Why people leave companies

http://qz.com/287876/this-is-why-people-leave-your-company/

by prostoalex • 12 years ago

69 54 12 years ago

Mithaldu2• 12 years ago

I really like the note about few people leaving because of their bosses. My experiences with all companies, excepting one, has been that the person i reported to was hard-working, intelligent, well-meaning, skilled and all-around a great person; who was however constrained by decisions and outright mistakes of people above them, who sometimes manage to be so separated from the humans in their companies that i struggled to still consider them humans at all. (I'm talking outright abuse of people inside AND outside the company, as well as rampant and violent irrationality.)

x0rg• 12 years ago

Constraints are often linked to a lack of courage. People prefer to defend themselves more than what they do. They prefer to complain more than actually solve problems..

Mithaldu2• 12 years ago

By constraints i mean managers being told "you can leave if you like" to their faces when addressing things that were actively, massively and negatively affecting the company's bottom-line and well-being.

vinceguidry3• 12 years ago

I was nodding my head until I read the second section on advice on how not to lose people. It seemed like the most unactionable crap I've ever heard outside of the self-help industry.

Something that is actionable that can help retain employees is encouraging candor and honest communication about office politics on the part of direct supervisors. It kept me from jumping ship and I consider myself underpaid. Knowing that at least one person at the company had my best interests at heart kept me from making a decision that would have hurt everybody but me.

aeonsky2• 12 years ago

I know that point of view too - if you leave now, we would have to look very hard for a long time to replace you. We have many projects and you're the only one that knows X, however, we don't have the cash to offer you a raise, here are some more options for $0.001 each.

However, I usually found the minute you are inconvenient, you will be let go. Communication is important, but remember that businesses ALWAYS has their best interest in mind. Sometimes it is necessary to make tough decisions (bad for company, good for you - because you feel selfish) and quit a unwinnable situation.

vinceguidry3• 12 years ago

I'm always down to get fired. Just means I'll go somewhere else and make more money.

But the advice in the article is aimed at companies trying to keep people, not at employees trying to make career decisions. Presumably, the person in the company reading the article has a serious need to keep personnel, and I've seen first-hand how difficult that can be in the face of market realities.

I'm trying to hire someone right now and I'm being forced to either get real creative about who we're willing to take on, or give up for the time being on my ambition of building and leading a team. Simply because our CFO doesn't want to pay market salary for a developer. I've been following Rands long enough to think I can do this.

WalterBright• 12 years ago

I've been both an employee and an employer, and things are hardly so one-sided. For example, an engineer friend of mine works for a mega corp. He has cancer, and has been undergoing various treatments for years. The corp has bent over backward to be accommodating for his needs, such as time off for treatments, schedule adjustments, etc. For example, he's got chemobrain and they've found productive work he can do.

The corp has my respect and gratitude for this.

InclinedPlane• 12 years ago

Yeah, sadly that component of managing was completely missing from the advice in the article, and it's so critical, at any size company. A good manager should be putting in the effort to see that people get credit and kudos for their good work. Moreover, a good manager should protect their people from interruptions and interference from the rest of the company. Bad managers are funnels, good managers are umbrellas.

vinceguidry3• 12 years ago

Absolutely. I love my boss. Coolest person I've ever worked for. Always down to discuss candidly the difficulties the company is facing and what the various higher-ups are planning to face those challenges, and where we fit in. He's done his best to keep everybody else from crapping all over his planning process and therefore my peace of mind. I don't know where he learned how to do all that, but I'm eternally in his debt.

maerF0x0• 12 years ago

The note about wages is true except in the case that your employee can make more elsewhere. Recognition is important to good employees, and failing to recognize their value is insulting.

I have worked at places where latter hires made more than former hires (same equity), this disgruntled the former hires and there was a loss of experienced people. Simply bumping people up to the company average could have retained their better employees.

monk_e_boy• 12 years ago

I should prob make an anonymous account, but whatever. One of our sales people left to get a job in a charity shop. The wages and hours were better.

You gotta laugh. Or cry. I forget which.

grandalf2• 12 years ago

I am skeptical that there really are good HR people out there who are capable of being effective in a startup environment. I think that's why startups so often don't hire any until it's too late.

te_chris• 12 years ago

Maybe not traditional HR people, but surely former startup people who were responsible for culture could be hired into head of HR roles. That's what I'd try for anyway.

grandalf2• 12 years ago

Definitely. Culture is not trivial to get right, and the period of rapid growth when companies often mishire HR people is exactly when it is most needed.

I could see hiring a low level HR person in more of a clerical role and then hiring a community builder or evangelist or whatever to focus on culture.

7Figures2Commas• 12 years ago

One big difference is that the company didn’t approach recruiting from a purely skills-based perspective. “Honestly, we placed a high price on ‘hilarious’ and hired wonderful people, I think partially because we were willing to work with people who were awesome culture fits even if they had a steep learning curve ahead of them.”

I don't like the reference to "culture fit" since this is so nebulous and often abused, but the comment about skills-based hiring is really important for startups.

Lack of a willingness to develop employees is one of the big reasons startups complain about a "talent shortage." Far too many companies focus on people who can do X, Y and Z today because they've been doing those things for n years, and they completely filter out smart, motivated people who, if given an opportunity and a good environment, could be developed into fantastic employees.

This has an underestimated impact on employee retention. Unless your company is a rocket ship, the person you hire on a perfect skills fit may start to feel like he or she is stagnating relatively quickly.

Growth is crucial to employee satisfaction and companies should consider the saying "a man's reach should exceed his grasp" when filling positions. Hire intelligent, conscientious people who have to grow to fit a role and chances are they'll be far more engaged and loyal than the employees who don't have to grow to do the job.

Kalium• 12 years ago

The catch, I suspect, lies in knowing how much runway you have to develop someone. The person needs a month to learn a language and framework? Sure, that's workable. Needs a year? Maybe not.

jschwartzi• 12 years ago

The real question is whether that person can produce usable work output while they're learning. The framework that takes a year to learn because it's composed of 12 parts that would each take a month to master is still equivalent to the other framework that takes a month to master, because your employee can be producing useful work output within a month either way. If your 12-part framework is useless until fully mastered, then you should probably pick a different framework.

bkurtz13• 12 years ago

This article could be a lot better if it were more general and less focused on "startups"...

greenyoda• 12 years ago

"1. People who love their job and the company will work all the time anyway. If you’ve hired good fits, you’ll see this happen."

People will "work all the time" only if they love their job and the company more than their significant others, their friends, their children, their health, etc.

If companies consider a "good fit" someone who is willing to give up their personal life for the company, it's not surprising that it's hard for them to find people to hire.

"2. People do better work when they have lives of their own..."

This seems to contradict item #1: if you work all the time, how can you have a life of your own?

One more thing: The author of this article is an HR person, so the only thing she knows about why employees leave is probably based on what the employees choose to divulge during their exit interviews. Employees are generally not going to tell HR that "I'm leaving because my boss is an asshole", since that would be burning bridges - word could get back to the boss, and the employee would never get a decent reference from them. A smart employee would realize that they have nothing to gain by telling HR their real reasons for leaving, so they'd say something generic and inoffensive like "I'm leaving to pursue other opportunities".

julenx• 12 years ago

I understand #1 more along the lines of "people will work anytime", be it Tuesday 2am or a sunny Sunday morning, as opposed to all the time, which literally means you never stop working.

silverpikezero3• 12 years ago

It sounded good until I got to #2. This is utterly false. I would go so far as to say canonically-untrue: the only reason any employee leaves is because of their boss.

A good manager will keep an employee engaged, challenged, and happy. In fact managers can achieve this even if the company itself is not engaged, challenging, and a happy place. Good managers can also shield employees from an array of terrible dysfunction at the company level. All good managers I've ever had have this skill. A bad manager will not only expose company dysfunction, but magnify it, making the employee's job more difficult than if the employee has no manager at all. I've had the latter several times, and it's soul-draining.

The rest of the article reads like a novice's take on the SF startup scene, which I happen to loathe anyways. One funny example is the #7 HR comment, which exposes a pretty big misunderstanding about HR. HR serves no useful purpose to the employee; it exists to shield the company from problems, nothing more. Improving HR will have no meaningful impact on employee retention.

existencebox• 12 years ago

I don't mean to cherrypick, but to address your main point: I did not leave my last job because of my boss, to the contrary, he was one of the most motivational/mentor figures I'd ever had, bar none. (To the point that I actually really regret leaving.)

I left because I was told that due to it being academia, I was hard capped at essentially <2% yearly raises unless I swapped jobs out and back, and holding myself to a hilariously low academic salary this early in my career was going to really set me back financially in the long run.

silverpikezero3• 12 years ago

You make a good point. There are some kinds of "institutional dysfunction" that are too problematic to overcome. It that sense it's really not only about the manager. At best managers can carve out a small pocket of good work environment for the employee, but even that has limits that won't be enough for people to stay.

walshemj• 12 years ago

I have never left a job because of my Boss - not matter how good your Boss like King Canute is you cannot turn back the tides

eropple2• 12 years ago

I've left jobs because of my boss. I've also left jobs because of completely unrelated reasons. My boss at TripAdvisor was a fantastic guy who I still hold in the highest regard and I'd go work for again if it made sense. But I was offered an opportunity simply not available at that job because it didn't exist and didn't matter to the company.

I've also been privileged to work with HR people for whom the adage "never trust them" was completely false, because they were good people who happened to work in HR. So there's that, too. They were excellent sources of advice and problem-solving help when needed, and I consider at least one of them a friend even now that I no longer work for the company.

So it sounds to me like you're projecting, and kind of being rude about it?

silverpikezero3• 12 years ago

If by "projecting", you mean drawing on my experience, then of course I am.

I've also been privileged to work with HR people for whom the adage "never trust them" was completely false.

I'm glad you had a good experience with HR. Being able to be friends with an HR employee does not invalidate the axiom that you should not trust an HR rep in matters of your career (happiness). There is too large a body of negative examples out there in order to safely ignore it. Everyone can of course can and will make their own choices, but I stand by my previous statements.

bronbron2• 12 years ago

Eh, he's not wrong (even if he's being a Walter about it).

HR is not a union for employees. HR is there to protect the company: It just turns out that the company's theoretical (keyword there) interests and the employee's interests align frequently (e.g. keeping the workplace free of discrimination, keeping employee morale up).

Retra• 12 years ago

If you were hiring HR people, you would look for good people that can be trusted. And then you can also fire them if they don't do what is good for the company. You can't trust them because they answer to people you shouldn't trust. it doesn't matter how pleasant and understanding they are -- they won't outrank their boss for you.

Iftheshoefits• 12 years ago

I've only left a job because of the boss one time. The other times were mainly because I was either unhappy with my role in the company or to pursue other career opportunities that presented better/more diverse challenges and superior compensation packages.

bbcbasic5• 12 years ago

If you had replaced "only" with "most common" in your first paragraph, you'd probably get a few less "oh but I didn't leave because of my boss" replies.

HNers are soooo logical!

agounaris• 12 years ago

I strongly disagree with the boss section. People leave bad bosses not bad companies.

She also assumes that a manager/boss is definitely doing a good job and therefore an employee leaving is a hiring problem. Not really... it's interesting if this is a common logic among HR

Cakez0r• 12 years ago

The article mentions trusting HR with the company's deepest, darkest secrets... Company secrets are probably one of the biggest factors of my work satisfaction.

If there are hush-hush meetings and rumors circulating, that's a huge red flag. Run your business transparently. You never know which of your employees might have a solution to whatever problem the business is facing.

guhcampos2• 12 years ago

The counteroffer argument is weak and simply not true. And it led me to think that this Guthrie guy seems to believe that the only way of people leaving a job is looking for another one.

This is particularly not true inside the tech industry: good employees are constantly harassed by other companies. They will offer higher wages, shorter hours and tons of other benefits to make a wanted engineer turn. Sometimes those offers are hard to turn down, even if you are pretty happy with your job.

What I've seen happen to me and friends is a simple matter of chosing to be honest or not. Last time it happened to me I sat down with my boss and told him:

- Boss, these guys want me pretty bad, they have been harassing me for months now and I turned down every offer. Problem is, they gave me this X offer now and, taking into account that I'm getting married next year, the extra money would be handy, this is getting hard to say no.

He gave me a counteroffer and we lived happily ever after.

Bottomline: sometimes the employee does not really want to leave, but it's a tough market out there. If you want to keep your engineers (and other employees as well) you simply have to be a better workplace than the others. This includes money, benefits, hours, bureaucracy, stress levels and every other possible aspect that your employee might take into account.

It's not really that different than building a product which is better than your competitor. Problem is that H&R and Hiring guys want so bad to make a case for themselves that they try those magic and golden rules that simply won't work.

You are dealing with people, be nice to them and they will be nice to you in return. If they don't, you don't want them in your ranks anyway.

bbcbasic5• 12 years ago

The problem is that on average, giving every employee what they want in terms of salary, work allocation etc. is going to be hard or impossible. So most companies don't and usually the squeaky wheel (or the wheel that is threatening to leave) will get the grease. It is not fair but then there isn't a totally fair way to deal with this.

There is no fair way to pay people. It is a supply / demand and negotiated marketplace. There is no such thing as I am work $100k/year because I did XYZ and know ABC. I mean that may be true this second, but it is as only as true as the most up to date data. And is not true in any absolute sense.

guhcampos2• 12 years ago

It's essentially a min-max problem. Optimization is achievable, but hard work.

It demands honesty from both parties and any employee must understand exactly what you said: companies can't give all the employees want. You have to know your own value and make yourself valuable to the company first, then ask for recognition.

ufmace• 12 years ago

That sounds kinda odd to me. If they haven't interviewed you yet, why are they making specific offers? Or is it really more like "We are willing to pay up to X for the right candidate"?

If they are making specific offers to people who haven't interviewed with them, that smacks of desperation to me - maybe there's a good reason why they're having so much trouble hiring that they have to pull these stunts.

If you go to your current employer with a "We are willing to pay up to X for the right candidate" offer, then they have plenty of excuse for ignoring it if that's what they care to do, so it doesn't seem to have much value over just asking for a raise if you want one.

The real bottom line of that point was that interviewing with other companies is kind of a pain, and employees generally won't do it unless they've already decided they want to move on. Other companies usually don't give specific offers before a round of interviews, so by the time your employee has an offer in-hand from another company, it's too late to be making counter-offers. Better to both do your best to watch the market and give raises that match the market, rather than just cost of living, and to cultivate an environment where unhappy employees will be comfortable telling you why they're unhappy before they go looking for another position.

dozzie• 12 years ago

- Boss, these guys want me pretty bad, they have been harassing me for months now [...]
He gave me a counteroffer and we lived happily ever after.

It's not a counteroffer the author talks about. She talks about "Boss, I'm leaving" situation.

11thEarlOfMar• 12 years ago

One of the mantras of all companies, especially tech, is that you've got to be always hiring. That means always out looking for great people who are also a cultural fit and bringing them in regardless of whether there is an open position. This is difficult for founders since their focus is typically on building the product, no matter what.

I speculate that there is a type of HR role that could fill this need, but not be a full-time payroll person for the startup companies they serve. Perhaps a type of retained recruiter but who has a much closer relationship to the start up than the current 'hunter' type that Founders never meet in person. They'd have a good working relationship with the founder and employees, actually understand the culture and the tech, and then only bring people in who they felt were truly a fit.

Do such types exist? If not, would founders find them valuable? How would you align their interest with the startup so they genuinely brought in candidates they felt were a fit?

bronbron2• 12 years ago

That means always out looking for great people who are also a cultural fit and bringing them in regardless of whether there is an open position.
I speculate that there is a type of HR role that could fill this need

We have this at my company (not going to name, just to remain semi-anonymous). There's a whole group dedicated just to finding people who seem like good fits for the company. They're employees the same as any engineer would be.

I don't think it's that uncommon at bigger (i.e. > 100 employees) companies.

Fede_V2• 12 years ago

I didn't like this article at all. First - it states that putting insane pressure on people to work long hours is counter productive - and mandating week-end work leads to burn out.

The very next sentence then immediately says this:

"People who love their job and the company will work all the time anyway. If you’ve hired good fits, you’ll see this happen."

Uhh.. so you want to replace mandatory week-end over time, with an informal criteria where good fits work all the time anyway - thus if you don't work on the week-ends (of your own """choice""") you confirm you aren't a good fit?

Now, there's nothing wrong with working on week-ends when there's a deadline or an important milestone, but substituting explicit expectations with implicit ones is flat out horrendous and it means that you have to constantly read between the lines to find out exactly what you have to do.

lem72• 12 years ago

I didn't really read it that way. I read it more like treat people with respect, don't force them to create work that is a nice or should when they should be relaxing... but people who love their job will be happy to go the extra mile, work weekends, etc when there are Must or Mission Critical things that need to get done.

Fede_V2• 12 years ago

Sure - and I agree with all that. The issue comes with the circularity of the reasoning:

- People who are a good cultural fit don't mind working all the time

Therefore:

If someone minds working on week-ends - then they weren't a great cultural fit. It's almost Calvinist in its logic.

As you said, there's absolutely no problem working on week-ends when it's needed, or getting really caught up in an exciting new tech and spending evenings getting it up and running. However - when this become (implicitly) expected as a marker of good cultural fit, you've basically placed it as a burden for everyone.

dingaling• 12 years ago

Now, there's nothing wrong with working on week-ends when there's a deadline or an important milestone

I disagree with that, on the basis that deadlines and milestones are artificial constructs of the company. It should always be wrong to work on weekends.

I worked for 15 years for a Fortune 100 company and I experienced probably five or six 'crises' each year that required me to work unusual hours.

The worst case in each scenario was that the company might lose some money; the most common case, though, was nothing at all; it had been declared that we would be 'competitive' by an arbitrary date and it was all-hands-on-deck to meet that target.

Looking back I now understand and regret that neither of those cases are anything I should have worried about as an individual person. I gave my personal time to the company simply to avoid being sacked; that doesn't seem like a fair trade.

bbcbasic5• 12 years ago

It is very start-up-focused and US focused.

I have never worked at a company in 13 years that has done a pivot. There are companies out their doing the boring (but still profitable) stuff y'know!

Also I have never worked at a company that expects me to do routine unpaid overtime over the contracted hours. But I have worked in UK/Australia with different culture. UK is best 25 days annual leave + public holidays, and often no expectation to work more than the hours you agreed when you signed up (which is fair enough!).

Ahem yet people leave their cushy programming jobs in the UK!

Main reasons for me are substandard coding practices, low pay, not interesting enough work, major life changes (e.g. moving to another country), company going downhill.

Pro tip: Don't tell the potential employer or recruiter your current salary. Or if you do lie and add 20-30%.

andrewingram• 12 years ago

FYI. Every company I've worked for in London (to date, 4), has given me the minimum allowed holiday: 20 days + 8 public holidays.

bbcbasic5• 12 years ago

London is a different beast entirely!

icehawk219• 12 years ago

I largely agree with most of the points in this article but personally there's one thing that drives me up the wall that every company I've worked at has gotten wrong.

The author hints at "mandatory fun" with regards to company activities. I tend to be pretty strongly introverted and don't enjoy social outings very much. Yet every job I've been at when there's a company happy hour, a group going for drinks, a team lunch, or a holiday party and I don't want to go I find myself hounded for it. Made fun of for not wanting to "have fun" or ridiculed about not wanting to be "part of the team". To the point that I'll often just call out on the day of the event so I don't have to put up with it.

I guess I missed the part where me having fun by going home and sitting in front of my fireplace reading my new Henry Ford biography is against the rules. And lets not get started on how tired I am of being made fun of for not liking to drink alcohol. Team building activities and the such are fine, and I totally get why they exist and why most people enjoy them, but I genuinely don't have fun in most social settings. And I have even less when it's forced upon me or people go out of their way to try to force me into them.

shRaj9fEc8Vith• 12 years ago

i quit because after less than a year, the job is very repetitive. It's not very challenging, plus i got offered 60% raise somewhere else with some new cool stuff i want to learn -> insta-quit.

The project manager of mine was a terrible person. He made testers(female) cried in the toilet all the time. Think about it!!!

NateDad• 12 years ago

Compensation compensation compensation. Companiesnever value their current employees high enough. The guy who's been here for 3 years? His institutional knowledge is almost priceless. And yet, changes are, he can get a 15% pay bump by taking a new job. You should be paying him 15% above market and be happy about it. Maybe this is just the Boston area, but I have never left a job without making 15-20% more at the new job, and I'm no rock star.

And yes, don't expect people with lives to work crazy hours, but usually we just self select ourselves out of those jobs, because they're a bad fit. I suppose if you go from single to married and/or having kids, you might be stuck.

The only one I really agree with is loss of confidence, but even then, if I'm paid well, I'll probably be too lazy to go somewhere else, unless I start thinking working at the company is actually detrimental to my resume (which has happened to me once)

jrs235• 12 years ago

I think the problem is companies hire for say a web developer II position and assume after hiring they can stick to COLA (inflation) raises. Except, after three years truthfully they are now a web developer III which is a promotion and 10 to 15% increase. Since they have only been doing COLA raises (2 to 3%) it catches them and there budget by surprise. Just give 5% every year and don't worry about the cognitive dissonance you'd (the mangers) face. (I think managers have cd because they have rationalize why all of a sudden someone should be compensated 10% more when nothing much changed between yesterday and today. They need to see, think, and spread out the increase over a large period of time. Knowledge of existin outg systems doesn't happen in a day. Pay them more as they learn and know more.)

icedchai• 12 years ago

The reason I leave is almost always the same: boredom and lack of actual interesting, challenging work.

Why people leave companies

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