Comment by swombat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by swombat | Hacker News Reader

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I wonder how you would feel if the reciprocal attitude was adopted by your employer - i.e. if they continually interviewed potential replacements for your position, to:

* get practice at interviewing people for your role

* have an idea of what your market worth is, so they can use this in salary negotiations

* stop interviews being a difficult process they only do when you leave

* keep the option of finding a better candidate and replacing you on such occasions.

I'm going to take a wild guess and assume you would not tolerate that from your employer. It would show a lack of respect, trust, engagement, etc, basically it would convey to you that your employer doesn't even care about maintaining an appearance of giving a damn about you as a person. You've only just started there last week, and they're already thinking about firing you and replacing you with someone better.

Personally, whilst I think the attitude of getting upset because someone leaves the company is immature, I also think your attitude is disrespectful and shows such a contempt for the place where you're working, such an extreme lack of even the remotest sense of loyalty, that I wouldn't want to employ someone with your attitude ever.

This is without even delving into the fact that you're imposing a tax on the system, taking time away from your current employer (presumably with this attitude you're quite happy to pull sickies to cover your frequent job interviews), as well as other potential employers (interviewing people costs time and money; interviewing people who have no interest in changing jobs is a total waste of money for the company). If everyone suddenly behaved like you, regularly applying to even just a dozen jobs a year even though they have no intention of changing jobs, the recruitment process would incur such gargantuan costs that the economy would suffer, if not crash. Basically, your suggestion above seems to convey that you only really care about yourself. At least that's what it makes me feel from the really self-centred way you've described it.

I'm sorry that this reads like a personal accusation, but you made statements about your personal system of behaviour and I find that system deeply objectionable.

If I got the wrong end of the stick (perfectly possible), please do correct me...

I have rarely worked at a place that hasn't kept an ad on their site for an engineer even when not hiring. At one, the hr vp quite honestly admitted they interview continuously at a reduced level in case someone leaves.

And really the idea of loyalty to a place that has you sign an at will employment agreement and a non-compete clause doesn't make the much sense. And that so many companies seem more than willing to move overseas or outsource work solely (and inevitably foolishly) to reduce wage costs surely shows no loyalty to their employees.

And surely the endlessly quoted "market forces" requires all rational actors to pursue the avenue with the greatest fiscal returns doesn't it?

It would be nice if it were otherwise. And the first mandatory step to bring that about would be eliminating the at will employment agreement.

Now if your company does none of these things and retains employees through their whole careers then I applaud you enormously.

For the rest, it is deeply foolish to remain loyal to an organization that is so demonstrably unloyal that, for example, it has never kept a single employee up to anything remotely like retirement age.

I'm also a guy that's always interviewing. It keeps me fresh, which seems to be an inoculation to what I see as the number one career killer: stagnation.

I would have no problem if my employer constantly interviewed for my replacement. This would be an excellent thing to do because they would have a better understanding of where others want to take their careers and general trends in software development. Cheaper than bringing in business consultants.

Work for yourself, never settle. Loyalty just means you might be the last person laid off in a slump. Only exception to this rule might be ownership benefits or a pension.

My company is interviewing potential replacements for my position all the time. The things it shows: how hard it's to find such a replacement (so there is no desire to play "it's a world-wide financial crisis, dude, no raise for you this year, ok?"), the company is not managed by idiots, who expect all their employees are immortal, immutable beings who are going to be there forever and ever (and go into a crisis mode whenever such an employee suddenly proves she or he is a human) and, finally, the company is growing.

> you're imposing a tax on the system, taking time away from your current employer

An interview shouldn't feel like such a transactional process. An interview should be a great way to share between two workers at different companies different team and technical challenges. A good interview is one that I'm learning from, no matter which side I'm on.

Unfortunately, this concept is mostly limited to small innovative and agile companies asking their employees to wear many hats.

> Unfortunately, this concept is mostly limited to small innovative and agile companies asking their employees to wear many hats.

How does "asking their employees to wear many hats" affect the interviewee?

When wearing many hats, your knowledge is more likely to collide / integrate with other people who are wearing many hats.

If the interviewers are silo'ed and aren't familiar with such a variety of things devops, team management, feature releasing, then there is less of an opportunity to learn about a wide variety of things.

> I also think your attitude is disrespectful and shows such a contempt for the place where you're working, such an extreme lack of even the remotest sense of loyalty, that I wouldn't want to employ someone with your attitude ever.

There is no reciprocal loyalty from a corporation anywhere, ever. Corporations are amoral. You will be jettisoned without remorse at the first hint of necessity, and not even necessarily at all connected with your performance or loyalty.

No one looks out for you except you. Companies do interview without a specific position open. No reason why individuals shouldn't do the same.

Time-warp me back to some gold-lit age of caring and loyalty, and maybe I'll feel different.

I get where you're coming from, but look at it from the perspective of a smaller company. If a developer leaves, they're only going to give 2-3 weeks notice, but onboarding a developer, even if they were found day one, would take months and steal time from the rest of the team. Chances are it won't be day one, which means you then have a smaller engineering staff doing the same amount of work. I WISH some of the companies I've worked for had simply interviewed outside of times of need and brought on developers simply because they were good developers, to minimize the pain when key people leave.

Look at it like servers. You want to have some level of redundancy because machines will fail. Yeah you might not have full redundancy everywhere, and a perfect storm of failures might bring down your application, but if you have NO redundancy, your application will fall over under the same amount of load.

Companies do this all the time in various forms. Recruiting and HR are entire departments at most companies.

Don't get confused and start acting like a corporation is a person with feelings.

> Companies do this all the time in various forms.

> ... start acting like a *corporation• ...

So, partnerships, LLCs, and sole-proprietorships apparently don't exist. Good to know.

Ah, but some corporations are run by people with feelings. And for small corporations the situation is a bit different than for a larger one. The turning point is roughly around the time the CEO no longer knows the first name of everybody that works in the company.

I do think this strategy can be taken the wrong way so I understand your points. I think it's very doable in an honorable way. Let me clarify:

* I think companies are doing this but they aren't looking to replace me so much as to make sure that anyone person doesn't affect things too drastically if they leave.

* "Frequent job interviews" is over stating things. Many interviews might only progress to phone interviews or coding exercises. One or both parties can learn a lot just from that. In person interviewing is rare because I really don't want to use my pto and spend time away for work just for practice. If the opportunity excites me though, I very well might.

* Getting me excited to interview with a company takes a lot. Especially when I'm happy at work, I'm taking into account big projects I'm working on, my amazing coworkers and bosses that I'm not ready to leave, etc. It's definitely about more than money. You're right that one can't look at it as just a black & white decision. It's multivariable and will shape your life for years to come. Choose wisely.

* Applying to jobs... This is interesting because most opportunities I see come from being cold called with interesting opportunities and having a conversation. It's important to be up front and say, honestly that you're not looking but open to a great opportunity. In the first call I usually give a very high price as well that would justify leaving earlier than I would like. I think it's fair to say that many people have an amount that is walk away money. Ideally if I'm leaving earlier than I'd like I should be able to tell my current boss and they will say "Damn. This sucks but I can't blame you. That's a great opportunity."

You're taking this as a very deceptive practice, but that's not the way it has to work. This can be practiced with an enormous amount of honesty. It might surprise you to know that even after telling companies that I love where I work and don't see myself leaving for a few years, they're fine with that. We will still chat.

At the very least, I'm expanding my network and learning more about other companies. I also use this understanding of other companies when I talk to candidates for my current employer to have some context.

To wrap it all up, here are my guidelines that I follow to do this in an ethical way:

* Be up front with the hiring manager that you are happy in your current job and don't have any plans to make an immediate change but are open to discussing opportunities.

* Accomplish some big things at each company you work for before leaving. In my mind this means don't hop around every few months. Stay a few years, build something you're proud of. If I were going to be coaxed away before accomplishing something it would take A LOT. But hey. I'll let someone try and make a case for it.

* Move on when the opportunity meets your "Oh shit!" criteria and don't feel guilty. If you're good, you'll always be working on an important project and it will never be a great time for a change. I also help my team reduce my bus factor as much as possible. I think that's valuable for the company as well should they ever want to fire me or move me to a different team.

* If you aren't happy at your current place, don't lie. Tell them so they can fix it. If you are happy tell them you are. If they ask if you ever talk to other companies say of course! That you are always networking and bringing the good parts you hear back to the office and simultaneously looking out for great people to recruit.

There's no reason keeping yourself sharp and knowledgeable has to be a win-lose scenario.

Thanks for the clarifications. That does seem a lot more balanced and sensible than the reading I got from your first post!

Awesome. Glad to hear it.

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