Retaining Great People by Marc Andreessen

Marc Andreessen is the cofounder of Netscape and Andreessen Horowitz. This essay is an abridged excerpt of a blog post Marc published in 2007.

Companies that are winning—even really big, old ones—never have a retention problem. Everyone wants to stay, and when someone does leave, it’s really easy to get someone great to take her place.

Companies that have a retention problem usually have a winning problem. Or rather, a “not winning” problem. […]

The only way a company in that situation can retain great people is to start winning again.

Great people want to work at a winner.

All the raises, perks, and HR-sponsored “company values” drafting sessions in the world won’t help you retain great people if you’re not winning—not even the $6,000 heated Japanese toilets in all the restrooms, the $30,000 Olympic lap pool out back, and the free $4 bottles of organic orange juice in all the snack rooms.

This seems deeply unfair when you’re going through it, because when you’re not winning, that’s exactly when you need all those great people the most!

Oh well. That’s the price we pay for living in a society where jobs aren’t for life anymore.

So the right question is, how can we start winning again? […]

In general, the intangibles that keep great people are: the quality of the people they’re working with, the interestingness level of their projects, and whether they are learning and growing.

The tangibles are: winning, and a high stock price.

As the leader, you have to really believe that you can get your company back to winning and therefore back to a high stock price.

If not, you should sell the company.

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