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One thing missing is that author is assuming that talented people will like to work in one place indefinitely. With developers skipping boat every ~2 years on

by ozim 5y ago

One thing missing is that author is assuming that talented people will like to work in one place indefinitely. With developers skipping boat every ~2 years on average how do you make sure you will keep such person in-house. You can compensate people only up to some level but as they got bored or feel they can do something better with their time they will move. Not to mention family reasons or whatever else can happen in persons life. You can have talented dev today - next day he might be hit by a truck, if you run your business by relying on people you will be affected by such accidents, if you run your business as if everyone is interchangeable you won't. Even if they are not easily replaceable. That "corporations are doing it wrong" premise is also wrong - somehow those big corporations are chugging along for decades. Of course they leave "lucky ticket" profits on the table, but that "lucky ticket" has risk of loss - which is missing from the text. Yes with small focused team you can achieve great ROI in one off project but those are not projects that are done by big corporations. Then you have all the startups that usually fail. Then leave alone "my friend's team was composed of people who had a track record of being highly effective across a variety of contexts" - seems like author does not understand how hard it is to find such people and assemble a team especially if you are BigCorp. That friend just got lucky to be in specific time and place and their experience. Especially if you read that they just wanted to hire another scapegoat - so it is just survivor-ship bias.

Jensson 5y ago
> That "corporations are doing it wrong" premise is also wrong - somehow those big corporations are chugging along for decades. Once you have market dominance it is really hard to lose it, you have more resources and more experience than any startup. So they can carry a lot of bad practices without failing as a company, they have to be really bad to lose their position. This is actually a common business question, how can big well funded companies ever fall? Well, things like this is how they fall. Any one of these things wont be enough, but it all ads up.
- ozim 5y ago
  There is a lot of corporations that are far from market dominance. There is more to the world than Fortune 100. Some companies chug along with ~500 employees for multiple years with a lot of rotation.
rramadass 5y ago
> if you run your business by relying on people you will be affected by such accidents, if you run your business as if everyone is interchangeable you won't. Even if they are not easily replaceable. This right here is the problem and a fundamental error. It is a recipe for guaranteed disaster because you have completely ignored all the knowledge, experience and expertise which one has gathered over a period of time. Unless and until the task is trivial and/or very well defined with all constraints, assumptions and risks clarified people are not interchangeable. Paraphrasing Isaac Asimov: [Knowledge Work] does not mean my Ignorance is just as good as your Knowledge.
underdeserver 5y ago
In my view skipping boat every ~2 years on average is the result of a bad situation. Maybe people feel they have to do that to increase their comp or advance in their career, but I'd much rather stay in one place for 5-10 years growing it and growing with it. I'd also wager that a good workplace that provides autonomy, fair compensation, strong peers and a good atmosphere will not see 2-year average attrition.
pm90 5y ago
Developers wouldn’t skip a boat every 2 years if they were happy. Instead of accepting that as a fact to be worked around try to understand why your developers are leaving after a 2 year tenure. I’ve worked at a few companies, all of them have had highly skilled senior engineers with long tenures. The “2 year tenure” is a self fulfilling prophecy that management types love as a way to treat engineers poorly (why bother? They’re gonna leave anyways!).

by ozim 5y ago

Jensson 5y ago

> That "corporations are doing it wrong" premise is also wrong - somehow those big corporations are chugging along for decades. Once you have market dominance it is really hard to lose it, you have more resources and more experience than any startup. So they can carry a lot of bad practices without failing as a company, they have to be really bad to lose their position. This is actually a common business question, how can big well funded companies ever fall? Well, things like this is how they fall. Any one of these things wont be enough, but it all ads up.

ozim 5y ago
There is a lot of corporations that are far from market dominance. There is more to the world than Fortune 100. Some companies chug along with ~500 employees for multiple years with a lot of rotation.

rramadass 5y ago

> if you run your business by relying on people you will be affected by such accidents, if you run your business as if everyone is interchangeable you won't. Even if they are not easily replaceable. This right here is the problem and a fundamental error. It is a recipe for guaranteed disaster because you have completely ignored all the knowledge, experience and expertise which one has gathered over a period of time. Unless and until the task is trivial and/or very well defined with all constraints, assumptions and risks clarified people are not interchangeable. Paraphrasing Isaac Asimov: [Knowledge Work] does not mean my Ignorance is just as good as your Knowledge.

underdeserver 5y ago

In my view skipping boat every ~2 years on average is the result of a bad situation. Maybe people feel they have to do that to increase their comp or advance in their career, but I'd much rather stay in one place for 5-10 years growing it and growing with it. I'd also wager that a good workplace that provides autonomy, fair compensation, strong peers and a good atmosphere will not see 2-year average attrition.

pm90 5y ago

Developers wouldn’t skip a boat every 2 years if they were happy. Instead of accepting that as a fact to be worked around try to understand why your developers are leaving after a 2 year tenure. I’ve worked at a few companies, all of them have had highly skilled senior engineers with long tenures. The “2 year tenure” is a self fulfilling prophecy that management types love as a way to treat engineers poorly (why bother? They’re gonna leave anyways!).