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> Sudden and unexpected changes that increase uncertainty make it harder to invest in retraining, rather than easier. This largely ignores the uncertainty and

> Sudden and unexpected changes that increase uncertainty make it harder to invest in retraining, rather than easier. This largely ignores the uncertainty and costs of a revolving workforce, and the value of having a workforce that all knows each other, the way the company works, and cares whether it succeeds. When I was younger, I did a bunch of short-ish stints at various companies (I think average tenure was a hair under 2 years) because someone else would offer more money, more exciting work, etc. It was incredibly inefficient for the employer. "Waiting for my laptop/credentials to be issued" was like a full percentage point of my time there. I barely cared whether the company did well because I wasn't going to be there long enough for my RSUs to swing wildly either way. I never got to the point where I knew offhand who to talk to about niche parts of the product, and never became "that guy" for anyone else. Frankly a lot of our stuff was higher risk and took longer because of the revolving doors. People important to a project would leave in the middle, or the person who wrote an important system would quit so we were left with whatever tribal knowledge we had. Things worked well when the lady that wrote our invoicing system 20 years ago was still around but in security now. Things went poorly when she quit 6 months ago and now I have to reverse engineer it to figure out why I get stack overflows on invoices that contain an image.

epistasis 9mo ago
> This largely ignores the uncertainty and costs of a revolving workforce, and the value of having a workforce that all knows each other, the way the company works, and cares whether it succeeds. I'm not "ignoring" that, and a retrained workforce is also a revolving workforce. When I run teams or companies I invest heavily in giving employees opportunities to train for new skills, level up on their existing skills, and grow into greater responsibility and knowledge domains. But that always needs to be balanced with the rest of the needs. When my runway is uncertain, that reduces the ability to plan for adding training for existing employees rather than bringing in a consultant or a new hire.

epistasis 9mo ago

> This largely ignores the uncertainty and costs of a revolving workforce, and the value of having a workforce that all knows each other, the way the company works, and cares whether it succeeds. I'm not "ignoring" that, and a retrained workforce is also a revolving workforce. When I run teams or companies I invest heavily in giving employees opportunities to train for new skills, level up on their existing skills, and grow into greater responsibility and knowledge domains. But that always needs to be balanced with the rest of the needs. When my runway is uncertain, that reduces the ability to plan for adding training for existing employees rather than bringing in a consultant or a new hire.