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I used to work for a private company that had a market cap in the billions of dollars and is the dominant monopoly in their field. I left that job in September.

I used to work for a private company that had a market cap in the billions of dollars and is the dominant monopoly in their field. I left that job in September. Here are things they could have done to make me stay (only would have needed one): - Increase paid vacation from 3 weeks to 6+ weeks - Increase base salary to match offers I was receiving at other companies - Reduce work week from 40 hours to 32 hours - Hire people more experienced than me so I can learn from them and keep growing - Fire the toxic team member on our team who, despite being junior to me in experience and ability level, was at risk of becoming my manager on a long enough timeline simply because he had been at the company longer than me However, none of these were offered to me when I announced I would be leaving. I was leaving to move to my own company so I was open to being convinced to stay but there was never a serious attempt. Instead everyone during my exit lamented how hard it is to hire people right now. I had a good team and the company is pretty decent but HR was seriously lacking when it came to managing developers.

bklaasen 5y ago
You said you weren't offered any of these, but did you tell your boss that you'd have stayed if any of your conditions had been met?
- halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
  I think the broader point is that the onus should not be on the employee but on the employer. The employer should be ahead of the employee anticipating needs and reacting to broader market trends. Even if the company isn’t seeing significant levels of attrition yet, they should be extra attentive and provide incentives to stay before the employee has decided to leave. By then, it’s usually too little too late.
  - LurkingPenguin 5y ago
    > The employer should be ahead of the employee anticipating needs and reacting to broader market trends. In the case of the parent comment, be ahead of the employee how? "Good news, Steve. We're giving you a $50,000/year raise but you'll be working 32 hours a week instead of 40. We're giving you 2 months of paid vacation next year instead of 3 weeks. We're hiring 5 new people with more experience than you, who will be responsible for mentoring you and helping you grow, as well as a personal comedian, who can keep you entertained when you're feeling down."
    - ser0 5y ago
      Effectively, yes, this. Just as businesses are expected to monitor and react to competitors that are after their customers. They should also have processes in place to react to competitors for their staff.
      - LurkingPenguin 5y ago
        > ...react to competitors... In this case, there were no competitors. The parent poster indicated that he was leaving to start his own thing. Nobody was offering him a high-paying job where he would work only 32 hours a week, have 6+ weeks of paid vacation annually and generally be treated like the company's most valuable asset. While I wish the parent poster the best, he's far more likely to discover that running his own business will require him to work more, not less, and at least initially, is likely to provide him with lower net pay and benefits. Unless you're an absolute rockstar, you have to be realistic, even in this market.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        Mountain_Skies 5y ago
        He didn't say he needed to be offered all of that, just at least one of the items.
        LurkingPenguin 5y ago
        I've hired and fired, both in management roles and for my own business. The problem with the parent poster's incentives, even if he was willing to accept just one, is that they're not thoughtful and consistent. On one hand, the parent poster would be open to the company firing another employee he doesn't like or hiring more people who could help him grow, but on the other hand, he's open to working part time or taking off on vacation for a month and a half or more each year. If I was his manager, I would be genuinely confused about whether a person like this wanted to be more or less invested in his work at the company. And that's never a good thing to have an employer be confused about. By all means, ask for a raise. Express a desire for greater opportunities to learn and grow. Raise concerns about situations you're uncomfortable with. But seriously thinking that you might command full-time pay and benefits for part-time hours? That's a huge red flag. The parent poster basically admitted he already had one foot out the door. Given that it doesn't sound like his employer fought to convince him to stay, I'm guessing that his employer either sensed this or that he wasn't as valuable to his employer as he thought it was.
- stubish 5y ago
  Companies who want to keep staff need to proactively work this out rather than wait for employees to make demands, or you end up only with employees prepared to make demands. Not everyone is emotionally or culturally comfortable with that. It is a management problem. Thankfully many companies are tackling the issue because diversity, as one of the numerous reasons there are things like gender pay gaps is that people in many less privileged social groups are uncomfortable or unwilling to make demands of their employer.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Plenty of companies also only accept the demand when you have already gotten the demand satisfied elsewhere.
    - chii 5y ago
      Because the demands being satisfied elsewhere is proof that those demands are the minimum required to keep the employee - after all, what a company wants to pay is the minimum viable pay for the worker to work.
robomartin 5y ago
weeks_per_year = 52 vacation_weeks = (3, 6) hours_per_week = (40, 32) old_hours_per_year = (weeks_per_year - vacation_weeks[0]) * hours_per_week[0] new_hours_per_year = (weeks_per_year - vacation_weeks[1]) * hours_per_week[1] ratio_of_hours_worked = new_hours_per_year / old_hours_per_year how_much_less_did_i_work = 100 * (1 - ratio_of_hours_worked) print(f"{old_hours_per_year = }") print(f"{new_hours_per_year = }") print(f"{ratio_of_hours_worked = :0.2f}") print(f"{how_much_less_did_i_work = :0.0f}%") Output: old_hours_per_year = 1960 new_hours_per_year = 1472 ratio_of_hours_worked = 0.75 how_much_less_did_i_work = 25% So...you wanted to work 25% LESS, doing the same job, at the same company, and make more money? That's the pitch? Even better: > I was leaving to move to my own company As a good friend likes to put it: "I run my own business, which gives me complete freedom." "Now, seven days a week, I get to choose which twenty hours of the day I want to work for just over minimum wage" I hope you understand what your comment says about you to an employer. If you do not, unless your business is trivial, you will. You will one day experience an employee coming to you with a similar view of the universe. And then you will understand. You will surely chuckle and think "Wow! Did I really sound like that? What was I thinking?".
- bandyaboot 5y ago
  “Only would have needed one”.
  - greenyoda 5y ago
    Exactly. The original comment said that they were underpaid, and would be happy with either a raise to a market-level salary or a reduction in hours. Getting the same amount of pay for 25% fewer hours would be equivalent to a 25% raise in hourly earnings, and it wouldn't be surprising if someone were 25% underpaid if they had stayed at one employer for a long time. So it doesn't seem like such an unreasonable thing to ask for. > I hope you understand what your comment says about you to an employer. I hope you understand what your comment suggests about you, as an employer: you're quick to mock an employee for making a reasonable request, without even listening carefully enough to understand the question. You might want to reconsider this attitude if you care about employee retention.

bklaasen 5y ago

You said you weren't offered any of these, but did you tell your boss that you'd have stayed if any of your conditions had been met?

halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
I think the broader point is that the onus should not be on the employee but on the employer. The employer should be ahead of the employee anticipating needs and reacting to broader market trends. Even if the company isn’t seeing significant levels of attrition yet, they should be extra attentive and provide incentives to stay before the employee has decided to leave. By then, it’s usually too little too late.
- LurkingPenguin 5y ago
  > The employer should be ahead of the employee anticipating needs and reacting to broader market trends. In the case of the parent comment, be ahead of the employee how? "Good news, Steve. We're giving you a $50,000/year raise but you'll be working 32 hours a week instead of 40. We're giving you 2 months of paid vacation next year instead of 3 weeks. We're hiring 5 new people with more experience than you, who will be responsible for mentoring you and helping you grow, as well as a personal comedian, who can keep you entertained when you're feeling down."
  - ser0 5y ago
    Effectively, yes, this. Just as businesses are expected to monitor and react to competitors that are after their customers. They should also have processes in place to react to competitors for their staff.
    - LurkingPenguin 5y ago
      > ...react to competitors... In this case, there were no competitors. The parent poster indicated that he was leaving to start his own thing. Nobody was offering him a high-paying job where he would work only 32 hours a week, have 6+ weeks of paid vacation annually and generally be treated like the company's most valuable asset. While I wish the parent poster the best, he's far more likely to discover that running his own business will require him to work more, not less, and at least initially, is likely to provide him with lower net pay and benefits. Unless you're an absolute rockstar, you have to be realistic, even in this market.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - Mountain_Skies 5y ago
        He didn't say he needed to be offered all of that, just at least one of the items.
        LurkingPenguin 5y ago
        I've hired and fired, both in management roles and for my own business. The problem with the parent poster's incentives, even if he was willing to accept just one, is that they're not thoughtful and consistent. On one hand, the parent poster would be open to the company firing another employee he doesn't like or hiring more people who could help him grow, but on the other hand, he's open to working part time or taking off on vacation for a month and a half or more each year. If I was his manager, I would be genuinely confused about whether a person like this wanted to be more or less invested in his work at the company. And that's never a good thing to have an employer be confused about. By all means, ask for a raise. Express a desire for greater opportunities to learn and grow. Raise concerns about situations you're uncomfortable with. But seriously thinking that you might command full-time pay and benefits for part-time hours? That's a huge red flag. The parent poster basically admitted he already had one foot out the door. Given that it doesn't sound like his employer fought to convince him to stay, I'm guessing that his employer either sensed this or that he wasn't as valuable to his employer as he thought it was.
stubish 5y ago
Companies who want to keep staff need to proactively work this out rather than wait for employees to make demands, or you end up only with employees prepared to make demands. Not everyone is emotionally or culturally comfortable with that. It is a management problem. Thankfully many companies are tackling the issue because diversity, as one of the numerous reasons there are things like gender pay gaps is that people in many less privileged social groups are uncomfortable or unwilling to make demands of their employer.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Plenty of companies also only accept the demand when you have already gotten the demand satisfied elsewhere.
  - chii 5y ago
    Because the demands being satisfied elsewhere is proof that those demands are the minimum required to keep the employee - after all, what a company wants to pay is the minimum viable pay for the worker to work.

robomartin 5y ago

weeks_per_year = 52 vacation_weeks = (3, 6) hours_per_week = (40, 32) old_hours_per_year = (weeks_per_year - vacation_weeks[0]) * hours_per_week[0] new_hours_per_year = (weeks_per_year - vacation_weeks[1]) * hours_per_week[1] ratio_of_hours_worked = new_hours_per_year / old_hours_per_year how_much_less_did_i_work = 100 * (1 - ratio_of_hours_worked) print(f"{old_hours_per_year = }") print(f"{new_hours_per_year = }") print(f"{ratio_of_hours_worked = :0.2f}") print(f"{how_much_less_did_i_work = :0.0f}%") Output: old_hours_per_year = 1960 new_hours_per_year = 1472 ratio_of_hours_worked = 0.75 how_much_less_did_i_work = 25% So...you wanted to work 25% LESS, doing the same job, at the same company, and make more money? That's the pitch? Even better: > I was leaving to move to my own company As a good friend likes to put it: "I run my own business, which gives me complete freedom." "Now, seven days a week, I get to choose which twenty hours of the day I want to work for just over minimum wage" I hope you understand what your comment says about you to an employer. If you do not, unless your business is trivial, you will. You will one day experience an employee coming to you with a similar view of the universe. And then you will understand. You will surely chuckle and think "Wow! Did I really sound like that? What was I thinking?".

bandyaboot 5y ago
“Only would have needed one”.
- greenyoda 5y ago
  Exactly. The original comment said that they were underpaid, and would be happy with either a raise to a market-level salary or a reduction in hours. Getting the same amount of pay for 25% fewer hours would be equivalent to a 25% raise in hourly earnings, and it wouldn't be surprising if someone were 25% underpaid if they had stayed at one employer for a long time. So it doesn't seem like such an unreasonable thing to ask for. > I hope you understand what your comment says about you to an employer. I hope you understand what your comment suggests about you, as an employer: you're quick to mock an employee for making a reasonable request, without even listening carefully enough to understand the question. You might want to reconsider this attitude if you care about employee retention.