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Comment by jgwil2 | Hacker News Reader

Is there reverse also not possible though? I'm a manager and I see an employee who is thinking of leaving, so I try to figure out why. Do they want a raise? More responsibility or autonomy? And then I try to give it to them so they won't leave. Or is that overly idealistic?

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Often this is only temporary, though. They increase your salary, but it comes out of your next raise and you get fewer opportunities because your loyalty is in question, or if they're evil and the employment laws allow it they make you happy temporarily until they find a replacement. If you're company is prepared to do those things for you they should be willing to before you threaten to quit

It's the job of the manager to create an environment where employees can go to the manager to discuss things which are not going well or change of career anytime without the fear of retribution. I'm mentioning this often to make sure everyone knows it. Last month we had a case where someone was unhappy being a Team Lead and we could change their career path to something more interesting with an equal level of contribution.

A good manager might. I know of two managers who offered me jobs on their teams so I wouldn't need to go to another part of the company (same money and all).

Most managers cut you loose because it's easy to replace you.

Not sure who told you this. It's not easy to replace anyone and hasn't been for a while now. An experienced individual leaving a team is always a big hit to the team's productivity. Typically takes 3-6 months to recover from that.

Ok, maybe not easy to do, but easy to justify. Why not get rid of an expensive senior dev and replace them with someone fresh out of school? They typically can work more hours (no kids) and can do 80% of the work for 50% of the pay.

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