[ikura]

> So what does it say?

It depends on the definition of tenure... if tenure is defined as a closed interval (i.e. defined only for developers who've joined and then left) then it means that, of the developers who have departed, none had wanted to grow with the company, or the company had let them go. For a startup company this might not be a good sign.

If tenure is defined as the length of time the developer had worked, OR, has worked so far, then it means they have a core group of developers and aren't growing the development team particularly quickly. Again, this might not be a good sign for a startup.

[yreg]

> then it means that, of the developers who have departed, none had wanted to grow with the company, or the company had let them go. For a startup company this might not be a good sign.

What. Of course that "of the developers who have departed" all have left/been fired, that's a tautology. How is it "not a good sign"? Or is it supposed to be a bad sign that there even is a person who is not working there anymore?

[joelfried]

I think parent meant:

Assuming tenure is defined ONLY for those who have already left, 2 years is a bad sign. For a 3 year old company, if that definition is used, it is indeed pretty bad. It means that _of the people who are leaving_, people stay a couple of years, then bounce. This means people stick around long enough to get past the warmup of new employment, get used to your stack and tech, then bounce for greener pastures.

The very important metric this leaves out though is what percentage of the company actually left. If there's 7 people in this 3 year old company and only one person left last year . . . that says almost nothing. Any single person can leave for a great variety of reasons. You'd need a decent sample for this to matter.

The flip side definition of "tenure" is worth considering though: if the average tenure of 2 years includes people still working at the company, there are a lot more variables to content with before you can know anything. A 3 year old company could have an average employee of it have been working there for 2 years and not a single person who joined the company having ever left (e.g. if at year 1 there was a decent amount of hiring). I think this is probably why parent wanted to restrict the definition (and why it's worth thinking about this angle) - because otherwise the company ramp up and trajectory and hiring patterns become hidden variables and you can't glean anything out of the tenure numbers on their own.

[yreg]

I still don't get what's bad about that. So what would be a good tenure for a 3 year old company if 2 years is bad? 2.5 years? 1 year? 6 months?