Yep. At one point my company tried to hire an architect from outside to lead our engineering team. Our software is very complicated, even ignoring the codebase and only looking at the business use cases. It takes years before people become somewhat familiar with it.
That guy noped out after three months and literally gave the product’s complexity as the main reason. Complete waste of money.
They eventually promoted one of our senior devs instead and he absolutely killed it. Modernized much of the codebase and dev processes because we were still acting like a startup at the time. It’s insane they just didn’t go with him from the beginning. He saved the company many millions of dollars that will never show up on a bean counter’s spreadsheet.
Management lives in a different reality. I’ve never worked in a back office environment, but everywhere I have worked even “hands on” middle and upper management tends to stay in their bubble. On the rare occasion they do site visits there’s plenty of warning, so store managers scrimp on labor during the leadup and then overstaff relative to normal conditions to make sure everything looks perfect. It is very difficult for middle management and up to get a clear picture of what is actually happening because there’s no incentive to be honest. Being honest actually gets you punished, because when everyone else lies honesty makes you look incompetent.
they thought it would be cheaper if they hire a new person, because a new person is not likely to be fully vested into benefits if you were working longer.
Tbf promoting from within isn’t always a silver bullet. Especially when it comes dev -> manager pipeline, some people are just good at what they do but shitty as managers.
I worked at a shitty movie theatre for years and was promised an assistant general manager position - as in, showed my name tag with the position. Learned both front and back of house, worked literal 100 hour weeks (no OT, no benefits because “entertainment industry.”
Instead, they hired a random sociopathic woman who was lazy and did nothing at all. Not only verbally abusive, but also physically assaulted me. Absolutely tanked morale and they started hemorrhaging employees.
I recently applied for a management role in another organizational unit. My role has considerable overlap with that work area. They decided to only consider external candidates after the first round of interviews.
They settled on someone that doesn’t really have relatable experience. I’ve had to train them on so many things. It’s just demoralizing.
A project I did is getting written up in a national (industry) publication soon. It represents the type of work that I interviewed for.
But fuck me, right?
What’s worse is the reverse and it happens more often: Posting a job and then hiring from outside rather than promoting from within.
Because no manager wants to lose their low paid competent worker. So instead they hire the outside person for the senior position.
Yep. At one point my company tried to hire an architect from outside to lead our engineering team. Our software is very complicated, even ignoring the codebase and only looking at the business use cases. It takes years before people become somewhat familiar with it.
That guy noped out after three months and literally gave the product’s complexity as the main reason. Complete waste of money.
They eventually promoted one of our senior devs instead and he absolutely killed it. Modernized much of the codebase and dev processes because we were still acting like a startup at the time. It’s insane they just didn’t go with him from the beginning. He saved the company many millions of dollars that will never show up on a bean counter’s spreadsheet.
My leading hypothesis is “management is stupid”. It explains a lot of this sort of thing.
Management lives in a different reality. I’ve never worked in a back office environment, but everywhere I have worked even “hands on” middle and upper management tends to stay in their bubble. On the rare occasion they do site visits there’s plenty of warning, so store managers scrimp on labor during the leadup and then overstaff relative to normal conditions to make sure everything looks perfect. It is very difficult for middle management and up to get a clear picture of what is actually happening because there’s no incentive to be honest. Being honest actually gets you punished, because when everyone else lies honesty makes you look incompetent.
they thought it would be cheaper if they hire a new person, because a new person is not likely to be fully vested into benefits if you were working longer.
Tbf promoting from within isn’t always a silver bullet. Especially when it comes dev -> manager pipeline, some people are just good at what they do but shitty as managers.
Oh sure, but you don’t know until you let them try.
I worked at a shitty movie theatre for years and was promised an assistant general manager position - as in, showed my name tag with the position. Learned both front and back of house, worked literal 100 hour weeks (no OT, no benefits because “entertainment industry.”
Instead, they hired a random sociopathic woman who was lazy and did nothing at all. Not only verbally abusive, but also physically assaulted me. Absolutely tanked morale and they started hemorrhaging employees.
did they ever gave you a reason why they hired the lazy woman.
I recently applied for a management role in another organizational unit. My role has considerable overlap with that work area. They decided to only consider external candidates after the first round of interviews.
They settled on someone that doesn’t really have relatable experience. I’ve had to train them on so many things. It’s just demoralizing.
A project I did is getting written up in a national (industry) publication soon. It represents the type of work that I interviewed for.
But fuck me, right?
a research position?
Not necessarily…a lot of places will only hire from within so they don’t actually have to pay market prices to attract outside talent.
Then that low paid competent worker searches for employment elsewhere. That’s what happens at my company.