Hacker News Reader

Comment by OptionOfT | Hacker News Reader

I've seen that in a large management consultancy company. Part of their risk management procedures (both for the company and in terms of some EU law) meant they couldn't keep contractors for longer than x years. They'd have to convert to employee or separate for 12 months.

Bit that doesn't really work in knowledge systems. Even with the best documentation people will build up knowledge that no one has, and their departure is costly.

Equally at the end of their contract a lot of time will need to be spend on a handover which slows down others even more.

So what happened? The contractor went via another middle man, which checked the correct boxes on the form, and everybody was happy.

View on HN

> Even with the best documentation people will build up knowledge that no one has

I think that's the part management teams are missing. They assume that employees are just human resources and they can replace a senior engineer with a 100% equivalent one when needed.

I worked for a large US bank that has a 10% biannual attrition target at all levels across the company. Twice a year they PIP 10-15% of staff, most of whom take a substantial buyout. Institutional knowledge is constantly being lost and experienced staff are being replaced with fresh cohorts of new grads, who then get replaced themselves right as they start becoming useful.

I knew multiple people there who made more in signing bonus, pay during training, and severance than they made for work actually performed.

The CEO is convinced that this is the path to "top tech talent."

Does the approach apply to senior management?

There's some level where it stops, but that's after you've got 100+ reports.

I don't know that I interacted with anybody senior enough to avoid this process in the time I worked there.

Senior leaders in large companies I've worked at always had a fairly high turnover just because they all tend to be hyper competitive and engaged in their own Game of Thrones type competitions - which someone has to lose.

That sounds like Enron. It breeds a culture of short termism, arse covering, and often... bending the numbers a bit

If we called it by the literal term, decimation, you would get a good sense of the effect. "I have a new policy, I'm going to decimate my own company"

I assume management thinks this will lead to better documentation practices and standardized processes so it becomes easier and cheaper to introduce new employees. In practice the opposite happens, employees get scared for their jobs, hire bad new employees so it's the new people that will get PIP-ed.

> I assume management thinks this will lead to better documentation practices and standardized processes

I think employees will also document less, and try not to standardise processes as much as they can as an attempt to improve their job security.

Oh, I think I know who is this. The CEO is fantastic (he is very technology oriented) but he is super convinced this is the right way. It has all kinds of perverse consequences. The constant loss of experience shows everywhere. Cliques are formed as means of protection. People focus on being seen, rather than in doing a great job, etc.

It's Capital One, idk why I was so vague in that comment. The CEO has a cult of personality and came out of management consulting and tries to manage software engineering hiring/firing processes like it's McKinsey. It's a very bottom heavy engineering organization, and a lot of teams are staffed by contractors and a rotating cast of junior devs every year or two.

There are good reasons the Founder-CEO has stayed in power as long as he has, he has an amazing business sense and is why Capital One made it through 2008 unscathed, but he tries to manage every org like it's management consulting.

    >  They assume that employees are just human resources and they can replace a senior engineer with a 100% equivalent one when needed.

they don't assume that, they make it happen by doing this regularly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com