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What to do when employees quit

• mdergosits 11y ago
  As good as slack is for communicating I don't think it should be used as a "knowledge" store. At a previous employer I found that commit messages were a great way to store information. Maybe commit messages aren't as great for question and answers, but searching slack doesn't seem very intuitive. Idea: A slack bot that searches for questions and answers and creates a wiki out of the scraped information.
  • Jemaclus 11y ago
    What's really great is when you go back in the Slack history from the day you interviewed and see what people said about you... I imagine that can sometimes be awkward.
    • toomuchtodo 11y ago
      Private email should always be used for chatting about potential hires, instead of Slack.
    • torbit 11y ago
      sounds like they are using it wrong. user error.
      • gohrt 11y ago
        Or privacy fail in the applicatio design/UI
  • fluxquanta 11y ago
    >As good as slack is for communicating I don't think it should be used as a "knowledge" store. It's not that it shouldn't be, but that it probably won't be when it should. My company uses HipChat and not Slack, but ever since we first adopted it about 4 years ago I have been preaching that our in-house technical support staff use its search function before asking the developers for help. Maybe 10% of them do, if I'm being generous. The rest think their issue is unique and requires immediate one-on-one developer attention. We also have an in-house wiki that doesn't get consulted as often as it should. I spend at least half a day documenting, from a end-user perspective, every project I complete on our wiki and still find myself repeating what I've written in a one-on-one chat on a daily basis.
• o_nate 11y ago
  Seems like "pay them more" should be at least mentioned as a possibility here.
  • x3n0ph3n3 11y ago
    If they've already chosen to quit, paying more may only keep them begrudgingly.
    • gohrt 11y ago
      post-mortem actions are for the future, not the past.
    • wkimeria 11y ago
      No, sometimes pay is the original issue. But if they choose to leave, do not offer them money to stay. Any employee who stays is not being very smart, the only interest the company has in paying you more is keeping you long enough to train your replacement. If you were not worth X the day before you quit, how are you suddenly worth X the day you decide to quit? I've seen people accept a counter-offer from a company, and very few of those lasted more than 6 months, or the amount of time it takes the company to make them no longer indispensable.
      • oriolid 11y ago
        > If you were not worth X the day before you quit, how are you suddenly worth X the day you decide to quit? On the other hand, why would they have paid you X even if you were worth it, if they could get away with less?
        • granfalloon 11y ago
          I wouldn't begrudge an employer for negotiating my salary and not paying me what they think I'm "worth," but I also wouldn't feel guilty about doing the least amount of work necessary to fly under the radar at the job and not get fired. (Not a direct response to your comment, I know -- it just made me think of how annoyed I get when the former is considered "just business" while its equivalent on the employee's end is usually regarded as "mooching" or a moral failing.)
• deleted 11y ago
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• taurath 11y ago
  This part is key: > Take the time, on a regular basis, to talk to your employees about their lives, goals and challenges. Ask them what they hope to accomplish, not just in the next week, but in the next year, five years and ten years in their careers. Listen intently to what they say, and think about how you can help them achieve that. And then act. Anyone who asks me those questions will get double the loyalty out of me - they'll know before I even think of going elsewhere. I've been at way too many places that just don't give a damn, or assume that people will look out for themselves. They will, but probably to another place. But if you want them to be dedicated and loyal to working for you you need to get out in front. Solve the little problems before they become big ones, or lose your best employees (who can easily get a job elsewhere) and let your companies morale and productivity die.
  • gohrt 11y ago
    Would an employee feel honest telling their boss their 5-year goals? What if it isn't "leading a larger team at this company" ?
    • Quanticles 11y ago
      Not everyone can be a manger, strong technical people are very valuable too.
      • forgottenpass 11y ago
        OK, but that doesn't change the point of their post. It can easily be rephrased as something like... "Would an employee feel honest telling their boss their 5-year goals? What if it isn't "leading a larger team at this company" or "designing and developing more and/or more-important portions of the company's projects"?
    • rzzzt 11y ago
      What does a typical 5-year goal sound like? I always struggle to come up with anything when this sort of question comes up (not necessarily in an employer-employee conversation, just in general).
• sheepmullet 11y ago
  You can document institutional knowledge and try and make sure nobody is indispensable but ultimately you will still take a huge blow. You should focus most of your attention on improving retention. I left a full 200 page notebook full of product ideas/customer notes/requirements/designs when I left my last job. Hopefully it helps the team but it is only in note form and completely unordered. More likely they won't look at it and the knowledge will just be lost.
• angersock 11y ago
  About to do an exit interview tomorrow, and this article resonates with me, in the general case. There are also the cases of pathologically bad employees, or just underperforming. However, in some cases, it is personal. It's not some growth stage for the employee--they could well be leaving an early employee role because you, the founder(s), have fucked up. You've found yourself with an employee putting out tremendous amounts of work, transferring their knowledge, coordinating their team even as they're leaving, and who generally would be great except for the fact that, for some reason, they're leaving. Things you should be asking yourself and your employee: Did you ignore, multiple times, their domain expertise because you {thought you knew better, couldn't afford to follow it, felt like it, didn't like them}? Did you support them in front of their team? If not, did you support them at all? Did you respect the chain of command, or did you reallocate their resources under them? Did you lie to them? Was it for a good reason, because of {team morale, need-to-know, legal liability}? Whether or not you ever lied to them, did they feel like they could trust what you said? Did you give them information when they requested it? Did you give them resources when they requested it? If you didn't give them resources, why not, and was it worth it in the long run? Did you spend enough time with them, communicating not just about work but bullshitting and building a friendship? If you didn't, was it because you {were busy, had other leads, didn't like them, are an "introvert"}? How did that lack of communication factor into their departure? Did you display any competence at all by some objective metric in your facility as leader? Whether or not you did, did the employee feel like you were competent? And yeah, I think you should feel bad. You've wasted their time and the company's resources because of your mismanagement. If you're really luckily, maybe you can learn from it and keep from losing anyone else--because if you don't, you don't deserve to be followed.
  • taurath 11y ago
    Note that the amount of these questions these leaders will ask themselves is inversely proportionate to their own ego. I watched half an engineering team leave a company over 2-3 months and each and every time the 3 managers up the chain found ways to explain it that didn't involve their competence or methods. Last I saw they were circling the drain.
• kafkaesq 11y ago
  Imagine getting punched in the stomach. And then, instead of recovering in a few minutes, imagine the shock and pain slowly turning into disappointment, anger and dread. Don’t you realize how important you are to the team? How could you do this to me? It was what I felt right then and there. Betrayal. Sadness. Despair about the future. Umm, companies pull the plug on employees all the time. In most cases with vastly less forethought and regret than employees engage in when leaving their jobs (even jobs they hate). I guess it can sort of "hurt" on the management side, when employees leave. But given the pain that employees go through (hint: the immediate threat to their own physical safety, as well as that of their families) when they're let go, I'm not sure how one could begin to consider the two situations as remotely comparable. Let alone get so emotional, and feel such a sense of "despair" when an employee (even a particularly valued one) leaves.
  • tikhonj 11y ago
    That quote is really out of context. His point is that this is the wrong reaction, but a very natural one. Here's what directly follows this quote: > It doesn’t matter that these questions weren’t the right ones to be asking. It doesn’t matter that they weren’t even remotely accurate, and frankly, incredibly selfish. It doesn’t matter that they run counter to everything I’ve learned about managing employee exits since then. It was what I felt right then and there. Betrayal. Sadness. Despair about the future. It's pretty easy to get overly emotional on anything that you've put significant amounts of time and effort into. The point of the article is that you shouldn't actually follow these feelings and that there are much better ways of handling it.
    • kafkaesq 11y ago
      Your right it is -- I didn't quite catch that when I was pasting, but it does sound a bit unfair, out of context. So: apologies to the original author.
  • crpatino 11y ago
    > I guess it can sort of "hurt" on the management side, when employees leave. I agree on the "hurt" part, but it is a well known fact that employees do change jobs in this industry. If a manager is not aware of that, and has not already made contingency plans for when that difficult time comes, then he is not very good at his job. I would go as far as to say that he could do worse than to look at what other parts of his job he might been ignoring (hopefully) without noticing. Maybe that would explain why the employees leave in the first place.
• unabridged 11y ago
  If a leaving employee is so important, you should ask yourself "Am I really 100x-1000x (whatever ratio your equity is to their equity) more important than this employee?"
  • davidgrenier 11y ago
    You seem to make the assumption that just throwing more money at the individual is fair compensation. Perhaps I misunderstood your statement.
    • kafkaesq 11y ago
      Founder equity is typically on a completely different scale than that of employees (even first hires). So we shouldn't be surprised that their loyalty is on a completely different scale, as well.
      • unabridged 11y ago
        Exactly. My main problem is that the CEO's stance is entirely hypocritical, because he would demand real equity or quit (probably even faster) if he was in the employee's position. Once you have access to millions in funding its tough to see people who have to work for a living as human just like you. You expect them to lovingly accept terms that you would be insulted at. Now if your talent is so great that you dwarf all your employees it might be justified. But when you are pained at losing productive workers chances are your favorable terms exist mostly because of your connections.
        • cmdrfred 11y ago
          This is exactly as I see it. A company and it's investment in me is how I determine my investment in it. Pay market average expect an average 8 hour work day.
        • vacri 11y ago
          You have a considerable chip on your shoulder, and are projecting things onto the article that aren't there. The article spends a lot of time discussing how things are from the departing employee's point of view, and not (as you suggest) looking down from an ivory tower.
• davidgrenier 11y ago
  I know for some people that article may feel like this article talks about them one way or another. It may also seem a little self involved to think that it does if you are an employee. But a word of advice for such talented employee as some of the recommendations go both ways. I'm 5 weeks away from being done with a 6 months-ahead notice to my employer that I would be leaving because I knew nobody could enter "the kingdom" that I ended up holding the key to. I felt too bad leaving them in that situation especially since I was given opportunities may developers would never expect their current employer to go for. I also know that despite that long transfer of knowledge they'll have a heck of a hard time dealing with. You don't want to be irreplaceable just as much as they don't want you to be, especially in an era where software developers are in such ridiculous demand. And in no way does this mean you can't be as good as you work to be.
  • sheepmullet 11y ago
    It sounds like you were given opportunities you wouldn't get elsewhere and in exchange you showed them loyalty and didn't leave them in the lurch by giving them 6 months notice. To me that's a great success story for both sides. Do you feel like the advantages given to you weren't worth the 6 months extra you felt like you had to stay? Why? The first company I worked for full time made me the solution architect for a 20 person project even though I only had 2 years of work experience at the time. Successfully completing that project put me an easy 5 years ahead of my peers in terms of career growth and very few of them have caught up in the 10 years since.
• cryptica 11y ago
  If an employee is so valuable that it hurts when they leave, maybe they should have been given more incentives to stay. You can't say that an employee is selfish when they're the ones doing all the hard, laborious technical work and getting almost nothing out of it aside from a below-average startup salary. This might come as a shock to some, but engineers have feelings and ambitions too. In this highly competitive market, it makes sense to give your employees more equity if you want to hold on to them. When you consider supply and demand, the ratio of founders to engineers is now much higher than it ever was. Great engineers are rare. I've left quite a few companies, even a promising startup - Would I have left if I held even 5% equity in that company? Probably not. If you don't give your 'valued' employee decent equity then you are the selfish one and I hope that they do leave (if only out of respect for the profession). I've seen too many self-important founders who think that they deserve twenty times more equity than their best employee (just because they're friends with a rich investor). Taking risks is easy (and kind of fun), doing mind-numbing programming every day for 10 years is not (and working for a single company, in a single problem domain for that long IS mind numbing). Also, let's not pretend that engineers aren't taking risks. 5 years of a young engineer's life is a huge risk especially when you consider that a lot of engineers start to slow down as they get older.
• lgleason 11y ago
  The way you treat exiting employees is just as important as how you treat them when they are still there from a recruiting perspective. If you treat someone well when they decide to leave, they are more likely to recommend your company to others looking for a job. There have been places I left for various reasons that were great employers that I still recommend to this day for others looking for a job.....and might even thing about joining if the right opportunity came along.
  • chiph 11y ago
    I made this point at a previous firm I worked at. That the number of potential employees in any town is a finite number, and so you want to treat people leaving as brand ambassadors of your firm so you won't have trouble hiring in the future.
  • jdbernard 11y ago
    As an example, I was introduced to my current company by an employee who had just left.
• deleted 11y ago
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• StillBored 11y ago
  As someone who left, and is now hearing of the rest of the team leaving.... 1st, if someone is so darn important, it is your job to have a backup plan for when they quit, or for that matter get hit by the proverbial bus. Anything less is managerial incompetence, spend a day or two reading about business continuity. 2nd, there are these things called golden handcuffs, if you don't understand the concept I refer you to the above. 3rd, if you don't have the money for 2, then you better not be seen driving around in your brand new lamborghini, or spending all your time at over the top expensive restaurants while your employees have a tiny fraction of the company, and slave away for 70+ hours a week eating crap ass food from the fast food joint they are paying for themselves. (This really happened!)