17% leave their job due to insufficient recognition
blog.rypple.com
blog.rypple.com
Recognition arbitrage, employees claiming credit for the work of others, by corporate-climber types is probably to blame in many cases. From my experience, credit usually goes to whoever delivers the results or the news first. Smart corporate climbers will go to great lengths to be the first to take credit for new ideas or inventions within a company, and they will work hard to maintain a high profile.
I've tried to do a modest amount of self-promotion to stay visible within my companies after a few very bad experiences early in my career. Just as importantly, I try to go out of my way to call out another person's accomplishments whenever I get an opportunity.
A company that fails to recognize valuable people isn't likely to succeed. When self-aggrandizing people are promoted faster than the get-it-done types, I take it as a red flag that management has no clue how things are actually done within the company. Companies who instead go out of their way to recognize valuable team members and promote those who work hard will end up with competent and motivated management. Now if only I had identified this pattern earlier in my career I could have avoided some train-wreck companies.
At my last job, I was part of a major migration project that had taken something like three or four years total (I was only with them for the last two years). Because the project had come in so late and so overbudget, the powers that be set a seemingly arbitrary go-live date and told us to just get it done.
We all worked long hours for a long time to get this done, and when it finally went live we were told they wanted to take the team out for a celebration. That later morphed into "well, everyone else on the project (meaning client project, not my migration team) had to learn the new system too, so we should take everyone out to celebrate everyone!" completely minimizing just how much my team had done, since we had not only learn and adapt like everyone else had, but we learned it first and had to teach it to everyone else.
That celebration, btw, never ended up happening. Instead, there was an announcement at around the same time saying there would be no raises across the entire (10,000 person) company.
I got fed up and left (read: snapped and was fired) a few months later, but I heard from a friend that they had the same announcement this year ("no raises") on the same day that the company sent out an email saying "you should watch the Indy 500 this year, since we spent an assload to sponsor it".
That ended up as much more of a self-entitled rant than it was intended to be, but I think my underlying point still shines through.
For background, suffice it to say that the manager in this story, who was my boss at all times except my time with the migration project I mentioned, was not well liked, and for good reason. This is a man who micromanaged absolutely everyone and everything, was insulting (called me and my "whole generation" - I was 23 at the time - a bunch of slackers, told me I was "getting too big for my britches" when I made a fairly innocuous suggestion, and repeatedly talked about other employees behind their backs), and seemed to only care about making himself look good.
Anyway, my firing:
I had been working on a fairly high profile assignment, lots of pressure, etc. and had worked on my own time until 4am the previous day. I was running on maybe 3 hours of sleep, so I was more on edge than usual. I mentioned this extra work to the boss, and asked if I could go home at 4pm that day (1.5hr early). Anyway, the day progresses and I was finally able to finish my tests, get peer reviews done (a story unto itself), and passed my work off to be installed my the clients production control team right at 4pm, so I had to wait to confirm they hadn't screwed up the install - a very real concern, btw.
Anyway, around 4:30 the boss calls, asking me about a "post-implementation review" (something was installed and had run for the first time, so the programmer needs to confirm initial results) that I was supposed to do a few days earlier. Genuine mea culpa here, as I had just plain forgotten about it and didn't realize it was even installed yet, and had been distracted by the "OMG GET IT DONE NOW" assignment being installed in this story.
He told me that since I was "overbudget" (I had logged about 54 hours on a 50 hour estimate), I was not to charge any more time to that ticket. This essentially means "work for free." He also told me to have it done by 9am the next morning, so my choice was either stay late or come in early and work, so I told him since I was already staying late waiting for prod control, I'd do it right then.
So, my install was completed a few minutes later, so I spent 10-20 minutes confirming the install before starting the requested post-implementation review. This review, btw, was estimated as an hour of work, for good reason. I had to go through a week or so of production runs to try to find data that had actually ran through the logic I changed.
I hadn't actually found any runs through my changes by 5:30, when the boss left for the day. He stopped by my desk on the way out, and "joked"
> What are you still doing here? Didn't you ask to leave early today?
I explained, calmly at first but steadily angering, that I had wanted to leave early but since he had told me to get this thing done by the morning, not to charge time for it, etc. I was stuck here. He told me to just go home and do it in the morning, but I explained that if I have to work extra hours for free, I should do it at night so I don't fuck up my billable hours for the next day and be forced to stay late to make that day balance.
There was a bit of back and forth, but I ended up visibly angry and yelling a bit. He told me, forcefully, "go home."
I left, choosing to take the stairs to try to burn off steam, but the anger overflowed and I yelled "Stupid fucking piece of shit job" about a floor and a half down.
I went home, beat the shit out of a couch pillow, and broke down crying.
The next day, I went in and started to work on that same post-implementation review, and the boss came over and took me to a conference room. My new project manager, first day on the job, was there already. They told me I was suspended for three days, and they took my badge, etc.
On my way out, I passed my HR rep, which made me think she was supposed to be there for the meeting, but who knows. I went home and wrote my side of the story to that same HR manager. I got a response that afternoon (around 5pm) thanking me for my side, and giving me a formal letter of suspension.
I heard reports from a friend that my phone was disconnected around 2pm that day, so clearly I was fired before I got the letter of "suspension." This was even confirmed by another friend who talked to a guy in IT who said that same HR woman called them to terminate my accounts around 2pm the day I was suspended. She apparently called back a few minutes after it was done, panicking, saying she had only meant to suspend me. I still think I was accidentally fired, then actually fired to cover for it.
Anyway, that's the story. AMA.
I used to dream about leaving that job, and I guess I just finally reacted in a way that got me out of it, even if it wasn't ideal. After I lost the job, my girlfriend explained that "for as much as you bitched about that job, you were never actually going to quit." and she was absolutely right. The fear of quitting and having to find a new job was too much for me.
I've been out of a job for a bit more than a year now. I see ads all the time that maybe I could do, but I don't always apply because I don't feel qualified for them. It's really starting to get to me.
So what projects are you working/have you worked on?
I want to be able to leverage this project to get a proper job ("hey look at this! I've shipped something!"), so that just drives my paranoia into overdrive. Literally hours spent messing about with colours ("Is this yellow ok, or should it be more muted?"), rather than coding an extra feature. The colour point is rather moot anyway, since I've got a touch of ye olde colourblindness.
I think I should set a target - I'll have it online by... the end of next week! We'll see how I do.
The rest of my, shall we say, "vacation" has been spent
a) terrified that I'll never get a job again:
I'd spent three years in COBOL-land and any pretense of actual skill had long since rusted over. I had pretty much no inclination to code anything after work, since the job sapped my energy so well.
Even before that job, I still didn't think I was really any good. A programmer-turned-sysadmin friend of mine from college seems to think I'm good. When he moved to England, he said something about maybe recommending me for the job he was leaving. When I expressed these concerns, he said I was smart and could pick things up fast, had faith in me, etc. Unfortunately, my self-esteem sucks, and it's reflected in the projects I start.
I tried to teach myself C#, Java, some python.. but I got so caught up in the details that I didn't get anywhere. I wasn't creative enough to come up with a solid "use it in anger" project, so I'd just give up.
Now, I've got the aforementioned web project, and I'm teaching myself PHP to get it done, but I still feel like a pretender.
b) RSI.
I had started seriously learning from UNSW's YouTube videos, and was reading lots of books, taking notes, etc. when my arm was engulfed in pain. For a couple months, I didn't type much, didn't do much.. I was convinced I was royally screwed and would never be able to code again... at age 25. The pain has mostly gone - I've typed this whole thing without pain - but it does come back from time to time, though the same friend I mentioned earlier is convinced it's psychosomatic at this point. He's probably right, to be honest.
c) Job offer.
I signed a conditional offer back in February, to do a job horribly similar to my last job. I figured I could take that job and use the money from it to take courses, etc. I thought the structure would help me maintain enough inertia. Instead, the job fell through when that company didn't get the contract they were hiring for. It took until June to get that notice. I'd used it as an excuse for being lazy during that time, thinking the problem was solved when it wasn't. Incidentally, the RSI started about the same time the job fell through, thus strengthening the case for the RSI being psychosomatic.
Sorry for ranting, but when I started writing this, I got self-conscious about how lazy/incompetent/whatever I am, and I think I'm being defensive when it isn't necessarily called for. I just.. I don't think things are actually going to work out, and it occasionally makes me contemplate suicide. I need to catch a break, but I haven't earned it yet.
/rant
a) Push the baby out by this week. If you're anything like me, the improvement in your actual project will be exponential.
b) This is a little harder to explain, but I'll do my best. I've felt inadequate many times in my life, and it can be paralyzing.
You need to be OK with failure, because life is full of it. That doesn't mean you should accept it, but it means that your worth shouldn't be defined through being successful, and you shouldn't be crushed by failure. How you do that is really up to you - I've found my own way - but once you're OK with that, you won't feel like you have to "earn" your breaks, and the need to perfect things will decrease.
I hope this is helpful. I don't want to offer more advice than I can chew, but I wanted to at least say something. Feel free to shoot me a message.
It sounds valuable, but too much self awareness is crippling. You question everything about yourself, and when you realize your own insignificance it's remarkably depressing.
a) Push the baby out by this week.
I'll try, but there's a long way to go. I've never touched jQuery before, and I'm rusty with everything else I'm using. "This week" probably isn't feasible, but I'll do what I can to have it out by the end of next week. I'll post it here when I do.
Thanks for all the advice. It's definitely appreciated, especially now that I've spent the last hour explaining my deficiencies to HN.
And launch the darn app. It cannot do it itself.
I had the same problem for a while, until I realized that the worst that could happen is either you get no response, or they will tell you "thanks but no thanks". If you do get an interview, then that is an opportunity to meet interesting people, and possibly learn something.
The key here is approaching interviews less as a time for some people you don't know to judge you and more as an opportunity for you and some other people to learn about each other. You can learn an awful lot about business, the market, people's technical and non-technical problems, if you make an effort to go on interviews. You may even learn something about yourself, or have a brilliant idea for a project.
Besides, "unqualified" isn't the right word at all. It's more accurate to say that you have a different skill set (based on your horrible migration story) - and skill sets are easy to change, given time and motivation.
Simple. I'm tired of spending an hour on a cover letter, tailoring my resume, looking up contacts at the company, etc. only for all my work to be piped directly to /dev/null.
When I first lost my job, I sent out a bunch of resumes to places hiring for jobs I wanted to do. A .Net developer here, a Java developer there. I never heard back from anything I wanted.
I gave up and applied for a job similar to my last one, and got an offer. They ended up not getting the contract, and I was left with the bill for calling their number across the country for the technical interview, and the bill for a scanner/printer (didn't have one then) that I needed to sign and send back the offer.
I went through a series of phone interviews about a month ago for a junior QA position. After three weeks and three phone interviews with HR, a technical interviewer, and a manager, I got a message from noreply@company.com with a PFO form letter.
I still send resumes to things, but I generally limit that to jobs explicitly marked "entry level" that rarely come in.
If you know anyone hiring in Canada (I'm living 500km from "home" right now, so I don't much care where in Canada) for an entry level position, let me know. I'll work my ass off to get up to speed, I'll work long hours, whatever it takes.
Boss was completely oblivious and didn't notice.
My standard for 'snapping' is now way higher than a rant and some swearing, but that is absolutely not a good thing.
Susan wants a new application, so Jim tells Bob to write it. When the application is complete, Jim shows it to Susan, and Susan praises Jim rather than Bob, because as far as she is concerned, Jim made it happen. Yet, Jim did little more than tell Bob to do it and show the result to Susan. If recognition requires little work, Susan will praise Jim more often (if she is not aware of Bob, or chooses not to recognize him). If Bob sees this praise of Jim by Susan for his work enough times, he may leave the company one day citing "insufficient recognition", when, in fact, more recognition was being given, albeit to the wrong person.
If Jim "made it happen", he has actually earned some of that praise. As a good manager, his very next step should be to transmit and amplify that praise so that Bob also can bask in it, but also to educate/remind Susan that Jim has an entire team that is delivering behind the scenes. It's quite effective to accomplish both of those in one communication (when praise is in email form), by forwarding on to Bob, cc'ing Susan, adding his own praise and reminding Susan (in the clear) that Bob is the one who actually did the programming.
I don't believe that there's some natural conservation of credit/recognition. By sharing as above, Jim doesn't reduce his standing in Susan's eyes, because from her point of view, it's still Jim that "made it happen" and he's being gracious in recognizing his team. Bob now sees the praise that he's earned, may realize that Jim probably added some value along the way, and even if Bob is hardcore "only coding matters", at least Jim has set the record straight.
When done even halfway well, I don't think that pattern results in employees leaving over recognition.
I don't believe that there's some natural conservation of credit/recognition.
the thing is, the manager and the (good) tech are only very rarely in competition for the same promotions. Technical folks, generally speaking, move into management after they've gone as far as they think they can go as technical people.
Now, to be fair, I probably had enough clout (and they probably had enough sense) to make noise and get myself reassigned, but at that point I started looking elsewhere, and found something new to try. But I didn't start looking until I perceived my needs being neglected.
I would quit, but I have to work off my debt first.
The environment is not doing me good - I'm slacking off (like here at HN), working worse and feeling tired and burned out even when doing little actual work.
Ultimately your current attitude will catch up with you could set your career back. Getting labeled as a slacker could result in you getting crappy projects where you can't grow professionally and personally. You'll become even more bitter/jaded and eventually hit a death spiral. Crappy projects <=> more bitter and jaded. It's very tough to get out of this death spiral once you're in it....
The thing is, here in Uruguay job security is king - if you switch jobs you're a kind of pariah for a couple of years (OTOH if I get fired it's like winning the lottery, about 6 to 8 salaries plus benefits plus 6 months unemployment which for my sector is very good).
So I have to endure another 2 years while I do the MBA - and it's very likely that I'll get a significantly better job offer while I'm doing the MBA due to connections - I'll try to network heavily on the MBA, it's my number one goal from it.
Ironically I haven't been labeled a slacker (and I used to be a top student and respected worker) - my boss is too incompetent to even realize I'm slacking. My projects can't get any crappier though (ever heard of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forte_4GL ? Not a marketable skill ).
I hope to either get into a project management / CTO position, or start my own company.
They're not nice people, suffice to say, and working for them is apparently no fun. Go figure.
For example, I work at a company with ~50k people. My immediate boss is the "Sales Executive" for our division and, as such, is charged with establishing sales goals by region for our national sales force. Usually, he makes them up. When he realized that I was kind of a data geek, he decided to bump that responsibility to me (at this point I had been here less than a month.)
I did what I could with incomplete information and sent him a huge spreadsheet annotated with problems I expected him to correct based on an in-depth understanding of the situation. Turns out he doesn't really know how to use excel.
Long story short, my painstaking work to come up with rough numbers is passed off as somebody else's work to come up with great numbers (they weren't great numbers.)
This conveys a few things: A) My boss is fine taking credit for my work - this is obviously a problem; B) Nobody really noticed that my numbers were really bad - this is a bigger problem.
In an exit interview, this would be easy to categorize as "insufficient recognition," but the real problem is "nobody has any idea what the hell is going on and I'm getting off this boat before somebody puts my name on it."
The problem however is that for whatever reason, management isn't as effective as it should be. A function of time, burn out, or simple inadequacies, if people are leaving a job because they aren't recognized, chances are good that they would also say their manager wasn't very good at his or her job.
This is on top of an employee of the month program. Upper management takes this program very seriously (the award is a reasonable bonus, plus the winners for the year are given the opportunity to win an expenses-paid weekend vacation. This program is driven by employees as well--upper management cannot vote.
I'm not particularly driven by this sort of recognition, but it is comforting to know that folks genuinely want to reward others for a job well-done.
Erm... why do you need management's blessing for this in the first place?
Rather than focusing on making yourself known, focus on identifying people who need problems solved. Meet with them directly, make sure they know you want to help, make sure they are comfortable with your solutions.
You should also make a point to identify and promote the successes of people you work with. In doing so you'll improve the team culture around you. Some those people will remember you kindly and promote your own stuff for you when appropriate.
Spend a lot of energy on problem solving and professional networking and you'll get there.
Maybe self-promotion wasn't a good choice of words on my part. Effective professional communication might be a better way to put it.
In our morning meetings, people update their status on the work they're doing. Even a simple "nice!" when warranted goes a long way, making them feel good in front of the group, and giving them a nice attitude for the rest of the day.
Google has set up an environment that makes it pretty easy for people to transfer between groups, and even between sites. You have to be a grown-up about it, of course, and not ditch your team during some critical crunch time. But provided you exercise mature judgment in the matter, you can pretty much switch teams whenever you want, and it doesn't cause the company to grind to a halt, as such a policy would at other places I've worked or visited.
The asymmetry of the relationship makes it more likely for the employee to be get the short end of the stick. It's not inspiration and respect that get passed down the corporate ladder (in most companies). Many employees don't speak up for fear of repercussions (they are at the mercy of their managers, after all).
For example: "I'm recognized on my team but what about the company at large"? or "Everyone at the company knows I'm great but our customers don't know me."
Don Draper: "That's what the money is for!"
It was a tough decision for me, because I not only left the job but a steady paycheck. While the check may have been smaller than I'd have liked (or needed) there's something to be said for reliability. Being a contract dev has given me much more freedom and the ability to write my own paycheck, but it's definitely not easy. Some days I'd much rather be working for someone... but finding management that are willing to put themselves out there and communicate on the level needed to keep me happy is tough. I demand a very high level of communication because that's the way I've found to be able to do the best job I can. Make no mistake, I may be tough to get along with but I always strive to do the best job I can. I suppose the only one that really understands that and can deliver on those demands is me.
Employee validation is more complex. You can accomplish a lot, but piss a lot of people off and you've done wrong. You can make a lot of people happy but not get much done and only the standouts will notice.
Nobody wants it to be the care bear cousins, where everyone gets a gold star sticker and a cookie. On the other hand, when you work twice as hard as others to go above and beyond, you do want that to matter or you will burn out.
I don't really have a point. Maybe if they're oatmeal cookies?
Some people enjoy public praise or having their picture posted, but not all of us do. --Knowing that we're doing a good job and quiet/low key recognition on occasion is enough. And if our employer wants to give us a bonus, well, who's going to say no to that?
Also, for other "big" recognitions, you'd better be damn sure the person deserves it. I've seen people who did one thing at the right time in front of the right people that earned corporate recognition and a bonus while the rest of us were doing equally valuable stuff at a less visible level and got nothing. Nothing kills productivity faster than that.
What HR fails to understand is my employees are professional managers and this is uncomfortably similar to giving a dog a treat when it sits up and begs. Given their incomes are well into the 6 figures, this is particularly ridiculous.
My reports know I have to occasionally hand out these token treats to appease HR and are well aware that I reward them for performance in their bonuses, where it counts.
We've made it an insider joke - I now throw a meeting once a month and hand these wretched things out. HR is invited to it and the staff gush effusively over the reward. I swear they are more motivated by the charade than anything.