19. Sept. 2023
Reaktion von LeadingIT
2yIt appears that I personally upset you and I'm sorry for that. Had we spent time together and talked through this I'm sure there would be a different story here and maybe even an overall different outcome.
Of course it’s me responding, at the end of the day I'm responsible for everything in this company. I certainly agree that I'm not perfect, in fact, I've never run a company that has grown this large and every day I'm figuring out the next steps to our continued growth.
I'll reiterate our side of our story as I usually do. We are a DRIVEN fast growth company and that may cause us to often have our issues. Our work this year implementing EOS/Traction has certainly helped us and shined a light where we need to make changes. While our total year over year growth was 80%, our organic growth was in fact 22%. It is because of this continued growth that we can continue improving pay, paying 100% benefits, increasing a 5% 401k match and a lot of other fringe benefits. Without growth, a business dies.
Yes we use metrics and KPIs to hold team accountable, shouldn’t we if we want to be successful?
Yes we pay ~3% cost of living annual raises, usually paid quarterly, when most companies do not.
Yes we pay 100% of health benefits (even families), VERY few companies do this.
Yes we need to care about making money, if we don't, we would “die” as a business.
Yes we have acquired companies, and yes it can be difficult, challenging, and a great opportunity for everyone involved.
Yes articles have been written and published about us and our growth, shouldn’t we celebrate that?
Almost half of our technical team are amazing team members who provide immense value to our clients and our company. They are consistently high performers who do more than just their role requires. They take on new challenges, they pursue additional knowledge, and they have a positive attitude.
They are paid on average 15% over “market rate” AND have their benefits 100% paid for. We know because we’ve done the homework acquiring industry data from Service Leadership that gives us actual MSP salary data across thousands of businesses.
However, especially in a labor shortage, some employers will pay excessively to find talent. Our company could not sustain paying the sometimes 40% over market rate to the team member who may have been poached without leaving the couch.
It is absolutely not that I don't care, I just can't compete against that insanity of such a tight labor market.
Our industry simply does not have enough talent in IT and so we have to "build" people. And as other reviews have pointed out, we can be that "stepping stone" for people to build a career in IT. We’d prefer they start and STAY with us, so we have ascension plans that allow a new fresh out of school (or not) tech/engineer to start with us and ascend their salary adding an additional $40,000/year if not more.
We continue to improve everything we do AND we strive to IMPACT everyone involved, teams, clients, community.
I'm reminded of Subpar Parks, a parody account of sorts that found where people had actually 1-star Yelp reviewed our awesome National Parks. “Trees block view and there are too many gray rocks – Yosemite”. Seems this has become the place where only angry former employees go to air their grievances.
I suppose happy employees appreciate the opportunity, challenge themselves to do more and grow, and be the change they want to see in a company.
If you’re curious about the reality of our company and the growth opportunity, come talk to us. Come talk to me.
Stephen