Inside eROI: Startup Grows Up – Transition (Part 4)
Monday, July 23rd, 2007A transition: Three employees leave on good terms
The company has had almost no turnover in its 4 ½ year history. A couple employees haven’t worked out, but for the most part eROI is loyal to its employees and employees remain loyal to eROI. There are a few exceptions where employees moved states to be closer to family or chose family. But, on the whole, it was a steady growth of new employees to add to the stable community of old-timer employees (in the startup world, this is defined as the formative three years with the company).
Interestingly over the past 6 weeks, three employees left the company. They left for similar reasons and the 31 remaining employees are more aligned and stronger because of this healthy transition process. These three employees were in dual-roles to provide an opportunity to grow into an area they were passionate about, but there wasn’t enough work in the new area to sustain a full-time position. These employees were excited about creating their own job descriptions for half of their job, but ultimately lost the passion in the core area of the other role of their job. Furthermore, all three of the employees that left saw how aligned the whole company was becoming. The collective motivation to make our mark on the world and do amazing quality work meant a renewed commitment to the company, more attention to detail and more hours, in some cases. These were some of the subtle reasons why a couple of the employees chose to become freelancers. Here is an excerpt from one of the former employee’s blog:
“I resigned from my job about two weeks ago and I wanted to wait until everything was finished before I started blogging again. It’s been a really emotional (ahh damn I’ve gone emo) and stressful last few months for me. I’m sure many people have left jobs before and have gone through similar scenarios. You start getting really combative, you aren’t easily motivated; maybe you’re even unmotivated, you start affecting those who are around you. It can get ugly, and while I was definitely in a bad state of mind, I would like to think I pulled myself together enough to leave on good terms with my former company. After all, it was they who gave me my shot and fostered my learning for all of this stuff.”



I am excited to join a great panel for an upcoming Software Association of Oregon event called 


