[lumost]

After 1-3 years of tenure things start to look different imo. Sure you get bad hires, and you also get people who become lazy. But on any given project you tend to have some split of people who work on the wrong things, don’t work on anything, or fail to deliver. People who consistently hit one of these categories usually move on on their own - either because of culture fit or comp growth. It’s much easier and healthier to focus on retaining your best people. As long as someone is doing something, and isn’t a net drag on the team - firing seems to be more pain then the alternative in software.

Assuming that the industry returns to its standard 30-50% attrition year on year.

[ROTMetro]

And those people become lazy because they put A LOT into the company those first 1-3 years. And after they coast a bit, they usual come back strong because 1. They are intimately familiar with the corporate culture and the internal software paradigm and 2. They have emotional investment. It's like getting divorced in your early 40s because things are not the same as a few years before, and not getting to the good part of a relationship.

[lumost]

Absolutely! I also didn’t quite see it when I moved around earlier in my career - but many of the more tenured folks simply know how to work efficiently in the organization.

They tend not to pick up meaningless fights, or invest time in work that the org doesn’t care about, when their are debates - they can usually settle them.

In hindsight I spent too much time early in my career on work no one cared about. I spend less time on that stuff now and have better wlb and feedback to boot.