A Problematic Talent Hiring Cycle in Many Fast Growing Companies
Tags: management, startup, career, aws
Published: 2023-02-08 05:00:00

![interview in office](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/xejemp40gn71n3ym6clr.png)



> I wrote this long long ago even before all the tech giant started to lay off. About Hiring Process in many fast growing tech companies I noticed, many talented people left, and the whole company gets hurt, even the business is still running, but the HURT is obvious, especially for the business future. 
> - [Google Lay off 12k employees](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/google-global-layoffs-canada-kitchener-edmonton-1.6739483)
> - [Facebook Lay off](https://www.arabnews.com/node/2121801/media)
> - [Tech Layoff](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/economy/2023/02/07/tech-layoffs-2023-google-amazon/11135692002/)


A fast growing company / (or the boss of a fast growing team) wants to hire more people to make team bigger, so for hiring new people fast, they might offer bigger amount of salary than what existing employees have. 

![awful hiring progress in many small fast start-ups](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/y44hko29a3myzd29uok7.png)

- The Pattern is 
	1. The salary for the good existing talented engineers [become about equal to normal/ok enginners](https://www.glassdoor.co.nz/Reviews/Employee-Review-Xero-RVW49253014.htm), (Let's use a NZ well known start-up as an example. Xero was founded in 2007/2008, it focused on accounting area, and it gradually got bigger and bigger. But this is not the only case, there are more similar start-up companies too, especially in a small country, like in New Zealand.)
		- Other bad things happen at the same time too
			- [Raises and promotions are based on who you know, what you say and who you complement, very little to do with your work related skills, effort or accomplishments](https://www.glassdoor.co.nz/Reviews/Employee-Review-Xero-RVW22625682.htm)
			- [however perfectly good at what you do, and even if you contribute a ton to the team, you will expect yourself to get 2 - 4 % raise max per year,](https://www.glassdoor.co.nz/Reviews/Employee-Review-Xero-RVW11188739.htm)
	2. Good engineers gradually figured out and felt unfair, started to look for other opportunities. They either get offer from other fast growing companies, or they look for other companies who pay more, and gradually they left with their valued domain knowledge 
	3. Some engineers stay, they may be talented, but may have less ambition, or they enjoy the comfort, and they will guide new talents :( 
	4. Many years later, good new talents repeat step 2

- In the end, a fast growing company will become stable, many talents left and new employees join.  And after years, theirs' pay gradually increase, some of them might leave. Others will stay, they get higher titles, senior to principal to lead. **THEY WILL DOMINATE** all tech related decisions for the company, it may be super old or not in good practice. So the tech related staff will not attract new good talents any more, and ambitious one keep moving, they either find a good place to stay or they build their own companies.


This is a real cycle for many startups, especially for a country like NZ, in a market it doesn't have a big amount of IT professionals.

## How to solve the problem, **break the awful hiring cycle**
- Give more **trust** for engineers, let them make tech decisions, let them play around new tech stacks, let them always have higher pay than new employees
- Hire engineer managers who have a **real tech** background
- Pay attention to the hiring process, review and change it every quarter
- Always give more pay raise for good talented engineers, if not, at least give them position promotion in title.
- Matching engineers salary to either market value or new engineers' if the market gets crazy.

## In sum
The key point to keep business healthy is to keep talents stay, the employer supposed to care more the existing talents with full of **domain knowledge and company practice**, rather than pay more to attract new employees. 



![a person get fired and stressed](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/os3wnmhkh2l85s4m3c7f.png)





## Related Articles and References
- [Tech CEOs screwed up, and it's time to hold them accountable](https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-ceo-accountable-layoffs-google-apple-intel-2023-2)
- [You can fire 80% of software engineers and the company will survive](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33687819)