I was talking with one of my friends recently and he was telling me about a problem he was having. He is trying to recruit a very talented programmer for his team and, while the position was approved and everybody gave that candidate a thumb up during the interview process, he still has to fight with the human resource department to get this hire approved.
The proposed compensation wasn’t outrageous, market level at best but that was the first problem for the human resource department. The second one was the title: the candidate didn’t fit snugly in one of their standard categories.
That strikes me as a classic example of a company where business goals are not aligned. On one side, we have a production team that has for mission to deliver exceptional products and, on the other side, we have human resource team that has for mission to keep employee cost as low as possible.
While both goals are valid and make sense individually, in the software business they are not aligned and therefor are preventing the company to reach an overall goal of maximizing profits. To maximize profits, the company needs to deliver exceptional products as those products sell a magnitude more than average products.
To deliver exceptional products in such a competitive environment as the software business, you have to attract talent. Talented programmers are rare and the contribution programmers make function of their talent is not a linear progression: It is a geometrical progression. A superstar programmer may earn 1.5 time more than a normal programmer but is not 1.5 time more productive. He usually is 4, 6 and sometimes 10 times more productive.
Talent needs to be compensated. If you only offers below market compensation, you depriving your company from the talent and productivity needed to deliver exceptional products and maximize your profit. The business goals of your different department need to be aligned. If your production team goal is to deliver exceptional products, your human resource team goal should be to find exceptional peoples.
(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)
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