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Companies churn through people constantly. Google famously has an employee tenure of like a year[1]. Most companies that subscribe to the Jack Welch "fire your

Companies churn through people constantly. Google famously has an employee tenure of like a year[1]. Most companies that subscribe to the Jack Welch "fire your bottom 10% yearly" philosophy don't usually declare a media stock-pump "layoff" but are just letting go of purported non-performers constantly. And there are a lot of "top 10%" performers who are very happy that the so-called deadweight isn't kept around just for some foolish notion of "loyalty". Sometimes layoffs are unfair, and sometimes the wrong people are let go. But often it's entirely necessary and the right people are let go. [1] - Which makes the whole gruelling, multi-month hiring process positively ridiculous. It would be much better for this industry if companies hire fast and fire fast, instead of delusions that they're finding the magical employee base that will be with them forever.

pclmulqdq 2y ago
I think if you look at companies like Citadel, which routinely fire the bottom 10% as part of the job description, it attracts a certain set of people who actually do feel "safe" in that environment. The trouble comes when you break your norms about layoffs. Also, Google's median tenure of <1 year was due to hiring, not employees leaving. In other words, that number included people who hadn't left yet. I think if you look at people leaving Google, average is about 3 years.
- llm_nerd 2y ago
  >Also, Google's median tenure of <1 year was due to hiring, not employees leaving Google would have to be growing at >300% per year for this math to make sense. But even if it's 3 years ({X} doubt), that's still cartoonishly low for a hiring process that drags on for months and months. >I think if you look at companies like Citadel, which routinely fire the bottom 10% as part of the job description Almost all tech companies target firing/pushing out a considerable percentage of employees per year. It actually is incredibly common, even if it usually doesn't make the news. They used to do it overtly via stack ranking, but now they just do it more quietly. Microsoft punted 2000 "low performers" in the first two months. Brutal firings with zero severance, immediate cancellation of health coverage, etc.
  - pclmulqdq 2y ago
    Just to do the math for you, a 1 year average tenure would be a doubling of company size per year without any attrition, not a 300% increase. Google "exponential distribution." With attrition, you get there pretty fast. Also, the statistic you quoted comes from ~2012 IIRC, which was a period of explosive growth at Google. > Almost all tech companies target firing/pushing out a considerable percentage of employees per year. Not firing, but managing out. It's very different culturally.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - llm_nerd 2y ago
      >just to do the math for you, a 1 year average tenure would be The guy I replied to did say median tenure (where I was talking about mean or average tenure), so relative to a median tenure sure, doubling the staff would do that. But you said average, in which case no that isn't true. Google is a 26 year old company. If you randomly distributed tenures across a hypothetical employee base (1-26 years), it would take something like 1200% growth to get the average tenure under 2 years. And of course Google's actual employee count growth rate over the past decade and a half is more in the range of 12%, so a couple of factors off for that. Even when people say the average tenure is 3 -- doubtful -- that still requires an insane level of turnover for a company growing so slowly, relatively, and being so old.
surajrmal 2y ago
The Google tenure stat is misleading because it was taken at a time when the company was growing 20% per year. The actual statistic worth looking at was how long a person who is leaving had been with the company on average at the time of leaving or what percentage of the overall headcount leaves per year. While I don't feel comfortable sharing those numbers, I can confidently say they lower than the industry norm.
- llm_nerd 2y ago
  The industry norm is incredibly short tenures, and often when it starts increasing, it's paradoxically when the company is on the track towards complacency and eventual failure. https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/why-googles-high-turnover-rate-is-great-for-employees-and-possibly-even-for-google.html https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/why-googles-high-turnover-rat... This isn't some Google specific thing. The cargo cult "look at our super exhaustive, endlessly demanding hiring process" is a farce everywhere. It's actually a bit paradoxical because it actually selects for employees who don't want to actually stay with you, they just want to be able to say they were willing to endure your gauntlet.
  - moregrist 2y ago
    Perhaps in your segment of the industry. I’ve worked in places where people stuck around for years because they believed in the company and technology and wanted to successfully ship a product. In fact, I still view repeated 18-month stints as a bit of a red flag. It’s a big industry. There’s a difference between a norm and something that a sizable subset of people do.
  - surajrmal 2y ago
    Most folks I work with at Google have been there for nearly 10 years.

pclmulqdq 2y ago

I think if you look at companies like Citadel, which routinely fire the bottom 10% as part of the job description, it attracts a certain set of people who actually do feel "safe" in that environment. The trouble comes when you break your norms about layoffs. Also, Google's median tenure of <1 year was due to hiring, not employees leaving. In other words, that number included people who hadn't left yet. I think if you look at people leaving Google, average is about 3 years.

llm_nerd 2y ago
>Also, Google's median tenure of <1 year was due to hiring, not employees leaving Google would have to be growing at >300% per year for this math to make sense. But even if it's 3 years ({X} doubt), that's still cartoonishly low for a hiring process that drags on for months and months. >I think if you look at companies like Citadel, which routinely fire the bottom 10% as part of the job description Almost all tech companies target firing/pushing out a considerable percentage of employees per year. It actually is incredibly common, even if it usually doesn't make the news. They used to do it overtly via stack ranking, but now they just do it more quietly. Microsoft punted 2000 "low performers" in the first two months. Brutal firings with zero severance, immediate cancellation of health coverage, etc.
- pclmulqdq 2y ago
  Just to do the math for you, a 1 year average tenure would be a doubling of company size per year without any attrition, not a 300% increase. Google "exponential distribution." With attrition, you get there pretty fast. Also, the statistic you quoted comes from ~2012 IIRC, which was a period of explosive growth at Google. > Almost all tech companies target firing/pushing out a considerable percentage of employees per year. Not firing, but managing out. It's very different culturally.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - llm_nerd 2y ago
    >just to do the math for you, a 1 year average tenure would be The guy I replied to did say median tenure (where I was talking about mean or average tenure), so relative to a median tenure sure, doubling the staff would do that. But you said average, in which case no that isn't true. Google is a 26 year old company. If you randomly distributed tenures across a hypothetical employee base (1-26 years), it would take something like 1200% growth to get the average tenure under 2 years. And of course Google's actual employee count growth rate over the past decade and a half is more in the range of 12%, so a couple of factors off for that. Even when people say the average tenure is 3 -- doubtful -- that still requires an insane level of turnover for a company growing so slowly, relatively, and being so old.

surajrmal 2y ago

The Google tenure stat is misleading because it was taken at a time when the company was growing 20% per year. The actual statistic worth looking at was how long a person who is leaving had been with the company on average at the time of leaving or what percentage of the overall headcount leaves per year. While I don't feel comfortable sharing those numbers, I can confidently say they lower than the industry norm.

llm_nerd 2y ago
The industry norm is incredibly short tenures, and often when it starts increasing, it's paradoxically when the company is on the track towards complacency and eventual failure. https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/why-googles-high-turnover-rate-is-great-for-employees-and-possibly-even-for-google.html https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/why-googles-high-turnover-rat... This isn't some Google specific thing. The cargo cult "look at our super exhaustive, endlessly demanding hiring process" is a farce everywhere. It's actually a bit paradoxical because it actually selects for employees who don't want to actually stay with you, they just want to be able to say they were willing to endure your gauntlet.
- moregrist 2y ago
  Perhaps in your segment of the industry. I’ve worked in places where people stuck around for years because they believed in the company and technology and wanted to successfully ship a product. In fact, I still view repeated 18-month stints as a bit of a red flag. It’s a big industry. There’s a difference between a norm and something that a sizable subset of people do.
- surajrmal 2y ago
  Most folks I work with at Google have been there for nearly 10 years.