Let’s Admit Why There Are So Many “Job Hoppers” In Startupland
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1. Non-funded startups typically don't have employees or, if they do, they are employee-founders. If the cash isn't there to support salaries, you won't have payroll. People can and do get misled in non-funded companies, though it is the rare exception and by no means the rule, since most of those involved understand they are taking a flyer and that nothing may come of their efforts unless and until the startup gains sufficient traction at least to get funding.
2. Most of the abuse involving outright misrepresentations concerns funded companies that hit hard times and then tell their employees that they must stick with a failing situation, and endure the accompanying hardships (missed paychecks, etc.), in the name of deferring their reward until the company can rebound. In such cases, employees are in effect being asked to take the risks of founders and yet are often given nothing more than their deferred pay in case the company does bounce back - that is, having taken on an indispensable role to enable the company to save itself, they get no additional equity or other reward for the hardships they undertook.
3. Funded companies also are more prone to mislead employees with tall talk about what the company will supposedly do and why the options held by employees will be worth so much. Yet, in doing so, they don't tell their employees anything about the capitalization of the company itself, thus leaving the employees with a sense their 50,000 options or whatever will make them rich while in reality they may represent only a miniscule percent of the company and have only a small upside even in a success case. At the same time, no one is ever told about VC liquidation preferences, which can easily be used in many cases to wipe out the interests of the employee-shareholders in an instant as soon as anything goes wobbly with the company.
4. Opportunities come and go rather quickly in the startup world and it may just be a simple fact of life that employee tenures will tend to be shorter in such an environment for reasons having nothing to do either with flakiness or opportunism on the part of employees or with deception or abuse on the part of employers. I think it is a mistake to overstate this in either direction in seeking to ascribe generalized motives to one side or the other.
Flakes are often Job Hoppers. Not all Job Hoppers are Flakes.
Correlation, not causation.
Also, I'd like to see some objective stats here like "do companies with lots of job hoppers do better or worse, here is the data"
Vivek Wadhwa cited in his studies job hopping as an aggregate positive for the economy of silicon valley and its emergence as the prominent startup hub.
http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/the-valley-of-my-dreams-why...
Finally, someone taking a shot at that misconception. Just because some people advance their career and improve their conditions by changing employers doesn't mean they're unreliable or incompetent.
Quite often it's the competent people who get sick and tired of a crappy job, widespread incompetence, excessive office politics and stuff like that and they decide to move on. They tie the loose ends, dot the i's, cross the t's and start looking for a better opportunity.
It's not just the startups that mislead people, either. It's just that a big company will lie to you about other kinds of stuff.
Are you treating your employees fairly? Do they feel like they're contributing, or are they writing dead-end code?
You know when they will leave for a new job - when you start treating them like trash.
1. The best people will quit.
2. The median people will whine and make the office a miserable place.
3. The worst people will put their heads down, terrified that they will get fired or laid off.
Consequence? The best people still in their chairs will be the ones with the lowest morale.
The odds are that they won't be around long, and that doesn't mean they're a bad person or someone who can't get things done.
OTOH, the correlation != causation thing is huge as well. One of the reasons some people stay for long periods in one place is that they aren't that marketable because they really don't do much. Nobody is taking them out for coffee on a regular basis and gently trying to poach them.
Sometimes the people who move most often are the ones who have the most choices. Sure, you can label them as "lacking loyalty" or some such, but you cannot assume that those who don't move are automatically loyal. They simply may have stayed in one place because they had very little opportunity to advance by moving.
We love the people who ask hard questions. If the person interviewing you doesn't: don't work there.
Thanks for that post.
It's the employer's equivalent of "what is your biggest weakness". It just tests their ability to BS.
"How long was the person before me here?"
"What's the average length of time someone stays here?"
"How long have *you* been here?"
The second and third questions are good, but short tenures could also signify a rapidly growing company (which is something to be wary of, but not for the same reason) like Google in 2006.
Sure, but if everyone interviewing you are less than a year in, where are all the people who worked here before?
And why are you being interviewed mostly or exclusively by junior team members who haven't proved themselves yet? Is the company entrusting the selection of successful employees to newbies who haven't yet proved they can be such?
An interviewer for a company in the middle of a growth spurt should be able to explain that, quote some enticing growth figures, and mention that "almost all of the original team members are now project leaders and executives... in fact, if this goes well, you'll meet some of them shortly".
You're asking for a number. Your interviewer either gives it to you, or he evades.
Another brilliant one is "how long are you planning to stay?".
This can lead to some of the most revealing and unstructured discussions you'll engage in during your interview process. Not for the feint of heart.
For example, if you join a small company to lead, say, their first Android application's development, and one of your first tasks involves hiring another developer or two to round out your team, there's not going to be a lot of tenure there. That certainly represents a risk, but it doesn't indicate something wrong with the company.
When I encounter situations like this, I often ask about the team members' prior experience. They're not obliged to share those details, of course, but most people are eager to tell you about their past achievements and how they hope to outdo themselves in their new roles.
Maybe the best answer is that one's greatest weakness is being OCD about fixing one's weaknesses :-)
And for a serious answer: I spend too much time worrying about weaknesses when I should be delegating affected tasks to others while I focus on tasks that play to my strengths.
Or: If I don't do something well, I delegate it to someone who can and get back to doing what I do best.
Honestly, the most surefire litmus test I've found is ex-employees who still speak positively about the employer.
Conversely, a very vague non-answer, like "I couldn't really say" may hint at a non-disparagement clause in exchange for a severance package (with an NDA covering the existence of the agreement itself).
"Tell me why the last three people to leave your team left?" "How long ago was this?" Then at a different point in time, "How big is your team?"
You are likely to get accurate answers. You can do the math. And the way they talk about the departed will tell you volumes about their environment.
It's possible the organization encourages people not to linger in the sense Alex Papadimoulis discusses in http://thedailywtf.com/articles/up-or-out-solving-the-it-tur...
Of course, getting the why of a turnover rate is hard; an employer with a culture that encourages negative turnover probably won't be willing to fess up. That probably involves contacting enough former employees to get a non-biased sample, and convincing each of them to be honest. That is, if they are willing to talk to you at all.
You'll often get a better answer to the question, though, if you ask it of the junior person in the room (e.g., the engineer if the hiring manager has brought one).
Employment is a relationship. It has two sides. When one party decides to end it, the most common reasons are:
1) Other party's chronic inability to respond and satisfy the breaker-upper's needs. 2) A competitor coming along who satisfies those needs much better.
Employers regularly break up employment relations for those two reasons. But now some CEOs and VC managers will have us believe that it's wrong for employees to do the same to them.
Employers are expected - nay, obligated! - to fire employees who fail to meet performance expectations. But if an employer fails to meet your compensation expectations, and you leave, the Susters and Calacanises shall publicly insult you and announce they will not hire you, and nobody else should either.
It is telling that only very specific employers and very specific dream-dealing businessmen are among the mob shouting indignantly about loyalty and morality. When was the last time Google or Palantir blogged petulantly about "Generation Y" and "trophy kids"?
Suster, Calacanis et al are reacting to their own failing at keeping employees, with all the grace, maturity and effectiveness of that girl you dumped, who went out on the street and shouted about what a terrible person you are to leave her, and how nobody else should ever trust or date you.
Mature, successful employers do not waste their time on that. They're too busy making great products with their happy, motivated, tenured employees - or bidding polite farewell to those who should or want to move on.
This article is spot on. Startup executives are world-class dealers of dreams. They need to be more weary of selling to their own employees. Too many bright engineers work insanely hard for a year or two, then discover all they're getting is fairy dust, and quit. Why don't Suster and Calacanis write an article about that?
It's most striking when a top employee leaves for a company that's not a startup. Take that engineer that left Mahalo for Yahoo recently. Suster and Calacanis call him a flake, yet how much you want to bet he'll stay at Yahoo longer than a year?
And since when is it acceptable to attack an ex-employee that way, sleazily keeping his name out, when everyone on the internet knows who the epitaphs refer to?
These people are sore losers, and they'll keep losing until they figure out what that "dying company" is doing right that makes their best engineers "hop" there rather than labor at their own enterprises.
All they do right now is poison and taint an otherwise healthy, open and mature dialogue between employees and employers.
And while we're on the topic of insulting posts or people on a rant, why don't you re-read your text and think about how IT sounds
I've learned to view a job interview more like a sales-pitch. Once you view it this way, you become a lot more thorough with your questions.
Kathy Sierra, a while back, wrote a truly eye-opening blog post on "the hollywood model". You're fired at the end of every job, and your job security is your reputation.
I don't love everything about the way hollywood works, of course, but one thing's for sure - they give credit. They list credits. Of course, people can grab credit they haven't earned, and I'm sure that people who have succeeded don't always get the credit they are due... but at least the system intends to give credit.
As a dev, when was the last time you got a by-line? If you release an excellent product, is there a "credits" list where the UI designer, the "producers" (proj managers?), developers are listed? Maybe in the code itself, but that's proprietary.
So instead out industry relies on these stupid indicators, which lead to articles about how "job hoppers are bad". Well, some job hoppers are people who opportunistically abandon a good team that doesn't deserve it, and others are people who people who are too good to waste any more time on a crap situation.
Job hopping, code tests, three minute phone call reference checks, university degrees... hey, I use these things too when I'm hiring. That's what you do when you interview unknown people whose work you can't immediately identify. And I do the monkey dance when I'm interviewed too, because that's what you have to do.
But man, there has got to be a better way... a big goal of my career is to get to the point where the people who interview me have better ways of knowing what I can contribute.
What's wrong with something like this, for example? http://www.jobvent.com/
Jobvent looks like more-or-less the same basic idea.
One issue with translating this idea to startups is that if it's a small enough startup, they might be able to tell who you are. You might be the only person who's ever quit that startup, or there might be few enough that they can tell anyway. This could cause issues where companies threaten to give bad recommendations to future employers if people use the site, or something.
So if a boss has high turnover rates under him, the idea would be that the reason why could float on his Unvarnished profile, such that would-be employees can get this information from the market before signing up to work for him.
Awesome hiring managers should get credit for being awesome. Bad hiring managers should not be able to hide behind information asymmetries. So too with employees.
Information liquidity is a powerful thing!
Highly unlikely considering what you have created. Anonymity and credibility are mutually exclusive. What you have here is a libel engine.
1. Your basic value proposition rests on getting people to pay money to have the ability to respond to things said about them. That's going to leave a bad taste in people's mouths.
2. Many people (like me) have deliberately chosen to not join facebook. We can't even try to address issues we see.
3. Identity is much more complicated than you acknowledge. My name is Ben Tilly. I'm at Google. People by the same name can also be found in a US college, doing graphic design in New Zealand, and being a nurse in England. Just to name a few that come up off of the top of my head. How do you tell which Ben Tilly should be able to respond to a bad comment about someone named Ben Tilly at Rent.com?
4. Anonymity is not so easy to protect. Only a small fraction of people comment online. A given manager only manages a small number of people. If a negative comment appears, frequently it is surprisingly easy to make an educated guess. If the comment is at all detailed, an analysis of writing style will usually confirm that guess. Unless a large fraction of people in your environment are commenting, the level of anonymity is limited. (Particularly if the boss can get access to proxy logs saying who was visiting getunvarnished, when.)
I wouldn't call this "can't". If you actually couldn't use their preferred identity provider, that would be different (and it could happen; I had a lot of trouble getting a Facebook account at all a few years back, due to my unusual name). But choosing not to sign up is not the same as not being able to sign up.
The unintended consequence, of course, is that people who don't have a Facebook account can't just create one. Instead you have to create one, use it until you have a sufficiently well-established identity, and only then can you use their service. Which is a high barrier for people who actually don't have a Facebook account.
First of all, "high" is relative. The exit may be high, but still not cover the funding, so all the proceeds go to the funding entities (the VCs) and maybe a few top executives / founders. That happens in countless startups that sell for $50m after raising $30-40m. Even "senior" employees get basically nothing.
Another common issue is dilution. Your vested shares can and will be severely diluted. Again, the VCs and maybe the founders are the only ones with any control or protection over this.
A lot of other interesting things can happen at or around that all important payday. You may want to read about how things like IPO and other liquidity events are actually handled by law. Surprisingly few startup employees do, and this stuff is far from trivial - there's a reason why Goldman et al pay the best and brightest to figure this stuff out.
All of this is doubly true if the founders / execs are untrustworthy / morally indifferent and actually strive to dilute or otherwise deprive you.
Ironically when we went public we made a chunk of money from the very ratchet agreements we had argued so vigorously against (combined with help from the taxman).
"Stick with me and you'll get rich kid" I've heard of CEOs who actually sat their employees down and showed them how rich they'd be based on what price the company is sold for. ("If we sell for a billion, I get a jet and you get a yacht.")
I've had someone tell me this before (read my iStoleYourStartup post) and I sort-of got the feeling from the beginning it was a sham. I played along because I wasn't losing anything as I was doing it on the side, but I knew this speak was shady from the start. Not looking twice at this is type of mentality and behavior is a failure on one's own part.
"I'll mentor you." Most startup CEOs aren't ready to mentor anyone. They're still trying to figure things out for themselves. Even if they could, where would they find the time to mentor?
What type of history does this CEO have? Are they a serial entrepreneur? Have they made multiple exits or IPO'd other companies in the past? Are they mentoring you under the pure prospect of being a mentor? Again, this takes intuition and judgement.
"We'll change the world together, you'll see" that's when changing the world gives way to "just increase page views!" and the job becomes more about the mechanics of SEO and link-baiting.
Every CEO of a distruptive start up will want to "change the world." Just because most of them are wrong doesn't make them liars or criminals. When the default to "increase page views," they simply don't have the experience to perform under pressure. This goes back to the second point about CEO career history.
To the point about why he is writing the article in the first place, saying employees are trained to behave that way is removing accountability from the employee who could very easily provide value on his own terms.
I don't believe there is any sort of "solution" as it in the end every developer is accountable for how much of their career they are responsible for. Ever heard the phrase, "its not the jobs you are given, but the jobs you take."
Every single developer in the world has the ability to make their own image, brand, expertise, and career. Real job hoppers know this - employers that don't provide their vision get left behind to ones that will cater to their own demands.
This article is attempting to protect any negative job hopper image with malfeasance on the part of the employer - but only re-enforcing the "employer"/"employee" relationship in the process.
I guess my entire point to this mini-rant is that job hoppers make their own careers, choose trust selectively, and provide value at a level that they can make their own terms.
Downshifting to accusing that the second party is intentionally misleading (even though this can and does happen sometimes - as it did to me), and avoiding taking accountability for one's own actions is delaying the learning process and avoiding change.
If you "hop jobs," let you be the reason why you are leaving, not someone or something else. Take responsibility for your own career, and only give people trust who have earned it.
I also like to leave other peoples' companies every year because I'm a systems engineer, and most of my work is front-loaded. After I've been at a company for a year, my systems are automated well enough that I have little to do but maintain or grow, and I want to be more in life than a systems janitor.
Plus, start-up compensation sucks. If I took a job tomorrow, I would make roughly $200k doing SRE or equivalent at an established company .. or $100k and 15 basis points of stock options vested over 4 years at some me-too start-up whose business model looks a lot like that south park underwear gnomes episode.
Not to mention that most companies do their best to over-hire because they really feel that their problems are incredibly complex and unique, just like all the 6 other companies who got funded in the same marketplace that year.
And, it's just a good investment strategy. Leave a start-up every year as soon as you've gotten your first 25% worth of stock options vested. In a decade you might see $100k for your trouble.
The incentive to mentor is long-term. It benefits the company later on, and loyalty is an asset for the person doing the mentoring (his proteges might move with him if he gets sacked). Unfortunately, few people think this far ahead. In the short term, mentoring is an expense.
Candidates, especially young or recent graduates, are not. If you, an exec, hone a pitch on a jaded 40-something VC manager with 20 years of industry experience, and then use it umodified on a 20-something candidate with 0-1 years of industry experience - you are not being truly fair and honest.
And yes, the candidate is likely to discover that a year later, feel cheated and abandon you. Tweet about him being a "flake" if that makes you feel good; the blame lies solely with you.