← Back to context

Comment by Retric

11 days ago

Nobody is talking about handing out 200k of training upfront. Individual 1-8 week training courses don’t actually cost that much to operate internally and generally allow someone to do something very specific and useful. There’s plenty of ways to boost short term retention like a bonus after 1 year of service.

50+k of training over a 40 year career requires salary bumps for retention, but the first set of training should have paid for itself before you’re offering the next.

> Nobody is talking about handing out 200k of training upfront.

Why not?

> 50k of training over a 40 year career requires salary bumps for retention, but is hardly a major risk.

"Pay 50k for training and then pay a salary bump" is more expensive than "just pay a salary bump to the person the competitor was a sucker enough to pay 50k to train", so how does that work?

  • > is more expensive than

    Nope. Keeping the same person for 40 years saves far more than 50k of onboarding costs over that timeframe. Employee churn is really expensive but if it’s not coming out of your budget middle management doesn’t care.

    Companies do all kinds of objectively dumb things due to poor incentives.

    • > Keeping the same person for 40 years saves far more than 50k of onboarding costs over that timeframe. Employee churn is really expensive but if it’s not coming out of your budget middle management doesn’t care.

      How does that change the number from the perspective of the employee?

      The problem is not how to get an employee to stay for 40 years. The problem is, the employee who has just received $50k in training will take whichever job pays more, so the employer who paid the $50k has to offer the same salary as the one who didn't. And then who is going to pay the $50k when they could get the employee that someone else paid the money to train, for the same salary?

      2 replies →