If we a good idea, would we be able to work on it? Probably not, the "innovation team", which was his team, would be the ones to build the prototype.
If we had a successful good idea, would we receive any compensation? No, and that's very selfish. He insinuated that we should rethink priorities or place of work if compensation was important.
He also talked about how he only wanted ideas that had the potential to make billions.
Felt a lot like: "Give us your best ideas, then GTFO of the room so we can implement your cool brainchild - with no credit to you!"
There's practically zero reward for the folks with good ideas in that model, yet it's sort of the table stakes innovation model.
We're talking about things that used to take 1-2 weeks, being done by Tuesday, if it was assigned on a Monday morning. It was nuts.
My immediate manager, didn't understand it.
His manager sat down with me and read through the code, and was ecstatic.
He brought the CEO in (it was a small shop, that was the next level), and explained out the implications.
AND..... that was the last I ever heard of it. They bought me some pizza.
On their own they decided that if they repackaged the library itself, they could sell it as a b2b tool (which was a pretty good idea).
And they assigned devs and PMs from other teams to build it.
And those devs and PMs never took a look at my code. I'm guessing they were never told about it. They did, however, build their design the exact same way they had built everything else before my library. Which meant, it made all the same mistakes they had always made. Their final product didn't really move the needle. It did not really save anyone much time. And it did not successfully sell to other businesses.
Except by then, it was the new "company initiative". And the % of resources the company had put into its development was substantial. So when it failed completely to materialize real results, it was devastating for the company.
They ended up laying off some ~20% of the company to recover losses in the months after I quit.
So yeah: "Give me your best ideas so we can implement them with out you" doesn't work. If you could have implemented the idea, you would have had it already.
A couple years later an engineering manager at the same level gave another presentation about how innovation and ideas have been lacking. He placed the blame on software engineers not trying hard enough.
I think there's a certain type of person who thinks that the only type of success is one where all of the profit/credit goes to them. Sadly, they seem to be the leaders of many organizations.
If that's not a glaring neon sign telling you to quit, and quit now, I don't know what is.
It probably sounds worse on paper and due to my phrasing. I'd say he was stating the reality and being a doofus (he's the excitable and friendly type). It wasn't so sinister.
Honestly, the line "had me question everything, including my self-worth, my identity, and purpose" resonated with me so deeply, not just the first time I was laid off, but even now 20 years later and having left by choice.
On the flipside, to get CYA-managery, but any time someone in management says anything approaching "you should quit" that can be a bit worrisome. They might be doing you a favor, but the org is more than likely to be hurt by you leaving.
Suppose it’s $500k a year.
Well, what if someone says they could do it for $200k a year? Or even less? Why keep the $500k employee???
That is how they arrive at $150k. It maximizes profit and keeps costs to a minimum. Good business.
You may not be able to guarantee that the new person can do it. This isn't a given, otherwise we would have all figured out how to hire the right devs for any given product and team.
There's a ramp up time to learning the product (and codebase, if it's software). If an emergency happens, only the new person will be fixing it and they will lack a lot of knowledge to fix it quickly or effectively.
Did the maintainer have any customer relations like customer feedback, including what works and doesn't in the product and what features they would like to see? Those have just been forfeited as well. Same for intra-company relationships.
The person you just fired could also go help make a competing product (legally or not), since they're the best person to do so. Chasing this down would require legal resources, which requires further expenses.
Sounds like a whole lot of extra potential complications for a measly +$300k.
In reality, if you are depending on one employee to make your business that is a huge risk.
That employee needs to document and transfer his knowledge and relationships out to the company at large. You must raise the bus factor.
This is extremely common in many/most SMBs.
> That employee needs to document and transfer his knowledge and relationships out to the company at large.
Most employees who are rainmakers/linchpins like this are also aware that they are rainmakers/linchpins.
First, knowledge documentation and transfer in reality is hard. Very few people read docs, even when they are told to and those docs are critical to their job and the business as a whole. If you do it face-to-face, it’s almost always the case that the person learning politely listens and is already making a mental list of changes (often catastrophic) that they are going to make.
Second, relationships are extremely valuable, and anyone who has them pretty much knows this. Why would they give this up freely? Oh, you will fire them? I guess the company’s competitor would love to have your rainmaker and all of his/her contacts.
In all of the sustainable and stable businesses I have seen, these rainmakers/linchpins get paid outsized amounts of money due to the processes and connections that they have and have made. Imho, they deserve it.
The company has to have a BATNA in the event that the employee demands something outrageous, but usually the best course of action is to reward them generously for sustained profitable performance. If you are lucky and skilled as an executive/manager, some of these superstars will be happy with a slightly smaller (but still relatively large) income in order to work in what is hopefully a healthy work environment.
Firing/antagonizing them makes no sense.
By your logic having someone 2x as sucessful at sales is risky and you should let that person go.
Builds good will, makes people happy, and secures your ownership of a product that has added tremendous value to your company. That's a win all around.
I think you grossly underestimate how hard it is to find one person, much less two or three people, who can and will actually do this task diligently.
Your best hope is that the PM gets bored and wants to move on, and you let them hand pick their successor(s).
I’m going to paste from another reply I made in this thread:
“Knowledge documentation and transfer in reality is hard. Very few people read docs, even when they are told to and those docs are critical to their job and the business as a whole. If you do it face-to-face, it’s almost always the case that the person learning politely listens and is already making a mental list of changes (often catastrophic) that they are going to make.”
I will add that hiring competent people is hard if the company is focused on keeping compensation relatively low (as in this example) rather than rewarding their champions.
I realize that as an org gets larger, pay bands have to be a thing because mediocre-but-functional people (i.e., most “good” employees) get butthurt when a champion makes more than they do. That said, I think that many SMBs can have substantial salary variation within the employees, have those variations be reasonable, and frame it in a way that makes sense to everyone involved. That said, many chose not to do so.
You provide literally nothing of value to the customer, burden the customer-focused employees with unnecessary bullshit and use all of your political capital to advocate for the hiring of more deadweight employees? 100k per year.
You advocate for, build and maintain a product worth $10m/year to the business? Wow, you're pretty special. You can have 150k!