[malandrew]

And the few that don’t leave for higher pay, leave to go work with those that left for higher pay or because morale is low because of people leaving.

By my estimates from hundreds of informal exit interviews I have done with colleagues that have left, I’d wager 60-70% left for higher pay or due to second or third order effects caused by those that left for higher pay.

Half of the remaining engineers left to pursue new opportunities. Almost always these were engineers whose first job out of school is at the current company and they hit 4 years. Many of these won’t cite pay, but almost all got offers way higher than what their first employer out of school is paying them four years later.

Those that left because of a bad manager were in the minority. Most engineers frustrated over a bad manager transfer teams within the company instead of leaving the company.

[marcinzm]

Large tech companies, your profile says you're at Google, have fairly different dynamics than other companies. And most engineers do not work at FAANG. Many people join them explicitly for the money, especially nowadays, and so you're filtering at the onset for employees who follow money above other things. So it's not surprising they leave for more money. There's also generally a decent work culture so changing managers may actually improve things. The company is also large enough to have many managers and divisions with different approaches.

My experience at startups has been that people mostly leave because of management or business collapse.

[sjburt]

I would never badmouth a manager on my way out the door. There's no point to it and anyone I am talking to may or may not be a sympathetic ear; in any case, if they're still there, they still need to work with that individual and it's really no longer my business.

"Dream Opportunity" or "Better Pay" are easy explanations that nobody will question. Best just to leave it at that.

[corobo]

Haha exactly. Of course the leaver is getting more pay, you'd have had to seriously mess up for them to leave for less pay.

They're not likely to burn bridges on the way out though so that's all you hear. No point complaining when you're done

[david38]

I’ve never known a toxic manager who people didn’t know was toxic. Me repeating that will have no influence, so why bother?

[oblio]

1. They don't know it themselves and you'd just make an enemy for nothing.

2. Not everyone knows it, otherwise they wouldn't have a job. Or they're being accepted for other reasons. In both cases, you're pissing someone off, probably higher up.

The ego boost is not worth it.

[Jensson]

Fat people doesn't like you when you call them fat. It is the same. People are emotionally influenced by things you say even if nothing of it is new to them.

[laurent92]

> out of hundreds of exit interviews

Datapoint here, I didn’t say the truth at my exit interview. I left because I was angry my team lead wouldn’t help me reach a new level in my career, but I pretended it was for higher pay. Blaming it on my manager would have been useless and closed doors if I wanted to rehire in the higher position. Saying it wouldn’t have given them an opportunity to fix it, because I needed to learn skills to become a team lead, which I hadn’t, so they couldn’t have just promoted me.

[malandrew]

For me, they are "informal" exit interviewers. I'm not a manager. I'm not in HR. I'm an IC that has asked people informally with whom I've developed good rapport. I generally don't ask people that I don't expect to be candid with me because I don't know them well enough. No one has a motive to lie to me about why they are leaving.

[ipaddr]

That's the stock and safe answer. Left for hire pay or new opportunities.

Most of the time we leave because management failed us. We would never say this because nothing good will come of it.

[alfiedotwtf]

> Those that left because of a bad manager were in the minority

hehe I've seen the complete opposite - a whole dev team rise up to get rid of the manager. And when the manager didn't leave, it was set in stone that most of the devs left within weeks.

[caeril]

> because morale is low because of people leaving.

A broader point, here: Maybe in specific instances people are leaving for legitimate or systemic reasons, but it's still sad that humans still operate on the flawed basis of social proof in 2021.

One would have hoped we'd have advanced past primitive signaling, but I guess not.

Social proof is the perennial mind-killer of humans, everywhere.

[mateo411]

Can you explain how social proof factors into people leaving companies?

I just looked up what social proof is, essentially a phenomenon of people conforming to other people who they think understand or know more than them. It's supposed to explain her mentalities.

I guess I don't see how this leads to people leaving companies. Maybe I don't understand social proof.

[_dark_matter_]

Social proof is a second order effect. Losing users, layoffs, or operational failures are the first order effects - usually of mismanagement.

[circlefavshape]

> One would have hoped we'd have advanced past primitive signaling, but I guess not

We are what we are. We don't "advance"