"The one thing we can track precisely is how well the startups in each batch do at fundraising after Demo Day. But we know that's the wrong metric. There's no correlation between the percentage of startups that raise money and the metric that does matter financially, whether that batch of startups contains a big winner or not."
Not long ago, I worked at a large investment bank (which shall remain unnamed). Not only were we forced to use horrible networked computers running on XP with Excel 2002, but were also forced to use IE8.
However, one can only tolerate so many browser crashes before he begs permission from IT to install Chrome. That was a glorious day.
By the time employees think about taking a job elsewhere, it's often already too late. A counter-offer only retains the talent temporarily and more often than not, there's some fundamental dissatisfaction with the job.
One begs the question, what should employers do to retain talent?
The author left us with "Have clear and consistent salary guidelines, and regularly give raises to people who are outperforming their pay level." This takes the approach that prevention is key.
In my last job, I thought about quitting months before actually giving the notice. My employer counter-offered with 10% above what the other guy was offering. This temporarily retained me. However, for months after, I wasn't performing at my peak and eventually sought employment elsewhere.
Great designers are undervalued. If there was more of a push for entrepreneurs/founders to learn design 10 years ago, maybe Google and Facebook wouldn't have their design flaws.
"The one thing we can track precisely is how well the startups in each batch do at fundraising after Demo Day. But we know that's the wrong metric. There's no correlation between the percentage of startups that raise money and the metric that does matter financially, whether that batch of startups contains a big winner or not."
(http://www.paulgraham.com/swan.html)