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Comment by freedomben | Hacker News Reader

I don't disagree, but I do think the modern culture of company hopping is contributing to this. As a leader entrusted to make good decisions for the company, you must consider this reality.

At a previous company we hired a lot of junior engineers with the idea that our relatively high pay and reasonably good work would help us build a strong generation of seniors a few years down the road. What we mostly found was that we spent a ton of money and our sr eng time training and sharpening them, only for the vast majority of them to leave after 1 to 3 years. As I've gotten more into hiring, it's not at all surprising to me now as this is just clearly in the culture.

To be clear I'm not blaming the employees, in fact I blame ridiculously stupid HR practices for the last 20 years because they built a structure in which the only way to get a raise was to leave the company, and that was also often the best way to get promoted too.

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What's the structural solution to this? Offer golden handcuffs to stay for x years?

- "We'll train you, and if you stay the full 8 years you get a $500,000 bonus"?

- "Here's a $200,000 signing bonus, which you have to pay back if you leave before 8 years"

I'd be hesitant to rely on these as a candidate, because I'd have to assume I'd get fired at year 6-7 or something so that the company could save money.

from the op:

> ridiculously stupid HR practices... a structure in which the only way to get a raise was to leave the company, and that was also often the best way to get promoted too

Until that culture changes, of course you're gonna assume you get fired or issued a surprise RTO order at year 7.5.

When the social contract becomes penny-pinching every opportunity, of course the employees are gonna start playing that game too.

Yes, but where does the culture change begin? My conundrum in trying to solve it is:

- Companies that pay in the top 1% of compensation already don't have a retention problem.

- Only 1% of companies can pay the top 1% of compensation.

- The other 99% have issues with retention.

- Companies only have $X to allocate for 10 years of employment compensation.

- Any 99% company that structures $X of compensation to provide bonus $Y for staying a long time will necessarily offer salary $(X-Y) until the reward is granted.

- Any 99% company that does not provide a reward for staying a long time can offer salary $X, which is higher than $(X-Y).

- A rational employee cannot depend on bonus $Y, and rationally should take competing offers of Salary $X over offers of Salary $X-Y.

A meta-comment, but I wanted to let you know that I've really enjoyed our comments today. I appreciate your ability to analyze and articulate, and most importantly making me think :-)

I think golden handcuffs are a bandaid, but it can stop the bleeding. It didn't work on me (I was willing to walk away from huge ISO incentives long before vesting because I (probably foolishly) valued job happiness more than money), but it does work on a lot of people.

I don't know a long-term structural solution, for exactly the reason you mention:

> I'd be hesitant to rely on these as a candidate, because I'd have to assume I'd get fired at year 6-7 or something so that the company could save money.

Trust is at an all-time low right now, and for good reason. It very well might take years to turn the ship around. I think it will have to start with the big companies as a small company trying to do this will only put themselves at a disadvantage, but any exec at a big company proposing this would probably be dismissed as they heavily favor short-term over the long-term (by their actions, not necessarily words, but IMHO actions are all that really matters). Basically it's a Tragedy of the Commons problem.

>What's the structural solution to this? Offer golden handcuffs to stay for x years?

Be a good place to work with competitive pay so your employees want to stay.

Consider training a part of the compensation instead of an investment you expect returns on.

> modern culture of company hopping is contributing to this

Zero people are doing this for the fun of it. This is entirely driven by incentives, not "culture".

Or, rather, not by "culture" of the people doing the hopping—C-suite and MBA culture, yes, very much so, this is one of many bad outcomes from having companies run entirely by "professional managers" and finance dudes rather than people who were, at the start of their career, close to the actual productive work of the company, with the latter scenario once being far more common than it is now.

I don't disagree, but I think it's the incentives that led to the culture. Changing the incentives will have a downstream affect on the culture, but it's not immediate. It takes a bit of time for the shit to roll down hill.

I think it could be pretty damn immediate. What's missing are unions and pensions for long-term job stability, tolerability, security, and clear career progression. What's missing are wages that kept up with the inflation rates of housing and healthcare, not the price of wheat or flatscreen TVs. What's missing is C-suite norms that favor retaining workers through the usual economic-cycle downturns, rather than swiftly choosing to enact mass firings any time the CEO has a little indigestion (the science is extremely mixed on this anyway, there's not even a good reason to believe the latter approach is better for the company in general, and the C-suite zeitgeist used to favor avoiding mass firings unless absolutely necessary)

I don't think there'd be any waiting for worker "culture" to catch up to fill roles with comp packages and working conditions that addressed those core issues.

If there was high trust, then I would agree with you. However, the lack of trust means that a lot of people would not believe The pension would even be around, and especially I don't think people would believe that The mass layoffs would be a thing of the past.

Company hopping is a response to a lack of commitment to employees' security and future from employers and disappearance of anything resembling a pension.

People don't walk away from handcuffs made of any remotely precious metal, employers have every ability to disincentivize that behavior.

Did anyone bother to ask why they were leaving after 1-3 years, or was it just dismissed as "that's just the culture."

"modern culture of company hopping".. don't you mean simply going to another workplace for better wages? when you say "ridiculously stupid HR practices" don't you mean not paying them as much? do you really think it's a "cultural" thing to change jobs?

> "modern culture of company hopping".. don't you mean simply going to another workplace for better wages?

Yes that's what I mean, though I was making the argument from the perspective of the employer. Didn't mean mean any shade with "company hopping" (I've done that in the past because it was the best thing for me and my career, and I stand by those decisions, so I don't mean them with any negative connotations from the employee perspective at least, and from the employer perspective it's their own damn fault though they rarely ever recognize it).

> when you say "ridiculously stupid HR practices" don't you mean not paying them as much?

Yes, not paying them as much as another company would offer, plus being stingy with promotion opportunities (like from jr to mid, mid to sr, etc).

> do you really think it's a "cultural" thing to change jobs?

Yes absolutely, a culture born out of changing realities/incentives. That's not to say it wouldn't switch back if companies started rewarding loyalty again, but it won't spin on a dime.

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