If The Shoe Fits: Addicted to the Company
by Miki Saxon
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.
From the start of my career, especially as a headhunter, AKA, recruiter, I have done my best to drum the following mantra into the heads of both hiring managers and candidates.
Life is LARGE; career is but a small part of the whole. A major problem is created when the adjectives (and, therefore, the attitudes) are reversed.
Most agreed, but that was then…
These days, too many companies intentionally design their perks and campus to encourage people to stay — like Facebook.
My greeter walked me to one of the complex’s main arteries from Hacker Way toward Main Street. “The campus was designed to be a cross between Disneyland and downtown Palo Alto.”
If everything is at work why leave?
Maybe to have a life?
Of course, before you can leave you need to get your work done and it’s hard to be productive with all the distractions.
“It’s no wonder people are working longer, earlier, later, on weekends, and whenever they have a spare moment,” Jason Fried writes in the new book It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work, which hits the shelves in the US today (Oct. 2). “People can’t get work done at work anymore.”
Forbes recently published a Quora response to the question What People Won’t Tell You About Working At A Top Tech Company that presents both the pros and cons of working for a company with the main goal of arranging its perks and compensation so people won’t leave.
Not just won’t leave, but can’t leave.
It’s not just the perks, but the compensation. Even those willing to take a reduced package will find other companies hesitant to hire them. And when the downturn comes, as it always does, they will be in an even worse position.
A couple of weeks ago Ryan accepted a new position and I wrote his new company, Spatial Networks, up as a role model.
It’s proof companies don’t have to turn themselves into a field of poppies to attract and retain great talent. We’ll look at more examples next week.
Image credit: HikingArtist
October 9th, 2018 at 1:15 am
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