The Diving Save

While this was a good article, it was written from the point of view of management. From the employee's point of view, accepting a counteroffer is fraught with danger. You've just told your company that you were unhappy enough to want to leave - they can perceive that as a lack of "loyalty". They also know that whatever enticed you to leave this year could also entice you to leave a year from now (especially if it's a problem with the corporate culture that's hard to fix). So here's how the scenario could unfold:

You may not be easy to replace in the short term, so management, in their desperation to keep the company going, makes you a very sweet offer to get you to stay. But they may think the offer is too expensive in the long term, so they'll start looking for your replacement (or making sure that someone who is already in the company starts picking up the knowledge and skills that made you indispensable). And as soon as your replacement is up to speed, they'll fire you.

And after that, you'll be unlikely to ever get another offer from the company that you were originally going to move to, since you screwed them by backing out after you had already signed their job offer. Word of this could also spread to other companies in the field, making you a less-desirable hire in other places.

So before accepting a counteroffer, you need to be really, really sure that you can trust your manager's (and their managers') sincerity.

The concept of a counter offer involving "a significant raise" makes me uncomfortable.

From the employee side, it means "we were willing to pay you substantially more money for the same work, but we didn't because we could get away with it".

It leads to thoughts of "what else would they willingly give me but only if I drag it out of them?" and "why am I having to be in opposition to them? We're supposed to be a team fighting this problem for the company's interest, the company isn't supposed to be fighting us as well. Deciding to limit resources to the team is one thing, but this?" and "if all it took was three phonecalls to get a significant pay rise, why didn't my manager do that sooner? What were they doing if not looking out for their team?" as well as "now I resent the previous X years and feel underpaid and screwed over for them".

It feels as if somehow missing the point - there is a group of companies that can (and would be willing to) perform a "diving save" as described. There is a group of companies that get those unexpected moments of "I'm leaving, my last day is a week from friday" from valuable key people.

These groups of companies don't overlap much, if at all.

Actually, the learnable moment at that point isn't "hey, we should've appreciated that person more but we didn't, and we'll fix that". That wouldn't not be a fix, it wouldn't scale to the rest of the team, and it wouldn't be a diving save, but just prolonging the agony. The only way it makes sense is if it's a sudden revelation of the CEO+owners "we've turned out to be a sucky company for our employees and we hadn't noticed going down that slippery slope - but we don't want it; we want to fix it, and we've prepared to put significant resources to make it happen for the whole company". That would be a diving save as meant by that article. But that's a really rare occurance, it often doesn't turn out that way even for good & well-meaning people.

> Your job is to stand in clear mental opposition to that decision. Your job is to elegantly and professionally disassemble their plan,

Well, maybe. What if it's really best for that person to go elsewhere, even if it would be a loss for the company? I don't think the answer to this question is cut and dry, and I don't think the manager's role as a person and life mentor to the departing employee should be ignored.

"You have to assume that much of the narrative and compensation that you’re about offer will become known by the team. I understand why people share this confidential information, but I wish they wouldn’t."

Aww, poor managers? If only their workers would respect the lack of transparency fundamental to maintaining employees in similar functions at grossly different compensation levels...

Recently I found myself in the position of a diving save not of someone who reports to me, but of a peer. In this case, the balance is more difficult. On one hand, I have my own self-interest at heart -- I intend to stay at the organization, and I believe that my peer has great value to contribute to the organization. On the other hand, I have his as well, as a friend -- is the offer that they received likely to do better for them in the long term?

In this case, I felt like the two interests were aligned: I felt like their opportunity for growth within my organization was going to be greater than the opportunity that they had available in the company that they were going to. The mechanics were similar, then: understanding why the current role was better, I could explain it cogently.

The moral, I suppose, is that not in all cases, but in /some cases/, there exist times when diving saves can be executed by peers, too.

My experience has been that organizations that want you to work there make it apparent. Otherwise I would think that staying somewhere that makes a last ditch effort is not a good idea, unless it's some massive company that has this wicked small department that is doing cool stuff and they move you there. Otherwise, organizations who don't want you just don't want you, even if they think they do.