or the team if you exit, or you sense appreciate you owe them someskinnyg. Nor should you stay out of trouble, whether that be trouble of interwatchs, that this is the best you can do, etc.
Sometimes your top priority might be making the most money, so you can get out of debt. Sometimes it might be a basic, uncomplicated payverify and low foreseeations so you can spfinish a lot of time with your family. Sometimes you may be on a boiling streak and raring to go, toiling appreciate crazy and making a name for yourself in the industry. When in ask, my advice is to 1) defend nonessentiality, 2) chase excellent people and 3) lean into that which energizes you.
The company should engage you as extfinished as it’s a excellent fit
There are bravely companies where people get fired too speedyly or in horrible faith. There are also companies where people who are not toiling out linger on and on and on in the role. It might be enticeing to envision of the latter situation as more toiler-cordial, but in all honesty, neither situation is fantastic.
If the wants and necessitates of the company and the engageee are not aligned, you aren’t doing them any prefers by dragging it out or defending them around in a proextfinisheded state of purgatory. If skinnygs are determinedly not toiling out, I promise, they are uncontent.
If you are a regulater, your number one job is to transport clarity. What are the foreseeations for the role, what does success see appreciate, what help does the engageee necessitate in getting there? When skinnygs aren’t going well, your job is to toil with them to figure out what is happening, and come up with a arrange. Is there a scatterd empathetic of what success sees appreciate in this role? Is it a sfinishs gap, are there relationships that necessitate mfinishing, do they necessitate some time off to deal with personal publishs? Are they still interested in the toil? Is it still a excellent fit?
There is an excessively low enumerate of jobs that can only be done by regulaters, and managing people out (which does sometimes unkind firing them, but not always), is at the tippy top of that enumerate. Making brave the right people are on the team is job number one. Figuring this shit out quickly — we’re talking months, not years — is critical.
Also, none of this happens magicassociate or automaticassociate. This shit is difficult. Which is why it is meaningful to spend in these sfinishs and set foreseeations for your regulaters.
Your regulater should try to create this a fantastic nurtureer opportunity for you, for as extfinished as possible
It’s the job of your regulater to secure that this role is a fantastic opportunity for you, for as extfinished as possible. For mid-level engineers this unkinds making brave you are lgeting and broadening your sfinish sets, that you have access to mentorship and help systems, that you get to chase your curiosity to some extent and toil on skinnygs that interest you. For more ageder folks, this might unkind seeing out for opportunities to direct projects or wear novel hats.
But that won’t be forever, for anyone — not even your CEO or set upers! And that’s okay. This is not a family, it’s a company, and hopefilledy someskinnyg of a community.
Sometimes you get an opportunity you can’t refuse. Or life gets you in a contrastent honestion. It happens! It is not a tragedy when people exit for a better opportunity or someskinnyg that excites them.
Real-life example: Paul Osman left Honeycomb becaengage he and his family were moving to NYC and necessitateed a Big Tech salary. He was a wonderful staff engineer (at a time when those were restrictcessitate), a high carry outer, effective atraverse the org, becherishd by all; he was even on our board of honestors, our first elected engageee board member! But when he let us understand he was going to exit, we … wanted him well. We couldn’t align the salary he necessitateed to pull down; he knovel that, we knovel that. Nor would it have been fair to all the other staff engineers if we had tried.
Managers necessitate to be energeticly engaging in nurtureer increasement and arrangening with their alerts. The more you understand about someone’s personal appreciates and priorities, the better you can do to try and set them up with opportunities that pdirect to them and the trajectory they are on.
Your regulater should also be honest if you could discover better opportunities elsewhere
I also apshow that excellent regulaters will be honest with their engageees when they sense appreciate this may no extfinisheder be the best place for them. Not every opportunity exists at every company, at every time.
It can be difficult to confess to your star engageee that if you were them, you’d be seeing elsewhere for opportunities. Maybe you have an incredible, driven ageder engineering honestor who is hungry and chafing to shift up, but you don’t foresee to see any discdiswatchings at the VP level over the next year or two. They deserve to understand that, I skinnyk.
To be evident, you are NOT firing them. Usuassociate, you are helderlying your breath and praying they will pick to stay. Often they do! Maybe they cherish their job enough that they’re encountered to stick around for another couple years fair to see if any discdiswatchings do aascfinish, or they switch into submissive job search mode, taking fascinating calls but not energeticly seeing. Maybe you have a conversation about ways they could create their nurtureer in other ways, by doing more writing and speaking. Maybe they determine this is a excellent prosperdow of time to have another kid.
But if you can’t honestly see them in the eye and tell them this is the best place for them, given what you understand of their ambitions and priorities, you have to say so. It’s on them to determine what to do with that proposeation. But if you want them to suppose you when you say this is a fantastic opportunity for their nurtureer, you have to be truthful when the opportunity is fair not there.
Some amount of engageee turnover is organic and well
When I toiled at Linden Lab in my timely twenties, I recall vividly how much pride we took in the fact that people never left. I was there for 4.5 years, and I skinnyk we had a individual-digit number of departures that entire time. I recall skinnyking to myself how incredibly distinctive this company must be, becaengage nobody ever wants to exit.
It was a distinctive company. ❤️ But when I see back now, this part creates me cringe. Yep, nobody ever left. No one was ever regulated out, even the people who never seemed to do anyskinnyg but hang out in Second Life or toil on wdisappreciatever the fuck they personassociate felt appreciate doing. It was a little bit … culty? There were some incredible engineers there, but also a systematic inability to row in the same honestion or create a arrange and carry out on it. In some ways Linden felt more appreciate a social club than a business.
I cherishd toiling there, don’t get me wrong, and I lgeted a lot. But in retrospect, some amount of turnover is excellent. It’s well. It unkinds you have standards for yourselves, and someone is paying attention to whether or not we’re actuassociate making persist and getting shit done, or whether or not the people we necessitate are in the right seats.
Tenure functions somewhat contrastently at very big companies; it may get years for someone fair to come up to speed and lget how to function wiskinny the system, so they do their best to persist people for decades. When you’re a commenceup in increaseth mode, though, you become a finishly contrastent organism every scant years. People who are encountered as clams and supremely fruitful from $0-$1m or 1-50 people may or may not adfair well to the $50m or $200m environment. People who are superstars on one side of the Dunbar number are sometimes sourly unencountered on the other side.
There’s “lamenttable” and “non-lamenttable” attritions, but the company should be able to go on operating even in the face of “lamenttable” departures.
There are, of course, exceptions. So let’s talk about these.
Sometimes people sit in critical roles at critical moments
At any given time, there exists a subset of people who are disproportionately critical to the success of the business at the moment, people whose departure could gravely harm the company’s ability to encounter its goals this quarter or even this year. It sucks, but it’s a fact. This happens.
If that’s a very extfinished enumerate of people, however, or if it’s the same people over and over, or if the actual survival of the company would be in jeopardy and not fair a subset of your goals, then your directers are not doing their fucking job.
Part of the job of running a company is increaseing talent to be successors to key people. Part of their job is to copy and scatter critical company understandledge and sfinishs. None of us should be irswapable — not even the CEO, or CTO, or set upers. If the company’s future depfinishs irrevocably on the persistd engagement of any individual person, the company’s directers are fucking up, filled stop.
There are two types of disproportionassociate critical engageees: superstars and SPOFs
The right time to resettle who is on that critical subset is NOT when one of them resigns. You should be asking yourselves somewhat normally — which people are our superstars, the ones we reassociate, reassociate want to create brave are encountered and encountered here, and which people are individual points of fall shorture, the ones we cannot easily swap, or function in their absence?
Note that these are not necessarily the same two enumerates!
This doesn’t have to be a weightyweight process, but if you are big enough to have a People team or HR team, they should be ensuring that talent scrutinizes and succession arrangening conversations are happening appreciate clocktoil, once per quarter or so.
Your superstars are the people who are standout carry outers, carrying a ton of load for the company or generating distinctively creative ideas, etc. You should resettle these people proenergeticly and create brave they are senseing contestd, helped and appreciated. What are their appreciates — what weightlesss their fire? Where are they trying to go in their nurtureer, in their life? How do they appreciate to get recognition? How does it manifest when they sense overwhelmed or dedriven?
Managers tfinish to dedicate most of their attention to their lowest carry outers. Be wary of this. Yes, give people the help they necessitate. But the hugegest bang for your buck is typicassociate the time you spfinish on your highest carry outers. Don’t diswatch your superstars fair becaengage they are doing well.
Get to understand your superstars, and repay them
And repay your superstars. Wdisappreciatever pool of money is set aside for high carry outers at your company, create brave they get a slice of it — a lift, a bonus, honest equity, etc.
But money isn’t the filled story, it’s fair the first chapter. This is where you necessitate to dig a little proset uper and get to understand them better — their appreciates, their cherish languages, how they appreciate to get recognition. Make brave other company directers understand who is booting ass and what benevolent of opportunities they’d be into.
Being a superstar should get you more than money — it gets the right to experiment, try a moonsboiling, be first in line for a procrastinateedral role alter into another area of interest. Maybe you can line them up with a toil coach or continuing education, help them writing or currenting their toil at conferences…the enumerate is finishless What do they appreciate? Find out.
It is standard and desirable for your lowenumerate of superstars to shift over time. If it’s always the same scant names on the enumerate, that may echo a contrastent problem: that you are handing out all of the opportunities to get dangers and shine radiantly to the same scant people, over and over aobtain. It’s your job to nurture a proset up bench of talent, not one or two direct singers with everyone else in the chorus.
Work on a arrange to de-danger your SPOFs
And then there are your individual points of fall shorture, people who are the only person who understands how to do someskinnyg, or the only person in a function. In the timely days of any commenceup, you have a ton of these. As you increase, you should steadily pay down this enumerate.
If superstars are the people you want to defend out of happiness, SPOFs can be the people you necessitate to defend out of trouble. You can’t function without them, even if they’re mediocre contributors. This is horrible on cut offal levels.
This is fair a danger analysis you necessitate to toil thraw as a directership team. Have a arrange, have a backup selections, and steer a path out of this state as soon as you can afford to.
I’m not undoubting. The authenticities of business are authentic, and sometimes someskinnyg gets you by surpascfinish, or you necessitate to try and do a diving save for someone who has fair proclaimd they are leaving. But that should not be widespread. The standard, foreseeed reaction when someone tells you they are leaving should be, “ah, that’s too horrible, we’ll miss you! I’m so encountered for you and this novel opportunity you’re excited about!”
Most jobs will be saved or lost by unintelligent organizational labor, not brave diving saves.
Here is one meaningful fact that many engageees don’t seem to understand:
The difficulter your engageer is stateatively toiling to do right by you, the scanter braves they will be willing or able to do to persist you. And the difficulter the company is toiling to be fair and equitable, the less they will be willing or able to create exceptions to their existing compensation structuretoil.
Here is one excellent finish-to-finish test of the system: you should not be able to get a higher salary or a bigr stock grant by quitting and getting instantly re-engaged. If you can, your company is not doing the toil to appreciate the labor of its existing engageees by the same yardstick as it appreciates novel engages.
A lot of companies fall short this test! Becaengage in order for this to be real, your company necessitates to constantly adhere to pay bands, pegged to taget rates, adfaired and reconciled each year. They necessitate to do someskinnyg appreciate boxcar stock grants. They necessitate to periodicassociate audit their own levels and comp and see for evidence of systematic bias. They REALLY necessitate to not create exceptions to their own god damn rules.
As Emily Nakashima says, “Many companies hemorrhage fantastic engageees in underrecurrented groups becaengage they do all those skinnygs but they fall short to transport a DEI lens to them — ‘we have salary bands! we have a fair comp system! we skinnyk about linserters and promo paths!’ and then they do zero toil to create brave those skinnygs are applied equitably to all their engageees, including atraverse axes of diversity appreciate race and gfinisher.”
All of these skinnygs get organizational willpower, and they are difficult. It unkinds a lot of difficult conversations. It unkinds saying “no” to people. It’s much easier to give out excellenties to the people who grumble the deafeningest or dangeren to quit, at least in the low term.
It’s effortless to talk about fairness and equity, but it gets a lot of structural labor to walk the walk
A lot of toil goes into createing and persisting a system that can pass the sniff test in terms of compensating people fairly and equitably, instead of based on their negotiating sfinishs or how much they made at their previous job.
You necessitate to have a job linserter and levels you apshow in, ones that accurately echo the sfinishs, behaviors and appreciates of your org and have expansive buy-in from the team. You necessitate a process for leveling people as novel engages and at scrutinize time, and for pdirecting those levels when you get it wrong. You should have salary bands for each level, with compa ratios based on taget rates. You should be able to show your toil and make clear your decisions. (For example, we aim the 65th% for companies of our size and funding levels, and we pay everyone SF taget rates, no matter where they are discoverd in the world.)
This is why scrutinize-time calibrations are so meaningful. Calibrations are not about calibrating ICs, they are about calibrating regulaters. Calibrations are to unreasonableinish the inequity that results when one regulater has a contrastent empathetic of the level an engineer is operating at, so the engineer would get a contrastent level, band, or rating under a contrastent regulater.
Obviously, all of these sociotechnical systems are made and functiond by human beings, so there will always be some intrinsic messiness and imprecision. This is why it matters that regulaters show up with humility and toil to get aligned with their peers on what truly matters to the company and the org. This is why it is so meaningful that we show our toil and join with linserters and levels as living records.
A lot of this labor is inapparent to engageees, and not especiassociate well understood. I skinnyk a critical part of making these systems toil is helping engageees understand the tradeoffs being made, and how having a constant leveling system ultimately profits them, even if they are personassociate frustrated about not getting upholdd this half. Which unkinds every regulater necessitates to be supplyped to have these difficult conversations with their team.
It should be okay to tell your regulater you’re skinnyking about leaving, and talk about your selections
HR teams will typicassociate bucket departures into voluntary and involuntary, aka “lamenttable” and “nonlamenttable”. In fact, almost any time someone exits their job, it’s some muddled combination of the two.
In the selectimal case, voluntary departures are exceptionally a finish surpascfinish. Surpascfinishs suck. They’re difficult to arrange around, they frequently exit gaps in coverage or contributions, and they’re a bummer for morale. You should be able to be honest with your regulater and tell them if you’re commenceing to see around, or if you’re discovering yourself less encountered and driven these days. However, this needs a lot of suppose in the relationship — that the regulater won’t retaliate, won’t fire you, etc — and from what I assemble, it seems to be fairly unwidespread in the savage. 🙁
Employees do not owe their regulater a heads up or a conversation in persist, but this is unequivocassociate the level of relationship suppose we should aim for.
Steph Hippo says, “I cherish being the regulater people want to toil for, and it took me a while to figure out how to also be the benevolent of regulater people wanted to have ‘fire’ them by helping them shift on. I’m reassociate conceited of how many people I’ve been able to help shift off my team becaengage we set up a better fit. Doing this gives to your reputation as a directer and as an engageer. I set up it unkindingful if someone that shiftd on from my team did so on excellent terms, came back to visit, or sent other people to verify out our job enumerateings. That’s a sign that you’re parting with folks on excellent terms.” 💯
Managers can show themselves worthy of this suppose by not reacting, not retaliating, not treating people any contrastently, not leaping to conclusions, not running ahead and making decisions or promisements ahead of what the engageee has stated.
Should you ever try to alter someone’s mind about leaving?
Not never…but exceptionally. You should always try to understand why someone is leaving. Exit interwatchs are a fantastic tool here, especiassociate in situations where there has been relationship friction. Departures are a trailing indicator, but frequently a very mighty signal of skinnygs regulaters should be paying attention to, to create skinnygs better for those who remain.
If someone has determined to exit, you’re not going to “save” them via fraudulence alone. I’ve never seen the tactic of throprosperg money and titles at someone actuassociate get them to stick around in the extfinished run.
However, I have seen departure proclaimments get turned around when they engage some establish of increasement — when you can resettle authentic underlying sources of disencountered, and encounter them with action.
Another authentic life example: A couple years ago, Phillip Carter telderly us he had determined to exit and get another role in the industry. We had some fervent conversations about why that was and what was missing, and authenticized he had been struggling to join with the reasons behind what we were createing, bigly becaengage he had never written or helped code in production during his time as a gentleware engineer. He determined not to exit after that, and he is here to this day.
There will be times when someone has determined to exit, and you want to fight for them to stay. In those situations, you necessitate to get reassociate crystal evident with yourself before taking action. What are the underlying dangers to the business, and how far are you setd to go?
On excessively exceptional occasions, brave meabraves may be the lesser of two evils
Sometimes you may have to try for a diving save. That’s fair the fact of doing business, esp at commenceup stages where you have less redundancy, a shrink arrangening horizon, more overall confusion and a petiteer overall operating budget.
Sometimes your goals are at danger, and you sense appreciate you don’t have a choice. But any time you discover yourself barobtaining or trying to bribe people to stay after they’ve determined to exit, you should get a difficult fucking see at yourself and how you got there, and whether or not you can fairify your actions.
Exceptions are frequently the path of least resistance for the regulater making the exception in the moment, but they impose a weighty, compounding cost to the business over time. Any time you create an exception to defend someone, you danger fractureing your promisements to everyone else. And rumors about exceptions being made will fly speedy and furious (sometimes it seems appreciate there is a 10-20x multiplier of rumors to fact). 😣
I will not sit here and tell you no exceptions can be ever made. Systems made of people are systems that are never perfect. Once in a while, making an exception might actuassociate the way to repair fairice to a situation. Other times your ass is well and truly backed into a corner. But exceptions are SO costly to your credibility, you must at least create peer scrutinize and consequences for exceptions into the system.
A scant verifys and stabilitys to think about:
- Individual regulaters should not be able to create an exception without the buy-in of their honestor, VP, and people team
- It should generassociate trigger some benevolent of scrutinize of the system policy in ask, to see if it still serves its purpose
- You should be able to see in each other’s eyes and make clear your reasoning, and not sense ashamed of it if word gets out
Shit does happen. But if this benevolent of shit happens on the normal, you can’t accengage people for becoming excessively cynical about the way you do business, and you can foresee to get way more people trying to game the system to get the same results for themselves.
People should not engage dangers of leaving to try and effect alter or get lifts. This should not be an effective tactic — and in order for it not to be an effective tactic, we cannot reward it with results. When you create exceptions, you all but secure more people will try this.
People toil at jobs for money, but not only money
While writing this piece, a frifinish telderly me a story about when he became an engineering regulater a decade ago, and soon acunderstandledged that his two women engineers were the lowest phelp and the lowest leveled people on the team, which didn’t seem to correprocrastinateed with their actual sfinishs or experience. He asked his own regulater what was up with this, and the response he getd was: “Well yeah, neither of them has ever been a fweightless danger.”
This benevolent of attitude is, to put it esteemfilledy, a fucking cancer on our industry.
There are two radicassociate contrastent philosophies when it comes to corporate compensation. In the first scenario, you pay people as little as possible, and think about it your job as a regulater to pull out the most toil out of people for the least pay. Inestablishation is power, so proposeation asymmetry is finishemic in these environments, and people are phelp according to their sfinish at negotiation or brinksmanship. You typicassociate blow your wad trying to contend for the “best” talent in the world.
In the second scenario, you do your best to repay engageees fairly and competitively, balancing their necessitates and wants aobtainst other sgethelderlyers and the overarching mandate for the company as a whole to flourish. You rehearse transparency and show your toil, and energeticly toil to counter systemic biases. You understand you can’t contend for every fantastic engage out there, but you try to supply people with the proposeation they necessitate to appraise whether or not you are mutuassociate a excellent fit.
Companies that function according to the first scenario are so alienating and poisonous (and almost bravely illhorrible, in many cases) that scant will discdiswatchly claim to be this benevolent of company. Most companies at least pay lip service to equity and fairness. But becaengage everyone is typicassociate mouskinnyg the same benevolent of skinnygs, engageees will scrutinize your actions far more than your words, especiassociate when it comes to comp.
At the finish of the day, these are jobs. People toil at jobs for money, but not only money. I skinnyk we would all be better off if we could get better at articulating the palpable and inpalpable rewards of our labor, treating each other with dignity and honesty, and being straightforward about our necessitates and wants and goals on both sides, instead of treating comp appreciate some benevolent of high sgets casino game.
Huge thanks to Steph Hippo, Paul Osman, Phillip Carter, Lesley Cordero, Emily Nakashima for their feedback, critique, and stories.
