Top Ten Reasons Why Large Companies Fail To Keep Their Best Talent

Whether it’s a high-profile tech company like Yahoo!, or a more established conglomerate like GE or Home Depot, large companies have a hard time keeping their best and brightest in house. Recently, GigaOM discussed the troubles at Yahoo! with a flat stock price, vested options for some of their best people, and the apparent free flow of VC dollars luring away some of their best people to do the start-up thing again.

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Yet, Yahoo!, GE, Home Depot, and other large established companies have a tremendous advantage in retaining their top talent and don’t. I’ve seen the good and the bad things that large companies do in relation to talent management.
Here’s my Top Ten list of what large companies do to lose their top talent :


1. Big Company Bureaucracy. This is probably the #1 reason we hear after the fact from disenchanted employees. However, it’s usually a reason that masks the real reason. No one likes rules that make no sense. But, when top talent is complaining along these lines, it’s usually a sign that they didn’t feel as if they had a say in these rules. They were simply told to follow along and get with the program. No voice in the process and really talented people say “check please.”

2. Failing to Find a Project for the Talent that Ignites Their Passion. Big companies have many moving parts — by definition. Therefore, they usually don’t have people going around to their best and brightest asking them if they’re enjoying their current projects or if they want to work on something new that they’re really interested in which would help the company. HR people are usually too busy keeping up with other things to get into this. The bosses are also usually tapped out on time and this becomes a “nice to have” rather than “must have” conversation. However, unless you see it as a “must have,” say adios to some of your best people. Top talent isn’t driven by money and power, but by the opportunity to be a part of something huge, that will change the world, and for which they are really passionate. Big companies usually never spend the time to figure this out with those people.


3. Poor Annual Performance Reviews. You would be amazed at how many companies do not do a very effective job at annual performance reviews. Or, if they have them, they are rushed through, with a form quickly filled out and sent off to HR, and back to real work. The impression this leaves with the employee is that my boss — and, therefore, the company — isn’t really interested in my long-term future here. If you’re talented enough, why stay? This one leads into #4….


4. No Discussion around Career Development. Here’s a secret for most bosses: most employees don’t know what they’ll be doing in 5 years. In our experience, about less than 5% of people could tell you if you asked. However, everyone wants to have a discussion with you about their future. Most bosses never engage with their employees about where they want to go in their careers — even the top talent. This represents a huge opportunity for you and your organization if you do bring it up. Our best clients have separate annual discussions with their employees — apart from their annual or bi-annual performance review meetings — to discuss succession planning or career development. If your best people know that you think there’s a path for them going forward, they’ll be more likely to hang around.


5. Shifting Whims/Strategic Priorities. I applaud companies trying to build an incubator or “brickhouse” around their talent, by giving them new exciting projects to work on. The challenge for most organizations is not setting up a strategic priority, like establishing an incubator, but sticking with it a year or two from now. Top talent hates to be “jerked around.” If you commit to a project that they will be heading up, you’ve got to give them enough opportunity to deliver what they’ve promised.


6. Lack of Accountability and/or telling them how to do their Jobs. Although you can’t “jerk around” top talent, it’s a mistake to treat top talent leading a project as “untouchable.” We’re not saying that you need to get into anyone’s business or telling them what to do. However, top talent demands accountability from others and doesn’t mind being held accountable for their projects. Therefore, have regular touch points with your best people as they work through their projects. They’ll appreciate your insights/observations/suggestions — as long as they don’t spillover into preaching.

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7. Top Talent likes other Top Talent. What are the rest of the people around your top talent like? Many organizations keep some people on the payroll that rationally shouldn’t be there. You’ll get a litany of rationales explaining why when you ask. “It’s too hard to find a replacement for him/her….” “Now’s not the time….” However, doing exit interviews with the best people leaving big companies you often hear how they were turned off by some of their former “team mates.” If you want to keep your best people, make sure they’re surrounded by other great people.

8. The Missing Vision Thing. This might sound obvious, but is the future of your organization exciting? What strategy are you executing? What is the vision you want this talented person to fulfill? Did they have a say/input into this vision? If the answer is no, there’s work to do — and fast.


9. Lack of Open-Mindedness. The best people want to share their ideas and have them listened to. However, a lot of companies have a vision/strategy which they are trying to execute against — and, often find opposing voices to this strategy as an annoyance and a sign that someone’s not a “team player.” If all the best people are leaving and disagreeing with the strategy, you’re left with a bunch of “yes” people saying the same things to each other. You’ve got to be able to listen to others’ points of view — always incorporating the best parts of these new suggestions.


10. Who’s the Boss? If a few people have recently quit at your company who report to the same boss, it’s likely not a coincidence. We’ll often get asked to come in and “fix” someone who’s a great sales person, engineer, or is a founder, but who is driving everyone around them “nuts.” We can try, but unfortunately, executive coaching usually only works 33% of the time in these cases. You’re better off trying to find another spot for them in the organization — or, at the very least, not overseeing your high-potential talent that you want to keep.
It’s never a one-way street. Top talent has to assume some responsibility as much as the organization. However, with the scarcity of talent — which will only increase in the next 5 years — Smart Organizations are ones who get out in front of these ten things, rather than wait for their people to come to them, asking to implement this list.

One key to career growth is never to stop learning

Takeaway: Don’t stop learning just because your company doesn’t offer formal training. It’s up to you to keep your skills sharp and increase your knowledge.

Earlier this week, Patrick Gray wrote a guest piece in this blog about turbo-charging your tech career. One point he makes is that tech pros should not just wait around for corporate-sanctioned training to learn new skills. He says, “If you rely on corporate-style training to enhance your skills, you’ll likely never get anywhere.”

This reminded me of a situation I was faced with a couple of years ago when my son was in elementary school. He’d been diagnosed with ADHD, which these days is about as common as a second ear. However, in our school system, children with this diagnosis were placed in some special ed classes and/or aligned with a behavior modification plan. His troubles focusing were attributed to a willful disregard for the teacher and the class work, etc.

In one “we have a problem” meeting, I asked the teacher what she knew about ADHD. Her response? Not much because the school system did not mandate knowing about it. I was pretty shocked. I couldn’t understand why someone who, if the statistics were true, would likely have a pretty healthy proportion of her class exhibiting ADHD symptoms would not do some kind of looking into it on her own accord. Knowing a few facts could help her reach these students better and generally increase her ability to do her job. Why would someone wait for an officially sanctioned okay from the department of education?

I think the same holds true for any job, but especially for IT. IT pros should not wait for the company to pay for further training in new technologies. In fact, most of the IT pros I’ve spoken to say that learning new technologies is something they can’t really help doing, given their innate curiosity and interest in the area.

Pick up a piece of software and take it for a test drive. Poke around a new OS-maybe you’ll be the one to find a compelling reason for your company to upgrade. Take advantage of tuition reimbursement programs if your company offers them. Just keep growing and don’t wait around for company-sanctioned training.

Why trying to sound smarter can make you seem dumb

Takeaway: Think using big words makes you sound smarter? Think again.

If I had to pick one grammatical blunder that annoys me more than any other it would be the mangling of direct objects in an attempt to sound smarter. More specifically, how some people will use “I’ incorrectly, as in, “My grandfather left his money to her and I.” One of my elementary school teachers seared into my head an easy technique for checking this kind of construction-remove the first direct object phrase (her and) then see if the sentence makes sense. In this case it would be “My grandfather left his money to I.” Of course, this is not correct–the word “I” should be “me.”

But I see and hear that construction all the time–on scripted television shows, on the news, everywhere. Why? My only guess is that students who try to use “me and him” as subjects of a sentence are either smacked by their grammar teachers or ridiculed openly as hicks so they learn pretty quickly not to do it. But then they overcompensate and try to use “I” as a direct object when it shouldn’t be.

I also do a lot of editing in my line of work. I am constantly seeing “hundred dollar words” used in place of smaller, simpler words that mean the same thing (utilize instead of use, possesses instead of has) in an attempt to sound smarter. This practice actually has the opposite effect for the reader, according to one study. Daniel Oppenheimer, a psychologist at Princeton, took a handful of writing samples and used a thesaurus to replace the simple words with needlessly flowery ones-a practice he said he’d seen used quite often by techies and business people.

The result? As the grandiosity and complexity of the language increased, the judges’ estimation of the intelligence of the authors decreased.

So are you guilty of this? Have you seen this in others? What are some of the worst offenders of the “trying to sound smart” way of communicating that you’ve seen?

10 things you may be asked during a developer interview (and how to handle them)

Takeaway: These tips will help you clear some of the most common interview hurdles when you’re trying to land a developer job.

Many software developers I have talked to absolutely dread job interviews. And I have seen job candidates absolutely flub a number of questions. Some are standard interview questions, but a developer will still need to answer them in a way that relates them to the job. Other questions are specific to the software development industry. Here are 10 job interview questions that come up in development interviews, with tips on how to address them.

1: Tell us about your current position

Employers want to know about what you are currently doing a lot more than they want to know about prior positions. The reason for this is simple: The world of software development moves so fast that what you did two or more years ago is interesting for background but probably has little bearing on their current work. When asking this question, the interviewer is trying to relate what you currently do to the position the company is offering, and you will want to answer with that in mind. For example, if the position you are applying for involves a lot of database programming, emphasize where in your current job you have worked with databases.

2: Programming challenges

Many employers will present you with some sort of programming challenge. These range from being asked to sketch out a piece of pseudo code that implements some business logic or being handed a piece of code and told to find the bugs to being put down in front of a computer and asked to code away. What they are usually looking for is not just a certain level of competency — they also want to see how you go about solving the problem. You can offer to narrate your thought process as you solve the problem. If they take you up on it, that will help them to learn what they are looking for. Or perhaps when you are done, you could walk the interviewer through how you solved it.

3: Do you have any examples of your work?

Employers love to be able to look at real-world examples of your work. Unfortunately, this is rarely possible. The truth is, in most circumstances, your work is the property of your employer and you can’t be taking it outside of the building without permission. And it would be unusual to have a boss say, “Sure, go grab a couple of your best apps from source control to take on the job interview!” Instead of being unable to provide any samples, contribute to an open source project or work on an application at home that is sophisticated enough to let your skills shine. Then you will have something that you can show the interviewer and also be able to demonstrate an ability to work on your own and manage your own time, too. These side projects can often serve as a great talking point in the interview.

4: Brainteasers

Apart from asking you to demonstrate some programming abilities in the interview, some employers may give you a variety of brainteasers. Some people are really good programmers and stink at these, but the idea is to test your overall problem-solving skills. Luckily, you can prepare for these a little bit by picking up a few brainteaser books (usually only a dollar or two) at a book store or supermarket and doing a few every day. Most of these brainteasers follow a similar format, so by practicing, you will understand how to approach the most common types. There are also a few standard ones that come up on a regular basis, such as the one where you need to get a group of people across a river with a boat of limited capacity.

5: Do you have a security clearance?

Depending upon the job, a security clearance may be required. Employers prefer hiring people with one already because it simplifies things. It would be a big hassle to hire someone and then discover that they can’t get the needed clearance to do the job. If you have a clearance, make sure that it is up to date. It’s also a good item to list on a resume.

If you do not have a security clearance, ask before you come in for the interview about any security requirements for the job and research whether you are eligible for any security clearances needed. This way, when asked, you can answer with something like, “No, I do not have that clearance, but I have looked into it and I can obtain one if needed.”

6: Background check and criminal history information

Information about criminal history and other background check items typically will not come up in an interview with a hiring manager, but they will often come up in an interview with HR or a recruiter (especially the recruiters). They do not want details, for the most part, but they want to know whether it will be a waste of time interviewing you. Obviously, it is great to have a squeaky clean record, but there are plenty of good job candidates who don’t. You will need to be honest here, because things show up on the background check anyway. If what you say does not match the check, they will feel that you lied to them. At the same time, limit your sharing to the minimum. You can start with something like, “I have a misdemeanor conviction from three years ago” and take it from there.

7: What is your experience level with XYZ?

When interviewers ask about your experience level with a technology, they really want to get a feel for what you have been doing with it, not how long you have been doing it. For example, if they are asking about SQL, is it important to them that you have been writing statements no more complex than, “SELECT id, name, city FROM people WHERE state = ‘NY’” for 10 years? Not really. Performing complex data transformations, correlated subqueries, etc., for six months will be much more impressive. When talking about your experience level, emphasize the kinds of challenges you solved with those technologies and the unique aspects of the technologies you used to solve the problems.

8: What’s the hardest challenge you have had to overcome — and how did you approach it?

This is a stock interview question, but it has some special pitfalls for the programmer. One of the failures I’ve seen in interviews is that candidates do not properly set the context of their answer. I have faced some challenges that at that point in my career were difficult but that later on were trivial. If I brought them up in an interview without explaining my experience level when they arose, it would put me in a bad light. The interviewer would be thinking, “Why would someone with his experience struggle with this?” So when you answer, give a short (one sentence) scene setup. Also, put your focus on the problem-solving steps you took, not the technical details. No one really cares if the problem turned out to be that the variable was one character shorter than the data going into it; they want to know how you did the research to discover it.

9: Describe your programming habits

There are a number of variations on this question, some of which just ask about things such as:

• Source control
• Testing
• Variable/file/class/whatever naming
• Application architecture decisions

Some things we do by habit are not flattering when we answer these questions, but it is because of circumstances outside of your control. For example, if your current employer does not have a source control system, do not say, “I do not use source control” because it makes you look awful! Instead, an answer such as, “My current employer does not have a source control system, but I have used TFS at a previous employer, and I use Mercurial at home for personal projects” will be much better.

Other times, we simply have bad habits; in those cases, it is better to recognize them and show that you are trying to change them. You could say something like, “I tend to not write as many unit tests as I should, but I have been working hard to ensure greater code coverage.” Of course, don’t lie about this. But employers like to find people with enough self-awareness to see and correct their flaws, and the honesty to be able to discuss them.

10: Tell us a little bit about yourself

Often, job candidates go way off the deep end on this question, talking about things they do not need to be discussing in a job interview, personal stories and relationships, and so on. Or worse, they bring up things that present them in an unflattering light. What the interviewer is really looking to learn is how your personality relates to the job of software development. For example, if you enjoy restoring antique furniture, you could point out that it requires a lot of patience, eye for detail, research, and so on. Of course, you will want to talk about your personality traits as well. Unusual experiences or education can be brought up here, too. What you definitely do not want to do is talk too long. Try to make it a back-and-forth conversation, but if it isn’t, limit your time to a few minutes and don’t trip all over yourself trying to cram in every last detail.

Top three careers for the ethically challenged IT pro

Takeaway: While current employment stats for IT pros fluctuate, there’s always a niche for those who are not burdened by a sense of ethics or decency.

[Full disclosure: The following is not a serious piece and will not enhance your life in any way. If you want only meaty content, don't bother reading this or posting a comment that we wasted your time. Hey, it's Friday and we needed a break.]

1. Facebook spammer and scammer

There is no end to the career potential here. Except maybe prison. But really, for the ethically challenged IT pro, Facebook is like a playground with its spammers, scammers, and wildly insecure, crack-like social network games. For example, likejacking (asking a victim to click something while a different action is taken behind the scenes) can open up a whole new world to you by giving you the ability to obtain someone else’s account information. Even if your dreams lean toward the non-profit (that is, just infecting PCs with malware makes your heart go all aflutter), this is the field for you.

2. Political Email Interceptor

Apparently on any given day, there are about 14 billion emails sent from the denizens of the U.S. House and Senate that really shouldn’t have been sent. Can you imagine the amount of money a sexually promiscuous, adulterous pol who may or may not be gay, would shell out to retrieve and destroy an email that went out to the wrong person, or just went out period? And the power you could wield! The information you could glean could make you as omnipotent as if you held in your hands Heidi Fleiss’s client list.

3. Bay Area Barfly

With Apple, Inc. currently averaging one lost iPhone prototype per year, this could become a very lucrative venture. You may develop a bit of a drinking problem along the way, but think about it: If you find just one lost prototype per year, you could sell it on the black market or ransom it back to Apple for a huge amount of money. Plus, all the Happy Hour hors d’oeuvres you can eat!

Ten years later: IT and life lessons from the South Tower

Takeaway: Bob Eisenhardt was an IT pro employed in the South Tower on 9/11. He explains what it took to recover — both personally and in IT.

When the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were attacked ten years ago, 2,753 people lost their lives, including employees of companies housed in the towers, 343 firefighters, 60 police officers, and eight private emergency medical technicians and paramedics. Another 184 people were killed in the attack on the Pentagon. The overwhelming majority of casualties were civilians, including nationals of over 70 countries.

TechRepublic wanted to commemorate that day in a meaningful way. We have asked Bob Eisenhardt, an IT pro and TechRepublic member who was employed in the South Tower, to talk about his own experience and what it took to recover and rebuild his IT shop in the aftermath.

On September 11, 2001 the world changed. I was part of the IT team for Aon Group (a global insurance company) located in the 99 to 105 floors of the South tower. TechRepublic has invited me to commemorate the tenth anniversary with these personal notes and memories.

Since this is an IT site, I will talk about the loss of and recovery of data in the immediate aftermath of the crashes. But I have to stress that, as it is with any disaster scenario, people are the most precious commodity. Aon’s Chairman, Patrick Ryan, demonstrated this when he headed a memorial service at St. Patricks Cathedral, with Judy Collins signing “Amazing Grace.” For most of us, this was the first time we all came together again in a single room, and we were mostly still in shock. Recovery would take a long time.

It’s important that your staff know that in evacuations they should not worry about computers, data, retrieving their personal effects from their desks, or going back to get their car. I learned this in the worst possible way: Steve Poulos, the system administrator for Aon Risk Services, returned to the 103^rd floor to retrieve the Risk Service data tapes. By doing so, he ran out of time and did not survive.

Get clear, get safe and go home as required. You should have your staff participate in evacuation drills, taught to use stairs and not elevators, and to have on hand “go bags” (small, easy-to-carry container for basic supplies such as flashlights, small medicals, maps, food and money). IT personnel may consider placing periodic backup data in their go bags if it fits snugly.

Another thing I learned on that day ten years ago was that simple common sense proved to be the ultimate skill. “Down was good, up was not an option, speed was essential.” Thousands of people made snap decisions without knowing the consequences of their actions; survival often meant just following the basics. (To quote Jean Reno’s wonderful advice in the 1998 remake of Godzilla - “Running would be a good idea.” When time came, I ran!)

The technical details

Due to maintenance in the 103 floor data center on Sept. 8-9, the data tapes for Aon Consulting ran cleanly and were taken offsite on Monday morning. We were lucky to have those backups as Tuesday was a very different day.

Technology also aided survivors tremendously in the days that followed the tragedy. In distant Chicago, Aon quickly developed a web bulletin board for survivors to post comments, which also enabled us to do head-counts. With that and the Yahoo-finance message board, survivors and family members could reconnect, and have a space to express their mourning.

September 11 was traumatic to the extreme, and to this day I am truly amazed that the Aon team began restoration literally within hours after the event. On September 12, Michael Edghill was arranging for our data tapes to be shipped to the South Carolina data center. Some of us went to work quickly, others took their time in emotional recovery but, eventually, we all returned. Our professional ethics required that we get to work as soon as possible, and we had it in abundance.

On September 24, we received in our temporary mid-town office over 900 Dell Optiplex desktop towers, large 21″ monitors and 250 laptop systems. The distribution of this equipment required a huge multi-office team effort. We put GHOST imaging to the ultimate test on a bench running 10 systems at a clip. (The only unforeseen problem was that in the beginning we were too easily handing out free keyboards and mice to anyone who needed one, so we later just ran out of them entirely. No good deed goes unpunished). In this intense recovery environment, you worked fast and smart, ate many boxes of pizza, and made lifelong friends.

The 900 plus systems used in rebuilding the network. Photo: Bob Eisenhardt

Not everyone was using imaging systems. I was initially assigned to cover the dislocated Aon Consulting staff move to our Greenwich, CT site. Here my primary job was to keep these emotionally stunned workers productive while staying out of the way of Larry Manno, manager of this location, who already had more than enough to do. By fortunate circumstance, I carried a small laptop that performed truly heroic work for my co-workers. For a few days, I was virtually the only IT staffer who actually had a computer! Print server, email conduit, temporary loaner - this was a wonderful little laptop indeed.

For months prior to 9/11, we were forever complaining about the size of Lotus Notes email files. And yet, after September 11, these same large email files contained a wealth of stored easy-to-access data that provided its own ad-hoc backup protocol! I will never complain about large email files again.

We also learned that Dell does not build substandard equipment. At Ground Zero, workers found an intact Dell Latitude CSX laptop belonging to Louis Sausa. It survived falling 101 floors amidst tons of collapsing building. Now in the hands of the World Trade Center museum, it has not been turned on again, so it remains set to September 10, 2001. I wonder if the BIOS knows what day today is.

For me, the essence of the day is now compressed into 102 minutes, from 8:45 am to 10:02 am. Last year on 9/11, while visiting family in Atlanta, I walked away to a fence at a Soccer game, touched the ground at 9:59 am - the moment the South Tower collapsed. The earth held the remains of many of my friends: Donald Havlish, John Crowe, Laura Snick, Catherine Nardella, and Pamela Gaff, among others. I took a deep breath and then a small hand took mine. My granddaughter, Nicole Skyer, age 7, came to take me back to the soccer game and another day.

Every morning, take a glance up at the sky and remember that you are alive to enjoy this day and that for all the good and bad it may bring, you are here to see it through.

I dedicate this piece to Steve Poulos.