Ordinarily The Daily WTF is good for a chuckle, but this was actually insightful. I find that it applies to the HN user base, since we're (or we think we are) the employees most likely to "evaporate" and leave the job security types behind.
This is the first time I've read something which makes complete sense to me and helps get rid of the "ifs and buts" from my head (I still am looking for work). My ideas would never have been implemented, the organization was too resistant to change. The curve makes sense- it was fun for a while, but after "getting it all", the daily monotony would have killed me. At the same time other employees came in, did their work, and went home. They felt the whole system was very rigid, but they were ok with tolerating it. After quitting I've often found myself wondering if its something in my head that prevented me from "sticking it out". This post makes some good sense and I hope more employers read it.
The signal given to other employees will hurt them in the long-term. Nobody will ever let on that they might be thinking about leaving. "Why did Bob, who had just begun to lead the new project, decide to take some other job? Wow, what a jerk!"
The thing I have found is that in most work environments the good engineers accomplish great things, get burned out, then leave, while the bad engineers become exceptionally good at playing political games. You know, the same engineers that have appalling work performance are the ones that are ass-kissing all day long, forming alliances, playing the office politics game like they are desperate to keep from getting voted off a reality TV show.
The sad thing is, it actually works in most companies. The really unqualified employees will never be let go, or even disciplined, because they are "friends" with the management.
I think this creates a low morale for everyone. In some companies, the really talented engineers just quit because they get too frustrated with the general lack of motivation and laziness of the "political" engineers, and either drop out or burn out, knowing full well that the "political" engineer will probably be promoted to become their superior, even though they are grossly incompetent at their present job.
How do you solve this problem?
If you have a culture where employees are expected to move on after a few years, the people who are playing politics and trying to get entrenched for job security are really easy to pick out. (They've been there 10 years while the average stay is maybe 3 or 4).
No amount of ass kissing will save you from being the weird guy who can't move on.
This method probably works very well for large scale, non-technical corporates because the aptitude to practice politics successfully would logically have strong correlations with other useful soft work skills (sales, negotiation, social skills). However in a highly technical company this might not be as effective. I wonder how Google does it?