7 ms·

17% leave their job due to insufficient recognition

69 points by jsatok 16y ago

poet 16y ago
Another (frankly more likely) possibility is that people think they deserve more recognition than they actually do. This post is based on the premise that it is the employer's fault and that doesn't necessarily follow.
- petercooper 16y ago
  I'd agree if this post were talking about anything beyond basic levels of recognition for minor tasks. It's not talking about significant recognition/awards, merely frequently feedback and "thanks" type stuff. Don't we all deserve the occasional thanks from our managers when we actually do stuff? (Needless question for me as I work for myself ;-))
  - nettdata 16y ago
    The vast majority of managers I've encountered only focus on the stuff that is wrong, or was done poorly. The ROI on a simple "attaboy" is huge, especially when done in a group environment. In our morning meetings, people update their status on the work they're doing. Even a simple "nice!" when warranted goes a long way, making them feel good in front of the group, and giving them a nice attitude for the rest of the day.
- dpritchett 16y ago
  I imagine it's more common to be underutilized or misapplied. Humans tend to grow and change much faster than their corporate job descriptions can keep up with. There's always a mismatch, it's just a question of whether or not the key players acknowledge it - and of how much indulgence is afforded to the employee in terms of personal growth that may not perfectly align with current business objectives.
  - dpritchett 16y ago
    Google apparently has a system in place for enabling this truest form of employee engagement: Google has set up an environment that makes it pretty easy for people to transfer between groups, and even between sites. You have to be a grown-up about it, of course, and not ditch your team during some critical crunch time. But provided you exercise mature judgment in the matter, you can pretty much switch teams whenever you want, and it doesn't cause the company to grind to a halt, as such a policy would at other places I've worked or visited. http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rhino-on-rails.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rhino-on-rails.html
    - christkv 16y ago
      Does that not assume that somebody else is switching with you. What if you got a sucky group and nobody wants to switch ?
- random42 16y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
- wynand 16y ago
  Why do you think it's more likely that employees are in the wrong? The asymmetry of the relationship makes it more likely for the employee to be get the short end of the stick. It's not inspiration and respect that get passed down the corporate ladder (in most companies). Many employees don't speak up for fear of repercussions (they are at the mercy of their managers, after all).
jswinghammer 16y ago
Speaking for myself at least I think that when I had a better opportunity I filled in reasons for leaving that made me feel more justified about my decision. You can extend the recognition reason pretty far if you're looking for reasons to dislike your current job. For example: "I'm recognized on my team but what about the company at large"? or "Everyone at the company knows I'm great but our customers don't know me."
mitrick2 16y ago
We recently implemented a new recognition program for and by employees called the "EmploYAY" Program (yeah, it's cheesy on purpose). Anyone in the company can nominate a peer for the award, and based on the particular event or effort that inspired the nomination, the recipient gets different levels of awards. It's definitely helped recognize people for their awesome contributions, and made it fun for all involved.
- tallanvor 16y ago
  I don't know if I'm an outlier, but cheesy recognition programs (there's one where I work now) really demoralize me. I've worked hard to get where I am, and I want my employer to treat me like an adult and a professional, not a child. Some people enjoy public praise or having their picture posted, but not all of us do. --Knowing that we're doing a good job and quiet/low key recognition on occasion is enough. And if our employer wants to give us a bonus, well, who's going to say no to that?
  - BigZaphod 16y ago
    I agree. I don't mind actual public recognition. In fact, I sorta desire it sometimes - but only when it's actually earned and the people being told of the achievement recognize why it was an achievement in the first place. There has to be real meaning behind this stuff, IMO. Things like "employee of the month" just feels like cheap pandering and no one really cares.
    - tallanvor 16y ago
      If you really go above and beyond, then public recognition can make sense. I just hate it when companies try to make a big deal out of things I think are (or should be) just a normal part of the job.
    - evilduck 16y ago
      Employee of the month is stupid. It limits recognition to a single person in a timeframe, even if there are two who deserve it, and falsely creates recognition when maybe nobody deserves it, watering down legitimate recognition potential. Having been in jobs like that before, they're also usually based off metrics that are easy to game or dominate. Also, for other "big" recognitions, you'd better be damn sure the person deserves it. I've seen people who did one thing at the right time in front of the right people that earned corporate recognition and a bonus while the rest of us were doing equally valuable stuff at a less visible level and got nothing. Nothing kills productivity faster than that.
notahacker 16y ago
Does "insufficient recognition" as a reason for leaving a job mean simply not getting praise, or does it mean employees not getting the changes to their responsibilities, workload or perks that reflects what they feel their strengths and contributions are? Praise is all well and good but no amount of "good job" and wizard clipart is going to make up for the feeling of being stuck in a silo and/or burdened mainly with the stuff other people don't want to do.
- nollidge 16y ago
  This. I have left jobs because "recognition" meant decent raises and praise, and then being assigned to rewrite shitty applications without the opportunity to redesign them. Now, to be fair, I probably had enough clout (and they probably had enough sense) to make noise and get myself reassigned, but at that point I started looking elsewhere, and found something new to try. But I didn't start looking until I perceived my needs being neglected.
joezydeco 16y ago
Peggy Olson: "You never say thank you!" Don Draper: "That's what the money is for!"
- hkr 16y ago
  I'd gladly take a pay cut if that's what it takes to increase the thank you's and make the place more enjoyable--especially if I have to spend most of my day among the same strangers.
- derefr 16y ago
  The more I read Economics blogs, the more I get a sense that this is actually the right thing to do. Don't give your employees perks; just turn every perk into a dollar in their pocket, and be very flexible to how they use the money. If they want to use part of their paycheck to buy a dual-monitor setup, let them (in fact, just give them an empty desk and $2000 and tell them to buy their own workstation.) If they want to pay their boss to thank them when they do good work, let them. If they want to buy a foosball table for the break room, let them set up a WePay arrangement with the other employees to get one. Otherwise, if they don't care about those things, let them remain dollars, rather than being unappreciated sunk costs.
d4ft 16y ago
This phenomena was described to a t in Dan Ariely's The Upside of Irrationality. In it, he first describes a situation in which one would be paid a high salary (I think a million dollars) for creating power points that were immediately deleted. He asserts that most people would not be able to handle the job. To test, he does some interesting experiments wherein students are paid for assembling simple lego figures. If the figures were then disassembled in view of the student immediately after their completion, students on average, constructed far fewer figures. Worth a read.
- nettdata 16y ago
  Reminds me of some government work I've done. The worst case was when I wrote a best-practices manual for Java/database/security for their internal development, and it was basically taken in draft form, put in a big 3-ring binder, and put on a shelf to never be read by anyone. They paid a solid 5-figures for it, but more than anything it was a checklist item that could be signed-off in order to appease the auditors. "Yes, we did the required review and policy and procedure development".
- coliveira 16y ago
  This is rational behavior, because nobody works only for the money (unless you are a bank robber). If you're doing something that has no repercussions, then you're losing a lot of the additional value of your work.
  - ohyes 16y ago
    Even if you are a bank robber. I'm sure some people rob banks for the thrill/challenge. (It fits with every movie cliche anyway...)
- GFischer 16y ago
  If you're heavily in debt, you would stay. I know - I'm in a job that's not quite as bad as that, but it's far from rewarding, and extremely political, with other people taking the praise and few willing to do what's needed. I would quit, but I have to work off my debt first. The environment is not doing me good - I'm slacking off (like here at HN), working worse and feeling tired and burned out even when doing little actual work.
Encosia 16y ago
In my experience, people that feel chronically under-appreciated are also bad at self-promotion, and would be more appreciated if all of their contributions were actually known. Especially when you go above and beyond (the sort of thing you most want recognition for), it's often a proactive effort that may not have an obvious cause-effect benefit that's visible to anyone outside the situation.
- gchucky 16y ago
  I'm trying to wrap my head around your comment. How would one self-promote without coming off as arrogant or obnoxious? (And I'm not asking this snarkily; I'm genuinely curious.)
  - rcoder 16y ago
    One of the reasons I like having stand-up meetings every morning with my team is that it gives each developer an opportunity to talk up their recent accomplishments, and to receive praise (however transitory) from the rest of the team for them. Having something awesome to report in standup is a good motivator, and getting instant feedback helps drive home the relevance and value of those contributions.
  - dpritchett 16y ago
    Pure self-promotion is a naive strategy. Effective promotion of one's own work comes as an expected side effect of other more desirable activities. Sort of like getting good SEO by posting useful content on your company blog. Rather than focusing on making yourself known, focus on identifying people who need problems solved. Meet with them directly, make sure they know you want to help, make sure they are comfortable with your solutions. You should also make a point to identify and promote the successes of people you work with. In doing so you'll improve the team culture around you. Some those people will remember you kindly and promote your own stuff for you when appropriate. Spend a lot of energy on problem solving and professional networking and you'll get there.
  - Encosia 16y ago
    There's definitely a fine line to walk. However, it's not arrogant to keep whoever you report to apprised of what you're doing, why it matters to the business, and how you're accomplishing those things. Definitely no need to be a gloryhound or grandstand, but there's a lot of middle ground between arrogance and not taking credit for what you do. Maybe self-promotion wasn't a good choice of words on my part. Effective professional communication might be a better way to put it.
devmonk 16y ago
My guess is that when some chose "insufficient recognition", a possible reason was that someone else was taking that recognition. Having a site that allows people to recognize others for their achievements could just as easily compound the issue. For example: Susan wants a new application, so Jim tells Bob to write it. When the application is complete, Jim shows it to Susan, and Susan praises Jim rather than Bob, because as far as she is concerned, Jim made it happen. Yet, Jim did little more than tell Bob to do it and show the result to Susan. If recognition requires little work, Susan will praise Jim more often (if she is not aware of Bob, or chooses not to recognize him). If Bob sees this praise of Jim by Susan for his work enough times, he may leave the company one day citing "insufficient recognition", when, in fact, more recognition was being given, albeit to the wrong person.
- sokoloff 16y ago
  I hear a common theme that I've seen among tech folks (and probably a theme that I subscribed to early in my career). If Jim "made it happen", he has actually earned some of that praise. As a good manager, his very next step should be to transmit and amplify that praise so that Bob also can bask in it, but also to educate/remind Susan that Jim has an entire team that is delivering behind the scenes. It's quite effective to accomplish both of those in one communication (when praise is in email form), by forwarding on to Bob, cc'ing Susan, adding his own praise and reminding Susan (in the clear) that Bob is the one who actually did the programming. I don't believe that there's some natural conservation of credit/recognition. By sharing as above, Jim doesn't reduce his standing in Susan's eyes, because from her point of view, it's still Jim that "made it happen" and he's being gracious in recognizing his team. Bob now sees the praise that he's earned, may realize that Jim probably added some value along the way, and even if Bob is hardcore "only coding matters", at least Jim has set the record straight. When done even halfway well, I don't think that pattern results in employees leaving over recognition.
  - pbourke 16y ago
    I don't believe that there's some natural conservation of credit/recognition. I think this would be a function of the promotion/performance evaluation process and general company culture.
TedBlosser 16y ago
I was on a sales team of ~12 enterprise engineers and account managers that was always a top performing region in our operation. I think this was due to the fact that our boss consistently recognized team members publicly (in group emails or voicemails) almost on a daily basis. It made me want to work harder for him every day. Still the best boss I've had.
RBr 16y ago
Recognition is a function of management. If a manager is truly engaged in the day-to-day activities of a team, that manager can (and will) naturally recognize work properly. The problem however is that for whatever reason, management isn't as effective as it should be. A function of time, burn out, or simple inadequacies, if people are leaving a job because they aren't recognized, chances are good that they would also say their manager wasn't very good at his or her job.
- lancewiggs 16y ago
  It's something we all need to do - not just "management." A great company culture will, almost as a byproduct, see people genuinely complementing each other on great work, and supporting each other to do even better work. There is no us and them.
  - bmj 16y ago
    This is something my employer has instituted--any employee has the ability to call out another employee for a job well done. This is on top of an employee of the month program. Upper management takes this program very seriously (the award is a reasonable bonus, plus the winners for the year are given the opportunity to win an expenses-paid weekend vacation. This program is driven by employees as well--upper management cannot vote. I'm not particularly driven by this sort of recognition, but it is comforting to know that folks genuinely want to reward others for a job well-done.
    - j_baker 16y ago
      "any employee has the ability to call out another employee for a job well done" Erm... why do you need management's blessing for this in the first place?
      - bmj 16y ago
        Because management provides a monetary award with such recognition.
Construct 16y ago
17% may leave their job, but I'm sure many more simply stay put without truly being engaged, all the while collecting a paycheck. Recognition arbitrage, employees claiming credit for the work of others, by corporate-climber types is probably to blame in many cases. From my experience, credit usually goes to whoever delivers the results or the news first. Smart corporate climbers will go to great lengths to be the first to take credit for new ideas or inventions within a company, and they will work hard to maintain a high profile. I've tried to do a modest amount of self-promotion to stay visible within my companies after a few very bad experiences early in my career. Just as importantly, I try to go out of my way to call out another person's accomplishments whenever I get an opportunity. A company that fails to recognize valuable people isn't likely to succeed. When self-aggrandizing people are promoted faster than the get-it-done types, I take it as a red flag that management has no clue how things are actually done within the company. Companies who instead go out of their way to recognize valuable team members and promote those who work hard will end up with competent and motivated management. Now if only I had identified this pattern earlier in my career I could have avoided some train-wreck companies.
- AgentConundrum 16y ago
  It's not only corporate-climber types stealing credit though, it really can be just a complete failure to understand worker motivations. At my last job, I was part of a major migration project that had taken something like three or four years total (I was only with them for the last two years). Because the project had come in so late and so overbudget, the powers that be set a seemingly arbitrary go-live date and told us to just get it done. We all worked long hours for a long time to get this done, and when it finally went live we were told they wanted to take the team out for a celebration. That later morphed into "well, everyone else on the project (meaning client project, not my migration team) had to learn the new system too, so we should take everyone out to celebrate everyone!" completely minimizing just how much my team had done, since we had not only learn and adapt like everyone else had, but we learned it first and had to teach it to everyone else. That celebration, btw, never ended up happening. Instead, there was an announcement at around the same time saying there would be no raises across the entire (10,000 person) company. I got fed up and left (read: snapped and was fired) a few months later, but I heard from a friend that they had the same announcement this year ("no raises") on the same day that the company sent out an email saying "you should watch the Indy 500 this year, since we spent an assload to sponsor it". That ended up as much more of a self-entitled rant than it was intended to be, but I think my underlying point still shines through.
jason 16y ago
and 17% stay at their job due to generous recognition.
alexophile 16y ago
I think "Insufficient Recognition" translates into a lot of different things - overly competitive internal structure, poor lines of communication, ill-defined job descriptions, etc. For example, I work at a company with ~50k people. My immediate boss is the "Sales Executive" for our division and, as such, is charged with establishing sales goals by region for our national sales force. Usually, he makes them up. When he realized that I was kind of a data geek, he decided to bump that responsibility to me (at this point I had been here less than a month.) I did what I could with incomplete information and sent him a huge spreadsheet annotated with problems I expected him to correct based on an in-depth understanding of the situation. Turns out he doesn't really know how to use excel. Long story short, my painstaking work to come up with rough numbers is passed off as somebody else's work to come up with great numbers (they weren't great numbers.) This conveys a few things: A) My boss is fine taking credit for my work - this is obviously a problem; B) Nobody really noticed that my numbers were really bad - this is a bigger problem. In an exit interview, this would be easy to categorize as "insufficient recognition," but the real problem is "nobody has any idea what the hell is going on and I'm getting off this boat before somebody puts my name on it."
rjurney 16y ago
As an employee for the first time in the last year, I've struggled with this at times. I spent 6 years as an entrepreneur, where validation was with customers, or as a contractor or consultant - where validation was hourly. It was always very clear and direct. Employee validation is more complex. You can accomplish a lot, but piss a lot of people off and you've done wrong. You can make a lot of people happy but not get much done and only the standouts will notice. Nobody wants it to be the care bear cousins, where everyone gets a gold star sticker and a cookie. On the other hand, when you work twice as hard as others to go above and beyond, you do want that to matter or you will burn out. I don't really have a point. Maybe if they're oatmeal cookies?
swah 16y ago
If everyone is recognized, does it still keep its value?
absconditus 16y ago
How many employees desire recognition for simply doing their jobs? I work with several people who feel that they should be promoted because they have managed not to be fired.
christkv 16y ago
What do you do when someone wants recognition and support for a skillset or r&d project. Gets it from his manager but does not support the manager in selling the organisation on the skillset or project letting the manager hanging in limbo. Then complains that they are not recognized ?
jacobroufa 16y ago
This isn't just a facet of the tech scene but jobs all over. I left my restaurant job for this very reason. I gave my managers ample opportunity to tell me where I needed improvement and give constructive criticism. Yet they continued to mess with my hours and not give reason, hiring more people instead of giving the hours to people who needed them. My managers would rather stay non-confrontational, not recognizing that confrontation isn't necessarily a bad thing but a way to improve relationships between coworkers and employees as well as improving quality across the board. It was this lack of communication that drove me away. It was a tough decision for me, because I not only left the job but a steady paycheck. While the check may have been smaller than I'd have liked (or needed) there's something to be said for reliability. Being a contract dev has given me much more freedom and the ability to write my own paycheck, but it's definitely not easy. Some days I'd much rather be working for someone... but finding management that are willing to put themselves out there and communicate on the level needed to keep me happy is tough. I demand a very high level of communication because that's the way I've found to be able to do the best job I can. Make no mistake, I may be tough to get along with but I always strive to do the best job I can. I suppose the only one that really understands that and can deliver on those demands is me.

69 points by jsatok 16y ago

poet 16y ago

Another (frankly more likely) possibility is that people think they deserve more recognition than they actually do. This post is based on the premise that it is the employer's fault and that doesn't necessarily follow.

petercooper 16y ago
I'd agree if this post were talking about anything beyond basic levels of recognition for minor tasks. It's not talking about significant recognition/awards, merely frequently feedback and "thanks" type stuff. Don't we all deserve the occasional thanks from our managers when we actually do stuff? (Needless question for me as I work for myself ;-))
- nettdata 16y ago
  The vast majority of managers I've encountered only focus on the stuff that is wrong, or was done poorly. The ROI on a simple "attaboy" is huge, especially when done in a group environment. In our morning meetings, people update their status on the work they're doing. Even a simple "nice!" when warranted goes a long way, making them feel good in front of the group, and giving them a nice attitude for the rest of the day.
dpritchett 16y ago
I imagine it's more common to be underutilized or misapplied. Humans tend to grow and change much faster than their corporate job descriptions can keep up with. There's always a mismatch, it's just a question of whether or not the key players acknowledge it - and of how much indulgence is afforded to the employee in terms of personal growth that may not perfectly align with current business objectives.
- dpritchett 16y ago
  Google apparently has a system in place for enabling this truest form of employee engagement: Google has set up an environment that makes it pretty easy for people to transfer between groups, and even between sites. You have to be a grown-up about it, of course, and not ditch your team during some critical crunch time. But provided you exercise mature judgment in the matter, you can pretty much switch teams whenever you want, and it doesn't cause the company to grind to a halt, as such a policy would at other places I've worked or visited. http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rhino-on-rails.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rhino-on-rails.html
  - christkv 16y ago
    Does that not assume that somebody else is switching with you. What if you got a sucky group and nobody wants to switch ?
random42 16y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
wynand 16y ago
Why do you think it's more likely that employees are in the wrong? The asymmetry of the relationship makes it more likely for the employee to be get the short end of the stick. It's not inspiration and respect that get passed down the corporate ladder (in most companies). Many employees don't speak up for fear of repercussions (they are at the mercy of their managers, after all).

jswinghammer 16y ago

Speaking for myself at least I think that when I had a better opportunity I filled in reasons for leaving that made me feel more justified about my decision. You can extend the recognition reason pretty far if you're looking for reasons to dislike your current job. For example: "I'm recognized on my team but what about the company at large"? or "Everyone at the company knows I'm great but our customers don't know me."

mitrick2 16y ago

We recently implemented a new recognition program for and by employees called the "EmploYAY" Program (yeah, it's cheesy on purpose). Anyone in the company can nominate a peer for the award, and based on the particular event or effort that inspired the nomination, the recipient gets different levels of awards. It's definitely helped recognize people for their awesome contributions, and made it fun for all involved.

tallanvor 16y ago
I don't know if I'm an outlier, but cheesy recognition programs (there's one where I work now) really demoralize me. I've worked hard to get where I am, and I want my employer to treat me like an adult and a professional, not a child. Some people enjoy public praise or having their picture posted, but not all of us do. --Knowing that we're doing a good job and quiet/low key recognition on occasion is enough. And if our employer wants to give us a bonus, well, who's going to say no to that?
- BigZaphod 16y ago
  I agree. I don't mind actual public recognition. In fact, I sorta desire it sometimes - but only when it's actually earned and the people being told of the achievement recognize why it was an achievement in the first place. There has to be real meaning behind this stuff, IMO. Things like "employee of the month" just feels like cheap pandering and no one really cares.
  - tallanvor 16y ago
    If you really go above and beyond, then public recognition can make sense. I just hate it when companies try to make a big deal out of things I think are (or should be) just a normal part of the job.
  - evilduck 16y ago
    Employee of the month is stupid. It limits recognition to a single person in a timeframe, even if there are two who deserve it, and falsely creates recognition when maybe nobody deserves it, watering down legitimate recognition potential. Having been in jobs like that before, they're also usually based off metrics that are easy to game or dominate. Also, for other "big" recognitions, you'd better be damn sure the person deserves it. I've seen people who did one thing at the right time in front of the right people that earned corporate recognition and a bonus while the rest of us were doing equally valuable stuff at a less visible level and got nothing. Nothing kills productivity faster than that.

notahacker 16y ago

Does "insufficient recognition" as a reason for leaving a job mean simply not getting praise, or does it mean employees not getting the changes to their responsibilities, workload or perks that reflects what they feel their strengths and contributions are? Praise is all well and good but no amount of "good job" and wizard clipart is going to make up for the feeling of being stuck in a silo and/or burdened mainly with the stuff other people don't want to do.

nollidge 16y ago
This. I have left jobs because "recognition" meant decent raises and praise, and then being assigned to rewrite shitty applications without the opportunity to redesign them. Now, to be fair, I probably had enough clout (and they probably had enough sense) to make noise and get myself reassigned, but at that point I started looking elsewhere, and found something new to try. But I didn't start looking until I perceived my needs being neglected.

joezydeco 16y ago

Peggy Olson: "You never say thank you!" Don Draper: "That's what the money is for!"

hkr 16y ago
I'd gladly take a pay cut if that's what it takes to increase the thank you's and make the place more enjoyable--especially if I have to spend most of my day among the same strangers.
derefr 16y ago
The more I read Economics blogs, the more I get a sense that this is actually the right thing to do. Don't give your employees perks; just turn every perk into a dollar in their pocket, and be very flexible to how they use the money. If they want to use part of their paycheck to buy a dual-monitor setup, let them (in fact, just give them an empty desk and $2000 and tell them to buy their own workstation.) If they want to pay their boss to thank them when they do good work, let them. If they want to buy a foosball table for the break room, let them set up a WePay arrangement with the other employees to get one. Otherwise, if they don't care about those things, let them remain dollars, rather than being unappreciated sunk costs.

d4ft 16y ago

This phenomena was described to a t in Dan Ariely's The Upside of Irrationality. In it, he first describes a situation in which one would be paid a high salary (I think a million dollars) for creating power points that were immediately deleted. He asserts that most people would not be able to handle the job. To test, he does some interesting experiments wherein students are paid for assembling simple lego figures. If the figures were then disassembled in view of the student immediately after their completion, students on average, constructed far fewer figures. Worth a read.

nettdata 16y ago
Reminds me of some government work I've done. The worst case was when I wrote a best-practices manual for Java/database/security for their internal development, and it was basically taken in draft form, put in a big 3-ring binder, and put on a shelf to never be read by anyone. They paid a solid 5-figures for it, but more than anything it was a checklist item that could be signed-off in order to appease the auditors. "Yes, we did the required review and policy and procedure development".
coliveira 16y ago
This is rational behavior, because nobody works only for the money (unless you are a bank robber). If you're doing something that has no repercussions, then you're losing a lot of the additional value of your work.
- ohyes 16y ago
  Even if you are a bank robber. I'm sure some people rob banks for the thrill/challenge. (It fits with every movie cliche anyway...)
GFischer 16y ago
If you're heavily in debt, you would stay. I know - I'm in a job that's not quite as bad as that, but it's far from rewarding, and extremely political, with other people taking the praise and few willing to do what's needed. I would quit, but I have to work off my debt first. The environment is not doing me good - I'm slacking off (like here at HN), working worse and feeling tired and burned out even when doing little actual work.

Encosia 16y ago

In my experience, people that feel chronically under-appreciated are also bad at self-promotion, and would be more appreciated if all of their contributions were actually known. Especially when you go above and beyond (the sort of thing you most want recognition for), it's often a proactive effort that may not have an obvious cause-effect benefit that's visible to anyone outside the situation.

gchucky 16y ago
I'm trying to wrap my head around your comment. How would one self-promote without coming off as arrogant or obnoxious? (And I'm not asking this snarkily; I'm genuinely curious.)
- rcoder 16y ago
  One of the reasons I like having stand-up meetings every morning with my team is that it gives each developer an opportunity to talk up their recent accomplishments, and to receive praise (however transitory) from the rest of the team for them. Having something awesome to report in standup is a good motivator, and getting instant feedback helps drive home the relevance and value of those contributions.
- dpritchett 16y ago
  Pure self-promotion is a naive strategy. Effective promotion of one's own work comes as an expected side effect of other more desirable activities. Sort of like getting good SEO by posting useful content on your company blog. Rather than focusing on making yourself known, focus on identifying people who need problems solved. Meet with them directly, make sure they know you want to help, make sure they are comfortable with your solutions. You should also make a point to identify and promote the successes of people you work with. In doing so you'll improve the team culture around you. Some those people will remember you kindly and promote your own stuff for you when appropriate. Spend a lot of energy on problem solving and professional networking and you'll get there.
- Encosia 16y ago
  There's definitely a fine line to walk. However, it's not arrogant to keep whoever you report to apprised of what you're doing, why it matters to the business, and how you're accomplishing those things. Definitely no need to be a gloryhound or grandstand, but there's a lot of middle ground between arrogance and not taking credit for what you do. Maybe self-promotion wasn't a good choice of words on my part. Effective professional communication might be a better way to put it.

devmonk 16y ago

My guess is that when some chose "insufficient recognition", a possible reason was that someone else was taking that recognition. Having a site that allows people to recognize others for their achievements could just as easily compound the issue. For example: Susan wants a new application, so Jim tells Bob to write it. When the application is complete, Jim shows it to Susan, and Susan praises Jim rather than Bob, because as far as she is concerned, Jim made it happen. Yet, Jim did little more than tell Bob to do it and show the result to Susan. If recognition requires little work, Susan will praise Jim more often (if she is not aware of Bob, or chooses not to recognize him). If Bob sees this praise of Jim by Susan for his work enough times, he may leave the company one day citing "insufficient recognition", when, in fact, more recognition was being given, albeit to the wrong person.

sokoloff 16y ago
I hear a common theme that I've seen among tech folks (and probably a theme that I subscribed to early in my career). If Jim "made it happen", he has actually earned some of that praise. As a good manager, his very next step should be to transmit and amplify that praise so that Bob also can bask in it, but also to educate/remind Susan that Jim has an entire team that is delivering behind the scenes. It's quite effective to accomplish both of those in one communication (when praise is in email form), by forwarding on to Bob, cc'ing Susan, adding his own praise and reminding Susan (in the clear) that Bob is the one who actually did the programming. I don't believe that there's some natural conservation of credit/recognition. By sharing as above, Jim doesn't reduce his standing in Susan's eyes, because from her point of view, it's still Jim that "made it happen" and he's being gracious in recognizing his team. Bob now sees the praise that he's earned, may realize that Jim probably added some value along the way, and even if Bob is hardcore "only coding matters", at least Jim has set the record straight. When done even halfway well, I don't think that pattern results in employees leaving over recognition.
- pbourke 16y ago
  I don't believe that there's some natural conservation of credit/recognition. I think this would be a function of the promotion/performance evaluation process and general company culture.

TedBlosser 16y ago

I was on a sales team of ~12 enterprise engineers and account managers that was always a top performing region in our operation. I think this was due to the fact that our boss consistently recognized team members publicly (in group emails or voicemails) almost on a daily basis. It made me want to work harder for him every day. Still the best boss I've had.

RBr 16y ago

Recognition is a function of management. If a manager is truly engaged in the day-to-day activities of a team, that manager can (and will) naturally recognize work properly. The problem however is that for whatever reason, management isn't as effective as it should be. A function of time, burn out, or simple inadequacies, if people are leaving a job because they aren't recognized, chances are good that they would also say their manager wasn't very good at his or her job.

lancewiggs 16y ago
It's something we all need to do - not just "management." A great company culture will, almost as a byproduct, see people genuinely complementing each other on great work, and supporting each other to do even better work. There is no us and them.
- bmj 16y ago
  This is something my employer has instituted--any employee has the ability to call out another employee for a job well done. This is on top of an employee of the month program. Upper management takes this program very seriously (the award is a reasonable bonus, plus the winners for the year are given the opportunity to win an expenses-paid weekend vacation. This program is driven by employees as well--upper management cannot vote. I'm not particularly driven by this sort of recognition, but it is comforting to know that folks genuinely want to reward others for a job well-done.
  - j_baker 16y ago
    "any employee has the ability to call out another employee for a job well done" Erm... why do you need management's blessing for this in the first place?
    - bmj 16y ago
      Because management provides a monetary award with such recognition.

Construct 16y ago

17% may leave their job, but I'm sure many more simply stay put without truly being engaged, all the while collecting a paycheck. Recognition arbitrage, employees claiming credit for the work of others, by corporate-climber types is probably to blame in many cases. From my experience, credit usually goes to whoever delivers the results or the news first. Smart corporate climbers will go to great lengths to be the first to take credit for new ideas or inventions within a company, and they will work hard to maintain a high profile. I've tried to do a modest amount of self-promotion to stay visible within my companies after a few very bad experiences early in my career. Just as importantly, I try to go out of my way to call out another person's accomplishments whenever I get an opportunity. A company that fails to recognize valuable people isn't likely to succeed. When self-aggrandizing people are promoted faster than the get-it-done types, I take it as a red flag that management has no clue how things are actually done within the company. Companies who instead go out of their way to recognize valuable team members and promote those who work hard will end up with competent and motivated management. Now if only I had identified this pattern earlier in my career I could have avoided some train-wreck companies.

AgentConundrum 16y ago
It's not only corporate-climber types stealing credit though, it really can be just a complete failure to understand worker motivations. At my last job, I was part of a major migration project that had taken something like three or four years total (I was only with them for the last two years). Because the project had come in so late and so overbudget, the powers that be set a seemingly arbitrary go-live date and told us to just get it done. We all worked long hours for a long time to get this done, and when it finally went live we were told they wanted to take the team out for a celebration. That later morphed into "well, everyone else on the project (meaning client project, not my migration team) had to learn the new system too, so we should take everyone out to celebrate everyone!" completely minimizing just how much my team had done, since we had not only learn and adapt like everyone else had, but we learned it first and had to teach it to everyone else. That celebration, btw, never ended up happening. Instead, there was an announcement at around the same time saying there would be no raises across the entire (10,000 person) company. I got fed up and left (read: snapped and was fired) a few months later, but I heard from a friend that they had the same announcement this year ("no raises") on the same day that the company sent out an email saying "you should watch the Indy 500 this year, since we spent an assload to sponsor it". That ended up as much more of a self-entitled rant than it was intended to be, but I think my underlying point still shines through.

jason 16y ago

and 17% stay at their job due to generous recognition.

alexophile 16y ago

I think "Insufficient Recognition" translates into a lot of different things - overly competitive internal structure, poor lines of communication, ill-defined job descriptions, etc. For example, I work at a company with ~50k people. My immediate boss is the "Sales Executive" for our division and, as such, is charged with establishing sales goals by region for our national sales force. Usually, he makes them up. When he realized that I was kind of a data geek, he decided to bump that responsibility to me (at this point I had been here less than a month.) I did what I could with incomplete information and sent him a huge spreadsheet annotated with problems I expected him to correct based on an in-depth understanding of the situation. Turns out he doesn't really know how to use excel. Long story short, my painstaking work to come up with rough numbers is passed off as somebody else's work to come up with great numbers (they weren't great numbers.) This conveys a few things: A) My boss is fine taking credit for my work - this is obviously a problem; B) Nobody really noticed that my numbers were really bad - this is a bigger problem. In an exit interview, this would be easy to categorize as "insufficient recognition," but the real problem is "nobody has any idea what the hell is going on and I'm getting off this boat before somebody puts my name on it."

rjurney 16y ago

As an employee for the first time in the last year, I've struggled with this at times. I spent 6 years as an entrepreneur, where validation was with customers, or as a contractor or consultant - where validation was hourly. It was always very clear and direct. Employee validation is more complex. You can accomplish a lot, but piss a lot of people off and you've done wrong. You can make a lot of people happy but not get much done and only the standouts will notice. Nobody wants it to be the care bear cousins, where everyone gets a gold star sticker and a cookie. On the other hand, when you work twice as hard as others to go above and beyond, you do want that to matter or you will burn out. I don't really have a point. Maybe if they're oatmeal cookies?

swah 16y ago

If everyone is recognized, does it still keep its value?

absconditus 16y ago

How many employees desire recognition for simply doing their jobs? I work with several people who feel that they should be promoted because they have managed not to be fired.

christkv 16y ago

What do you do when someone wants recognition and support for a skillset or r&d project. Gets it from his manager but does not support the manager in selling the organisation on the skillset or project letting the manager hanging in limbo. Then complains that they are not recognized ?

jacobroufa 16y ago

This isn't just a facet of the tech scene but jobs all over. I left my restaurant job for this very reason. I gave my managers ample opportunity to tell me where I needed improvement and give constructive criticism. Yet they continued to mess with my hours and not give reason, hiring more people instead of giving the hours to people who needed them. My managers would rather stay non-confrontational, not recognizing that confrontation isn't necessarily a bad thing but a way to improve relationships between coworkers and employees as well as improving quality across the board. It was this lack of communication that drove me away. It was a tough decision for me, because I not only left the job but a steady paycheck. While the check may have been smaller than I'd have liked (or needed) there's something to be said for reliability. Being a contract dev has given me much more freedom and the ability to write my own paycheck, but it's definitely not easy. Some days I'd much rather be working for someone... but finding management that are willing to put themselves out there and communicate on the level needed to keep me happy is tough. I demand a very high level of communication because that's the way I've found to be able to do the best job I can. Make no mistake, I may be tough to get along with but I always strive to do the best job I can. I suppose the only one that really understands that and can deliver on those demands is me.