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I Gave Employees Everything They Wanted. They Started a Side-Hustle And Left.

James Williams
ILLUMINATION
Published in
5 min readFeb 14, 2022

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Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

I’m all for engineers shaking their moneymakers, but damn.

You don’t expect to pour your heart into the culture, do all you can to make employees happy, and still see them leave.

When this happens, it’s easy to feel taken advantage of. Sometimes you have that f$$kit emotion that says, “If people leave anyway, we’ll manage like the big businesses who toss people on the street when profits decline.”

Instead, we do our research, listen to Simon Sinek to tap into employees’ motivation and inspiration. We search for company bliss where people genuinely smile on Zoom calls.

Culture gurus teach us that managing is inferior to leading. If we lead and pour into people, “it’s the right thing to do”. We don’t want to be the selfish capitalist buying yachts while our employees pinch pennies. And when we make mistakes, a boatload of YouTube videos and masterclasses are waiting to paint us as Lex Luthor figures putting profits over people.

But what happens when we’ve done all we can, and engineers smack us with their pimp hands and waltz out the door?

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ILLUMINATION
ILLUMINATION

Published in ILLUMINATION

We curate and disseminate outstanding articles from diverse domains and disciplines to create fusion and synergy.

James Williams
James Williams

Written by James Williams

Founder of COFEBE, Inc. We build tools that make engineer’s jobs easier. https://www.cofebe.com

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