[emmett]

No poaching agreements are not bullshit - you are giving them privileged information (who your best people are) and in exchange you're expecting them to use that information only for the purpose directed.

It's similar to an NDA. Nothing bullshit about it.

[phillmv]

> you are giving them privileged information (who your best people are)

Between linked in, google, your company's about page, github and twitter accounts, you can already figure this out in ten minutes flat. You don't even need to know that in order to recruit people.

--

I feel that NDAs are kind of bullshit too, but they're typically not as expressly oppressive. Unless they stretch into noncompetes, which are incredible bullshit.

[simonw]

"Between linked in, google, your company's about page, github and twitter accounts, you can already figure this out in ten minutes flat"

I don't think that's true at all. Some of the best engineers I've worked with have had very small online footprints (they're too busy building awesome things at their company to spend much time on Twitter etc). Now that I'm responsible for hiring, I consider knowledge of that kind of person to be incredibly important.

[dagw]

I have to agree here. Most of the best people I've worked with don't have much in the way of twitter and github accounts. Github and twitter only seems popular within a fairly narrow professional and cultural niche.

[pawelwentpawel]

I understand using github/twitter a lot if you're a developer. When you work on something you might want to get some immediate feedback/testers on it.

Yet still, linkedin (even though useful) scares me away a little bit. Each single time I get back, I see more and more people inventing longer and more exotic job names and descriptions, pitching around with some void statements and uploading their pictures in suits.

[nathan_long]

My problem with LinkedIn is other people. People want me to say I know them when I don't (hey, networking!). People want me to recommend them when I have only seen them in the hallway and don't even know what they do.

I am very conservative about these things. Does LinkedIn's own model disagree? Does it push people towards larger networks, instead of smaller, higher-value ones?

Am I doing it wrong, or is (seemingly) everyone else?

[pawelwentpawel]

There is quite a lot of recruiters/randoms just adding as many people as possible. Without any introductory message, I would just consider that as spam. However, if you know somebody in person but don't know him very well then I don't see a huge problem. I get quite a lot of invites from my former class mates that I had no real connection with. But hey, you never know where your life takes you. Those connections might accidentally come in very useful one day.

As for the recommendations - they've got nothing to loose really. In the worst case they won't get one.

[vellum]

I agree. Github is like a portfolio. But you don't need a portfolio if you're a great developer with a strong network.

[barrkel]

This is really, really not true. Some of (perhaps even most of) the best engineers I've worked with had almost zero public profile, almost to the point of being publicity phobic.

[phillmv]

In retrospect, I was being a little hyperbolic. I too know plenty of developers without an online presence.

Anyhow, my point was, who your best employees are is not privileged information.

[SonicSoul]

care to elaborate exactly how you accomplish this in 10 min? or any other time period?

out of all the great developers i know, 1 has a technical blog (and he updates it very infrequently). Also, how do you gauge if someone is a star based on their twitter or linked in profiles?

[phillmv]

A good 90% of the people I know have linked in profiles. You look at their titles. See who is a friend of the top cheese on facebook, sort by universities. Github is self explanatory, I hope.

[JoeAltmaier]

Poaching is a myth. You assume the only reason your folks are working for you, is they don't know about a better deal elsewhere?

Every sensible employee should regard every paycheck as a renewed offer of employment. If a better deal exists, its their choice, not yours, whether they stay or not.

Your only real option is to treat employees well, make sure they know you appreciate their talents, and try to generate some loyalty.

[flyinRyan]

Good post. Loyalty in the workplace is also nonsense. We're (mostly) all capitalists here we should act like it. Never ever stay at a company because you "love it" or some childish notion of "loyalty". You should be there because it's the best allocation of your resource of time/knowledge.

I don't care about the company I work for and I feel no more loyalty to them then I do an online electronics store. Having said that, my employment has two goals: making me money now and making me money later. This means that I won't leave the company I'm at if someone else offers me $2 more a year. There are a lot of factors that make up my market value and all of them have to be considered. I have left one company to work at another at lower pay because I knew that move would put me in a better position several years down the road, i.e. would increase my market value. I said before I didn't care about companies I work for. Emotionally that's true. Professionally, of course I want them to do well because them failing hurts the value of the time I spent there. I also want to stay long enough to accomplish big things that I can talk about to the next place I interview for.

If you go into a relationship where you are more emotionally attached to them then they are to you you're going to get hurt. And a company is just one downsizing away from letting you go no matter how much they make you feel like "family".

[lsc]

>Good post. Loyalty in the workplace is also nonsense. We're (mostly) all capitalists here we should act like it. Never ever stay at a company because you "love it" or some childish notion of "loyalty". You should be there because it's the best allocation of your resource of time/knowledge.

This is how I feel... and probably how most entrepreneurs feel. That's why we are striking out on our own.

This is not how many employees feel. One guy working for me (at wages I pay) felt actively guilty and apologized to me for interviewing with google. I mean, he'd have gotten a staggering raise if he got the job. (I think he's right on the edge of being good enough; I bet if he practised interviewing and tried a few times, he could make it. Fortunately for me, he failed the first interview, and like a lot of people, he finds interviewing uncomfortable.) I mean, if anything, I feel a little bit proud when my employees go on to much bigger and better things; I don't have money, so I hire people that are just starting, or that have been unemployed for a while and need to start over. I mean, I'd /like/ them to stay with me longer? But if you aren't capable of becoming google materiel, well, I try not to let you past the 'project-based contractor' stage, so it's just plain irrational for me to expect people to stick around for my low wages forever.

I absolutely don't understand this. I mean, I don't expect loyalty. (I mean, I expect honesty... but I don't expect anyone to stick around if someone else offers a lot more cash.) But, many employees really do feel something like Loyalty. As a owner, it would be in my interest to put some effort into making those sorts more comfortable.

Now, what to do? I don't really understand that feeling of loyalty, so I can't address it directly, but I can say "besides money, what makes these people comfortable/happy? that I can give them and google can't?" - like one benefit I give employees is extreme schedule flexibility. Another is being careful to have an environment where your employees don't feel like they will get fired. (yeah. I don't get this one, either. But it's huge. Normal people are terrified of getting let go. But, I guess large companies do this, too. Of course, instead of giving people severance, when I have to lay people off, I go pester all the recruiters I know and try to get them better jobs.)

but yeah. this is something, I think, that we, as entrepreneurs, should study. It's important to understand.

[flyinRyan]

I think just letting your employees know that you go to these lengths to help them if you wind up with no other choice but to let them go will be at least as valuable as "job stability" (what ever that means these days).

[lsc]

Every boss talks like he's going to take care of you, and (I hope) it sounds like the bullshit it is to most people. (when I hear a boss saying he's going to take care of me, I hear "I want you to do more work for me for no additional compensation") But, if when you do fire someone you do get them a better job? that person will talk, and it won't be regarded as bullshit... and you can do a lot worse than hiring people recommended or evaluated by someone that you /know/ is good.

[wilmoore]

It is times like this that I wish for multi-upvotes.

[mjwalshe]

its colusion and in some places ileagal it also voilates for on the Universal Human rights.