A effective trick I learned about retaining engineers | Hacker News Reader

A effective trick I learned about retaining engineers

startupdreams.substack.com

6 pointsgsibble13 comments

I want to dismiss this as poorly written drivel, but I suspect he is absolutely right and on multiple levels.

We are materialistic and we are ego driven. You load up each worker with Bose QC headphones, that 4k monitor they were looking at on Amazon, a top spec MacBook, an Aeron chair, a motorized standing desk, all toys they have pined for but could never justify. You buy it for them, not a generic office perk, but “gifts” that “belong” to them. They are going to feel special and appreciated, like a kid on Christmas. And I think the result is that you will have hacked their consumer mind and won a loyalty and appreciation that is probably not in line with what the expense should really justify. At least I suspect it’s going to work pretty damn well on anyone under 30!

I realize I should have added we pay above market salaries, give bonuses for good work, and focus on making our engineers feel rewarded and valued. This is just a PART of that, and a part our engineers love and always talk about to potential new hires.

I could have written it just from the engineer's perspective......I get paid a ton, encouraged to take time off, my company recognizes my contributions, the CEO specifically says thank you to me all the time, and I got $10,000 of free stuff when I started!

But since there are a lot of founders on this forum, I was trying to give a measured balance of both how it benefits engineers and how it benefits the company.

Oh sure, I thought it was a clever twist on the more typical ping pong table. Collective office perks work wonders. I suspect this more personalized strategy, in combination with other good retention policies pays dividends, not as cheap as the ping pong table, but higher impact.

Some odd typos there for someone who is a managing partner and multiple time CEO. That aside, the trick here seems to be rather than attempting to retain employees, one should treat them as expendable and invest in office furniture instead.

Really, I feel no employee should ever "want" to work for this guy. Taking at face value his claim to have asked actual employees (not candidates) to write a "Christmas wish list" but then fired them if their list was deemed inappropriate.... Yikes. I imagine he gives people unlimited time off but then fires them for taking two weeks as well.

Hardly. We fired one guy when he made a list of $75,000 of stuff.

We encourage people to take time off and force them to at the end of the year if they have not taken a minimum of two weeks off. We don't want anyone to burn out.

Sorry about the typos. I did write the up and didn't proofread it.

If you ask people to generate a "Christmas wish list" and don't like the result you tell them thanks for their input but unfortunately you can't get them everything on the list.

You literally asked for a wish list and framed it as "congrats it's Christmas" then fired someone.

This absurd behavior follows right on your assertion that interviewing and hiring people is hard and expensive. I guess not so hard nor so expensive that you would fire someone for filling out a wish list. This would be akin to disowning my kid because she asked for a pony.

You frame startup employees as overworked, overpaid, underperforming, gossipy, disloyal boobs who are going to quit when anything better shows itself. Since this seems to happen a lot, your apparent "solution" to retain them is to invest in office furniture that can always be reused.

This "solution" seems to me to highlight a problem you have with your employees rather than a solution to retaining them.

Best of luck though.

We say to make the list reasonable. I believe I said that in the article.

And like I said, the primary way we retain talent is by paying about 20-30% above market. This is just an effective perk.

Calm down.

>And like I said, the primary way we retain talent is by paying about 20-30% above market.

Only 20-30% above market rate?

I thought the idea was to pay them 1.5-2x:

https://startupdreams.substack.com/p/my-biggest-lessons-afte...

>Many companies take the approach of hiring lots of cheap engineers. I go the opposite. I hire as few fantastic engineers as I can. The math works out. One fantastic engineer can do 3-5x the work of one normal engineer. Then pay them 1.5-2x the salary of a regular engineer.

I'm perfectly calm, you're the one firing employees because you don't like their "Christmas Wish List".

Let's say that you didn't like that person's 75k ask (again it was a wish list). Until the slowdown, it was not uncommon for experienced tech talent to get 5 figure start up packages on top of signing bonuses and moving allowances. My wife's last offer included 500k in housing assistance. In that light, a 75k startup package does not, on the surface, seem unreasonable.

Since tech workers as so gossipy, I imagine the entire company knows you fired that guy for a bad list. What do you think that does for moral? Honestly, it is no wonder your perspective is that tech employees have no loyalty and leave as soon as they can find something else.

Lol.. buy 'em a new laptop and a new desk. That'll keep them from leaving for a $30k/y pay hike. Right. Nice shortcut. Quality of life matters more. Better pay leads to better quality of life. But if the salaries are already competitive, I'd say investing in company culture is even more valuable than investing on better computers.

We also make sure to pay market salaries and give raises. This isn't about NOT giving those things. It's in addition to.

Out motto as a software development company is "Engineers First" which is why we make sure they have every piece of equipment they could want and the best workspaces they could have.

Geeez. A lot of people completely misinterpreting what I said here.

My apologies if I have misinterpreted your statements.

Perhaps you could clarify what you meant when you said:

"if you give a raise to one engineer, word will spread, and you'll have to give raises to all of them, and your burn will skyrocket since engineers are all a bunch of gossips"

"Quite frankly, they are used to be overworked, have very high demands, and pay that does not match the amount of work and hours they put in. Oftentimes, they're requests for higher pay are denied which is when they become resentful and move on. They don’t care about your mission and they don’t care about your company."

Please, correct my interpretation of your "trick" based off your statement:

"Well, fortunately there's a shortcut I’ve learned rather than having to increase pay or give out bonuses. Invest heavily in fixed assets."

How do you feel I am misinterpreting your statement?

"on an engineer's first day, they'd walk in to an empty desk, sit down, and we'd say today is Christmas. Go home and think about your dream workspace. Computer(s), monitors, keyboard, mouse, headphone setup, plants, anything. And make a list. Send it to us and if everything is within reason, we'll get it for you. Now, this was first a test to see if they would make reasonable requests. Out of 50 engineers, only one made outrageous requests and he was shown the door."

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