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Comment by ktRolster | Hacker News Reader

I'll be honest, I would feel rather uncomfortable if someone tried to have this conversation with me.

Just let me do my job. I want to get back to programming.

Well, whenever I'm confronted by some kind of management thing like this I try to think about it from the manager's perspective. First, it seems like this is something that matters when a "10-point bump on engagement scores" is how your manager is being rewarded. Also, they don't necessarily know what you're doing all day but they can sense you don't really care that much about it. That makes management nervous, because they DO know turnover is bad. So, at a company where the engineers don't actually really care that much about what they're working on they want to try and manufacture that environment. So you create a "career plan" for someone to keep them engaged for the next 6 months to build the widgets you need.

I do find it interesting that one of the quotes in the article is "They discover that in three to five years, a bunch of people are going to leave because they're concerned about career growth and development. Panic ensues". Uh what? Three to five years is a pretty good stretch these days in SV. If you really wanted to keep people longer than that, you would have a completely different business and reward structure.

The rest of it boils down to "get to know your co-workers", I guess? It doesn't really seem that revolutionary. If you want to spend more than 5 years working with them, I think that should happen naturally not as part of some kind of corporate management mandated dream sharing time.

> While at Google, his framework for career development led to more than a 10-point bump on engagement scores across hundreds of employees.

This caught my attention too. It is not clear if these improvements were sustained over an extended period of time. Also, what about other metrics? For e.g. did attrition rate change? Did people write better quality software? What was the effect on innovation?

Indeed, career discussions are important. Even more important are the following, which are more about here and now, than the future:

1. Is the work challenging enough?

2. Am I learning on the job?

3. Do my contributions matter?

4. Do I have healthy relationships in the team and with management?

5. Am I concerned about my pay?

6. Do I have a work life balance?

If the above are sorted out, then sure, go ahead and ensure that my future also looks bright.

That makes management nervous, because they DO know turnover is bad.

Turnover is bad because to get any kind of decent raise, you either need to quit or threaten to quit. This is true at most companies.

Good point. If you switch jobs, chances are good you will be paid more in your new position and your replacement will be paid more than you were.

I tell them I want to know how the organization assesses cost and value of engineering projects. I've yet to see that question actively accepted.

Are you not curious if the company will have a career path for you to grow into a rockstar programmer with the rest of the team?

They don't. I am responsible for my own career path.

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