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The investment into training isn't merely money and can't usually be neatly calculated. It's usually paid in the form of time, motivation, distraction and lost

The investment into training isn't merely money and can't usually be neatly calculated. It's usually paid in the form of time, motivation, distraction and lost opportunities by more senior staff. If you, personally, sink a year into training someone intensively, and then they leave, would you perceive it as merely lost opportunity costs? Probably not. Mentors and mentees are supposed to have a more than purely transactional relationship in most understandings. As to why not just pay more, probably the reason you were trying to train someone to begin with is because you can't afford to pay the higher wages to just poach the most experienced people? Otherwise why not just pay the higher wages to start with and skip the risky and slow training? Also, the software world has the unique problem that everyone is competing against VC backed startups that are willing to spend more up front to minimize time to market, so these firms generally don't train but can afford to poach anyone who is trained at a perhaps unsustainably high salary.

sokoloff 4y ago
> why not just pay the higher wages to start with and skip the risky and slow training? It’s not like walking around with sacks of money and hiring people interested in that money is low-risk. I’ve found training to be lower risk/uncertainty than hiring in terms of fewer outright failures and negative surprises.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  Yet, companies just love to hire instead of retain. Take an employee who just got trained/experience and is now worth $N, who is currently making $N-2. Most companies I've worked with would piss and moan about giving that employee a raise to $N-1. They'd rather let him leave. Then, they suddenly have no problem hiring a relatively unknown employee and paying him $N+2. It's never made sense to me in all my decades in this business. Obviously value-destroying behavior that's routinely done by most companies.
  - origin_path 4y ago
    You talk as if figuring out what an employee is worth is easy, and that worth is absolute (same to all employers). If you have competitors who are willing to pay a premium over what the skills are worth to the first company not to train someone, then this situation can arise.

sokoloff 4y ago

> why not just pay the higher wages to start with and skip the risky and slow training? It’s not like walking around with sacks of money and hiring people interested in that money is low-risk. I’ve found training to be lower risk/uncertainty than hiring in terms of fewer outright failures and negative surprises.

ryandrake 4y ago
Yet, companies just love to hire instead of retain. Take an employee who just got trained/experience and is now worth $N, who is currently making $N-2. Most companies I've worked with would piss and moan about giving that employee a raise to $N-1. They'd rather let him leave. Then, they suddenly have no problem hiring a relatively unknown employee and paying him $N+2. It's never made sense to me in all my decades in this business. Obviously value-destroying behavior that's routinely done by most companies.
- origin_path 4y ago
  You talk as if figuring out what an employee is worth is easy, and that worth is absolute (same to all employers). If you have competitors who are willing to pay a premium over what the skills are worth to the first company not to train someone, then this situation can arise.