Lateral quitter: Difference between revisions

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{{a|work|}}{{d|{{PAGENAME}}|ˈlætərəl ˈkwɪtə|n|}}One who voluntarily leaves your organisation to work somewhere else. Managers will steadfastly deny any lateral quitters are ever missed, but there are excel spreadsheets that will prove otherwise.
{{a|work|{{image|competence phase transition|png|}}}}{{d|{{PAGENAME}}|ˈlætərəl ˈkwɪtə|n|}}One who voluntarily leaves your organisation to work somewhere else. Managers will steadfastly deny any lateral quitters are ever missed, but there are excel spreadsheets that will prove otherwise.


As a matter of logic lateral quitters will tend to be good employees you didn’t want to leave. If they are not, you should be “encouraging them” to leave anyway.  
As a matter of logic, lateral quitters will tend to be ''good'' employees that you didn’t want to leave. [[Line manager]]s have a remarkable facility, after the fact, for persuading their superiors, that this is not the case, but it stands to reason: if people leave who you wanted to leave anyway, you should have ''made'' them leave. Employment should not, however much human resources dogma implies otherwise, be a hostage situation. Either way.


Now, it is true: there is a [[bid/ask spread]] at the “[[competence phase transition|phase transition]]” between employees you genuinely value and those you would be just as happy never to see again — a sort of purgatorial state occupied by earnest plodders who don’t really earn their keep but do no real harm, such that you can’t ''quite'' summon the bureaucratic energy to proactively whack them, but few will shed crocodile tears if they did decide to push off. These [[Weak gazelle|types]] do every now and then have a rush of blood to the head and throw in the towel, especially at times of mass exuberance: you know, dotcom booms, crypto mania, that kind of thing, displaying a lemming-like willingness to show up in the fossil record then these periodic mass extinctions occur. God speed all our friends in operations at Coinbase right now: enjoy it while it lasts.
===The competence phase transition===


Anyway. Leaving aside the purgatorial plodders lateral leavers will generally be your ''good'' employees are leaving. If your [[HR]] were worth the compendious space it occupied, it would its some time analysing what these lateral quitters are, and asking ''why'', in general terms, they are walking away.  
Now, it is true: there ''is'' a sort of “[[bid/ask spread]]” between staff you genuinely value and those you would be just as happy never to see again. This we call the “[[competence phase transition]]”. It is a sort of purgatorial state, occupied by earnest plodders who don’t really earn their keep but do no real harm, such that you can’t ''quite'' summon the bureaucratic energy to proactively whack them, but few will shed crocodile tears if they did decide to push off. It is a remarkably stable state: [[Weak gazelle|staff of such a tepid bearing]] can comfortably inhabit this zone for decades. Some do, every now and then, have a rush of blood to the head and throw in the towel, often  at times of mass exuberance: you know, dotcom booms, [[Cryptobabble|crypto mania]], that kind of thing, when in a fit of irrational (and uncharacteristic) exuberance, these people join fly-by-night stablecoin start-ups and legaltech ventures. They are not generally heard of again until they show up in the fossil record as evidence of one of these mass extinctions that the financial service industry undergoes every decade or so.
 
God speed all our friends in operation roles at Coinbase and [[Lexrifyly]] right now, by the way: hope it is fun while it lasts.
 
Anyway. Leaving aside these anomalous situations, lateral leavers will generally be your ''better'' employees. If [[HR]] were worth the space it occupied, it would ask who these lateral quitters are, and ''why'', in general terms, they are walking away.  


It takes no towering intellectual insight to boil it down to one of three things: money, progression, and quality of work.
It takes no towering intellectual insight to boil it down to one of three things: money, progression, and quality of work.