Engineering manager dilemma
I have an engineer 6 Month in to the job and now i learnt he is interviewing and looking out , he has not found anything yet but now since i know he is going to quit i don't feel like giving him more critical work on projects. Small company everyone is super important, not ton of people to back up, I can go hire extra engineer and then hope he will quit. I want to keep the one I have but i cannot confront him about him looking out since i came to know from other person on the team. I tried to check negative signals on my own but nothing negative came out of it. He seemed to be happy at work. What should i try next?
Ask him if he is happy and if he would like to change anything.
It's an open ended question, everyone wants ping pong table, foosball table and bean bags.
Hahaha
How often do you meet with him?
Everyday but 1:1 very often. He is looking for i think some work from home but that is something not in company's policy.
You should fire the snitch.
It doesn't work that way but yes i do tread with snitches very very carefully and really don't take their word for it unless their are other strong signs of confirmation.
Chances are, the snitch is playing you. I would confront him, or at least ask whether he is happy with his current role. It is also possible he may have lied to the snitch for whatever reason
I think you can start interviewing candidates. Create a job desc and start actively screening people for when he leaves. If he doesnt then its fine you can keep them warm for when someone else leaves. I always have hired a replacement in 2 weeks because i stat connected to several candidates. Attrition is natural but as a manager i try to minimize the impact. Of course people will talk about trying to retain .. bla bla.. let’s face it. Retaining engineers in bay area is a hypothetical concept.
Interestingly enough this person did quit in January and i was able to retain him. Now i think he just doesn't know what he wants . He is close to 40yrs , unmarried - i think he is generally unhappy in his personal life and some how i am suppose to provide that happiness at work.
Interesting background story. I am surprised that he is trying to quit again in 3 months. May be best to reduce his workload. You might also let him know that you heard he was interviewing, which is fine..
Yes. You shouldn’t change your behavior based on third hand snitching. If anything, the employee who snitched is a jackass and can’t be trusted.
Everyone is a snitch , order of magnitude might be different. Welcome to Engineering Management.
Let him interview and look around. I will often interview around to see where I stand and what I could do to improve. If he gets a once in a lifetime opportunity, good for him. Else I am hoping you are a good manager to him everyday in which case, you don’t have a reason to worry.
He asked for WFH option and you’re denying it and you want him to stay to avoid all the hassle; looks like you should take some steps, some ideas — See why he doesn’t want to spend more time in office? Maybe arrange more team building stuff. Encourage him to talk to team mates, make sure he collaborates and maybe make him work with more positive people, who are happy. Or, could it be, he wants WFH to learn new skills and change career. Then sooner or later, he’s gone but maintain a nice rapport so he can do good knowledge transfer. Also, just tell him a story that you know, you some times get tired working on same stuff but it’s important that we understand our obligations and responsibilities.
Good point. He is not even a year in to job so i am not overly dependent on the person at this time. I want to be though and that is how envision this role else its more work for me. He was full time WFH before this job and probably now realizes that working at office calls for different lifestyle.
^^My first boss (at a diff company) openly told me that he used to interview for “practice”, and met a lot of people that way, and that I should strongly consider it. Seriously though, pulling someone off projects because of gossip is a great way to enable manipulative people to bump someone else off an important project without the bump-ee being able to defend themselves or even know why. Think REALLY hard about what kind of culture you’re wanting to create there, you’re a small company and now is the time that your cultural norms are being established. Good luck.
Really nice answer!
Being small i don't have enough people to bump people off projects. The only thing different that I can do at best is pay more attention to that project so as to be not left blind sided once he decides to leave. But that is more work for me.
What is his tc
How did you find out he is interviewing ? How do you know it's not something personal instead of job hunt ?
Through other engineers.