[ChrisMarshallNY]

I ran a pretty high-functioning team of experienced C++ image processing pipeline programmers, for 25 years. We were part of a much larger, international (and interdisciplinary) team. We worked for one of the most renowned imaging companies in the world.

Some of the folks we dealt with, were the top people in their field, and not everyone was especially good at getting along with others.

Everyone thought they had The Answer, and everyone was totally passionate about doing their best work.

Needless to say, we often had heated discussions.

For the most part, we did excellent work (not always, but team infighting was not the reason for issues).

My personal experience, is that creative, passionate, high-talent teams can be pretty messy, and managing them, is tricky.

[sally_glance]

25 years is a long time, I'm intrigued. Looking back, can you single out any specific rules, workflows or cultural reasons which made this possible? Also, how much fluctuation in team members did you experience?

I'm currently managing multiple teams, some of which are experiencing challenges with clashes between top talent. I'm sure there is no magical bullet, but still very interested in anecdotal data on this.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Well, the biggest “secret,” was keeping people on board, for a long time. It was almost impossible to hire folks that could “hit the ground running,” as the tech was very proprietary, so investment in training was a big deal.

When they finally wrapped up our team, the person with the least tenure, had been there a decade.

Keeping people for a long time, is a big topic, on its own.

Also, everyone believed in The Mission. Inspiring talented, smart people, is not easy. It requires a great deal of Integrity and Humility, on the part of the management. That’s rare as hen’s teeth, these days.

It’s an old-fashioned Japanese “craftsman” company, with a 100-year-plus history of making some of the best optical equipment in the world, so there was a lot of inspiration (and very difficult minds to change, which could be a challenge).

[sally_glance]

Thanks, that was insightful. Vision and mission can be a hard sell, depending on the company. Having some decades of engineering tradition certainly helps with that.

Focusing on retention somehow went out of fashion these days, it pains me how often I have to reiterate short vs long term costs. It's not all on the employer side though, loyalty seems a rare attribute today as well... I get many CVs of people who barely ever stayed a year at any one company. Doesn't mean they won't stay with us, but takes some convincing arguments on their side.

[fuzzy_biscuit]

Companies that show little loyalty should expect little loyalty. It seems to be a general business culture truth right now that loyalty is something that will be exploited rather than lauded. That's just my experience as someone who has been in 3 consecutive layoffs over the last few years and became a bit jaded/bitter before my current gig.

[sunray2]

Do you think that craftmanship and longevity, in terms of keeping these people on board, go hand-in-hand?

As an example, Hamamatsu Photonics has been in the optics field a long time, and is going hard on developing for quantum physics applications. It's refreshing, since pretty much every company in quantum computing is very young, so hasn't had the time to build that craftsman vibe yet. Of course, there are people who've been working on quantum information technologies for a few decades now.

I look forward to seeing this ethos developing in quantum, for sure.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

> Do you think that craftmanship and longevity, in terms of keeping these people on board, go hand-in-hand?

In this case, yes. But that also depends on who you want to retain.

If you want to retain folks that treat their work seriously, and in a craftsmanlike manner, it's important to provide a structure that incubates and rewards that.

We've really reached a point, in tech, where we're in a "death spiral." Companies treat their employees like crap. They may pay them well, but they treat them terribly. This means no loyalty, so the employee feels no issue with leaving as soon as the grass looks greener elsewhere, and the management feels justified in looking at their employees as "disloyal," or even "dangerous." It's a classic negative feedback loop. Money is the only meaningful currency, so people flit around, jacking up their salary, and looking at each company as "just another job."

The people that need to start the change, are CEOs (and shareholders). It's difficult, because "blinking first," seems "wussy," and also, it's pretty much certain that employees would continue to act the way that they do now, for some time, until a new culture gets established. That time, may be enough time to kill the company, as their more rapacious competition eats their lunch.

I was lucky to join an old corporation that had a long-established tradition of retaining top talent. Not sure if you would be able to start a new one, with a similar ethos, these days.

[ashoeafoot]

You have now read this in Werner Herzogs voice, and from now on every divadev sounds like kinski to you.