The Dead Sea Effect

Recently, I read a post from Bruce Webster's blog that highlights a pattern happening at large organizations, where the quality of retained employees exponentially worsens overtime when talented employees leave the company. In many cases, the most talented employees will be the most likely ones to leave the company if there is a workplace problem, since they are the ones most likely to secure opportunities at other companies quickly. As a result, the least talented employees are the ones that remain if there is a workplace problem. As talented employees continue to leave the organization, backfilling their roles with other talented employees becomes even more difficult. since they either notice the lack of quality right away and look elsewhere, or they will join and leave shortly afterwards. As a result, the only employees who are retained over the long-term are those that are less talented, and the degradation of talent at the large organization becomes self-reinforcing. Webster names this pattern The Dead Sea effect, since he noticed talented engineers evaporate similar to water in the Dead Sea, where less talented employees are the remaining salt residue. For additional context, water collected in the Dead Sea evaporates more quickly than water in the open ocean, making it one of the saltiest bodies of water in the world.