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I can attest to this because the company I currently work for has the highest turnover I've ever experienced. People are barely making it 8 months, meanwhile th

I can attest to this because the company I currently work for has the highest turnover I've ever experienced. People are barely making it 8 months, meanwhile the bosses are pushing for faster growth to match our newish funding. That's leading to people who have been here for 2 months hiring _more_ people to replace the people who left at 8 months. Just about every project is suffering from simply not understanding what it does or how it works, which leads to more burn out which causes even more churn. I've never seen the cycle this close before and it really is wild just how bad it can get.

jcadam 5y ago
The current job market is punishing poorly run companies. It's too easy to pick up the phone and get a new job quick these days if you're unhappy, contributing to churn.
- echelon 5y ago
  When does the market for engineers turn into a buyer's market? If the economy goes into recession or worse, do those playing hot potato get stuck out in the cold?
  - jcadam 5y ago
    It's a cycle, like anything else. Tech was largely spared during the last recession. Who knows what's going to happen during the next?
    - xapata 5y ago
      Cycles of arbitrary periods are nearly indistinguishable from a random walk. My guess is the latter.
      - jmercouris 5y ago
        What does this mean? Can you please rephrase?
        stavros 5y ago
        ELI5: "Who knows?"
        late2part 5y ago
        Here's what I think he means. If you look at trends over an arbitrary period, they may look useful. If you look at the similar trends over a larger period, they look different. Therefore, the smaller periods are just random variations relative to the larger periods.
        xapata 5y ago
        Close. It's more a comment on the structure of those random variations, and whether it's appropriate to describe the system as periodic at all. For example, sometimes it rains, and sometimes the sun shines. Is the weather cyclical? Depends on the place, time, and time-scale you're considering. Maybe a better example is roulette. If you watch the "cycles" of red and black, you might imagine you could make predictions. Gamblers are often fooled by this randomness.
        lordnacho 5y ago
        This is a good observation that I upvoted because it's very relevant. A lot of things look like cycles but have no oscillating dynamic, it's true. But you could suppose that business cycles are caused by a build-up of bad debt. Things to well, debts can be paid, collateral gets worth more, more investment, etc. This can't go on forever and the reverse cycle then occurs, often as rates come up. Soros store about this and called it reflexivity. Of course I'm not saying business cycles are definitely caused by this, there's probably more to it than that. But it's a common explanation.
        xapata 5y ago
  - d0gsg0w00f 5y ago
    Once the talent pipeline fills up (not likely) or leadership realizes that technology is a mixed blessing and may not be worth the complexity. Right now you have to have technology to compete but eventually mid sized companies will realize it's not worth the millions a year it takes to try and keep up with the Joneses and keep the technology as simple as possible. However, it's also difficult to find unskilled labor so the only alternative is automation. Just look at all the companies that won't answer a phone anymore and force you to do everything through an app. So IMO tech wages will remain high for quite some time.
  - vmception 5y ago
    Yes who cares Take the risk or don’t
- ryanmcbride 5y ago
  Yup. I'd never blame someone for taking a better job elsewhere.
- jodrellblank 5y ago
  How is everyone moving and also moving somewhere better? Is it not the case that the majority of open job opportunities are ones other people have recently left from unhappiness?
  - zippergz 5y ago
    I think there's a lot of "grass is greener" moves happening. Unless you have trusted friends working in a company, it is very hard to tell if it actually is better than your current situation until you've tried it. None of the sources of information available to an outsider (including Glassdoor reviews and HN posts extolling the virtues or sounding off about the horribleness of a given company) are particularly predictive of what your individual experience will be, from what I have seen. There's just too much variability, and too much bias in each narrator.
    - nijave 5y ago
      Not only that, jobs seem to have a "honeymoon" period after which you start to notice more issues you might have originally ignored (so things seem fine for the first few months)
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    > How is everyone moving and also moving somewhere better? Several of us exited a toxic company semi-recently. For what it's worth, it was common for people to take minor cuts to total compensation. The old, toxic company had evolved to pay well because it was the only way they could retain people (however briefly) through the obvious toxicity. We just didn't talk about it publicly much. But it didn't matter. Huge quality of life improvement and I don't really miss the extra money.
  - AlexCoventry 5y ago
    It seems like many companies are more willing to offer high salaries to new hires than to give incumbent employees competitive raises.
- wefarrell 5y ago
  Some industries are so backwards and difficult to disrupt that many companies can just continue operating this way for many generations of staff turnover.

jcadam 5y ago

The current job market is punishing poorly run companies. It's too easy to pick up the phone and get a new job quick these days if you're unhappy, contributing to churn.

echelon 5y ago
When does the market for engineers turn into a buyer's market? If the economy goes into recession or worse, do those playing hot potato get stuck out in the cold?
- jcadam 5y ago
  It's a cycle, like anything else. Tech was largely spared during the last recession. Who knows what's going to happen during the next?
  - xapata 5y ago
    Cycles of arbitrary periods are nearly indistinguishable from a random walk. My guess is the latter.
    - jmercouris 5y ago
      What does this mean? Can you please rephrase?
      - stavros 5y ago
        ELI5: "Who knows?"
      - late2part 5y ago
        Here's what I think he means. If you look at trends over an arbitrary period, they may look useful. If you look at the similar trends over a larger period, they look different. Therefore, the smaller periods are just random variations relative to the larger periods.
        xapata 5y ago
        Close. It's more a comment on the structure of those random variations, and whether it's appropriate to describe the system as periodic at all. For example, sometimes it rains, and sometimes the sun shines. Is the weather cyclical? Depends on the place, time, and time-scale you're considering. Maybe a better example is roulette. If you watch the "cycles" of red and black, you might imagine you could make predictions. Gamblers are often fooled by this randomness.
        lordnacho 5y ago
        This is a good observation that I upvoted because it's very relevant. A lot of things look like cycles but have no oscillating dynamic, it's true. But you could suppose that business cycles are caused by a build-up of bad debt. Things to well, debts can be paid, collateral gets worth more, more investment, etc. This can't go on forever and the reverse cycle then occurs, often as rates come up. Soros store about this and called it reflexivity. Of course I'm not saying business cycles are definitely caused by this, there's probably more to it than that. But it's a common explanation.
        xapata 5y ago
- d0gsg0w00f 5y ago
  Once the talent pipeline fills up (not likely) or leadership realizes that technology is a mixed blessing and may not be worth the complexity. Right now you have to have technology to compete but eventually mid sized companies will realize it's not worth the millions a year it takes to try and keep up with the Joneses and keep the technology as simple as possible. However, it's also difficult to find unskilled labor so the only alternative is automation. Just look at all the companies that won't answer a phone anymore and force you to do everything through an app. So IMO tech wages will remain high for quite some time.
- vmception 5y ago
  Yes who cares Take the risk or don’t
ryanmcbride 5y ago
Yup. I'd never blame someone for taking a better job elsewhere.
jodrellblank 5y ago
How is everyone moving and also moving somewhere better? Is it not the case that the majority of open job opportunities are ones other people have recently left from unhappiness?
- zippergz 5y ago
  I think there's a lot of "grass is greener" moves happening. Unless you have trusted friends working in a company, it is very hard to tell if it actually is better than your current situation until you've tried it. None of the sources of information available to an outsider (including Glassdoor reviews and HN posts extolling the virtues or sounding off about the horribleness of a given company) are particularly predictive of what your individual experience will be, from what I have seen. There's just too much variability, and too much bias in each narrator.
  - nijave 5y ago
    Not only that, jobs seem to have a "honeymoon" period after which you start to notice more issues you might have originally ignored (so things seem fine for the first few months)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > How is everyone moving and also moving somewhere better? Several of us exited a toxic company semi-recently. For what it's worth, it was common for people to take minor cuts to total compensation. The old, toxic company had evolved to pay well because it was the only way they could retain people (however briefly) through the obvious toxicity. We just didn't talk about it publicly much. But it didn't matter. Huge quality of life improvement and I don't really miss the extra money.
- AlexCoventry 5y ago
  It seems like many companies are more willing to offer high salaries to new hires than to give incumbent employees competitive raises.
wefarrell 5y ago
Some industries are so backwards and difficult to disrupt that many companies can just continue operating this way for many generations of staff turnover.