Managers, say goodbye to your employees with pride

As founding CEO of Kabam, I take a certain pride in saying goodbye to my employees. But not in a Donald Trump-like “You’re Fired!” way.

When I do my job right, Kabam employees rapidly grow their skills and advance their careers. An unfortunate bi-product is Kabam employees also rise to A-list status with industry recruiters. Retaining high performers is almost as difficult as hiring them in the first place, and sometimes we lose people to other companies. When that happens, saying goodbye is bittersweet. I don’t like to lose valued employees, but I am proud to have given them the opportunity to grow in their careers and become even more marketable.

Take Amit Ranade. Whip-smart, Stanford computer science grad, Amit joined Kabam in our earliest days as a games company. He had solid technical skills but not much management experience. We initially hired him as product manager for one of our fledgling games but soon realized he could take on so much more. Amit grew one game, and another, which landed him a studio management role with responsibility for 100 people. Amit then became instrumental in building Kabam’s platform technology. We eventually gave him responsibility for TechOps. Then marketing. Then third-party publishing. In his nearly five years at the company, Amit left virtually no job untouched, rising to President of Distribution and Platform. So when Amit decided to step back from Kabam and focus on what he loves — helping build a new company — I said goodbye to him with a conflicted sense of pride and regret. Pride at providing an environment where Amit could excel and regret knowing he will take his remarkable skills elsewhere. Amit’s new company, Lantern, is fortunate to have him and I will miss him dearly.

Sometimes it’s not the employee’s choice to say goodbye. These instances can be even harder because I’ve had to make the tough decisions about which areas of the company to fund and which to de-emphasize. In Silicon Valley, no one expects to work at the same company for decades. Still, no CEO wants to eliminate someone’s job; I certainly do everything I can to avoid it. I’ve tried to make the task more palatable by enabling employees to leave with dignity — and be well prepared for their next opportunity.

Whether employees chose to say goodbye or must move on because of shifting business priorities, everyone who leaves Kabam should ultimately be able to fondly look back at their time here. At least that’s my greatest wish.

To create a great environment that people will regard for years to come, I have established the three C’s of employee motivation:

• Culture – build an amazing place where people are genuinely excited to work; where they collaborate with colleagues whom they admire and respect; have flexibility with their hours and commutes; and an environment that fosters creativity and a learning culture
• Challenge – create a company that challenges everyone to do the best work of their career to date; never feel like success is final
• Compensation – provide a competitive salary, unmatched benefits and stock options; and unique liquidity events that make the stock options real for vested employees without the company having to go public

This environment isn’t for everyone. Change agents are welcomed and status quo seekers need not apply. Those who join have every opportunity to flourish. And if we have to say goodbye, we know we’ve given each other our very best.

Just as Amit did.

This post was first published on LinkedIn.