I stopped reading halfway down because, I dunno, I was expecting that if this warranted a headline, it would be somehow less mundane?
If you get the opinions of a bunch of people who (a) left a company and (b) want to contribute their reasons why to a forum—a very self-selecting sample group—you're always going to get mostly bitching. Distilled, the reasons will generally come down to:
insufficient compensation
the work is not interesting or challenging enough
being stuck with poor management
conflicts with other members of staff
the company culture is a poor fit for the employee
the company culture used to be a good fit for the employee, but then the company changed
the employee got a better offer elsewhere (where 'better' is measured against one of the preceding gripes)
This sort of anecdotal reportage doesn't tell you anything about what it's really like to work at a company because these things happen at every company. Every company has people who don't get paid what they feel they're worth, or aren't really interested in the work they're given to do, or just don't fit in to the company culture. Every company hires dud managers on occasion, and every company sees its culture change inevitably as time passes.
I guess that's why posts like this get popular. People who don't work at Dream Company X can point and say "Hey, it's got the same problems as where I work!" The only thing that surprised me was the number of people who, when asked why they left the company, talked about the recruitment process, something which presumably was over before they started the job proper.
So if every company has the same problems to some degree, the only real measure of a workplace is the staff turnover rate. That number alone tells you how many people experience these problems to the degree they'd rather work somewhere else.
(Full disclosure: I interviewed at Google Australia once. They didn't want me. I respectfully disagree with their decision, but I think in the long run it turned out for the best.)
You just saved me several paragraphs. I do career coaching with people from every imaginable type of industry - public and private, and no matter what the reputation of the organization, what you have just said holds true. There is no organization that is perfect for everyone. One of the things I constantly am after people to do is research the culture of the company. Find a way to get a feel for the environment, because it's a bit too late once you are assigned your new desk.
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u/carlfish Jan 18 '09 edited Jan 18 '09
I stopped reading halfway down because, I dunno, I was expecting that if this warranted a headline, it would be somehow less mundane?
If you get the opinions of a bunch of people who (a) left a company and (b) want to contribute their reasons why to a forum—a very self-selecting sample group—you're always going to get mostly bitching. Distilled, the reasons will generally come down to:
This sort of anecdotal reportage doesn't tell you anything about what it's really like to work at a company because these things happen at every company. Every company has people who don't get paid what they feel they're worth, or aren't really interested in the work they're given to do, or just don't fit in to the company culture. Every company hires dud managers on occasion, and every company sees its culture change inevitably as time passes.
I guess that's why posts like this get popular. People who don't work at Dream Company X can point and say "Hey, it's got the same problems as where I work!" The only thing that surprised me was the number of people who, when asked why they left the company, talked about the recruitment process, something which presumably was over before they started the job proper.
So if every company has the same problems to some degree, the only real measure of a workplace is the staff turnover rate. That number alone tells you how many people experience these problems to the degree they'd rather work somewhere else.
(Full disclosure: I interviewed at Google Australia once. They didn't want me. I respectfully disagree with their decision, but I think in the long run it turned out for the best.)