3 ms·

It seems to be a standard practice: people are afraid of sabotage.

IloveHN84 8y ago
But then lose access to personal knowledge, making them burning more money when hiring new people. At my company we have 3 months notice and you can't easily be locked out and set to leave. Some people is also strategically there: if they leave/die, none can replace them as they are the only ones to know some 'secrets'
- ido 8y ago
  Some people is also strategically there: if they leave/die, none can replace them as they are the only ones to know some 'secrets' That sounds like a pretty serious weakness the company should strive to improve upon.
  - mcv 8y ago
    Yeah, having people you can't afford to lose is an insane risk. Of course it's important to value all your employees, but accidents can always happen. Sometimes people get ill or have an unfortunate accident. Every piece of vital information needs to be known by at least two people and preferably stored somewhere. But even then, lots of valuable knowledge and experience will still reside in the heads of people, and it's always good to have people share their information about going concerns.
- toss1 8y ago
  Allowing people to be there "strategically" because they are the sole repository of a critical chunk of knowledge or skill is a serious mismanagement failure. First, it makes the entire company vulnerable to a single accident to any one of the critical people -- massively increases the risk to every other employee and the owners. Second, if a person has deliberately worked to somehow create such a critical niche for themselves, I would make it a critical & urgent priority to develop workarounds ASAP, then fire them. Anyone actively working to create their own feifdom and point failure in your organization is not merely neutral, they have made themselves a direct adversary to the company and everyone who works there. Management needs to rectify that situation, fast.
onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
I think a company should be afraid of sabotage if it's actively sabotaging it's employees. If you're holding monthly all-hands meetings and telling everyone that things are going swimmingly, and all your employees are asking their managers -- is it really? Should I be looking for other jobs just in case? And the script you give to your managers is -- oh, no, you don't need a back up. Everything is fine. If you know you're about to go out of business in a month unless you secure another round of funding, and you know talks are going terribly, and you're constantly lying to your employees about everything -- yeah, I think it'd be crazy not to expect some retaliation.
- ddalex 8y ago
  > -- oh, no, you don't need a back up :wink, wink: If you care about your team, you'll let them know what's really going on, no matter what your exec said.
- candiodari 8y ago
  One problem with that is that your company may be one month from failure for quite a bit of time. If you look at profit for a new company, it usually starts "positive", but just a little bit, not much at all. And then you grow the company. This immediately introduces expenses but revenue only grows slowly as new customers come in and get convinced. So it dives below zero, and quite far below zero. Now at that point you have investors, but they'll be watching how the curve evolves quite a bit. And they'll only be releasing money a few months of runway at a time. And then things get delayed for dumb reasons. So a lot of the time you're a few months from failure, and of course one of these investors might walk away and maybe you can find a new one, maybe not. So a startup should expect to spend something like 2 years of time "one/two months from failure". Should you really tell your employees this ? It's not going to go very well. I doubt that in the case of a unorganized failure that it would be very visible for the CEO either, by the way. I mean a week or two earlier than for the employees, sure. But not much more.

But then lose access to personal knowledge, making them burning more money when hiring new people. At my company we have 3 months notice and you can't easily be locked out and set to leave. Some people is also strategically there: if they leave/die, none can replace them as they are the only ones to know some 'secrets'

ido 8y ago
Some people is also strategically there: if they leave/die, none can replace them as they are the only ones to know some 'secrets' That sounds like a pretty serious weakness the company should strive to improve upon.
- mcv 8y ago
  Yeah, having people you can't afford to lose is an insane risk. Of course it's important to value all your employees, but accidents can always happen. Sometimes people get ill or have an unfortunate accident. Every piece of vital information needs to be known by at least two people and preferably stored somewhere. But even then, lots of valuable knowledge and experience will still reside in the heads of people, and it's always good to have people share their information about going concerns.
toss1 8y ago
Allowing people to be there "strategically" because they are the sole repository of a critical chunk of knowledge or skill is a serious mismanagement failure. First, it makes the entire company vulnerable to a single accident to any one of the critical people -- massively increases the risk to every other employee and the owners. Second, if a person has deliberately worked to somehow create such a critical niche for themselves, I would make it a critical & urgent priority to develop workarounds ASAP, then fire them. Anyone actively working to create their own feifdom and point failure in your organization is not merely neutral, they have made themselves a direct adversary to the company and everyone who works there. Management needs to rectify that situation, fast.

onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago

I think a company should be afraid of sabotage if it's actively sabotaging it's employees. If you're holding monthly all-hands meetings and telling everyone that things are going swimmingly, and all your employees are asking their managers -- is it really? Should I be looking for other jobs just in case? And the script you give to your managers is -- oh, no, you don't need a back up. Everything is fine. If you know you're about to go out of business in a month unless you secure another round of funding, and you know talks are going terribly, and you're constantly lying to your employees about everything -- yeah, I think it'd be crazy not to expect some retaliation.

ddalex 8y ago
> -- oh, no, you don't need a back up :wink, wink: If you care about your team, you'll let them know what's really going on, no matter what your exec said.
candiodari 8y ago
One problem with that is that your company may be one month from failure for quite a bit of time. If you look at profit for a new company, it usually starts "positive", but just a little bit, not much at all. And then you grow the company. This immediately introduces expenses but revenue only grows slowly as new customers come in and get convinced. So it dives below zero, and quite far below zero. Now at that point you have investors, but they'll be watching how the curve evolves quite a bit. And they'll only be releasing money a few months of runway at a time. And then things get delayed for dumb reasons. So a lot of the time you're a few months from failure, and of course one of these investors might walk away and maybe you can find a new one, maybe not. So a startup should expect to spend something like 2 years of time "one/two months from failure". Should you really tell your employees this ? It's not going to go very well. I doubt that in the case of a unorganized failure that it would be very visible for the CEO either, by the way. I mean a week or two earlier than for the employees, sure. But not much more.