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

Here’s why I don’t blame them.

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?

Here’s what I’ve learned from people leaving.

Companies Do Suck

Tony was a civil engineer. He’s one of these guys who design things like bolts, hinges, and couplings. You can think of him as a quiet genius who makes the things we take for granted.

Shortly after blowing out his knee, his aspiration of being a world-class athlete died. The 1984 Olympics would miss him as a hurdler. So he leaned on his engineering degree.

Like most of us, he partnered with a company as an employee. He made mad cash, but he made this company lots more. His brilliance would later lead to patents.

Through many spurious loopholes and corporate trickery, business owners stole his inventions; he lost the rights to his patents and ended up quitting with lint in his pockets.

The red disclaimers in his contract left a bitter taste in his mouth that will forever sting. The hate for corporate America is real and deserved.

It’s hard to look employees in the face and inspire them to do great things for you when you hear corporate horror stories. Stories like these happen often.

Developers give away their life-chi to companies who prey on their creativity. Bad business people jump into the software game, having no clue what it’s like to create.

To them, we’re all chocolates on an assembly line. They tell us what to do and wait for software widgets to come out the other end. It’s a tragic story of corporate exploitation.

But All Companies Aren’t Created Equal

Like luggage, people carry their past with them.

Cynicism grows when companies treat people like crap, exploit, and look past them. You start and end your day waiting for the other shoe to drop.

When will the lie about your stock package come to light? You get the sense you’re being duped, but you can’t work out how.

But some companies invest in their people. Not all companies treat their engineers like donkeys. Some business owners want to be the reason their employees can afford college tuition.

A broad paintbrush helps no one. Yet, you can feel the corporate hate bouncing off your LinkedIn feed. It’s easy to find anti-inspirational stories where an exploited employee flipped the middle finger and bounced.

Here’s the problem: If we treat every company as an evil entity that lies, cheats, and steals, we miss business owners who sacrifice for their people. We omit the single mom who fought her way out of the inner city to build her own technology company. And unfortunately, we ignore people who give back to communities and empower minorities.

“James, all you have to do man is drive this car to Vegas, just don’t look in the trunk.”

In about 250 miles, I could have grabbed a bag of cash to change my family's life forever. I didn’t do it.

Why?

A business took a chance on me. A generous business owner saw past the backward LA cap, white T-shirt, and converse. He put a screwdriver in my hand and taught me how to assemble computers. This entrepreneur could see his past in my eyes, so he helped me.

Guess what? His name lies on the same list as all the millionaire bastards we hate without knowing their stories.

Why My Employee Left

Kudos to him; he got a better offer.

I look at it this way: My company needs to have a lot to offer. But even when we think our corporate swag inspires people, sometimes people move on, which is a good thing.

My employee left because he saw a better career path for himself and his family. Sometimes people grow faster than the speed of our businesses.

I tip my hat to him and wish him the best.

When I took my introspective angry run around the block, I realized we could have done more. Did I inspire my ex-employee? Did we serve his needs?

Or did we do everything we could, but the right opportunity knocked on his door, anyway?

People do what’s in their best self-interest, and they should. A company's job is to align with people to get what they want. The idea is a win-win scenario where you collaborate with employees to help each other.

I didn’t do that, so he left.

What I Learned

Hakuna Matata.

Employees shouldn’t be ostracized when they exercise their corporate freedom. It’s how it should be. If companies yearn to be great, we must give people a reason to stay, and grow.

It means we must strive, together, to reach our mutual goals. There’s a symbiosis where we all eat and advance together.

I made it a habit to get curious when people leave. What could we improve? How could we help them in their next endeavor? Our success hinges on the feeling we give our people. Our focus should be on them rather than dimes and nickels.

The flip side, though, means companies get to choose as well. And though we may demonize company choice, this is how the world goes around.

Haters gon’ hate, and I’m not a hater. Both companies and people have choices. Businesses should have a moral obligation to treat their people well, and those that do perform better.

Employees often get the short end of the stick. But we’re not all Lex Luthor. Not all of us put profits before healthcare. It doesn’t make good business sense to exploit hard-working people, nor does it make sense to tattoo “evil capitalist” on every business owner’s head.

People work for businesses, and business owners are people.