People who accept counters are usually gone in a year anyway - they'd already decided to go, management has written them off in their minds, something like that.
Looking for the stat, but it's at least an 80% chance they'll be gone in 2 years; either of their own accord or the company's. So if your boss ever pulls one of these maneuvers either get on their boss's good side or start looking for work yourself because there's about to be a shuffle.
80% chance of leaving within 2 years? How far is this from the average stay in any given job in IT these days? Except for my first job that I stayed for 3.5 years (mostly out of necessity at the time), all my others have been less than 2 years, be it by my own will, the company's will or both.
Good point, I was thinking about that not long after I posted it. I think it had more to do with management shuffles than employee shuffles. Most stats I can find state it as 80-90% leaving in 6 months to 1 year which sounds right, often resuming their job hunt 90 days after receiving the counter.
Counters rarely make sense. There's probably exceptions, but I've never seen any.
Reminds me a little about when someone wants to break up with their partner and the partner tries to get them to stay. Usually by the time someone wants to leave things are just broken and to late to fix.
People think there are clear answers to things that in retrospect seem right or wrong decisions after things play out.
Those 10,000 shares of Msft? Well what if you were working for Eagle Computer (I owned one of those and remember that day very well)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Computer