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Yeah. I’m over 40, and I expect a high salary due to my productivity and experience. You could replace me with 3 folks from around the world, and it’s arguably

Yeah. I’m over 40, and I expect a high salary due to my productivity and experience. You could replace me with 3 folks from around the world, and it’s arguably a reasonable business decision.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago
It's maybe only a "good" business decision if you have very short-termist thinking.
- clnq 3y ago
  Yes, the institutional knowledge lost would cost more than the difference of that salary a year in most cases. But companies definitely do not value institutional knowledge as much as black-on-white figures on their financial statements. Short-termist, but a lot of business decisions are very short-termist, so I think the argument is good. Someone might think that.
- Mistletoe 3y ago
  Unfortunately most companies, shareholders, and execs care about the stock performance the next quarter and that’s about it. A neat compensation package for a CEO would be “What will the stock price be in a decade?” But you could never get a CEO to commit for a decade because they know like we all do that job hopping is how you make more money and get raises. The system is messed up all the way down. https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-ceo-life-cycle https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-ceo-life-cycle > For instance, when we asked CEOs about the ideal tenure for the role, many mentioned the widely touted seven-year average. When we surveyed directors, they said that CEOs generally should leave the job after 9.5 years—a point at which, many believe, performance typically plateaus. Why these expectations? No one has a compelling or evidence-based answer. They are simply conventional wisdom. The graph in that linked article is particularly telling as it shows performance increases all come after ten years.
  - dangwhy 3y ago
    Do CEO's really job hop though? I am looking at top tech companies and they seem to have been there for a long time and none of them are job hoppers.
    - clnq 3y ago
      Yes in large tech outside of FAANG. But that is only half the story. A lot of decision-making often falls on vice presidents, presidents, or heads assigned to subsidiaries or projects. They job hop a lot, more often than every 7 years in my experience. Phil Harrison is a known FAANG example, but in smaller companies, there are tons of Harrisons. Stephen Elop is a FAANG-adjacent example, having been the CEO of Nokia in its downfall and now job-hopping quite a lot. As a completely unrelated side-note, I love this quote from Elop's Wikipedia page: > In his first speech at a Telstra conference in September 2016, Elop cited Nokia as an example of a "great" company that can self-assess and "transform" when necessary, referencing its success as a networks equipment supplier. He said that Telstra was also needing a necessary transformation to become more of a technology company. Elop was dismissed from Telstra as part of its restructuring on 31 July 2018.
skylanh 3y ago
We're dealing with extensive loss of localized institutional knowledge in my workplace. The specific area I work in has one technically astute resource with experience dating back further than six years. There are other resources with that time-frame--but their knowledge is limited. This has been compounding the normal, expected resource churn. It's a qualitative stance, but a Big Brain with 10 years in an established area is worth more than three "fast brains" with 1 year of local, institutional knowledge. I might take the "fast brains" (especially if they have limited commitments) if we were in a different situation such as starting up.
- eitally 3y ago
  I find it amusing when I hear people make statements assessing short durations like 6 years to be significant. Six years in many industries is enough to reach mid-tier level expertise, but it is absolutely not mastery level. I'm making this comment from the perspective of someone who cultivate an engineering management role in high-tech manufacturing over the course of 15 years (where I was reporting direct to C-level when I left, with a team of close to 150 around the world) before joining a FAANG, where I had the rug pulled out from under me (new leadership killed my team in the first six months and I had to find a new role or be on the street, and the new role was unlike anything I'd ever done before). I spent 8 years starting a new career before being summarily dumped in the RIFs of this winter/spring, and have subsequently begun a third career at a different company. The experience builds, and my experience is that the sweet spot is frequently hiring people in their 40s who have ~20 years of practical experience in the domain or a related area, and who know how to avoid a lot of the pitfalls fresher employees might encounter while also creating a lot of shortcuts by virtue of their experience & networks. It was interesting: over the course of my career, the teams I was managing had ever-increasing average ages, ranging from mid-20s when I was leading my first team of developers to late-40s over the last few years in big tech. Different functions (business vs technical), but while I appreciate the enthusiasm so many new grads demonstrate, the self-sufficiency + competency of mid-career folks is worth its weight in gold.

Yeah. I’m over 40, and I expect a high salary due to my productivity and experience. You could replace me with 3 folks from around the world, and it’s arguably a reasonable business decision.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago

It's maybe only a "good" business decision if you have very short-termist thinking.

clnq 3y ago
Yes, the institutional knowledge lost would cost more than the difference of that salary a year in most cases. But companies definitely do not value institutional knowledge as much as black-on-white figures on their financial statements. Short-termist, but a lot of business decisions are very short-termist, so I think the argument is good. Someone might think that.
Mistletoe 3y ago
Unfortunately most companies, shareholders, and execs care about the stock performance the next quarter and that’s about it. A neat compensation package for a CEO would be “What will the stock price be in a decade?” But you could never get a CEO to commit for a decade because they know like we all do that job hopping is how you make more money and get raises. The system is messed up all the way down. https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-ceo-life-cycle https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-ceo-life-cycle > For instance, when we asked CEOs about the ideal tenure for the role, many mentioned the widely touted seven-year average. When we surveyed directors, they said that CEOs generally should leave the job after 9.5 years—a point at which, many believe, performance typically plateaus. Why these expectations? No one has a compelling or evidence-based answer. They are simply conventional wisdom. The graph in that linked article is particularly telling as it shows performance increases all come after ten years.
- dangwhy 3y ago
  Do CEO's really job hop though? I am looking at top tech companies and they seem to have been there for a long time and none of them are job hoppers.
  - clnq 3y ago
    Yes in large tech outside of FAANG. But that is only half the story. A lot of decision-making often falls on vice presidents, presidents, or heads assigned to subsidiaries or projects. They job hop a lot, more often than every 7 years in my experience. Phil Harrison is a known FAANG example, but in smaller companies, there are tons of Harrisons. Stephen Elop is a FAANG-adjacent example, having been the CEO of Nokia in its downfall and now job-hopping quite a lot. As a completely unrelated side-note, I love this quote from Elop's Wikipedia page: > In his first speech at a Telstra conference in September 2016, Elop cited Nokia as an example of a "great" company that can self-assess and "transform" when necessary, referencing its success as a networks equipment supplier. He said that Telstra was also needing a necessary transformation to become more of a technology company. Elop was dismissed from Telstra as part of its restructuring on 31 July 2018.

skylanh 3y ago

We're dealing with extensive loss of localized institutional knowledge in my workplace. The specific area I work in has one technically astute resource with experience dating back further than six years. There are other resources with that time-frame--but their knowledge is limited. This has been compounding the normal, expected resource churn. It's a qualitative stance, but a Big Brain with 10 years in an established area is worth more than three "fast brains" with 1 year of local, institutional knowledge. I might take the "fast brains" (especially if they have limited commitments) if we were in a different situation such as starting up.

eitally 3y ago
I find it amusing when I hear people make statements assessing short durations like 6 years to be significant. Six years in many industries is enough to reach mid-tier level expertise, but it is absolutely not mastery level. I'm making this comment from the perspective of someone who cultivate an engineering management role in high-tech manufacturing over the course of 15 years (where I was reporting direct to C-level when I left, with a team of close to 150 around the world) before joining a FAANG, where I had the rug pulled out from under me (new leadership killed my team in the first six months and I had to find a new role or be on the street, and the new role was unlike anything I'd ever done before). I spent 8 years starting a new career before being summarily dumped in the RIFs of this winter/spring, and have subsequently begun a third career at a different company. The experience builds, and my experience is that the sweet spot is frequently hiring people in their 40s who have ~20 years of practical experience in the domain or a related area, and who know how to avoid a lot of the pitfalls fresher employees might encounter while also creating a lot of shortcuts by virtue of their experience & networks. It was interesting: over the course of my career, the teams I was managing had ever-increasing average ages, ranging from mid-20s when I was leading my first team of developers to late-40s over the last few years in big tech. Different functions (business vs technical), but while I appreciate the enthusiasm so many new grads demonstrate, the self-sufficiency + competency of mid-career folks is worth its weight in gold.