Steve (The Biscuit) provided this link to The Daily WTF:
“If you’ve worked at enough companies in the IT industry, you’ve probably noticed that the most talented software developers tend to not stick around at one place for too long. The least talented folks, on the other hand, entrench themselves deep within the organization, often building beachheads of bad code that no sane developer would dare go near, all the while ensuring their own job security and screwing up just enough times not to get fired.
…Bruce F. Webster aptly named this phenomenon the Dead Sea Effect.”
There’s a lot of wisdom in this. I worked for Nortel for 6+ years and when I left, the relationship was over. I still had a few friends (those who were bothered to be on instant messenger networks other than MSN) but for the most part, I was the ex and not an alumnus by any means.
I have hoped, in my management of Mac-Sys that this is different. I still speak to many past employees (the exceptions generally being those who left under a cloud because they wanted something the company couldn’t provide during the first year or so when we were fighting just to stay alive.)
I think when my tenure with $BIG_COMPANY ends, it’ll be similar to Nortel which is a shame. Big companies should have more resources to hook up with past employees rather than treating them like the Ex with the onerous personal habits.
Aidan, as a Thoughtworks alumnus (never mind Inktomi, Blackstar etc) gets a lot of street cred for being a developer who gets things done. I find it heartening that Thoughtworks has an alumnus system – it’s such a positive aspect of company-employee relationships and certainly colours the way the employee will speak of the employer in years to come.
Would I rather have a good relationship with a past employer? Hell yeah. So what can you do as an employer?
- Don’t be a dick. People are going to leave and while it could be because of personal issues with you, it’s more likely it’s personal issues which they cannot escape
- Don’t be a dick. This bears repeating because sometimes the employee will make an effort to make life difficult unintentionally. They may be in all sorts of turmoil in their personal lives and dropping the job may be their response. Don’t make it more difficult
- Don’t be a dick. Keep in contact with these folk. Why not even start a mini social network for them? Create the FaceBook group, keep their Jabber login active. For security remove their logins to core systems but don’t be doing a global find/replace on their uid in the systems – that’s stupid.