5 ms·

This is rude move in several ways. First of all, at several prominent companies where I've worked both as a manager and an individual contributor, you would let

by sulam 10y ago

This is rude move in several ways. First of all, at several prominent companies where I've worked both as a manager and an individual contributor, you would let the person cliff their year if they made it that far. If you were so bad a fit that it was worth firing you in the first year, they could have fired you in the first six months just as easily. Which leads me to another way this is rude: when I'm looking at an employment record and I see someone was somewhere 6 months or less, I don't think much of it. Clearly something didn't work out, even if it wasn't mutual. When I see someone having been there one year, I assume there's one of two options: either the employee just wanted to cliff their shares and then move on or the company let them vest and then fired them. Either one of these does not reflect well on the employee. To let you stay 51 weeks and fire you without options is a double whammy -- I'm going to have the same negative reaction and you have no upside. :/ When you look for your next job, you may want to emphasize that you were at UnicornCo for less than a year to avoid this bias or at least offset it some. That will obviously require you to have a reasonable explanation for why there wasn't a good fit, but you were going to need that anyway. Forgot to add: contesting your unemployment at a reasonably sized company is really unheard of. Even when someone is fired, unless they are fired for cause (like, they stole stuff, harassed someone, etc) you're going to give them unemployment. If I'm interviewing you, this detail will make me want to dig further into your story. Take that as you will.

nharada 10y ago
This is not related directly to OP, but I'm interested to hear opinions from others: Do you really look poorly on someone who quits after a year instead of 6 or 18 months? If so, how far after that year before you don't think poorly of the move anymore? A few months? A year?
- romanhn 10y ago
  I asked a similar question here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12233155 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12233155. As a hiring manager, my short answer is - yes. If there's a bunch of short stints, I won't consider a resume no matter how relevant the experience. If there's proof that you can last at one place for 2+ years, the rest can usually be explained early on and likely won't impact the rest of the process too much.
  - hiringmanager 10y ago
    Your profile says you want to hire people, but your comment here says you are prejudiced. You're operating from the 1950s veiwpoint which is really a cultural hold over from the great depression- that employees should be desperate to find a job and companies should be free to screen them out for any arbitrary reasons. Let me guess, you make them write code on a white board too. If you have a one year cliff you are providing a huge financial incentive for your employees to leave after a year, by shifting the risk onto them. Maybe that's why you don't have enough people already?
    - maxlybbert 10y ago
      It's not necessarily a case of expecting candidates to be grateful for even being considered. Avoiding a bad hire is surprisingly important.
    - romanhn 10y ago
      Way to build up an imaginary strawman to argue against. I never claimed any of the things from your comment, I don't make anyone write code on a whiteboard, and I don't have trouble hiring either. If I'm going to invest into onboarding an employee, training them, providing opportunities for growth, etc. I'm not sure why you find it so disagreeable that I would prefer that they stick around as long as possible. Both parties are free to discontinue the relationship when the fit is no longer there, and that's fine by me. I'm indeed prejudiced against cowboy coders that want to jump from team to team, focus on picking up new tech for their resumes and do their best to avoid any maintenance work. Maybe that's just me, though...
      - hiringmanager 10y ago
        >I'm indeed prejudiced against cowboy coders that want to jump from team to team, focus on picking up new tech for their resumes and do their best to avoid any maintenance work. Being at a company for a year doesn't tell you someone is like that. This is why I called it a prejudice. Being at a company for a year can also indicate that the person is quality enough to be choosy about where they work and not to stick around when management proves themselves incompetent. Most statups fail. Most startups management is very poor. The best software developers realize that they are making an investment by working for a startup. Thus staying around past the first year is a judgement call on the future of the company.
- cure 10y ago
  When I look at resumes, I don't like to see a series of short (less than 18 months, say) stints. It can happen once or twice, no problem - sometimes things just don't work out. If the resume shows three or more short stints, especially in a row, it's a red flag. I might still phone screen the candidate if their experience looks relevant and the resume is otherwise impressive, but I'm going to ask about the short positions, and the answer matters a lot.
  - hiringmanager 10y ago
    This is silly. What you think these are "bad" employees and the company is figuring it out in the 14th month? Or are you stuck in the 1950s era idea of loyalty and these employees are not "loyal"-- yet are you considering whether you're giving them a reason to be loyal?
  - flukus 10y ago
    Your avoiding hiring people that get frustrated in crappy environments and rewarding the ones that put with it them or don't know any better.
    - romanhn 10y ago
      Note that he's talking about a series of short stints, not just one or two. If every environment is lousy and warrants immediate exit, perhaps the problem is not entirely with the environments. Chronic complaining without a bias for action is not exactly a positive trait as far as interviewing is concerned.
      - flukus 10y ago
        > If every environment is lousy and warrants immediate exit, perhaps the problem is not entirely with the environments Most are like that IME. This is compounded by the fact that these are the companies most frequently hiring. You've probably seen comments along the lines of 90% of candidates failing fizzbuzz? Remember those candidates work somewhere.
- 35bge57dtjku 10y ago
  I always heard people switch jobs every year in SV.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
hiringmanager 10y ago
You seem to imply that an employee being somewhere for one year is a bad sign. That seems like a prejudice. Sure, staying somewhere only 6 months can be a lack of fit. Staying somewhere a year, though, doesn't mean anything negative. Especially with startups. The startup could have pivoted. The employee could have felt that it was a good fit, then the startup pivoted and they gave the company an additional 6 months. The employee might have done great, but the statup founders chose to hire form outside rather than promote within (Showing a lack of loyalty to their own employees, and to the ones who took the greater risk by being there earlier.) Also, you should never look down on an employee who chooses to leave after one year even if you know they are doing it because of the cliff. The option structure of four years of vesting with a 1 year cliff is employee hostile (And startups should not be doing this because it incentivizes your employees to leave.) The first years and even months of a startup are most critical. Therefore, vesting should start nearly immediately, at most a 90 day cliff. Secondly, the startup cargo culture is set up in a way that does not have a level playing field for founders and early employees. Founders often get RSUs which are 3X as valuable per share as startup options. An employee on a 4 year option plan should quit every company after that first year cliff. In that way, after four years they have options in four companies... rather than all their eggs in one basket. RSUs solve this problem by giving them real skin in the game rather than a lottery ticket that is subject to all kinds of founder shenanigans down the line. Franky, all employees should be getting series-A preferred as it is silly that a Venture Capitalist an put in $10k of 10k shares and get preferences while an employee who gives up $70k in salary gets $70k options that he has to spend another $20k to exercise and even then only gets common. Why is a VCs money more valuable, dollar for dollar than an employees? It's not because the VC is really going to help the company execute in any significant way-- yet the employee is. And the delta between market price and salary you're paying employees is a real financial investment on the employees part (another reason you should not have vesting cliffs.) Given that we have this cargo culture where things are not thought out from first principles and everyone emulates what other startups did we have not only job titles from the 1950s (eg: 21 year old "CEOs" of 4 person companies) but we have option plans that have not changed since the 1970s!) The right thing for an employee to do in the market where companies are not giving them real skin in the game is to move every year, so that they diversify their lottery tickets. It's the only smart move. And that's just looking at options. When you consider the only time most engineers ever get a raise is when they leave to go work elsewhere, from a salary perspective they should leave each year too.

by sulam 10y ago

nharada 10y ago

This is not related directly to OP, but I'm interested to hear opinions from others: Do you really look poorly on someone who quits after a year instead of 6 or 18 months? If so, how far after that year before you don't think poorly of the move anymore? A few months? A year?

romanhn 10y ago
I asked a similar question here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12233155 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12233155. As a hiring manager, my short answer is - yes. If there's a bunch of short stints, I won't consider a resume no matter how relevant the experience. If there's proof that you can last at one place for 2+ years, the rest can usually be explained early on and likely won't impact the rest of the process too much.
- hiringmanager 10y ago
  Your profile says you want to hire people, but your comment here says you are prejudiced. You're operating from the 1950s veiwpoint which is really a cultural hold over from the great depression- that employees should be desperate to find a job and companies should be free to screen them out for any arbitrary reasons. Let me guess, you make them write code on a white board too. If you have a one year cliff you are providing a huge financial incentive for your employees to leave after a year, by shifting the risk onto them. Maybe that's why you don't have enough people already?
  - maxlybbert 10y ago
    It's not necessarily a case of expecting candidates to be grateful for even being considered. Avoiding a bad hire is surprisingly important.
  - romanhn 10y ago
    Way to build up an imaginary strawman to argue against. I never claimed any of the things from your comment, I don't make anyone write code on a whiteboard, and I don't have trouble hiring either. If I'm going to invest into onboarding an employee, training them, providing opportunities for growth, etc. I'm not sure why you find it so disagreeable that I would prefer that they stick around as long as possible. Both parties are free to discontinue the relationship when the fit is no longer there, and that's fine by me. I'm indeed prejudiced against cowboy coders that want to jump from team to team, focus on picking up new tech for their resumes and do their best to avoid any maintenance work. Maybe that's just me, though...
    - hiringmanager 10y ago
      >I'm indeed prejudiced against cowboy coders that want to jump from team to team, focus on picking up new tech for their resumes and do their best to avoid any maintenance work. Being at a company for a year doesn't tell you someone is like that. This is why I called it a prejudice. Being at a company for a year can also indicate that the person is quality enough to be choosy about where they work and not to stick around when management proves themselves incompetent. Most statups fail. Most startups management is very poor. The best software developers realize that they are making an investment by working for a startup. Thus staying around past the first year is a judgement call on the future of the company.
cure 10y ago
When I look at resumes, I don't like to see a series of short (less than 18 months, say) stints. It can happen once or twice, no problem - sometimes things just don't work out. If the resume shows three or more short stints, especially in a row, it's a red flag. I might still phone screen the candidate if their experience looks relevant and the resume is otherwise impressive, but I'm going to ask about the short positions, and the answer matters a lot.
- hiringmanager 10y ago
  This is silly. What you think these are "bad" employees and the company is figuring it out in the 14th month? Or are you stuck in the 1950s era idea of loyalty and these employees are not "loyal"-- yet are you considering whether you're giving them a reason to be loyal?
- flukus 10y ago
  Your avoiding hiring people that get frustrated in crappy environments and rewarding the ones that put with it them or don't know any better.
  - romanhn 10y ago
    Note that he's talking about a series of short stints, not just one or two. If every environment is lousy and warrants immediate exit, perhaps the problem is not entirely with the environments. Chronic complaining without a bias for action is not exactly a positive trait as far as interviewing is concerned.
    - flukus 10y ago
      > If every environment is lousy and warrants immediate exit, perhaps the problem is not entirely with the environments Most are like that IME. This is compounded by the fact that these are the companies most frequently hiring. You've probably seen comments along the lines of 90% of candidates failing fizzbuzz? Remember those candidates work somewhere.
35bge57dtjku 10y ago
I always heard people switch jobs every year in SV.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

hiringmanager 10y ago

You seem to imply that an employee being somewhere for one year is a bad sign. That seems like a prejudice. Sure, staying somewhere only 6 months can be a lack of fit. Staying somewhere a year, though, doesn't mean anything negative. Especially with startups. The startup could have pivoted. The employee could have felt that it was a good fit, then the startup pivoted and they gave the company an additional 6 months. The employee might have done great, but the statup founders chose to hire form outside rather than promote within (Showing a lack of loyalty to their own employees, and to the ones who took the greater risk by being there earlier.) Also, you should never look down on an employee who chooses to leave after one year even if you know they are doing it because of the cliff. The option structure of four years of vesting with a 1 year cliff is employee hostile (And startups should not be doing this because it incentivizes your employees to leave.) The first years and even months of a startup are most critical. Therefore, vesting should start nearly immediately, at most a 90 day cliff. Secondly, the startup cargo culture is set up in a way that does not have a level playing field for founders and early employees. Founders often get RSUs which are 3X as valuable per share as startup options. An employee on a 4 year option plan should quit every company after that first year cliff. In that way, after four years they have options in four companies... rather than all their eggs in one basket. RSUs solve this problem by giving them real skin in the game rather than a lottery ticket that is subject to all kinds of founder shenanigans down the line. Franky, all employees should be getting series-A preferred as it is silly that a Venture Capitalist an put in $10k of 10k shares and get preferences while an employee who gives up $70k in salary gets $70k options that he has to spend another $20k to exercise and even then only gets common. Why is a VCs money more valuable, dollar for dollar than an employees? It's not because the VC is really going to help the company execute in any significant way-- yet the employee is. And the delta between market price and salary you're paying employees is a real financial investment on the employees part (another reason you should not have vesting cliffs.) Given that we have this cargo culture where things are not thought out from first principles and everyone emulates what other startups did we have not only job titles from the 1950s (eg: 21 year old "CEOs" of 4 person companies) but we have option plans that have not changed since the 1970s!) The right thing for an employee to do in the market where companies are not giving them real skin in the game is to move every year, so that they diversify their lottery tickets. It's the only smart move. And that's just looking at options. When you consider the only time most engineers ever get a raise is when they leave to go work elsewhere, from a salary perspective they should leave each year too.