[HN Gopher] Leaving Well
___________________________________________________________________
Leaving Well
Author : mooreds
Score : 83 points
Date : 2021-08-03 12:18 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (avc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (avc.com)
| tckerr wrote:
| Employees are generally incentivized to keep career moves a
| secret, since if they go public they may either be terminated
| early or left with no backup plan if the search goes poorly. I do
| think this utilitarian calculus changes slightly as you move up
| the leadership ladder, since an abrupt exit can burn professional
| bridges, especially if you're in a position of large
| responsibility. But ultimately people need to do what's best for
| their career and can never be blamed for doing so.
|
| One thing I would have like the author to touch on is exploring
| whether this road should go both ways. For example, when an
| employee isn't performing and needs to be terminated, should they
| be given transition time? You would expect this from a company
| that elevates the employer-employee relationship beyond that of a
| financial transaction.
| specialist wrote:
| How do militaries handle turnover? Surely someone has studied
| this.
| wpietri wrote:
| What's missing for me here is the company's side of the
| responsibility. It's one-sided to depend on employees to give up
| opportunities for advancement in favor of a company that would
| not be as loyal to them.
|
| There are two things I think companies should do:
|
| 1) Make sure people have sufficient opportunities for growth.
| Honestly look at each person and make sure they're getting what
| they want for their career and their life out of it. Hopefully, a
| company can find ways to make sure people are always advancing in
| knowledge, skill, and capability. When they can't, they should be
| open about that and either find another way to make it up to them
| or help them find something that's a better fit.
|
| 2) Always be planning for succession. An important job of
| managers is to make sure employees are growing according to their
| capabilities. They should know who the best fit is to replace
| them and be grooming that person to be able to step into their
| job.
| specialist wrote:
| My SO has always done this for her people. Consequently, she
| has an amazing professional network. Sales & marketing.
|
| For my part, I've done what I can for my direct reports.
|
| I've never had a boss or worked at a place that has followed
| your advice. Tech sucks.
| ibudiallo wrote:
| This sounds great in theory. Up until my last job, this is the
| philosophy I lived by. When I leave, I want that the only thing
| they miss is my personality. But it is never the case.
|
| When you announce you are leaving, you turn from employee to
| liability. Especially when your departure comes as a surprise. I
| always felt the need to document everything, interview
| prospective replacement, even extend my notice to three weeks.
| But many times I see all my efforts thrown out the window the
| second I leave. It's not that what I leave behind is not
| valuable, it becomes the work of a quitter.
|
| Once my position was replaced by an intern, another time my
| position had been completely eliminated.
|
| When I leave again, I'll give good smiles and nod politely until
| my two weeks notice expire and I'll move on.
|
| Edit: Also a great reminder, when your employer wants you to
| leave, you usually have to clear your desk immediately.
| Archelaos wrote:
| Replacing a technical leadership position seems to me to be
| particularly difficult for a small company for two reasons:
|
| a) The new person needs to have a matching skillset, but for the
| transition period, duplicating the skill set is not very
| economically or would mean a large increase in IT investment.
|
| b) When the new person turns out to be a bad match or quits
| early, the overall impact on a small company is greater than on a
| large company. A single position can determine much of the fate
| of a small company.
|
| Any suggestions how best to cope with this problem?
| TimPC wrote:
| For me in non-leadership senior+ engineering positions I've
| previously accepted an offer with everything finalized except
| start date. I then notify my employer I'm leaving and discuss how
| to do a good transition. I then come back to my new employer,
| tell them how much time I need to leave well. So far new
| employers have been understanding, particularly when I imply I'll
| do my best to handle things the same way when I leave them. I
| haven't had problems doing this in the past and it seems to have
| a lot of upside. I think it's easy to destroy a good reference by
| giving two weeks notice in a situation where two weeks isn't
| adequate. I've never given longer than four weeks notice,
| although I have negotiated for an extra week on a start date with
| a new employer because the best vacations are between jobs.
| robbiemitchell wrote:
| > Cultures that allow for open honest transitions are better
| places to work and easier companies to manage.
|
| Executives and board members often talk the talk of openness,
| transparency, honesty, and directness. But it is usually one way.
| They will not stand for having honest feedback directed at them.
|
| If you are an executive or board member, think about the last
| time someone directed critical feedback in your direction, asking
| you to take responsibility for a failure mode reverberating
| throughout an organization:
|
| - Did you listen, or did you lash out?
|
| - Did you think about your role, or did you blame someone else
| for being a bad leader?
|
| - If you pushed someone out, were you open to discussing the
| debate that led to it? Or did you actually prefer for everyone to
| just stay heads down and move on?
| mabbo wrote:
| In hindsight, I'm not certain if Jeff Bezos 'left well'.
|
| Jeff had two CEOs under him- Wilke for Amazon, and Jassy for AWS.
| Six months before anyone else hears that Jeff is stepping down,
| Wilke announces that he's retiring. "So why leave? It's just
| time."[0]
|
| I'll always wonder- was it just time? Or was he waiting to step
| into Bezos's shoes when it was _his_ time, and had just found out
| they were going to be filled by someone else. I don 't even think
| that's unreasonable, but it didn't make things smoother.
|
| [0]https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/21/amazons-consumer-boss-
| jeff-w...
| rattray wrote:
| > it didn't make things smoother.
|
| Curious, what makes you say that?
| graycat wrote:
| > In hindsight, I'm not certain if Jeff Bezos 'left well'.
|
| Since Bezos is "the richest person in the world" and the
| founder of Amazon, tough for me to believe he was pushed out;
| being so rich, he has to have a lot of stock, enough that the
| BoD wouldn't or couldn't push him out.
|
| The story was that he wanted to do something else: I can
| believe that. And I believe that he gets to select the next
| CEO, will continue watching Amazon, and will take full
| operational control if he sees a need.
|
| So, does anyone know (1) what the Amazon _capitalization table_
| looks like, (2) what stock categories there are, (3) who the
| major stockholders are, and (4) the amounts of stock they own?
|
| In the sense of AVC's post, I don't believe that Bezos actually
| "left", "well" or otherwise.
|
| Uh, I grew up in Memphis and, thus, happen to know something
| about the founders of both Holiday Inns and FedEx -- in the
| sense of AVC, they never "left".
|
| [Uh, for some supporting details, I worked at FedEx, and my
| office was next to the founder's. The founder of Holiday Inn
| lived on the south side of Galloway golf course; I grew up in a
| house on the north side of that golf course. Etc.]
| mooreds wrote:
| I have written about this too, and like to call it "running
| through the finish line":
| https://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/2686
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| When I left a job managing a deep learning team, I gave about six
| months notice.
| fksadfji12 wrote:
| 6 months is an incredibly long time - very generous on your
| part!
|
| In the past, I've given 2-4 weeks, w/ option to pay for
| consulting separately (for more pay of course!)
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Do you think they'd have given you the same courtesy? "You have
| six months to find a new job."
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| No, but I liked the company and the people who worked for me,
| so why not be helpful? I have built my career on the help I
| have received from other people, so I try to give something
| back.
| devy wrote:
| Well said, I wonder what kind of recent events triggered Fred to
| write a blog post about "leaving well". In other words, were
| there any leaving not well turbulence in the companies he
| invested?
| gchamonlive wrote:
| I don't know about other countries, but here in Brazil I often
| hear about the opposite being done, but against common employees.
|
| What happen is that, usually, the employee is not satisfied with
| the work, pay or just wants to change job descriptions and start
| applying to interesting positions. If the company advertising the
| position has any sort of relationship with the current company
| the employee is working at, it will notify the employee superiors
| causing serious repercussions internally. Note that none of this
| is described in any non-compete clauses. Those are unspoken pacts
| between companies.
|
| I think companies believe that making their lives miserable in
| the process will reduce the resigning rate, but it only creates a
| culture of distrust. Because the alternative, making employees
| lives better, paying better salaries and implementing quality of
| life programs takes effort and costs money in the short run.
|
| In the long run however, I believe everybody would benefit from a
| culture of cooperation, not only executives.
| tester34 wrote:
| Why would company B tell company A that person from company A
| applied to them and make him/her kinda less likely to join e.g
| by company A offering salary raise or smth?
|
| it makes no sense
| praptak wrote:
| Company A reciprocates, so wages are being kept down. Not
| that different from
| https://www.engadget.com/2014-02-19-apple-google-and-
| other-t...
| Threeve303 wrote:
| This situation can lead to even more negative impacts on
| the employee down the line as a company can use your
| employment verification step to confidentially say anything
| they want about you. Employers have entirely too much power
| over your reputation and career even when you are long
| gone.
| michael1999 wrote:
| Class identity and broad social ties can be much stronger
| than an individual's ties to any single corporation.
| buran77 wrote:
| Quid pro quo strongly tied to the balance of power. Tiny Co.
| will probably not only refuse to hire people coming from Huge
| Co. but may may go the extra step and give Huge Co. a heads
| up in an attempt to gain favors with them. Plenty or such
| small companies got burned by getting on the wrong side of
| much larger companies, and ended up crippled by being denied
| contracts, or having their best people poached.
|
| The rest is the classic collusion between companies who see
| no reason to compete over people because this only drives
| salaries higher and raises payroll costs.
| cafard wrote:
| Minor counterpoint: My wife left a responsible position at an
| organization where she had worked for fifteen years or so, and
| gave a good deal of notice. People dropped her out of their
| calculations, and in the end she thought she might as well have
| given two weeks' notice. They did briefly bring her back for some
| consulting.
| ardit33 wrote:
| I have given 2 months notice before, even as an engineer. I
| agree with this assessment. The standard 2-3 weeks is good
| enough.
| aerosmile wrote:
| A lot of people here are justifying why from an employee's
| perspective it makes sense for a company to fire their founder
| CEO. But it's worth noting that a material percentage of HN
| readers are also current or future founders, and from their
| perspective it's 100% valuable to know the track record of VCs.
| As you build your company and go through multiple rounds of
| funding, you are going to occasionally have to make a choice
| between two or more VCs. While I have been lucky to have never
| been on the receiving end of VC shenanigans, I know enough people
| who can't say the same thing. It usually starts very innocently,
| like: "hey, look at this COO candidate, wouldn't they be amazing
| to help you build this company?" Except that the COO has a long
| relationship with the VC, and you can pretty much assume that
| every little thing that happens at the company will be
| immediately telegraphed. Another VC favorite is to be "helpful"
| in building the company and meet a bunch of your staff (or,
| worse, take them out for coffee). Again, thanks but no thanks.
| One more: 360 reviews that are shared with the board (why don't
| we get the board members' 360s from their previous CEOs?). And
| then the most damaging and highly unethical one: a CEO coach with
| loose lips (a very close VC friend has told me that he's
| successfully using one that works with many top companies - no, I
| won't share any details). In all these instances, I fully expect
| the employees to say - why not? But if you've ever been in the
| hot seat, you'll understand what you're up against, and if you're
| smart you'll say no to all of these (assuming you have the
| ability to choose, which often times you will not).
| lostdog wrote:
| Here's another tip for making leaving graceful: Get rid of cliffs
| and discontinuities in your compensation.
|
| When I had a bonus that paid out yearly, I had to wait a few
| months to leave my job. You can bet that I was less focused on my
| work for those few months, and left as quickly as possible when I
| hit the bonus day. A friend was looking to leave their job, but
| discovered that the 401k plan had some bizzaro vesting cliffs.
| They had to wait to give their resignation on exactly their
| 3-year anniversary, just in case the company decided to terminate
| them early.
| thesausageking wrote:
| For those who don't know, Fred is a VC with a reputation for
| pushing founder CEOs out. Most famously when he conspired behind
| Ev Williams' back while Ev was on paternity leave to bring in
| Dick Costolo as CEO of Twitter.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Fred is a VC with a reputation for pushing founder CEOs out
|
| Fred is a prolific VC with a lot of investments. At scale,
| eventually any investor is going to have companies that have
| outgrown their CEO.
|
| I think two things are simultaneously true:
|
| 1) Founder-run companies are, on average, better performers
| than companies that have replaced their founders with career
| CEOs. This only works if the founder can grow into the CEO role
| as the company scales.
|
| 2) Not every founder is capable or even interested in
| transitioning to the CEO role of a growing company. If the
| founder is unable or unwilling to grow into the CEO role, it's
| better for everyone to replace the founder with a more
| qualified CEO.
|
| I've worked at two startups where it was obvious that the
| founder only retained the CEO title because they wanted to
| remain top dog at their own company, but they didn't really
| want to do the work of being a CEO. In both cases (one <$100m
| startup, one >$1b unicorn) it was painfully clear to everyone
| that their was a leadership vacuum at the top. Other C-levels
| and VPs were constantly exiting the company because they were
| forced to do the jobs of the CEO while someone else took the
| credit. In one case, the CEO was ignoring important business
| meetings to come work alongside the engineers, "just like the
| old days". But he had long since fallen behind the technology
| curve and was trying to force engineers to do things like he
| did 10 years ago. It's not fun to be forced to choose between
| obeying your _CEO_ or doing things the right way. We all wished
| he'd just let us do our job and go back to filling the
| leadership void at the top of the company.
| oliv__ wrote:
| _> We all wished he'd just let us do our job and go back to
| filling the leadership void at the top of the company._
|
| Honest question: why didn't you tell him directly? I feel
| like for the right person, this could turn things around? Or
| maybe I'm just naive
| reducesuffering wrote:
| That's only a possibility if you have an appetite for
| increasing the risk of being fired from your job.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| He was clinging to the CEO position because he wanted to be
| in charge and call the shots. Anyone who got in the way of
| letting him do whatever he wanted was excluded from future
| meetings and then quietly let go in the next round of
| layoffs.
|
| Disagreeing with him meant the end of your employment. One
| of several reasons why most of us left.
| smt88 wrote:
| I used to read Fred's blog years ago. Since then, I've realized
| nothing is less useful in the business world than the thoughts
| of VCs.
|
| At best, the advice is something obvious. More often, it's
| transparently self-serving and/or based on extremely skewed
| anecdata.
| dasil003 wrote:
| Fred Wilson lost my respect recently when he was cheerleading
| a company's decision to move to single year stock grants
| instead of the traditional 4-year grants on the basis that
| employees should "not stay for the wrong reasons". Never mind
| this is yet another way for the investor class to take all
| the upside from the folks who actually do the work. Funny how
| no one complains about investors staying a company for the
| monetary upside Fred.
| vincentmarle wrote:
| How is 1-year vesting worse than 4-year vesting?
| flashgordon wrote:
| The "switch" here is in the wording. This is supposed to
| be 1-year _grants_ vs a 4 year _grant_
|
| We the former you total payout is rebased each year. With
| the later you get to reap the growth in rsu value.
| [deleted]
| dasil003 wrote:
| Because stock grants are sized based on price at the time
| of grant. With 1-year you get a max of 12months of upside
| on the valuation. With 4-year you get 48 months. When you
| hear about FAANG engineers making 7-figures this is why,
| their total comp offer may only have been $400k, but with
| stock appreciation and stacked refreshers there is huge
| upside.
|
| Of course management at these companies claims they will
| give you "more" in the new hire grant and yearly
| refresher, which may be technically true in terms of the
| dollar value they are granting, but what they fail to
| mention is that if the stock doubles one year, the next
| year your refresher is half the size (because it's based
| on valuation at the time of grant).
|
| It's especially disgusting for a VC to pitch this as the
| majority of young workers don't even know to think about
| this. Just another example of how being close to the
| money lets the investor class pull the wool over the eyes
| of the rest of us rubes.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Investors don't care how many shares the company issues
| out of a pre-allocated employee option pool. The vesting
| schedule of employees has effectively no impact on
| investors.
| skybrian wrote:
| That's a good point, but I'll just add that _not_ doing
| an immediate same-day sell when your options vest can be
| pretty important too. In theory, I'm in favor of
| diversifying for the usual reasons, but made the most
| money through procrastinating about it.
| phamilton wrote:
| eh... the same argument could be made for investing your
| extra salary into your employers equity, but I would not
| advocate that for anyone.
| wins32767 wrote:
| I don't get what you're saying here. If I get granted 40k
| options and they vest in 12 months, that's a lot better
| than 40k options that vest in 48 months. I have 10 years
| to exercise them in either case, so 10 years to get my
| upside, right?
| rabidrat wrote:
| No, they give you 10k options that vest in 12 months, and
| then next year you get 5k options that vest in 12 months,
| and then 2.5k, and then 1.25k (if stock price doubles
| every year). So you get less than half what you would
| have.
| jemfinch wrote:
| No one's explaining it particularly well, so I'll try to
| break it down.
|
| Let's say one company offers you $400k of equity vesting
| over four years. On your start date, they'll use the
| current price of the stock to translate that into a
| number of stock units (RSUs, typically), and then you'll
| get those stock units according to your vesting schedule.
| Let's say, for ease of calculation, that this $400k
| translates into 480 RSUs. So you'll vest 30 RSUs every
| quarter (let's ignore a cliff). If the price of the stock
| is rising, the 30 that vest in those later quarters will
| be worth more than the 30 that vested in your first
| quarter. Your last 30 units will be worth _a lot_ more
| than your first 30 units.
|
| Now let's say a company offers you $100k for your first
| year, and promises to refresh you another $100k each year
| thereafter. Your first year, they give you 120 units for
| the $100k. But your second year, the stock price has gone
| up, so $100k doesn't translate into 120 units anymore; it
| translates into maybe 100 units, or 80 units. Your second
| year, the stock price has gone up even further, and $100k
| translates into even fewer units. Likewise your fourth
| year. These per-year refreshes "reset" the value back at
| $100k each year, when a four year refresh would "accrue"
| more value, year over year, if the stock keeps going up
| in price, which tech stocks typically do.
|
| For a concrete example, at a former employer (GOOG) I was
| granted $150k of stock in 2019, vesting quarterly over
| four years. When I left in 2021, the value of the
| remaining shares of that grant was...$155k! The stock had
| more than doubled in price from the time of the grant,
| but it was still vesting according to the
| _original_translation from value to units. So the
| unvested value of _half_ the grant units were worth
| _more_ than the original grant, even after I'd already
| vested half the units.
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah - this is the reason it's bad.
|
| If you calculate the number of shares determined by the
| price when you join you're locking in more shares
| earlier. If you are forced to negotiate that each year
| then you lose the growth you would have gotten from
| locking in the cheaper shares earlier - and that's where
| the vast majority of growth exists.
|
| Imagine you worked at Tesla and joined at $250/share and
| five years later it's $2500/share. If you locked in 5
| year vesting at $150k/yr calculated at the $250/share
| mark then in year 5 that's now worth over 1.5M a year!
|
| If you're forced to renegotiate every year there's no way
| they're going to grant you 1.5M worth of shares for
| another year (unless you're pretty high up the chain).
|
| It screws employees from capturing that growth. It's
| framed in a twisted way as employee favorable because in
| theory if you were granted 5 years worth of equity in 1
| year it would be better, but nobody is doing that.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Ohhhh, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for explaining
| it!
| toast0 wrote:
| If instead of 40k options vesting over 4 years they plan
| to give you 10k options vesting over 1 year for the next
| 4 years, it's not great for you because the strike price
| in subsequent years may be higher (if it's significantly
| lower in future years, your company would hopefully
| cancel and regrant your earlier options at the lower
| price).
|
| Same thing can happen with RSUs, those are usually
| granted based on price. 4 year vesting of $100k worth of
| RSUs could be worth significantly more than $25k worth of
| RSUs granted with a one year vest each year for 4 years.
| taude wrote:
| No one's going to give you the same number of shares that
| would have heretofore been a 48 month term, that'd you
| get with 12. You'd instead get 10K for the first year.
| Then in 12 months, maybe get 10K more, but you'd be
| losing out on having 20K that could have potentially
| appreciated in value while you wait for the vesting.
| Repeat for the next few years, and in year four with your
| 10K grant, you'd have lost out on apprieciation of the
| prior 3.
| darksaints wrote:
| My first job out of college was as an analyst for a mid-level
| VC firm, and it is through that experience that I can whole-
| heartedly agree with you. Admittedly, I was just doing basic
| filtering of business plan submissions and validation of
| market and technology claims...but I had an up close and
| personal interaction with the partners of the firm as well as
| partners at other firms.
|
| Three things in particular stand out to me:
|
| * Most of them have had one success as an entrepreneur, and
| somehow think that everything that applied to their one
| success also automatically applies to every other company on
| the planet. This makes their "advice" almost completely
| worthless.
|
| * Most of them have absolutely monstruous egos. One of our
| partners would start every meeting with the founders of a
| potential investment with "Well, you've got two founding
| partners of a $200M investment fund sitting here with you,
| let's not waste any time". They literally treat everybody
| like it is a privilege to just be in their presence.
|
| * The incredibly vast majority of them are sheep...they
| refuse to lead rounds, and only commit to "maybe" decisions
| just to not lose out in case some other VC decides to jump
| the gun. They talk a big talk about taking big risks, but
| almost all of their decisions are "we will if you will",
| because they don't want to be the only one that investors can
| point at when something bombs.
|
| There are exceptions to each of those points, BTW...but I've
| never met one that was an exception to all of them. And
| consequently, I can't help but roll my eyes whenever one of
| them decides to spread their "wisdom".
| thesausageking wrote:
| I stopped reading VC blogs when I realized how self-serving
| they are.
|
| Fred is a fantastic writer and really pulls you in. However,
| he also uses his platform to do things like shill a shady ICO
| from one of his portfolio companies:
|
| https://avc.com/2017/05/kin/
| rattray wrote:
| Further color for folks who aren't familiar: he's also one of
| the most prolific and highly-regarded early-stage VC's in NYC
| (if not the most) with a longstanding and popular blog.
|
| Not disputing (I hadn't heard that before) just adding.
|
| Though I will note that the chances a good founder won't make a
| good CEO are probably higher at earlier stages, and getting
| "pushed out" isn't always the wrong thing for a founder who
| isn't a good fit as bigco executive.
| loganfrederick wrote:
| Yeah, I will support this. I've been at multiple startups
| where the founding CEO was not at all the right person to
| manage an organization of more than 5 people and the right
| decision for the business was to remove them.
|
| In one case, the founder was simply a rich kid who started
| the company with his family's money, fundraised from VCs,
| then everyone involved realized this person was luckier than
| skilled. It makes complete sense in this scenario for the VCs
| to remove the CEO but still like the business idea.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Yeah, but it's not always the right thing either. If a VC
| wants to give a buddy a CEO position and they sense the
| ability to push out a founder, they'll do it and still say
| it's for the good of the company. It's hard to tell what
| really happened without knowing the people involved.
|
| That's the whole point of the charade, of course, but it
| makes reputational information valuable, especially when a
| founder is deciding whether or not they want to get in bed
| with a particular VC.
| ilamont wrote:
| _This means reacting well to the news that an executive would
| like to move on._
|
| What if the executive doesn't want to move on? I'm not talking
| about people who have vested and are ready to bolt, but those who
| have founded the business and want to grow it further ... but are
| now no longer wanted by the venture capitalists.
|
| The post strikes me as something that a VC or appointed board
| member might show an inexperienced CEO or CTO before they get
| shown the door and are replaced by "professional management."
| Don't make a fuss, and accept our less-than-ideal severance
| terms. It's for the good of the company.
| jedc wrote:
| "This means reacting well to the news that an executive would
| like to move on." -- I took this section to be talking about
| accepting it when an executive quits. Some people handle this
| really well, and others don't.
| sdoering wrote:
| Reading this and before that your sister comment from
| @thesausageking I can only agree.
|
| Looks like a self serving argument coming from a VC.
|
| Not that it would be good, if we had cultures, were processes
| and cultures were in place that handle such transitions well.
| Companies and employees would profit from good transition
| handling.
|
| But I am yet to see a company that does this in a half decent
| way.
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