After the Going, Went
Episode 21 of The Ship Show (“Going, Going… Gone.“) is over a month old, but with Crazy JuneTM1, I never made it around to discussing the episode. Plus, there were some interesting developments that took some time to percolate.
If you didn’t hear the episode, the Crew discussed the various considerations and issues that are worth taking into account when deciding whether or not to stay at a job. It was an interesting episode to tape, because it’s often hard to have that conversation and entirely remove the identifying information.
In fact, it was such a delicate topic that we ended up putting this episode in the can for a few months, just in case.
If you’re an employee and didn’t have a chance to hear it, I’d definitely take the half-hour and listen; it’s turned out to be one of our better discussion/advice episodes to date.
The one thing I was a little sad about it because none of us come from a management background (really), we didn’t really have anyone with the managerial perspective on this issue. I think it would have been really interesting to explore
- As a manager, have you ever lost someone good? Did you see it coming, or was it a total surprise?
- How did you handle it? Did you try to keep them? Were you empowered by the organization to offer them anything substantive? Were you successful?
- Do you wish the person had talked to you before making a decision? What is your advice for reports on the best way to start that conversation?
- Have you ever had a report leave, and after hearing their reasons, think to yourself: “they’re totally right?” What did you end up doing then?
- Why do you feel the it’s so difficult to have these conversations? Is there a way we could improve upon that, from upper-management to middle-management to line engineers, without it being… weird?
We may have to redo the episode at some point, and get some management input on these questions… I think that’d be very valuable.
In any event, even though the topic was a delicate one, I personally received a lot of positive feedback.
No less than four people took the time through various channels to to tell me that this episode prompted them to really re-think their work situations.
Two of those announced their new jobs a couple of weeks after the episode shipped.
- Mostly related to getting my #DevOpsDays talk ready!↵
My $0.02 as a manager:
1) Yes. It wasn’t a total surprise. People can leave at any time. It was still shocking. The employee giving notice wasn’t the most shocking part…
2) In one instance, I was able to offer a retention bonus. You have to know when this is worthwhile and when it is in the employee’s best interest to leave. People leave. Managers need to prepare for that.
3) I ask my team to talk to me any time. I don’t know if they all would. One person did and it was helpful because we had more time to prepare for his departure. Another one told me when he had an offer and wasn’t sure whether he wanted to accept it. This requires trust because if the offer falls through or the employee doesn’t accept it, the employee has shown his/her hand to you… “I’m looking.”
4) I’m not sure I understand the question.
5) It doesn’t have to be weird. You’re all a team while you’re together. Life happens, people’s needs change, opportunities arise. A good manager has his/her employee’s best interests in mind. As much as I don’t want to lose anyone on my team, I want the best for each of them.
Hope that provides at least one perspective.
Hey Caroline!
Thanks for responding; so, if the person leaving wasn’t the most shocking part, what (if I may ask) was?
Did you find the retention bonus worked? I would imagine that most people probably wouldn’t take the bonus if their complaint wasn’t about compensation. In one case where I quit, had they offered me a substantive (and I mean substantive) retention bonus, I may have stayed… maybe. (A large part of the issue there was compensation, and my tech mentor even admitted that the company had messed that up in regards to me.)
Regarding “looking,” a manager/mentor of mine was told me that he advises his reports to interview every two years, no matter what; you need to see what the market is like out there. So in that case, I guess he expected that people would always be looking? In any event, I thought it was good advice.
Regarding 4, what I meant was: as a manager, have you ever had a report come to you and say (for example): “Our team is treated like shit, and no one listens to a single person on it. We’re just janitors, who are required to exist at the whims of other teams, and I’m tired of it, so I’m leaving.” And then realizing that their complaints are valid, and that your management really doesn’t respect your team, and that you’re not going to be able to change that, so maybe it’s time you start looking a well?
Regarding your last answer, I’m glad to hear that. It would take two hands to list the managers I’ve had (earlier in my career) that had myriad horrible management qualities… only interested in their own career development, who had elements of sociopathy, and who favored people they identified they wanted to take with them to their next gig, but treated everyone else on the team like garbage.
It’s sad that self awareness isn’t a prerequisite for management.
The most shocking part was that his counterpart (the other person who could back him up and knew most of the same stuff) had just received an offer from another company. The other guy told us he was leaving first. The second guy waited a few days then pulled me into the conference room to show me his offer. After my heart stopped, I talked to him about how serious he was. Luckily, he hadn’t made his decision. I went for the retention bonus. I think it was a combination of factors that led him to stay, but it made me acutely aware that anyone could go and multiple people could go at once. Neither of the people were leaving because of a bad work environment. Though I did talk to both about what could be changed to make the work environment better. One left to be closer to family, the other was just curious what else was out there. It’s good management to find out why people are looking, even if they don’t leave. Eventually they might get an offer they can’t refuse.
The first guy, the one who actually left, looked constantly. He sometimes told me he was looking and even asked me to be a reference for him once or twice. It always made me lose sleep because replacing someone good is hard and expensive (a lot of the cost is your time).
Ah, with number 4. No, I have never had that. I was the lone sysadmin at a place where I was treated like junk. I left. When I went from sysadmin to manager, I did discover that our team was universally reviled because of some of the management decisions made up the chain. I had to work hard to turn that around. It led to better respect for the team overall and a better work environment. Ask questions all the time. You don’t know what you don’t know. Sometimes you don’t want to hear the bad stuff but sometimes it’s the only way you find out what’s broken so you can try to fix it.
I know I’m not perfect (we just did a 360 and I got feedback from my team on things I could do to improve as a manager), but I really try to think of what’s best for the people who work for me. Sometimes it is just me defending someone’s career, a raise, a bonus, a special project, or someone trying to abuse them with extra work. There are lots of times they don’t even know what you did for them, but what’s important is that you did it for the right reasons.
Anyway, hope that helps. Let me know if you have any other questions.
Yes, that’s all super helpful!
This post caught the attention of some (former and current) managers on Twitter.
There was some discussion about possibly doing a followup episode of the podcast, tackling these questions from the management perspective.
If we end up doing that episode, would you mind if I emailed you to see if you’d be interested/available to join?
Sure. It sounds like that would be a good companion to this episode.