How Long Employees Stay at Tech Companies
This shows <a href = “http://www.businessinsider.com/employee-retention-rate-top-tech-companies-2017-8”>how long employees stay at major tech companies</a>:
Not having worked for a tech company, I found these tenures to be pretty short. I Googled retention at Google (I’m trying to stay on their good side) and found an article suggesting the median tenure at Google is 1.1 years. I imagine this sort of thing is hard to measure from the outside, but it does seem people don’t stay at the big tech firms long.
These companies recruit tens of thousands of young people fresh out of college to do scut-work for them. The majority of these youngsters lack the capability to do tech work and wash out within the first year, sometimes within the first six weeks. That tends to skew it downwards. Still, most of the people I know view these companies as a stepping-stone to more interesting work elsewhere, rather than as companies they think they’ll work 30 years for. I’ve rarely seen people work for more than 5 years for these companies, after a while you get in a rut career-wise and moving on is the only reasonable thing to do.
Bad:
Really 30 years??? I never gave it a thought and knew this was a segue way to some place else when much younger. it was probably the only way to make big jumps in salary. 3 years is probably about the limit; although in the golden days, you were expected to stay longer.
If you don’t show the retention rates by salary and profession it’s worthless information. The tenure numbers include low paid / hourly wage rate employees as well.
The other problem with the numbers is that jumping ship is almost always to a better paying job in one of the other company’s for professionals. It’s more or less like going to work in a different department in the same “company”.
Then there’s the issue of whether the retention rates include part-time employees who are let go and rehired frequently .. that’s part of the turnover rates… evidence that low paid employees are a commodity requiring little or no training and experience.. This also reflects the fact that lower wage / salaried labor sources are in excess of demand which drives down incentives for company’s to “pay to retain” them.
Let me say it this way… the data shown is YUGELY misleading. If those numbers applied to professionals none of those companies could produce anything for very long… chaos would exist.
At best the numbers reflect churn in the low wage sector of these companies… e.g. employees as a commodity.
BTW, the “stepping stone” hypothesis doesn’t hold water at all in Silicon valley among professionals. If you can land a professional job in one of these companies it’s a major life event. They pay very high salaries and benefits are among the best you can get, not to mention job perks, & annual bonus pay..
The worst of them is Netflix though… they hire and fire rapidly at all levels of income. They pay huge professional salaries .. way more than others… but they fire quickly so it’s a huge risk t hire on with them if you’re looking for a job that you want to plan on having some kind of certainty. Netflix is like a craps shoot.
The others not so much… I know several Apple employees.. new hire professionals and ones that have worked there for 10 and more years already. They stay because a) pay is high, b) benefits are unassailable and c) advancement is very good… being stuck in a position is unlikely.
I also know several Google employees, and several from Linked-In (now owned by Microsoft) and a few from Amazon’s research division… the professionals. Interestingly I known none from Facebook or Oracle though or any that have worked there or who want to work there instead of where they are now. I also know several from Western Digital,
Of the Silicon Valley company’s the hardest to get hired into as a professional is Google by far, and then Apple after that. Google and Apple are the “sweet-spot” for professionals. Turnover is very low among professionals. High among hourly paid and part-time workers though..