One of the quieter strengths of Sun Microsystems was on display at a new hire orientation in the summer of 1996. Like many companies at the time, Sun ran its new hire orientations every Monday, to welcome and mechanically onboard the several dozen people that started each week. Of note in that particular new hire orientation — and notable because it was not in fact notable at all — was that of the thirty or so new hires in the room, a half dozen were former employees returning to Sun.
While certainly not unique to Sun, the idea of employees returning to a former employer has become more unusual in Silicon Valley: startups often don’t have the longevity to accommodate a second stint — and many established companies erode employee trust to the point that former employees often have no desire to return.
Leaving Oxide
At Oxide, we have been blessed with many employees with longevity — but employees have left too. When there is a strong sense of mission, the departure of an employee can feel like a betrayal to the cause, but we do not view it that way: someone seeking happiness outside of Oxide should always be encouraged to do so.
By making it easy to leave Oxide — by allowing people to leave the company without otherwise judging them — we make it easier for them to return should they find that their career path points them back to Oxide.
Returning to Oxide
All of this leads to a question: given the rigor of our hiring process as expressed in [rfd3], what does it mean for a former employee to apply? They have written materials once and were hired on the basis of those materials; presuming that an employee left of their own volition, is it necessary to run through the entirety of the process?
In a word, yes: former employees who wish to apply for an open position should do just as they did when they were initially hired and… apply. This may seem to be an undue burden; wasn’t the (now former) employee already vetted by the Oxide hiring process? While former employees can certainly take solace in the fact that they were hired based on their original materials, our expectation is that the materials that they submit on their re-application will not be these materials, but will in fact be updated to reflect both their tenure at Oxide and beyond it. This allows these former employees to reflect on their time at Oxide and (especially) their desire to return — answering a question that will surely be on the minds of Oxide employees. Moreover, the updated materials allow for the former employee to introduce themselves to Oxide employees with whom they might not have overlapped — or to apply for a position other than the one that they originally held. Finally, having former employees apply to Oxide via the same process as any other candidate serves to reinforce the transparency of our hiring process — which in turn fosters the teamwork that we have found to be essential at Oxide.
Determinations
The hiring process for former employees is no different than the hiring process for anyone else: former employees should submit materials for the roles for which they wish to apply, and they will be evaluated like any other applicant per [rfd147].
External References
[rfd3] Oxide Computer Company. RFD 3 Oxide Hiring Process. https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/rfd/0003.
[rfd147] Oxide Computer Company. RFD 147 Evaluating Applicant Materials. https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/rfd/0147.