The War for Talent (1998)(fastcompany.com)
fastcompany.com
The War for Talent (1998)
https://www.fastcompany.com/34512/war-talent
29 comments
That’s how it feels to me too. When I started out most of the people I worked with had real interest in writing software. Nowadays you have a lot of people who got into it mainly because it’s a well paying job. Definitely much less fun.
I also feel it's less disruptively innovative. The hacker mentality is gone. It feels like the difference between a start-up and a mature company.
There are some positives. When I grew up, I was bullied and made fun of for being a 'nerd'. The nerds certainly won!
There are some positives. When I grew up, I was bullied and made fun of for being a 'nerd'. The nerds certainly won!
> I also feel it's less disruptively innovative.
I feel this, too.
It's so odd, to see a company crowing about being "disruptive," yet explicitly filtering for conformance and mediocrity, in their interview process.
I feel this, too.
It's so odd, to see a company crowing about being "disruptive," yet explicitly filtering for conformance and mediocrity, in their interview process.
Companies feel from the inside like communist states. A ton of propaganda, total disconnect from reality , more effort being put into checking on people vs enabling them to be productive, conformism valued highly, everything flows down from the top, nothing flows up.
I guess that’s called “ professionalism”
I guess that’s called “ professionalism”
Smart people are everywhere, in small percentages - they can learn to do most things.
I think part of the problem is, recruiters are (on average) less smart than greedy, and there's a layer of them before you even get to HR.
Then you get to HR, and they're generally more concerned with ticking skill boxes than hiring for intelligence (despite the fact that smart people can learn this shit on the job).
I think part of the problem is, recruiters are (on average) less smart than greedy, and there's a layer of them before you even get to HR.
Then you get to HR, and they're generally more concerned with ticking skill boxes than hiring for intelligence (despite the fact that smart people can learn this shit on the job).
Of course that's the problem. It's like they don't even want to understand what things people are expected to learn in a single semester of CS, far more difficult than your average CRUD job.
The demand side is also completely unwilling to admit the problem might be them making horrible strategic choices for the long term health of both their own company and the job market.
The demand side is also completely unwilling to admit the problem might be them making horrible strategic choices for the long term health of both their own company and the job market.
Problem is when a good developer meet a good company, both are essentially erased from job market, demand and supply side.
That leave us with mostly less than good job openings and less than good pool talents, just a little part of good talents and openings.
So what the recruiters got in hand usually are, less than good openings and talents.
That leave us with mostly less than good job openings and less than good pool talents, just a little part of good talents and openings.
So what the recruiters got in hand usually are, less than good openings and talents.
Can also be existing employees wanting to protect their sanity.
Because what if a new employee steps in with incompatible skills, starting to teach everybody about new tools X, Y, Z, that are so much better?
Because what if a new employee steps in with incompatible skills, starting to teach everybody about new tools X, Y, Z, that are so much better?
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A bit of an off topic: I've noticed a few older articles being posted around here lately and I must say I've enjoyed them very much.
The insights, learning their original contexts, and having hindsight due to the time passed makes them particularly valuable to me.
And I believe we can learn a lot by reading them. However most of what gets posted in HN and other aggregators is new content.
Is there any place where these sort of "most influential" articles of previous times can be found?
The insights, learning their original contexts, and having hindsight due to the time passed makes them particularly valuable to me.
And I believe we can learn a lot by reading them. However most of what gets posted in HN and other aggregators is new content.
Is there any place where these sort of "most influential" articles of previous times can be found?
It's sad to see how many dead links there are for content that people felt was popular/important. Linkrot is such a major problem and doesn't get enough attention.
Thanks! Funnily enough as soon as I wrote my comment I started hacking together something myself and... it's literally the same as that :D.
You can also try the first page of an empty search. That will show you the most popular articles of all time:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Talent is an ambiguous term. To me, it means someone who is capable solving the almost-impossible problem or solving a hard problem in a unique way. It is someone who has the potential to give a competitive advantage to a company or initiate a major change to society if given a chance.
In my experience, talent needs to be challenged and grown. There are clear signs of talent but they are not the ones that are typically focused on in a technical interview. It is not what do you already know. It is rather how do you approach a problem where you don't have all the information or what conventions bother you? Or someone who has deep insights from outside the standard areas.
Talent is not currently as valued as much as people claim. What is valued is productivity and someone who appears to add value. Talent usually means being able to claim credit for a key problem being fixed or a standard trend getting successfully implemented at a company.
I've been in the industry for a long time. There is so much latent talent in discriminated groups that I once thought that pure greed alone would cure racism and sexism in the tech industry. That has not been the case.
In my experience, talent needs to be challenged and grown. There are clear signs of talent but they are not the ones that are typically focused on in a technical interview. It is not what do you already know. It is rather how do you approach a problem where you don't have all the information or what conventions bother you? Or someone who has deep insights from outside the standard areas.
Talent is not currently as valued as much as people claim. What is valued is productivity and someone who appears to add value. Talent usually means being able to claim credit for a key problem being fixed or a standard trend getting successfully implemented at a company.
I've been in the industry for a long time. There is so much latent talent in discriminated groups that I once thought that pure greed alone would cure racism and sexism in the tech industry. That has not been the case.
>"We are competing with startups, not General Electric. There is a whole raft of talent that we simply do not get access to.”
But startups compete with FAANMG. And worse is semiconductor industry, where there is less EE fresh grads than with software engineering fresh grads graduated every year.
But startups compete with FAANMG. And worse is semiconductor industry, where there is less EE fresh grads than with software engineering fresh grads graduated every year.
Since it was written in 1998, competition from FAANG was minimal
Competition with Amazon and soon to be google was real however.
Aren't they startups 1998?
Amazon was around, but only selling books in 98, I think. (It might depend on when in 98). Google wasn't really a thing until 99/2000: It existed at the tail end of 98 but it wasn't really going after talent yet. They were setting up their strategy and testing the viability of PageRank at that point.
> people are willing to change jobs often
People are willing to changes jobs often because companies aren't offering meaningful paths for advancement. People aren't going to wait around forever, and will write their own promotion if it comes to that. I did, after watching people half as qualified as me interview for "Senior Software Engineer" with alleged years of experience as such.
I've watched corporations make blindingly obvious $100M mistakes, and then layoff the rank & file — the "talent" — who had no say, and if anything, disapproved of the decisions that led to their ultimate layoff. You can't get attached to a company, as the winds will shift tomorrow.
> almost all of the companies we studied are starting to take nontraditional approaches to recruiting
And yet there doesn't appear to be a recruiter out there that can put a competently written email into my inbox. Of the jobs I've held, I've self-applied to two, my own network for one, and the last was a recruiter.
> We don’t have a retention problem! In a sense, they’re right. At the senior level, the attrition rates at these companies are often quite low – 4% or 5% a year.
… 4%–5% attrition YoY would be low, IMO. My experience is closer to 30–50% YoY.
> They have good ideas, they have money – they just don’t have enough talented people to pursue those ideas. They are “talent-constrained.”
If you have the money, and you're "talent constrained", it is either because you don't have the money, or you're not willing to loose the purse-strings enough to get the talent.
> What do talented people get at startups? For one thing, the opportunity to make a lot of money.
Please. Lottery tickets similarly offer the opportunity to make a lot of money, but I suppose this is 1998 and the bubble hasn't imploded just quite yet.
> “Does your company make improving its talent pool one of its top three priorities?” In many companies, only 10% or 20% of corporate officers said yes.
And the truth comes out. "Talent, talent, talent" as a marketing message, but … it isn't an actual priority.
Mid-way through this alleged war for talent, Adobe, Apple, Google. Intel, Intuit, eBay and others would be sued for antitrust violations around suppressing wages by non-poaching agreements. They would later settle at various points for a collective $435M. Still, "[one of the plaintiffs] said the [earlier, slightly smaller settlement] represents only one-tenth of the $3 billion in compensation the 64,000 workers could have made if the defendants had not colluded".
People are willing to changes jobs often because companies aren't offering meaningful paths for advancement. People aren't going to wait around forever, and will write their own promotion if it comes to that. I did, after watching people half as qualified as me interview for "Senior Software Engineer" with alleged years of experience as such.
I've watched corporations make blindingly obvious $100M mistakes, and then layoff the rank & file — the "talent" — who had no say, and if anything, disapproved of the decisions that led to their ultimate layoff. You can't get attached to a company, as the winds will shift tomorrow.
> almost all of the companies we studied are starting to take nontraditional approaches to recruiting
And yet there doesn't appear to be a recruiter out there that can put a competently written email into my inbox. Of the jobs I've held, I've self-applied to two, my own network for one, and the last was a recruiter.
> We don’t have a retention problem! In a sense, they’re right. At the senior level, the attrition rates at these companies are often quite low – 4% or 5% a year.
… 4%–5% attrition YoY would be low, IMO. My experience is closer to 30–50% YoY.
> They have good ideas, they have money – they just don’t have enough talented people to pursue those ideas. They are “talent-constrained.”
If you have the money, and you're "talent constrained", it is either because you don't have the money, or you're not willing to loose the purse-strings enough to get the talent.
> What do talented people get at startups? For one thing, the opportunity to make a lot of money.
Please. Lottery tickets similarly offer the opportunity to make a lot of money, but I suppose this is 1998 and the bubble hasn't imploded just quite yet.
> “Does your company make improving its talent pool one of its top three priorities?” In many companies, only 10% or 20% of corporate officers said yes.
And the truth comes out. "Talent, talent, talent" as a marketing message, but … it isn't an actual priority.
Mid-way through this alleged war for talent, Adobe, Apple, Google. Intel, Intuit, eBay and others would be sued for antitrust violations around suppressing wages by non-poaching agreements. They would later settle at various points for a collective $435M. Still, "[one of the plaintiffs] said the [earlier, slightly smaller settlement] represents only one-tenth of the $3 billion in compensation the 64,000 workers could have made if the defendants had not colluded".
> 4%–5% attrition YoY would be low, IMO. My experience is closer to 30–50% YoY
50% is fast food level attrition. 12% is bottom tier in tech.
50% is fast food level attrition. 12% is bottom tier in tech.
If it is 12%, where are the people spending 5+y at the company? (And if it's "oh that's Steve over here", that's the exception proving the rule.) And this isn't "regrettable attrition", as I've heard more than one employer call it, this is all of it.
30-50% attrition sounds insane. Which companies do you base this observation on?
This of all things got the responses. Look at the makeup of your team/division/company (as outward as you can): how many are past 2 years? 3yr? If the answer is "few" and "extremely few", P(attrition per year) has to match.
That’s only true if the company is not hiring anyone. Attrition can be 0, but headcount doubles year over year and you have half your employees with <1 year of tenure.
You should still be seeing (significant) headcount over the 2yr mark, and the places I've worked at, you don't. (Of the portion of the headcount that existed at that time minus 2yrs, ofc., i.e., yes, ignore hiring.)
> Attrition can be 0, but headcount doubles year over year and you have half your employees with <1 year of tenure.
I really should have stated it more clearly. It's a contrived example. I suppose a better way would be "of the people who started ahead of me, how many remain?" or so; the hard part is that the company has all the data, and often doesn't release it.
4%, though, corresponds to an average tenure that's preposterous when nobody stays for much over 2yr, and particularly much over 3yr.
At one employer I worked at, I know that when I hit the 3yr mark, there were 5 people that remained who were there when I started. I would estimate there were ~60 people at start. That attrition, over 3yr, corresponds to a rate of ~56% YoY.
And that employer is not at all unique or distinguished in that regard. People leave — why would they stay?
> Attrition can be 0, but headcount doubles year over year and you have half your employees with <1 year of tenure.
I really should have stated it more clearly. It's a contrived example. I suppose a better way would be "of the people who started ahead of me, how many remain?" or so; the hard part is that the company has all the data, and often doesn't release it.
4%, though, corresponds to an average tenure that's preposterous when nobody stays for much over 2yr, and particularly much over 3yr.
At one employer I worked at, I know that when I hit the 3yr mark, there were 5 people that remained who were there when I started. I would estimate there were ~60 people at start. That attrition, over 3yr, corresponds to a rate of ~56% YoY.
And that employer is not at all unique or distinguished in that regard. People leave — why would they stay?
Most "attrition" figures are based on average tenure in exponentially growing companies like Amazon or Google. Real attrition is much lower than those figures.
And it's been a wonderful experience. Made for challenging interviews, though.
With CS and SWE curricula, it is now possible to have a "rote" set of skills and education, and we can assume/test for that.
I do feel that some of the "magic" has gone from the field, but there's no arguing with the torrents of money, sloshing around.