Why do companies refuse top staff?
In the spring of 2006, Kevin Systrom was standing behind a coffee machine at the Caffé del Doge cafe in Palo Alto, when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg approached the reception. A year earlier, Zuckerberg had already had dinner with Sistrom - he invited him to leave Stanford's last year to develop a photo service for Facebook. Kevin then refused. Remaining at Stanford, Sistrom developed an Instagram application that Zuckerberg recently acquired for $ 1 billion. (The amount is amazing, especially if you know that a startup does not have not only revenue, but also a model for getting it. At Instagram, which has not yet reached two years old , there are still only 14 employees.) In the end, Zuckerberg nevertheless captured Kevin into the ranks of the Facebook army, with which we congratulate him.
If in the story with Systrom Zuckerberg made a bet and did not lose, then with the co-founder of WhatsApp Brian Acton everything turned out differently. In 2009, he was not hired on Facebook, and in 2014 the company buys WhatsApp for $ 16 billion. How is it that large and innovative companies refuse promising employees (we will call them gurus or “stars”), for which in the future will chase with tripled speed, offering just crazy money? Focusing on metrics, not on results.
When a large number of people work in a company (large is when a bosses do not know all employees by face or by name), the organizational model resembles a large vertical. It’s almost impossible to control this vertical without any statistical metrics. Thus, the company unifies the process of recruitment, as well as evaluation of their work. This is both good and bad.
Good - because you can always tell which department is not working well or you can compare your indicators with those of other employees. This, in turn, helps to manage the level of wages and employee benefits package.
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The problem is that key employees are rarely amenable to formal evaluation. Studies confirm that the performance of “key” and “rank-and-file” employees may differ 10-100 times. It is clear that it is impossible to cost a scale of employee performance assessments based on the performance of the most productive people, since they have no clear boundaries of utility and productivity.
For example, in one of the companies with which we had a chance, one of the measures of efficiency of testers was the number of found bugs. In turn, the effectiveness of programmers was estimated in the number of closed bugs. Very quickly, from the race for product quality, this development process has grown into an agreement between testers and programmers: the first ones put everything into the bugtracker, and the programmers quickly fixed everything. Such bugs driven development.
In addition to the fact that it is impossible to evaluate key and rank-and-file employees on the same system, it is also necessary to remember that for key employees, motivation rarely coincides with generally accepted norms, which can greatly distort the causal link “experience / performance is the result”.
A good example is Microsoft and its employee assessment system.
Journalist Kurt Eichenwald, who last year in Vanity Fair published a big investigation about the system of work in the company (we give a translation from slon.ru), best of all told about the consequences of the use of such a system in Microsoft:
“ At the center of this problematic corporate culture was a management system called stack ranking. All the former and current Microsoft employees with whom I spoke, literally everyone, called this system the most destructive internal process at Microsoft, which drove an inconceivable number of employees from the company. The system, also referred to as the “performance model”, “Gaussian curve” or simply “employee assessment”, worked (with some variations) like this: each unit was obliged to designate a certain proportion of employees as the strongest, strong, medium, below average and weak.
“If there were ten people in your team, then on the very first day you understood that no matter how great all the team members worked, two of them will receive a high rating, seven - a mediocre rating, and one - a terrible one,” said a former programmer. “This leads employees to focus on competing with each other and not with other companies.”
If Microsoft were able to hire top technology leaders in one division before they became famous, - Steve Jobs from Apple, Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook, Larry Page from Google, Larry Ellison from Oracle and Jeff Bezos from Amazon, - then, regardless of their results, in one of the rounds of the assessment, two of them would receive marks below average, and one would be considered just a disgrace.
For this reason, managers said, many superstars at Microsoft did everything they could to avoid joining the same team with other brilliant developers, for fear that it would harm their place in the ranking. And this assessment had real consequences: the leaders of the ranking received bonuses and promotions, and those who were at the bottom did not receive anything, or they were pointed at the door. "
From this system, the company refused only recently.
Thus, if there is a suspicion that a (future) “star” is in front of you, you do not need to conduct sample interviews, but by hiring you do not evaluate the employee using conventional metrics.
Requirements for key employees are always high and this is understandable. Higher education, a prestigious university, a master's degree or a candidate of science, extensive experience, soft skills and impeccable knowledge of their subject - this is usually the ideal candidate in the eyes of companies. But practice shows that the "stars" are often "white crows" or "black swans." Someone has no education, someone even has basic communication skills, and some people are strange in life. These personalities are united only by one thing - manic perfectionism and ideological motivation.
By the way, any “star” in a team is a potential risk for the team and a very likely source of conflict (the “stars” are often arrogant, suffer from elevated ESS and snobbery, or, on the contrary, do not fit into the generally accepted picture of the behavior of most people). Therefore, companies should be clearly aware that standard management practices are unlikely to work with such people. As one of the options, the “star” can be isolated from the outside world and other employees in order not to put the usual rules at risk.
In our opinion, the main reason why companies refuse promising employees is that they do not fit into the so-called corporate culture. This is such a strange term that newcomers are afraid of on the days of open doors by people who have worked in the company for 20-30 years. So, highly qualified specialists will never go to work for a company just for the sake of “corporate culture”, and, moreover, they will not change their style and approach to work for the sake of a new company. But this does not mean that such employees will work poorly. After all, you need to remember that it is the presence of your own approach to work in combination with experience that makes a person unique. And forcing him to change his habits for the sake of corporate culture in any case impossible.
One day, headhunters from an IT company - the “market leader” - were looking for an opportunity to invite a specialist to the position of senior software developer. The specialist was not going to change the job. In order to drag the applicant to the interview, he used the whole archery of Euchar: the person was added to all social networks, once a week they called him to offer an interview, and after two months of unsuccessful attempts they connected their closest friends who worked for this company. The applicant eventually agreed. After two formal and one technical interview (!), Hour X came: the applicant was to appear before the court of the main aychar of the foreign customer. And 15, 30, 45 minutes of the interview, everything is fine, everyone is happy, after which the familiar question sounds painfully: “Why do you want to work in our company?”. The applicant politely replied that they didn’t look for a new job, but because the “market leader” wanted to see him in their ranks, then why not? The result, we think, is obvious to everyone: the applicant was refused, the reason is not in accordance with the corporate culture of the company.
Very often, when moving to a new company, a key employee brings with them members of his team. This is easily explained by the fact that in most cases an excellent result cannot be achieved alone (even if you are a recognized guru), but only in collaboration with a team of professionals.
Here corporations, no doubt, have succeeded. Promising startups buy in batches, and former hipster startups become part of the corporation (as it was with the same Instagram).
But here it is very important not to destroy the established traditions of management and interaction, as well as to maximize the fact that the team is already working for another company.
This situation is easily illustrated by the example of football players (or coaches). In one club, a football player demonstrates just phenomenal clogging, but, moving to another club, the performance drops by several times, and the star athlete drops to the level of an average football player. But I didn’t lose my qualification, I have not forgotten how to play football and have not received injuries. Something similar happened during the transition of Andriy Shevchenko from Milan to Chelsea, where he never caught on.
Differences in thinking, motivation, approaches to work distinguishes highly qualified specialists. Perhaps that is why recruitment agencies most often specialize in specific types of employees - some select only top managers, others close only “ordinary” vacancies.
Companies, before opening a new vacancy, should understand for themselves: they need an ordinary “cog” to strengthen the existing system, or a new biofuel that can disperse the car to supersonic speed. And if the answer is the second option, then you need to forget all existing metrics, standardized tests, the average temperature in the hospital and the principles of corporate culture and just look for such people, relying on intuition and experience. Indeed, one of the most important qualities of a good leader is the ability to recognize the potential among rising stars.
The process of finding and attracting "stars" to work in a company should not be accompanied by the closure of vacancies. This should be a parallel process, independent of current personnel tasks. If there is a “star” who is ready to join your team, but there is no position for it - think up a position. Otherwise, in a couple of years you will have to spend a couple of billions to correct your mistake.
If in the story with Systrom Zuckerberg made a bet and did not lose, then with the co-founder of WhatsApp Brian Acton everything turned out differently. In 2009, he was not hired on Facebook, and in 2014 the company buys WhatsApp for $ 16 billion. How is it that large and innovative companies refuse promising employees (we will call them gurus or “stars”), for which in the future will chase with tripled speed, offering just crazy money? Focusing on metrics, not on results.
When a large number of people work in a company (large is when a bosses do not know all employees by face or by name), the organizational model resembles a large vertical. It’s almost impossible to control this vertical without any statistical metrics. Thus, the company unifies the process of recruitment, as well as evaluation of their work. This is both good and bad.
Good - because you can always tell which department is not working well or you can compare your indicators with those of other employees. This, in turn, helps to manage the level of wages and employee benefits package.
')
The problem is that key employees are rarely amenable to formal evaluation. Studies confirm that the performance of “key” and “rank-and-file” employees may differ 10-100 times. It is clear that it is impossible to cost a scale of employee performance assessments based on the performance of the most productive people, since they have no clear boundaries of utility and productivity.
For example, in one of the companies with which we had a chance, one of the measures of efficiency of testers was the number of found bugs. In turn, the effectiveness of programmers was estimated in the number of closed bugs. Very quickly, from the race for product quality, this development process has grown into an agreement between testers and programmers: the first ones put everything into the bugtracker, and the programmers quickly fixed everything. Such bugs driven development.
In addition to the fact that it is impossible to evaluate key and rank-and-file employees on the same system, it is also necessary to remember that for key employees, motivation rarely coincides with generally accepted norms, which can greatly distort the causal link “experience / performance is the result”.
A good example is Microsoft and its employee assessment system.
Journalist Kurt Eichenwald, who last year in Vanity Fair published a big investigation about the system of work in the company (we give a translation from slon.ru), best of all told about the consequences of the use of such a system in Microsoft:
“ At the center of this problematic corporate culture was a management system called stack ranking. All the former and current Microsoft employees with whom I spoke, literally everyone, called this system the most destructive internal process at Microsoft, which drove an inconceivable number of employees from the company. The system, also referred to as the “performance model”, “Gaussian curve” or simply “employee assessment”, worked (with some variations) like this: each unit was obliged to designate a certain proportion of employees as the strongest, strong, medium, below average and weak.
“If there were ten people in your team, then on the very first day you understood that no matter how great all the team members worked, two of them will receive a high rating, seven - a mediocre rating, and one - a terrible one,” said a former programmer. “This leads employees to focus on competing with each other and not with other companies.”
If Microsoft were able to hire top technology leaders in one division before they became famous, - Steve Jobs from Apple, Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook, Larry Page from Google, Larry Ellison from Oracle and Jeff Bezos from Amazon, - then, regardless of their results, in one of the rounds of the assessment, two of them would receive marks below average, and one would be considered just a disgrace.
For this reason, managers said, many superstars at Microsoft did everything they could to avoid joining the same team with other brilliant developers, for fear that it would harm their place in the ranking. And this assessment had real consequences: the leaders of the ranking received bonuses and promotions, and those who were at the bottom did not receive anything, or they were pointed at the door. "
From this system, the company refused only recently.
Thus, if there is a suspicion that a (future) “star” is in front of you, you do not need to conduct sample interviews, but by hiring you do not evaluate the employee using conventional metrics.
Selection Criteria and Corporate Culture
Requirements for key employees are always high and this is understandable. Higher education, a prestigious university, a master's degree or a candidate of science, extensive experience, soft skills and impeccable knowledge of their subject - this is usually the ideal candidate in the eyes of companies. But practice shows that the "stars" are often "white crows" or "black swans." Someone has no education, someone even has basic communication skills, and some people are strange in life. These personalities are united only by one thing - manic perfectionism and ideological motivation.
By the way, any “star” in a team is a potential risk for the team and a very likely source of conflict (the “stars” are often arrogant, suffer from elevated ESS and snobbery, or, on the contrary, do not fit into the generally accepted picture of the behavior of most people). Therefore, companies should be clearly aware that standard management practices are unlikely to work with such people. As one of the options, the “star” can be isolated from the outside world and other employees in order not to put the usual rules at risk.
In our opinion, the main reason why companies refuse promising employees is that they do not fit into the so-called corporate culture. This is such a strange term that newcomers are afraid of on the days of open doors by people who have worked in the company for 20-30 years. So, highly qualified specialists will never go to work for a company just for the sake of “corporate culture”, and, moreover, they will not change their style and approach to work for the sake of a new company. But this does not mean that such employees will work poorly. After all, you need to remember that it is the presence of your own approach to work in combination with experience that makes a person unique. And forcing him to change his habits for the sake of corporate culture in any case impossible.
One day, headhunters from an IT company - the “market leader” - were looking for an opportunity to invite a specialist to the position of senior software developer. The specialist was not going to change the job. In order to drag the applicant to the interview, he used the whole archery of Euchar: the person was added to all social networks, once a week they called him to offer an interview, and after two months of unsuccessful attempts they connected their closest friends who worked for this company. The applicant eventually agreed. After two formal and one technical interview (!), Hour X came: the applicant was to appear before the court of the main aychar of the foreign customer. And 15, 30, 45 minutes of the interview, everything is fine, everyone is happy, after which the familiar question sounds painfully: “Why do you want to work in our company?”. The applicant politely replied that they didn’t look for a new job, but because the “market leader” wanted to see him in their ranks, then why not? The result, we think, is obvious to everyone: the applicant was refused, the reason is not in accordance with the corporate culture of the company.
Team
Very often, when moving to a new company, a key employee brings with them members of his team. This is easily explained by the fact that in most cases an excellent result cannot be achieved alone (even if you are a recognized guru), but only in collaboration with a team of professionals.
Here corporations, no doubt, have succeeded. Promising startups buy in batches, and former hipster startups become part of the corporation (as it was with the same Instagram).
But here it is very important not to destroy the established traditions of management and interaction, as well as to maximize the fact that the team is already working for another company.
This situation is easily illustrated by the example of football players (or coaches). In one club, a football player demonstrates just phenomenal clogging, but, moving to another club, the performance drops by several times, and the star athlete drops to the level of an average football player. But I didn’t lose my qualification, I have not forgotten how to play football and have not received injuries. Something similar happened during the transition of Andriy Shevchenko from Milan to Chelsea, where he never caught on.
findings
Differences in thinking, motivation, approaches to work distinguishes highly qualified specialists. Perhaps that is why recruitment agencies most often specialize in specific types of employees - some select only top managers, others close only “ordinary” vacancies.
Companies, before opening a new vacancy, should understand for themselves: they need an ordinary “cog” to strengthen the existing system, or a new biofuel that can disperse the car to supersonic speed. And if the answer is the second option, then you need to forget all existing metrics, standardized tests, the average temperature in the hospital and the principles of corporate culture and just look for such people, relying on intuition and experience. Indeed, one of the most important qualities of a good leader is the ability to recognize the potential among rising stars.
The process of finding and attracting "stars" to work in a company should not be accompanied by the closure of vacancies. This should be a parallel process, independent of current personnel tasks. If there is a “star” who is ready to join your team, but there is no position for it - think up a position. Otherwise, in a couple of years you will have to spend a couple of billions to correct your mistake.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/217679/
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