Why I’m happy when our employees leave

The Kulina team at Yogyakarta

Last month, about eight employees left our company (that’s about a fourth of the total headcount). Some have stayed with us for almost three years, while others for as little as three months.

The last all-hands meeting was quite emotional for us, and definitely was for me personally. But after a week of firefighting, I finally have time to write down my thoughts and why I was actually happy about the situation.

It’s about their careers, not your company

At an early-stage startup like ours, the tasks are never-ending and the pressure is paramount. This gives people an accelerated career path where they are in charge of many things, learn a lot, and become very valuable not only for the company but also for others.

To give you an example, Tika started off working in our food team before moving to our marketing team, where she handled the community of our customers. She eventually ended up being our copywriter. A few months later, she found a new opportunity as a UX copywriter at Traveloka, one of the four unicorns in Indonesia.

It’s about her career, not our company, and we’re glad to be part of her journey.

It’s a culture fit test

Nothing can explain a startup journey better than the two charts above. With all the hype around the startup ecosystem, many people want to work in a startup purely because it is a trend and not because of the learning, mission, and experience.

I realized these people are probably not going to survive because a startup encompasses both the ups and downs. It takes a lot of mental fitness to stick through and continue doing what you believe in. We’ve also seen some people who would probably be very successful in big companies but not at our stage.

The best form of mentorship at a startup is your own curiosity and the ability to do many things and learn quickly. Some also learn from working closely with the founders.

So, when people told me they were leaving because they needed a more structured mentorship (or being told what to do), I was very happy. I have done my job of helping them explore their career.

It’s an opportunity to stop and rethink

Every time someone leaves our company, regardless of their role, we take time to reflect and ask whether the way we’ve been doing something has been the most productive or even necessary. Most of the time, we discontinue a role and try a different approach. This gives us an opportunity to refresh and renew. If robots/AI are going to disrupt us anyway, we might as well disrupt ourselves first.

It pushes us to think about our people

We take time internally to think about why people are leaving. Is it because of our culture? Is it because of the pay? Is it because it’s not exciting anymore?

It’s time to level up