In software, when an engineer exits the team
medium.com
medium.com
If I can give any advice to engineering managers when someone quits: If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. The last three people that have left my team are people I know personally. Hearing an engineering manager berate and degrade someone who I have been through incidents, significant refactors, mentoring, debates, and late night delivery with is a new experience entirely. The first time it happened I had to talk the engineering manager down from making someone a non-rehire, the second time I didn't even bother. My judgement of them was fully passed on to the company and the leaders above this engineering manager that gave them accolades and excuses.
Most of the time when I leave a team it's because something either in the management chain like a process or a manager themselves failed me on such a deep level that the hope that gets me out of my bed that says, "We'll do something great today!" has departed me. This post reads to me like that is inevitable, but it is not. If you listen, ask questions without assumptions or judgements, and act as an enabler instead of a Lord or Lady then you'll strike long careers out of engineers. They may leave out of better bonuses or incentives, but they at least won't leave because of you, and one takes a substantial more amount enticing than the other.
The latter doesn't explicitly put anyone down specifically, but it does heavily imply....
It is absolutely possible to grow in the same company. Never worked for me but I've seen it many times.
Staying with the same company for too long might not be the most efficient way to make more money, though
has this word ever cropped up in the workplace/culture?
Especially, it seems, because software engineers are quite shy about negotiating in general. I know several people who are grossly underpaid in my opinion, but they prefer to avoid the discomfort of disagreeing with their manager. Still, I believe that's a bad long-term strategy for the manager. It makes them extremely easy to hire away if I can offer them our usual salary and it's double of what they currently earn.
This seems to miss the most obvious reason. That they found more money elsewhere. Of every developer I have seen leave, their primary motivation was a higher pay. Having a team you like is nice and all, but owning a house or being able to go on nicer holidays is better.
The company I worked at this year is falling apart because all of the actual talent has found higher paying jobs and all that is left is the juniors who will struggle to keep things running.
By my estimates from hundreds of informal exit interviews I have done with colleagues that have left, I’d wager 60-70% left for higher pay or due to second or third order effects caused by those that left for higher pay.
Half of the remaining engineers left to pursue new opportunities. Almost always these were engineers whose first job out of school is at the current company and they hit 4 years. Many of these won’t cite pay, but almost all got offers way higher than what their first employer out of school is paying them four years later.
Those that left because of a bad manager were in the minority. Most engineers frustrated over a bad manager transfer teams within the company instead of leaving the company.
"Dream Opportunity" or "Better Pay" are easy explanations that nobody will question. Best just to leave it at that.
They're not likely to burn bridges on the way out though so that's all you hear. No point complaining when you're done
2. Not everyone knows it, otherwise they wouldn't have a job. Or they're being accepted for other reasons. In both cases, you're pissing someone off, probably higher up.
The ego boost is not worth it.
Most of the time we leave because management failed us. We would never say this because nothing good will come of it.
My experience at startups has been that people mostly leave because of management or business collapse.
A broader point, here: Maybe in specific instances people are leaving for legitimate or systemic reasons, but it's still sad that humans still operate on the flawed basis of social proof in 2021.
One would have hoped we'd have advanced past primitive signaling, but I guess not.
Social proof is the perennial mind-killer of humans, everywhere.
I just looked up what social proof is, essentially a phenomenon of people conforming to other people who they think understand or know more than them. It's supposed to explain her mentalities.
I guess I don't see how this leads to people leaving companies. Maybe I don't understand social proof.
We are what we are. We don't "advance"
hehe I've seen the complete opposite - a whole dev team rise up to get rid of the manager. And when the manager didn't leave, it was set in stone that most of the devs left within weeks.
Datapoint here, I didn’t say the truth at my exit interview. I left because I was angry my team lead wouldn’t help me reach a new level in my career, but I pretended it was for higher pay. Blaming it on my manager would have been useless and closed doors if I wanted to rehire in the higher position. Saying it wouldn’t have given them an opportunity to fix it, because I needed to learn skills to become a team lead, which I hadn’t, so they couldn’t have just promoted me.
I guess I feel like all the other jobs will be just as bad, so why leave this one.
Where I work now, I'm actively hiring for a Senior Android dev role. We're very open to candidates who demonstrate potential for all our engineering positions. Building a couple small apps definitely counts in that regard. If you're interested in hearing more feel free to reach out! My work email is in my profile.
I've never seen this ever in my entire 37 year career. I'm not saying it doesn't happen just that I've personally never seen it. All the devs I know work on stuff they choose to work on and are passing up money for jobs they're less interested in.
I use to assume it varied by the company, but it doesn't seem to. Invariably, shifting companies seems to be the way to get more money.
I've also seen manager friends hire like crazy in the past few months only for those new hires to leave for more money as well.
If some other company wants to pay me more for the same shit, then that is where we are going.
In areas where going from one company to another as a "senior" only ends up with like a 5k gross pay difference, it's almost negligible.
In Silicon Valley hopping companies can be like $100k/year or more gross pay difference. In a few years you might leverage that when switching companies again to get even more. Adds up fast.
That has limits too. Its not like you can hop 20 companies in 10 years and end up making like $2+ million an year.
Eventually you will max out of levels to get promoted too. Then the only options are to startup on your own or be an exec at a large company.
Plus Im guessing any reasonable increase in your levels comes with fair degree of risks, workplace politics, up-or-out workplace policies and if you have a history of hopping 2 companies/year serious shops aren't going to hire you to only replace you 6 months from now.
I was passionate about specific frameworks, corroborable years of experience, and making sure I occassionally had at least 2 years of experience at one place
But I would lie about my interest in their mission or whatever these culty developer daycares were up to, for the compensation boost and sustaining that.
(Yes I eventually got lawyers and CPAs to validate my accredited investor status, and eventually learned what “self certification” really meant)
It was super strange to me that feigning passion was the gatekeeper instead of simple work integrity.
Anyway it worked. Priorities. If I was a betting man - which I am - I’d bet you’ve run into people like me.
What does this mean?
It means you have enough money around to throw at things that aren't certified as safe for the general public.
for everyone else: Blind app is where all of your developers and a few other personalities are talking about industry workplace cultures. Every post also ends with people posting their "total compensation" or tc, which is a meme on that app but absolutely serious. That app pretty much only lets in tech and finance grunts. The situation is similar to how HIRED only has jobs for devs and occasionally other roles.
That's the polite thing to say, without bruising egos or burning bridges. I left my last job because I felt unappreciated after being skipped over promotion, even after accomplishing all the tasks I had agreed to with my manager would give him the capital to push for my promotion. Instead, other members of my team got promoted - and that was the primary reason I started looking around.
The fact that I'd be paid more wasn't the primary reason, few people leave a job for a lower paying one, so it's often an effect, rather than a cause. When asked in my exit interview, guess what I said my primary motivation was? Hint - it wasn't "I'm disgruntled because you didn't keep your end of the bargain"
I left a job recently and had a great conversation with my boss about what went wrong and how I think they could improve and after talking to some old coworkers, it seems they have taken a lot of what I said to heart.
I get it not wanting to talk about it, but at the same time I think that feedback is the most valuable and I would want someone to tell me if I was in their situation.
to put it bluntly, there's no upside to telling the whole truth.
Being "honest" with folks who might be persuaded to give terrible references later and tell all their friends you are an ungrateful piece of shit is a bad idea. Never be honest with people that have more power than you, unless it is praise.
You spend maybe two to four weeks a year on a nice holiday. The rest of the time, for around 8 hours a day minus weekends, you are going to be spending with a team. Even if you live in a nice house and you're remote you're still going to be spending that 8 hours a day with a team.
If you don't like the other people in that team, or they don't like you, that's a big chunk of your life that's not going to be pleasant, however much more money you make.
Eventually I want to save up enough money to be self sustaining off investments and then spend my time doing whatever I want to do.
For example, I know people that look for higher paying jobs so they can work 2 years and not work 1 year. So the “spending 8 hours a day with a team” calculation is very different. You are looking for a higher paying job precisely to not need to spend 8 hours with people working. Which kind of applies to everyone when you give the option to retire earlier and have good money to take care of themselves and their family when old. You are earning ore to work less.
Lastly, you seem to apply a correlation between higher paying jobs and not liking people I your team. In my opinion, there is zero correlation. So leaving a job for a higher pay doesn’t mean at all that you will find a team that you enjoy less working with. The chance of actually enjoying more is just the same.
If you happen to find yourself in a team that makes you unhappy, but all means, leave immediately. But not changing jobs to a earn more because tou are afraid it will be a team that you will enjoy less working is the wrong thing to do.
I think looking for a higher pay (be it by negotiating promotions in the same company or by changing jobs) is almost always the right choice. And I do not mean in the “greedy” sense, I mean that is a very effective way to achieve more happiness.
So I could jump ship for a 10-15% raise, my take-home after taxes would be maybe an extra few hundred a month. Nice, yes, maybe I can have a slightly nicer HDTV or slightly bigger apartment or stay in a nicer hotel when I go on holiday, but I'm still chained to a laptop for the foreseeable future, even if I save every penny instead of buying nicer things.
YMMV. Of developers I saw leaving, including my direct reports, almost no one was driven by money. There are actually two primary reasons. 1) their performance was suboptimal and it was easier to change the company than to push themselves uphill 2) relocation. Most of those who chose that patch was taking siglificant lifestyle downgrade, even if net pay was somewhat better.
In this ranking system there is no place for every employer from position 2 down, even if they're a good prospect.
This is not at the instigation of the employee, but the employers themselves, who all have contracts saying "while you work for us you can't work for anyone else".
Covid has exacerbated this, as these days the work you need to put in for an annual performance review (more forms) often approaches what it takes to land a new job (zoom) ... so if you have to sell yourself to your current company, why not repackage the assessment and send it to a handful of other companies and select the top bidder.
My motivations for leaving so far:
- Working with more relevant technology. Maybe higher pay in the long run
- Getting experience in different roles. Again, long run thinking
- Getting out of anything related to real estate in 2006
- Moving across the country to chase a girl
- Knowing that my manager was going to quit and that he was the only one allowing me to work remote.
- Douglas
- Entire department off-shored. Was working remote so I could have stuck around I guess. Wasn't worth it.
I know we like to shit on engineering managers a lot here at HN but having worked with great managers, terrible managers and playing the role for a short stint myself (a humbling experience, where I was not happy with my own performance), I realise the critical role a good manager can play to bring out the best in the team, and conversely how a bad one can bring out the worst.
I'm of the opinion now that managers are a waste of resources and amount to baby-sitters who attend meetings, approve time off, and try to get me to work more.
I haven't met a manager yet who made a positive contribution to a project. There's a reason people shit on them!
It's funny how looking back this is exactly why I decided to change companies, before and after. I absolutely loath interviewing, but it only takes an unsupportive manager to tip me. On the other hand, my direct superior now, a CTO, is completely different from every other manager I had, so I have zero desire to leave, the risk is just too much.
1) pay a bit over market rate (5-10% is ok)
2) create a culture where approachability, kindness and responsibility are more important than anything else
3) offer (but don't enforce) specific workplace settings
4) offer (but don't enforce) work-from-home/work-from-office balance
5) periodically encourage people - feedback is very important
(Kindness/Responsibility) If I’m well paid, but someone is a full-on jerk to me/my team (particularly if they are at a very high level — in fact the higher the level the smaller the slight needs to be to have big impact), I will start to look, and it’s only a matter of time until more money finds me.
(Balance) If my wife starts telling me she misses me, or that my kids miss me, or asking why I couldn’t come to the performance, I will start to look, and it’s only a matter of time until more money finds me.
If I’m paid under market.. we’ll, I’m gonna find out soon, and then I will start to look…
One I didn’t see in your list is working to align people with work they want to do. Not always easy, but something can always be done, and the effort to try is almost as important as the result. If I’m stuck doing meaningless work, or never able to complete something, or (worst of all) watch the new hires come in and do my projects because I’m stuck working outages, I will start to look…
On Office vs Remote: This is a really, really difficult one.
The company I just left moved to a remote-priority hybrid model, where the office was "heavily suggested" two days a week and "absolutely optional" every other day. As you could imagine, those two statements mean the same thing; its optional every day.
I left because I love the office. I love the separation between work and home. I love the drive in; getting time to listen to podcasts or new music. Most of all, I love the company; I love collaborating in person, spontaneous low-stakes communication about little issues in their dev environments or problem solving, stuff that would never make it into Slack, but we're better off talking about it.
Not enough of the team feels the same way, so most days it was just me and maybe 3 or 4 other people (out of a dozen+). So, I left to find a company that was more aligned with what I want.
But, here's the ironic part: in the frank conversations I had with other team members, many are on the opposite side of the fence. The two-day-a-week "heavily recommended" was too much office time. They want full remote. Some of them were bold enough to just do it; management (and COVID) isn't at the place right now to enforce too harshly. Many still feel guilty about it; how there are people like me going in most days, which is aligned with the corporate mandate, and they're not doing it. One person left, citing this as a deciding reason.
Point being, I think any model can work; full office, full remote, or hybrid. No matter what companies do, there will be churn, because every choice is different in some way to what employees have either gotten used to (remote during pandemic -> full office) or what employees miss (full office pre-pandemic -> remote). And if you choose hybrid, you seriously need to enforce it; if you enforce it, some people will be unhappy with the model you pick, but that's better than not enforcing it and causing everyone to be unhappy.
On Positive Feedback: For me, it feels the best if its specific feedback not on the basic completion of tasks, but on the quality of completion. Not "Thank you so much for staying late to help with that customer issue", but "The way you solved that customer issue was pretty creative man, thanks for jumping in on that." That feels so much better (for me).
One of the big things I took too long to learn, and am still trying to improve in, is understanding how valuable positive peer feedback is. Not just approving great PRs with zero feedback or a "LGTM" "+1" ":thumbsup:"; I love putting line comments in that say genuine positive things I feel about lines, like "That's an awesome solution" or "I didn't know you could do that in typescript" or "I really like this, I'm definitely going to start doing that". The first hurdle I had to cross was, actually, having these thoughts more often; to reframe PR reviews from "its how we control risk on production merges" toward "its an opportunity to help the submitter improve their code" and even further into "its an opportunity for me to stay up-to-date on how the entire codebase is evolving, and how other devs solve problems."
Be specific, and be genuine. If I can't give genuine positive feedback, then either: the person I'm giving feedback to isn't really living up to any positive feedback, or in my experience more commonly: I'm not seeing the good in their work and effort, and its my responsibility to improve my ability to recognize it, so I can actually be genuine.
I've been suspecting for many months that people will end up shifting to workplace styles that match their preferences if they can and this is a good example.
I'm not necessarily in software engineering (operations/architecture), but the weight on my manager(s) at times has been what's kept me here.
Not always directly on them, but the vacuum they mention. Everyone on my team is a champion of their realm, and I can't help but assume the worst if I were to leave.
I might not love the place, but the people and the core of what we do - absolutely. Sometimes it indeed just isn't the right time.
Fact is though I wouldn't be looking if the company was as loyal to me as vice versa I guess. I actually really like the job and the people but I need to at least keep up with inflation to avoid feeling like a clown haha
Good luck with your job hunt.
It's also one of the biggest challenges to me, replacing those people, who are often top performers on my teams. But that's my job. It's what I do for this organisation. "As an engineer" I hope you never consider holding your own career progress back just to make that part of my job easier. If that's a serious problem for me, then that's because I failed at _my_ job. I need to have contingency plans and succession plans and we both need you to not be irreplaceable. When I've got my ducks in a row, my reaction is "Right, time to accelerate $otherDev's seniority, temporarily move those @responsibilies to @colleagues with a handover, and call up HR/recruiting to hire in someone with @skillset. Let's plan some celebratory drinks."
When you're ready, and when a great opportunity presents itself, do not spend a second worrying about how I'll need to deal with you leaving. While you've probably just made a whole bunch more work for me as I scrabble to fill the gap you're leaving, I will genuinely be happy for you and proud of you for getting there.
(And I will try my hardest to communicate that pride and happiness much better than I show my frustration and stress as I do the hard parts of my job.)
That's the correct attitude. View your team as a pipeline that produces top people. It's much more rewarding to work that way.
In the later, the team has a head start finding and onboarding my replacement. As we all know, the main issue here is that the customary 2 week notice is insufficient time to find your replacement. If it’s truly just about money or something like that, it also gives them an opportunity to give you what you feel is fair or they know what is going to happen if they don’t.
Usually nobody really in management cares unless they are complete psychos. And the team will not miss you much either because other people usually step up. People who leave are forgotten quickly.
I've watched a business fall apart slowly after the only developer on the legacy project left. Nobody knows the old framework, nobody wants to waste time learning something that won't advance their career, and finding an existing person familiar with it is search for a needle in a haystack.
A developer can find a new position in a matter of weeks. A business takes months to fill a position, then months more to ramp up as the new hire has to learn the unfamiliar code base. In a market with lots of competition, it can be catastrophic, but management has the mindset that we're all cogs until it's too late.
I hate reading this. Not because I think people who say it are wrong, but because so many engineers have had experiences that lead them to believe it. During my management career, I risked my own standing in a company more than once to back up people in my org. If a manager isn't willing to risk their own skin to make sure their team is treat with dignity and respect they aren't a leader, they're just a politician.
Maybe, but it's not been my experience. It's taken a year and a half. It previously took a year.
As it stands, employees give at least two weeks notice to employers before quitting, and employers give no notice whatsoever.
The benefit of the employee giving notice (from the company's perspective) is that management has a little time to move people around and try to cover for the missing person. The benefit from the offboarding employee's perspective is that they won't get a bad reference for their next job.
But, if an employee is leaving because they've found a new job (the most common case, I think) then they probably don't need a reference from this position, because they have their next job lined up already. Maybe it would be nice to have one later, but it's not strictly needed. At most, it's a weak enticement.
The obvious argument against giving notice to employees from a management perspective is that the employee will either sabotage the company, not do any work, or just take two weeks of vacation.
However, this is the case where the employee would actually need a good reference from their current company, because they do not already have a job lined up. If anything, you'd expect them to be less likely to behave badly than they would be in the typical case, where they find their next job and put in their two weeks notice afterward, because they need that reference.
When a company lays off an employee, they never give any notice, and the team with the missing team member is left to figure out what to do about it. Even though this can be a major disruption to the team, we don't typically hold it against the company: it's just how things are done. But, should it be?
Of course, the other reason to lay someone off without notice is that you can't afford to pay their salary for even two more weeks, but that's another situation. I'm talking about when someone is being laid off because of pro-active downsizing, or because they're not living up to their potential, or whatever.
Many places will let you go immediately but are required to pay notice pay.
As an employee working notices are soulcrushing fearful periods where you have to find new work while working with esteem low. The layoff with pay allow you to refocus and reframe your experiences with a safety net.
Employees who leave voluntarily will usually give as much notice as they can. There is no fixed guidance or expectation, but just good form to tell at least your manager as soon as you have made a decision. It isn't uncommon for people to publicly announce their departure 6-8 weeks in advance.
For people who are fired for bad performance, there is usually a PIP or other probationary period which would count as notice.
For layoffs, there will be severance (2-3 months is common).
The only time I have seen abrupt departures is for entirely unavoidable reasons – theft, sexual harassment, family issues, visas.
It's interesting reading this, as I have always been too -- shy? underconfident? I don't know -- to ever mention my job search to my manager, until I got an offer and accepted it. I worry about it being obvious that the time off I request is for interviewing and perhaps them placing obstacles in my way. I wonder if it's ever a good idea to mention a job search when one doesn't have any offers in hand yet.
Once you announce your intention to leave, you've broken trust with your employer and manager. Why assign the good projects to someone with one foot out the door? If they decide not to leave, was it because they want to be here, or because nobody wanted them? Are they going to leave in a few months anyways?
It's like when your significant other says they want to break up with you - "no, please I can change!" is never the right next step. You can end up together, but spend at least 3 months apart first.
I've been on teams where on more than one occasion colleagues have mentioned to me one day that they were thinking of leaving, and then a couple weeks later when I asked them about it they mentioned that they raised the explicit thoughts of departure with their manager (as well as their concerns that lead to it) with respective changes manifesting that kept them on the team for a number of years.
In the model you mention, it seems like it would never be worthwhile to retain employees who have an offer and are at that point announcing their departure?
Edit: I am not sure why what I am saying is controversial.
Either a person has a trusted relationship with their manager, or the they don't. I've had managers for whom I trusted and others I did not. It can also be assessed on how they treat others who report to them as well as how they speak of others of others on adjacent teams. Concerns can and should be raised over time, and not just bottled up and delivered at the end. A good manager should be probing for them as well.
There's obviously risk involved in any conversation, but I disagree with "it's never a good idea."
I thought so in the past.
But I have learned to be open about this and so far it seems managers appreciate it. It helps plan the transition better and prioritize closing projects.
I made friends this way.
One of my guys shared it with me for example and it was totally fine. We always were and still are on great terms and talk to each other from time to time. But we also both 'clicked' from the start. Never really a manager/employee relationship feeling. And while I tried to keep him with us I understood and wished him all the best. He's much happier at his new place now.
Guessing whether your manager might appreciate being able to plan transitions? Forget it! The best you should consider (depending on your level) is to give more notice than the required one. That can be a good compromise but I do hear that in some companies you shouldn't even consider that. But if you feel that they won't escort you out the building the second you give notice anyway than this can be a nice touch. It's a hard decision even then though because you are trying to be nice to your immediate colleagues but make no mistake that in the opposite situation they would not give you more than the mandatory notice period. Even if your manager might want to. HR is HR.
If you’re out there, Peggy, I am indeed sorry.
But you don't need to actually mention the job search. If you can put your finger on what's wrong with your current role and you have at least a little trust with your line manager, then you can just say "I'm not happy about XYZ in my role, I want to improve it, have you got any ideas?". And be prepared to bring it up several times.
I don't think anyone is expected to tell their employer they are job hunting.
If you're not confident that's the case (and unfortunately it's rare), it's too risky to make it known you're interviewing. It is often better to discuss whatever is making you unhappy, but without saying that you are considering leaving because of it.
Until I applied for another role 6 months later and the CTO knew the CEO of the former company, where overnight I went from completely technical and culture fit to even my recruiter being ghosted by the company.
The moral of the story here is if you’re exiting then don’t really bring it up unless you’re entirely prepared to exit that same day. When things go south, they hit rock bottom and the consequences go beyond the four walls of your office.
Keep it to yourself; it just isn't worth the risk.
I told my boss later into the process when I was sure I was going to get an offer. He could have fired me on the spot, but he appreciated the extra notice.
The modal manager's response is to fire you if you mention it.
When you're looking for a new job, you're doing what's best for you; what's best for the company is secondary. If you let your employer know you're searching, they'll start prying and trying to make changes to make you happy. That's reasonable, but at this point they may make promises they can't keep. Obviously, if you are unhappy and think they can change things, share those concerns, but if they aren't doing enough for you that you want to look for a new job, then you've sort of given up on them.
It is not baffling.
It is self respect.
I don't like important stuff that has not been completed. If I spent months on an important work it would feel like giving up. I would feel like a fraud abandoning it and letting it go to waste, because of my own decision. And so I try to focus one last time and push hard to have quality closure.
An interesting observation is how your focus suddenly improves when you have made your decision. You know all your long term plans no longer make any sense and so you stop worrying. You can finally have quality rest at home as various problems prevent you from achieving peace of mind. You know you can ignore bullshit. Or it suddenly stops being irritating anymore because you know you will not have to deal with it for long. You know you can finally say no to all distractions.
As the current top comment says: if they knew about it weeks in advance, why was it only after resignation was handed in they thought "oh wait I could try salvaging this"
People don't quit jobs, they quit managers
"And for those that care, a burst of contributions.
Open your eyes. Reality is shouting in your face. The dozens of dubious management books by "experts" are just making you feel good about not tackling the problem.
Just because the author didn't talk about promotions doesn't mean they don't happen or that the company concerned doesn't have a "proper career progression internally".
They may well have a "proper career progression": they might even have multiple career tracks for engineers (we do). You simply don't know.
Either way, it doesn't matter: turnover will still happen because there are often fewer of the more senior positions available than there are of the less senior. This is less of an issue in rapidly growing companies, because there are generally plenty of opportunities to progress.
It's natural for people to move on to new roles with new companies from time to time and, as a manager and a leader, is something I'm supportive of when it happens. There are many reasons they do this, progression being one, but money often being another.
Of course, I don't deny that plenty of companies exist that don't consider progression, or have any structures in place to facilitate it, but from the information we have here you can't infer that's the case for this company.
> find levers to negotiate
The time during which you "see it coming", when I the employee am asking more … pointed questions, usually about the company, how its run, the team's responsibilities or work or pay etc. … that, that is when you have the levers to negotiate. That is when you are still the BATNA.
But by the time I'm giving you notice, those levers are gone.¹
I also am pretty sure the last manager I gave notice to did not see it coming. He had a very quizzical look when I asked for the 1-on-1 mentioned in the article. He too, tried to fight what was by then destiny.
¹just in case someone tries to argue "everyone has a price": yeah, I'd agree. But I've not had anyone offer it, and by that time, it's far too high because of what you'd be asking. (Me to renege on a deal, me to stick with something I'm dissatisfied with, and it'd be a "pay replacing happiness" sort of an offer, which is why it'd be costly. You've had the chance to change the "happiness" part, and usually, the demonstration has been "we're unwilling to address those grievances")
(Also, too often, I think, the "problems" run deeper than the authority of the direct manager has control over. My last manager was in that situation: there was very little I think he could actually do. And that, in itself, is a problem.)
Yep. Particularly at larger companies your immediate manager can often do little more than perhaps offer a mild pay raise or slightly alter working conditions.
I'm currently planning on leaving some time in the next couple of years (sticking around for family reasons in the near-term) because I've realized our business model isn't what I thought it was when I joined, and that engineering really is a cost center past a certain baseline, which explains the utterly mediocre equipment/procedures and lack of leadership/low morale. I'd rather work somewhere where engineering is a profit center. Nothing my immediate manager can do about that.
This is a good point. I am seeing about same thing at work. Over obsession with Agile processes, tracking hours, third rate light duty computers, rigid working hours and so on. Many good engineers have already left instead banging head against "process" wall. And funnily today managers saying on call that they are finding difficult to hire and people are leaving left and right.
Mediocrity (often achieved through process) has cold advantages:
- It's cheaper because you're paying people less.
- It's more resilient because people are easier to replace.
- It's more predictable because you're not asking for groundbreaking work.
- Etc... you get the idea.
The only real downside is you're not going to build an exceptional product. But here's the rub: not every product needs to be exceptional in every way. Thus most departments in a company are perfectly fine with mediocrity.
Those "good engineers" aren't wanted.
I disagree. I've personally hired people who previously did this exact back and forth dance of getting an offer, then rejecting it because their current employer made them a better off. If a company is petty enough to hold it against you when you act in your best interests, you probably don't want to work there.
IMHO, once the switch of "I can't take this anymore and I want to leave" has been flipped, it's very difficult to flip that back. So your job as a manager is to do regular check-ins at sufficient frequency to identify and correct any issues before they get to this stage -- although as you say in your last paragraph, often these are outside your control. Which is why I've had X people leave my team in the past year, and am currently interviewing myself.
When I close the video meeting, I settle. My mind is racing. “Can I try something to bring the person back?” A list of grievances sets in, and I go through a loss cycle for days. It’s a breakup. I let go.
That doesn't read to me like they're thinking that finding something to bring the person back is a plausible outcome.
As a therapy aid, no. But as a general model for describing (or recognizing) the most common experiences post loss, still considered useful.
> because employment is a negotiated agreement
This does not logically follow the rest of the sentence preceding it.
The fact that negotiation takes place at the beginning of one’s employment does not have an automatic connection to the things a manager experiences when that employee resigns.
How about: "Wage theft by Uniqa Software Service and harrassment by Mammad Kabiri"
It might also make sense to point out that this is an EU court, because everyone knows that means worker protections actually have teeth. In the US getting fired like that is no issue in at-will states.
"EU court trial: Wage theft by Uniqa Software Service, Harrassment by Mammad Kabiri"
That's a good summary in my opinion.
Also, unrelatedly: Your text reads to me as if you could gain by improving your self-marketing. "code monkey" doesn't exactly sound like "that one guy we'll treat super nicely because we are afraid he might leave". But you certainly want to be in the latter category in your manager's mind. And chances are, after 10 years of working, you will have invaluable experience that helps your team. So it's probably mostly a matter of advertising your skills correctly.
> I could have improved the environment, the work, the team — myself. I write the conclusions down to be taken care of, reflecting on what I’ve learned.
From my personal experience, most people leave because it is almost impossible to get a significant raise internally versus changing jobs.
My role as a manager is to ensure you grow enough to move on to something better. That’s the contract, you give your best to the team while you’re here and we try our damndest to find good opportunities for you regardless of what it means for us.
I just have no misconceptions about our relationship, you’re here to push it and I’m here to challenge you to do that.
I want to make a movie to capture the feelings :)