Why good people leave large tech companies

This week in Tech in Asia Jobs shares insights into how successful companies operate, hire, and more.

Photo credit: Benson Kua.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” –Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I was visiting an ex-student who’s now the CFO of a large public tech company. The company is still one of the hottest places to work in tech. They make hardware with a large part of their innovation in embedded software and services.

The CFO asked me to stay as one of the engineering directors came in for a meeting.

I wish I hadn’t…

The director was there to protest the forced relocation of his entire 70-person team from Palo Alto to the East Bay. “Today, most of my team walks to work or takes the train there. The move will have them commuting for another 45 minutes. We’re going to lose a lot of them,” the director said.

He had complained to his boss, the VP of engineering, who admitted his hands were tied, as this was a “facilities matter,” and the VP of facilities reported to the CFO. So, this was a meeting of last resort, as the engineering director was making one last appeal to the CFO to keep his team in town.

While a significant part of the headcount of this tech company was in manufacturing, the director’s group was made up of experienced software engineers. Given they could get new jobs by just showing up at the local coffee shop, I was stunned by the CFO’s reply: “Too bad. But we need the space. They’re lucky they work here. If they leave, at least they’ll have [name of the company] on their resume.”

WTF? I wasn’t sure who was more shocked: the director or me.

After the director left, I must have looked pretty surprised as the CFO explained, “We have tens of thousands of employees, and at the rate we’re growing, it’s almost impossible to keep up with our space needs in the Bay Area. You know, for our CEO, ‘love us or leave us’ has been his policy from day one.” (By coincidence, the CEO was an intern at one of my startups more than two decades ago.)

I asked, “Now that the company is public and has grown so large, has the policy changed?” The CFO replied, “No. Our CEO believes we are on a mission to change the world, and you really have to want to work here or you ought to leave. And because we’re inundated with resumes from people who want to work for us, he sees no reason to change.”

I don’t know what was more sobering: thinking that the policy which might have made sense in a scrappy startup was now being applied to a company with 10,000+ employees or that the phrase “we are on a mission to change the world, and you really have to want to work here or you ought to leave” was the exact same line I used when the now-CEO was my intern.

Adult supervision

Before the rapid rise of unicorns (startups with a valuation over a billion dollars), when boards were still in control, they “encouraged” the hiring of “adult supervision” for founders after they found product/market fit.

Wake-up call

Postscript

Lessons learned