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Comment by adwww | Hacker News Reader

I've just left a similar workplace and while I feel my reasons for leaving were right, I do slightly regret my decision.

It's frustrating that too often management don't see the problems everyone else sees, and would rather waste $£ on recruitment than retention.

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Recruitment means you need to spend money on the new people. Retention means you need to spend money on everyone.

True in terms of salary. But that misses the huge time cost of recruitment (time writing job specs, screening, interviewing + 3 months or so of lower productivity) when often retention could be improved with zero / low cost culture changes.

As a mid-level manager I do wish people would inform my of any problems before they sign with some other workplace instead of after. I can't fix issues I don't hear about

Most of the time these things fall on deaf ears, are met with empty promises, or middle management isn’t in a position to change what needs to be changed.

I left both of my last jobs for these reasons. It became a waste of time to go voice these concerns when my time would be better spent looking for a new job.

Another manager here; you also can't fix most issues you do hear about. You can sometimes prevent the problem from forming in the first place, but it's not on "people to inform you" of them. Your entire job is trying to catch the few issues you can address early and doing your best to shield your team from the rest of them.

Personally, a lot of my experience is that my manager knows and understands the issue and is doing their best, but at some point there's only so much "managing up" they can do to prevent larger dysfunction in the org from effecting the team.

I had a discussion with my manager about this the other week and they asked me to let them know if I was considering other work so that they could try to fix it - my response was that I didn't think that would help. By the time I'm considering another job it's _because_ I no longer think my manager can or will do anything to fix the issues I have.

People generally don't leave companies when they feel like their manager would have been able to solve their issues with the company.

I tend to disagree with both points.

I can't read minds. I need people to tell me what works and what doesn't for them. An employment is a continuous transaction, if the situation changes it is absolutely open to re-negotiation. It's on both the employer, the direct manager and the employee to make sure everybody is happy with the arrangement.

And the two times I did hear about problem before the new contract was signed, I was able to find a solution. In the other case there is not much I can do.

My problem was the mid-level managers ha. As it has been in a previous employer as well actually.

One problem I've noticed is the sort of person who wants to apply for management roles is often the exact sort of person who should never be given that role.

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