[HN Gopher] How should we handle an over-productive employee?
___________________________________________________________________
How should we handle an over-productive employee?
Author : zikohh
Score : 100 points
Date : 2022-09-09 13:23 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (workplace.stackexchange.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (workplace.stackexchange.com)
| runeblaze wrote:
| > This is done partly because it is incredibly hard to recruit
| software developers nowadays
|
| Cries in new grad not being able to find work and being ghosted
| by companies after finishing their OA passing every test tears.
| breadbreadbread wrote:
| This isnt a problem. The tasks your business needs are being
| completed in exchange for a salary. If your weekly tasks are done
| you should be able to go home.
| monkeynotes wrote:
| If it were at all possible I'd give Bob a 4 day week, let him
| work on personal R&D stuff, or promote him to a level where he
| can use his competence to solve bigger problems. If there are no
| more challenging problems to work on it's time for Bob to look
| for a new job as his career will be suffering.
| solotronics wrote:
| Over 90% of the projects at work I would categorize as "very
| successful and high business impact" I did on my own and just
| showed management once I had a minimum proof of concept. This is
| over my whole career and not specific to an employer. I have
| thought about this a lot as it relates to prioritization of work.
| spprashant wrote:
| As someone who had seemingly unlimited energy when I started
| working, I am glad one of his team members recognizes his
| productivity and wants to do something to help him.
|
| It is clear that Bob has a lot of potential, but it crucial
| someone take the responsibility to mentor him and channel his
| zeal. This could be open source projects, building new side
| projects at work, and making him responsible for more than just a
| steady flow of client tickets.
|
| People like Bob often spend all of their energy on mundane tasks,
| and burn out or just lose interest by 30.
|
| As someone who just passed 30, and feels a tad bit bitter about
| wasting some of my potential, I wish I had someone to tell me
| what to spend time on, and what not to.
| itsboring wrote:
| Bob should master Crusader Kings III.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| This is a process problem. Folks create a kanban-board
| environment which is sort-of good at helping new hires get
| oriented and become useful, while keeping managers informed of
| where everything is at.
|
| But it gets ossified into "these folks are in charge of creating
| stories...tasks and no one else" and "these folks are queue-
| picking migrant farm workers just picking up tasks and doing them
| and nothing else".
|
| You put an Engineering effort through this wire screen and it
| ends up mush. The Engineering gets lost in the dissection.
|
| Let Bob read all the code, create his own tickets and get back to
| work. This whole question isn't "How to keep Bob busy" but is
| instead "How to rationalize our system that Bob is so clearly
| illustrating is broken"
| nsxwolf wrote:
| The post is so well written and stylized it sounds fake. "Bob" is
| just far too perfect to believe. Is this a genre - a kind of
| hypothetical fiction designed to spur interesting conversation
| (and SO upvotes?)
| icedchai wrote:
| Bob needs to pace himself and realize he doesn't have to be
| working all the time.
| Cryptonic wrote:
| Ok make him technical lead and sole developer of a new moonshot
| project. If you are a one product company, this is your chance to
| diversify.
| [deleted]
| Fiahil wrote:
| The solution is pretty simple and given out in the answers below
| :
|
| > It's a good idea for everyone (including Bob) to have a well
| defined side or pet project. Something that's useful for the
| business, fun to do, but doesn't have a hard deadline or
| deliverable yet. Could be technical or scientific research,
| tools, process improvement, experimental features, documentation,
| user research, competitive analysis, etc. This is "stuff to work
| on" if your hair isn't on fire and your tasks are mostly done.
| These can be defined in collaboration between the employees and
| the business stakeholders.
|
| > Have bob start filling up his own task queue
| rufius wrote:
| Bob has either outgrown that company or needs a vast increase of
| scope. If scope increase, figure out how to coach him because it
| won't click initially.
|
| That said, if I were his manager I'd be trying to help him find
| an opportunity outside the company that appropriately matches his
| ambition and skill.
| redleggedfrog wrote:
| Reading the bullets for a minute I thought I was Bob, but I've
| never done Android for real, so no, but the rest mostly fits. I'm
| maybe not quite that productive, either, but close. I have the
| advantage of being old and curious, and working with the same
| codebase for the last 10 years.
|
| What helps me is a really good manager - of which I have had two
| out of ??? in 25 years. When I'm out of tasks they allowed me to
| refactor and fix longstanding difficult bugs. It has the added
| advantage of getting me deeper into the code and allowing me to
| build better foundations for future work which makes me more
| productive for a nice feedback loop.
|
| They also have allowed me to train up other developers and write
| up official coding standards with down time and that has been
| great, too. It's nice when all your code looks mostly the same.
|
| Also being able to repeatedly decline a promotion to management
| but still get paid well has been good for company loyalty.
|
| There is a downside in that most days feel like, well, kind of
| like a Games Workshop orc going "Waaaaaaaah!" where I'm just
| hurtling through the work and my brain is just spinning max RPM
| and then I go home and it's hard to stop the momentum. I have to
| excercise to clear my head or I won't sleep.
| comfypotato wrote:
| This is the lifestyle to which I aspire. Can you provide your
| "most helpful tip" that got you to this place?
| mpalczewski wrote:
| The comments. The idea of someone doing things really well
| triggers tons of insecurities.
|
| "Until that guy burns out and crashes."
|
| "Are they abusing drugs?"
|
| "Bob is doing things without really understanding what he's
| doing"
|
| "Bob is working far beyond what he's billing"
|
| "To me, this sounds like the "smart guy" who if left unchecked
| will leave a trail of destruction."
| spaghettiToy wrote:
| I think the drugs thing is more common than anyone wants to
| admit.
|
| Of course caffeine is huge, but we had a 10x type programmer
| who suddenly went full 180 degrees.
|
| Turns out he stopped taking his Adderall.
|
| My company tried to hide it by saying "mental illness". That's
| still the official message, despite everyone next to him
| knowing full well what happened.
|
| >Until that guy burns out and crashes
|
| I see this most with new grads. The company knows their
| enthusiasm and ignorance to red tape and how disposable they
| are. They use these new grads on the worst jobs, long hours,
| terrible work experience, or thankless. The new grads do a
| decent job, but become disenchanted because their hard work
| wasn't rewarded either professionally with a promotion, or
| never made an impact on the company.
|
| ---
|
| I genuinely don't know what to do with over productive people.
| They are going to be disappointed. Although I'll take one at my
| current company, we have a backlog!
| fire wrote:
| do you happen to know if they were ADHD and it was prescribed
| meds? The effects of my ADHD were pretty severe before I got
| a diagnosis and was able to start stimulant meds, and when I
| run out it comes back in force.
|
| With how difficult it can be to do _anything_ with an
| executive dysfunction disorder ( what ADHD is ), I can
| totally see someone being fine on their meds, running out,
| and then being super unproductive as they also navigate
| scheduling mandated check-ins with a medical professional so
| they can get a refill ( it can be a huge pain in the ass )
| buescher wrote:
| Everybody hates a tourist.
| permalac wrote:
| Care to explain?
| rawgabbit wrote:
| I agree. Bob is smart but in a mediocre/bad job situation.
| Eventually, Bob realizes it is time to leave.
| rgoulter wrote:
| My impression reading the question is it's a low-tier
| outsourcing company. (Work is billed by the hour, only for
| approved tasks, code has to be auditing/approved by an external
| party).
|
| But e.g. considering "setup a packaging solution in days, when
| it wasn't done in a month" or "stuck for three weeks reviewing
| code which took two weeks to write" suggests either the star
| performer MUCH better than the others, or that he's more
| careless.
|
| "working without really understanding what you're doing" is a
| good technique in many cases, though, rather than a criticism
| as-such.
| onetokeoverthe wrote:
| danjc wrote:
| Please send me Bob's number.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Sounds like he needs more meetings to attend. That should help
| equalize his productivity.
| unity1001 wrote:
| Quick!! Schedule a few syncs on his/her calendar. That'll show
| him how to be productive!
| ofirg wrote:
| I will pay money to talk to bob and might solve your problem by
| taking him off your hands.
| motohagiography wrote:
| One thing I might suggest is find out what open source products
| your customers are using and get Bob to contriubte to those
| products from his corporate account on behalf of your company. If
| the projects are related to the company's line of business it
| will increase the firms profile hugely, and make you the go-to
| company for those customers as they can't afford _not_ to choose
| your expertise that they already depend on.
|
| Your company's revenue is part new business and part renweals.
| The open source product will be a funnel for converting the FOSS
| users to new customers, while locking down renewals in those
| customers who use projects he contributes to.
|
| Figure out your customers' stacks, and then pitch Bob on
| contributing to key libraries and technologies that underpin
| them.
| fab13n wrote:
| there's a problem between Bob and the bureaucracy. whether it's a
| Bob problem or a bureaucratic problem is left as an exercise to
| the reader.
|
| However, I'd be thoroughly unsurprised if Bob happened to be on
| the autism spectrum. And autistic people are counter-intuitive
| but very easy to handle: force yourself to be extremely explicit,
| and to stick to first-degree in your exchanges to a point that
| seems ridiculous (to you). That's it, really.
| setgree wrote:
| Growing up, when I got good at something, I was able to channel
| the gains in productivity into more free time. This gave me ample
| incentive to get good at things.
|
| In the workplace, if you get good at something, you are generally
| expected to work the same fixed amount, which means the company
| reaps most of the rewards of your gains in productivity.
|
| On the SE thread, people recommend rewarding Bob by giving him
| more work, a promotion, or more money. One person suggests
| allowing him more free time. Were I Bob, I'd want more money and
| a promotion, but most of all I'd want more time. But that just
| isn't how things are done in most workplaces.
|
| I think most people in Bob's shoes would just pretend that they
| are busier than they are.
| shash wrote:
| I think the SE thread mentions that he's paid by the hour.
| Which for someone like Bob is quite a poor way to manage them!
| nathas wrote:
| Management is about extracting value, which is what most of those
| on replies on StackExchange are doing.
|
| Leadership is about training new leaders.
|
| Bob is a kick-ass employee. Why not make him into a leader and
| have him figure out ways to make the other employees just as
| productive? He has to learn to multiply his effort. He doesn't
| need to be a manager to do that; he just needs to be made into a
| stronger leader and be given progressively larger scope.
| itsboring wrote:
| Leadership is a worthwhile activity for sure, but if "Bob"
| doesn't get enjoyment/satisfaction out of it, then it could be
| perceived by him as more of a punishment.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > We put him on charge of finding out how to package stuff for
| publishing using a new installer tool. He got it done in two days
| - the previous developer was stuck on it for a month and couldn't
| get it done.
|
| Hmm, a month? I wonder if the other devs are also a problem?
| pyb wrote:
| Looks like they accidentally hired a high performer.
| raarts wrote:
| My message to Bob: if you're the smartest in the room, you're in
| the wrong room.
| kyleee wrote:
| well that certainly depends on compensation and a bunch of
| other factors
| freedude wrote:
| If this is really a problem good business rules are being
| ignored.
|
| Where is the long list of items that have been shoved to the
| backburner?
|
| What lean projects could be implemented that Bob can work on?
| i.e. Bob makes everyone more efficient.
|
| What is the toughest project that exists for the team? Assign to
| Bob.
|
| What ancillary projects exist in the business that Bob can
| tackle. Perhaps these aren't just Dev projects.
|
| Good business is about best utilizing the resources you have. Bob
| in this case. You are wasting his time.
| BoxFour wrote:
| I'm going to be contrary and cynical say that something funny is
| going on here.
|
| Going from desktop to mobile development, for example, isn't a
| monumental task necessarily but if you're spinning up on an
| entirely new framework, language, and even way of thinking (old
| devices, low connectivity, etc) I'm extremely skeptical that you
| could learn it to any appreciable degree in a week of real time,
| let alone work time.
|
| Sure, it's possible there are factors making this transition
| easier, and yes some of those mobile concerns apply to desktop as
| well, but to me this reeks of a few possible situations, none of
| which are good:
|
| 1) Bob is doing things without really understanding what he's
| doing, perhaps literally following a guide to the letter without
| a shred of critical thought about what he's doing.
|
| 2) Bob is working far beyond what he's billing
|
| 3) You've over-hired by a fair amount and your technology is so
| simple that people can solve your business needs even in
| disparate contexts extremely easily. If your Android app is just
| a web view connecting to your site, for example, sure i can see
| that being simple enough to fix in a week.
| rubidium wrote:
| To (3)'s point, the manager doesn't realize what's possible and
| the current devs are actually working 4 hours a week. Bob is
| exception, and _actually_ working 40 hours a week and getting
| 10x done.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| The question wasn't posted by the manager though, but by
| someone on the team.
| Coneylake wrote:
| I don't think that was explicitly stated
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| The poster was the tech lead, per one of their comments.
| Coneylake wrote:
| A tech lead and a people manager can be the same person
| comfypotato wrote:
| It is stated by the assertion that the poster doesn't
| think the manager is stemming tasks pre-fire. This
| implies they are different people.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I agree. To me, this sounds like the "smart guy" who if left
| unchecked will leave a trail of destruction.
|
| If the business model is a simple framework where incremental
| tasks are assigned, consistency and risk management is more
| important than happy developers. If Bob is a true rock star,
| he'll move on, which makes sense. In the meantime, the business
| has redundancy and isn't impacted.
| deltasevennine wrote:
| There are people in this world who are very smart. Those people
| can be much smarter then you.
|
| Often smarter people tend to congregate and less smart people
| do as well. So many people live in bubbles where they think
| they're the smartest person in the room; but the reality is
| there are plenty of rooms out there where they'd be the
| stupidest person.
|
| I don't know who you are but the fact that you can't comprehend
| the existence of someone who has superior productivity is an
| indicator that I think you haven't been humbled. You live in a
| bubble. Try switching rooms sometimes to see what's out there.
| BoxFour wrote:
| Just the opposite actually: I used to work in academia and
| I've met some _incredibly_ intelligent people who were leaps
| and bounds more insightful than 99.9999999% of people I've
| ever met (including more so than myself, obviously).
|
| The common trait for all of them was a desire for deep
| understanding and diligence in acquiring that in all aspects
| of their lives, not productivity or even the appearance of
| it.
|
| An emphasis on, or even appearance of, productivity is
| something I find in dilettantes more frequently than anyone
| else (probably not shockingly). The Instagram CEO types,
| frequently.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| >An emphasis on, or even appearance of, productivity
|
| Is Bob's emphasis on productivity directly or is that a
| result of a different emphasis.
|
| From the article:
|
| >This creates a situation where Bob is becoming somewhat
| anxious, as he feels guilty for not having enough tasks and
| is getting increasingly worried that our manager might be
| holding tasks from him in so he can fired without much
| hassle at some point in the near future.
|
| One interpretation is that Bob isn't anxious about the lack
| of productivity nor about others not being productive. His
| anxiousness is from not doing a good enough job and risking
| his job. Bob is likely some combination of having been
| taught to please people, that he must be maximally
| productive to keep his job, and being in a position where
| loss of a job would hurt enough to cause anxiety
| (developers being one of the few roles that are able to
| earn themselves into not needing a job, but Bob isn't there
| yet).
|
| This isn't relate to Bob's intelligence, but to his
| upbringing, what he was taught to value, and his current
| moral situation (and a lack of teaching him to pace himself
| to avoid burnout). In this specific case Bob is doing well
| enough to be causing a problem for others, but it is common
| to meet many Bob-like people don't get through the entire
| backlog as quickly or otherwise have an effectively
| infinite backlog. Those cases often seem destined for some
| burnout related negative outcome.
| deltasevennine wrote:
| Academia is a series of bubbles. It very much depends on
| which school you went to.
|
| The selection process in schools stratifies intelligence
| levels between institutions moreso then the corporate
| world.
|
| It also depends on country. For example in china the
| education system relies heavily on quantitative results
| similar to an IQ test. In the US there's more leeway for
| bias, opinion and affirmative action. Thus, if you're in
| academia in china the people who surround you are much much
| more stratified then academia in the US.
|
| Where you went to school illustrates your bubble. Were you
| in the top bubble or mid bubble or bottom bubble. Saying
| you're in academia further emphasizes my point.
| BoxFour wrote:
| Well that's silly, by that logic no one is ever qualified
| to ever be skeptical about anything because every single
| person in existence lives in a bubble of their own
| variety.
|
| I mean you're in your own bubble making this judgement
| right now - is it inconceivable to you that someone has
| truly met some extremely intelligent people and what I'm
| saying follows about Bob here?
|
| Maybe time to get out of your own bubble ;).
| deltasevennine wrote:
| It's only silly if you're unable to comprehend what's
| implied and need everything spelled out to you
| explicitly.
|
| Everyone is in a bubble. This is obvious. Nobody needs to
| be told this. The entire earth is in itself a literal
| bubble. Again, Nobody needs to be told this.
|
| Obviously what's going on here when I use the word
| "bubble" is I'm saying your "bubble" is small and low
| such that you don't think someone with superior
| productivity can exist. The description of Bob doesn't
| mesh with you, while for others who live in bigger
| bubbles think there's nothing abnormal here. So Obviously
| I'm talking about the Size of the bubble... and I'm
| saying your bubble is small.
|
| You said it's not because you're in academia, and I said
| academia is the ultimate <small> bubble and I gave my
| reason why.
|
| I didn't think it would need spelling out, but obviously
| the way forward is to further describe your "bubble" what
| makes you think it isn't "small" or "low". I mean this is
| pretty obvious. For example... which academic
| institution, which major, and what other experiences you
| have outside of academia?
|
| >Maybe time to get out of your own bubble ;).
|
| Of course this is Possible. But, obviously I'm not in
| agreement with you, and our disagreement is the purpose
| of this discussion.
|
| Your counter was "academia." So I emphasized how that
| doesn't tell me anything. Again, what do you think the
| obvious next step is?
| tom-thistime wrote:
| Are you sure you've known several folks who each have a
| one-in-a-billion talent level?
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Depends how finely you define the talent.
|
| I may well be the best rubyist that can program while
| captaining a tall ship. Thats a 1 in 7 billion talent
| BoxFour wrote:
| No, but I can use contextual clues like other accolades
| to extrapolate from my own experience with that person
| here (like being a Nobel laureate, for example).
|
| To your point though, more like one in 100 million I
| suppose if I'm to be more accurate.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| I would doubt that even most Nobel laureates would
| qualify as 1 in 100 million. There are nearly 1000 living
| Nobel laureates out of 7.7 billion, so the rarest they
| could possibly be is about 1 in 8 million.
|
| Additionally, Nobel Prizes only cover a handful of fields
| out of hundreds of possible fields people could work in.
| I would put it at more like 1 in 100,000 or 1 in a
| million.
| deltasevennine wrote:
| So you're surrounded by Nobel laureates and that is a
| factor in your judgement? Did these laureates gain the
| prize through productivity and intelligence? Does it
| prove you're not in a bubble and that your experience is
| broad enough to validate your suspicion?
|
| From my view point it really depends on if the Nobel
| laureate won the prize for IQ or productivity; or whether
| the category has any relation to the two aforementioned
| categories. If I remember correctly only very specific
| Nobel categories meet the aforementioned criteria.
| BoxFour wrote:
| A factor in my judgement about whether the people I've
| met who dwarfed me with their intelligence were actually
| intelligent? Yeah I'd say it's a factor :).
|
| Is this some kind of nihilistic moral relativism thing
| you're playing at here? Otherwise I'm unclear what your
| point is.
|
| You implied I've never been exposed to extremely smart
| people and couldn't fathom someone like Bob existing, I
| think I've made it pretty clear that's a silly argument
| you made from a bad assumption.
| deltasevennine wrote:
| >Is this some kind of nihilistic moral relativism thing
| you're playing at here? Otherwise I'm unclear what your
| point is.
|
| I thought my point is obvious. I'm saying your
| descriptions are unconvincing.
|
| The obvious path forward is to describe your "bubble" in
| further detail. What was the nobel prize for?
|
| > A factor in my judgement about whether the people I've
| met who dwarfed me with their intelligence were actually
| intelligent? Yeah I'd say it's a factor :).
|
| I think this sentence shows you're unable to sense the
| implications of my statement. Why would I care about your
| judgement at all? Nobody cares, especially if we think
| you live in a <small> bubble. Does this clarify the next
| step? I'm basically asking for a more detailed
| description of your "bubble" so that _I_ and others
| reading can make their own judgements about your bubble
| and the validity of your claim.
|
| So far your arguments of "academia" and "nobel prize" are
| unconvincing to me. Is that not obvious? I thought it
| was, I guess I need to be more explicit next time.
| RobRivera wrote:
| >people I've ever met
|
| that's a bias.
| BoxFour wrote:
| Sure, everyone in existence has a bias of some variety. I
| don't think that needs stating.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| You're going off-track. Neither GP nor OP are talking about
| a person emphasizing their own productivity. OP is only
| "look at Bob being productive, how do we handle it" and GP
| criticizes your first reason to be critical of Bob. Not
| sure why you're inserting the whole "appearing to be
| productive" assumption here.
| BoxFour wrote:
| The response to me was that I must be in a bubble where I
| can't imagine someone being significantly smarter and
| more productive than myself or my cohort.
|
| My response was that I've met plenty of people far
| smarter than myself, but productivity wasn't their
| defining character trait or even a particularly
| noticeable one.
|
| Someone who's "ultra productive", like Bob here, is
| reason to be suspect for all of the reasons I listed in
| my original post.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| Intelligence has almost nothing to do with productivity. For
| example, who's more productive:
|
| Engineer #1, spends 30 hours in a week flawlessly moving an
| important backend service to a completely new framework,
| adding complete test coverage, impeccably clean code, clear,
| readable documentation, and who even gets accolades from
| their peers for their work.
|
| Engineer #2, spends 2-3 hours reading the code and the code
| of the dependent services, talks to a few non-development
| teams about how they use the service, and determines that the
| backend service never needed to exist, and with a small
| business process change that will save $1MM a year, convinces
| a director to nix the entire project.
|
| Engineer #2 was more productive. But to an outside observer,
| and especially so to highly intelligent, highly productive
| engineer, #2 will get a massive amount of hate. Since the
| productive worker archetype almost always focuses on how the
| work is valuable to them but has a limited sense of direction
| on how it is valuable to others.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Right. I know a few really incredible engineers. Maybe not
| this fast but its certainly possible for people like this to
| exist. It's funny that people think, "No one can be that
| good!".
| distantaidenn wrote:
| 4) Bob is outsourcing his work.
|
| Joking, but it is a possibility.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Someone savvy enough to outsource their work wouldn't be
| worried about losing their job for having an empty queue,
| they would spread it out over the week. Adding more tasks
| increases the likelihood of getting caught
| [deleted]
| BoxFour wrote:
| Yes, I thought about putting this down but thought it was a
| bit uncharitable.
|
| It is a thing that's happened obviously though.
| dtx1 wrote:
| This reminds me of the WWI and WWII flying Aces. Germany had a
| lot more flying aces and lot higher "highscores" for their pilots
| than the allied or entente forces. The reasons was simple:
| Germany send their high value pilots out a lot more to get these
| results, risking losing their best pilots, while the british
| deliberatly made sure their best pilots immediately became
| instructors teaching their skills to other pilots.
|
| Bob should stop doing any work himself and instead focus on
| teaching other developers. Most programming time is spend being
| stuck on problems and debugging, the mere task of coding is often
| trivial for most devs. A high achiever like bob could propably
| help people solve issues they are stuck on really fast. That in
| turn would 10x return the performance he can achieve himself.
| unregistereddev wrote:
| This is a very good challenge for Bob. It is very much a
| "practice teaching and see how it goes" thing. It may not be
| something Bob is good at, though it may be something he can
| improve.
|
| Part of the value of a technical career path is to let high
| flyers teach experienced developers. While some people are good
| at training, it is its own skill. Some advanced IC's forget how
| to teach the basics, but are good at teaching advanced skills.
|
| To be clear, I'm agreeing with you. I just wanted to add the
| caveat that Bob might fit best as a staff developer who trains
| senior engineers. He may or may not also be good at training
| juniors.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Tell him to fill the rest of his time clearing tasks and bugs for
| open source projects the company depends on.
| avn2109 wrote:
| Best answer here, unleash Bob to fix openSSL or Linux kernel
| performance improvements or something.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| More prosaically (and judging from the description of the
| org), it's likely to be something like this:
|
| https://github.com/RicoSuter/NSwag
|
| Which has 1.7k issues, some of which are open for years.
| nurettin wrote:
| Why doesn't he have tasks? I always have something on queue. If I
| don't, I make something up like refactoring, fixing technical
| debt, writing a tool, a script, something to ease my chores. Or I
| go yak shaving.
| reportgunner wrote:
| I think training others or leading others is the way to go here.
| Giving him more work leaves you with the risk of Bob not being
| available one day for a period of time leaving the rest of the
| company struggling to fill the hole in productivity that was left
| after him.
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| Given the setting described in the linked Stack Exchange
| question, could they not send the _other two_ developers on
| training courses / skill building courses?
|
| That way, Bob gets a nice full queue and the team as a whole
| enhances their skill level.
|
| Disclaimer: I don't work in IT and am not a programmer.
| sbf501 wrote:
| The entire piece is catering to Bob's anxiety. As one of the
| replies mentions, it is about communication.
|
| But if Bob is really getting bored, then it he isn't a fit with
| your company, and that's a decision he needs to make.
|
| If you don't have an HR department to ease Bob's pain, I hate to
| say it, he's an adult and doesn't need to be coddled. Let him
| make his own choice to stay or leave. OP has been completely
| clear.
| yung_steezy wrote:
| One of the replies mentions it but I think letting him do open-
| source contributions on company time is the best solution here.
| Getting a voice in the community for libraries that the company
| are using is very valuable.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| What a great problem to have.
| unity1001 wrote:
| Until that guy burns out and crashes.
| satysin wrote:
| Generally yes having a very high performing member on the team
| is a good thing. However there are situations where it can
| cause problems with the team morale and dynamic. As well as
| sometimes very serious/catastrophic issues.
|
| Say you have a team with several good performers and one _very_
| high performer that just blasts through their work. This can
| (and usually does) lead to other members of the team feeling
| they 're not as good.
|
| This can lead to them backing away from tasks they are good at,
| feel they're 'not good enough' and looking for another job (a
| loss for the team as they were good).
|
| It can also cause friction as the very high performer will
| often snap up many tasks. Tasks which other members of the team
| may find interesting to work on. Again leading to morale
| issues.
|
| Another point is that you should ask yourself _how_ is this
| person performing so much faster than everyone else?
|
| Are they cutting corners? Are they not planning things and
| introducing awful technical debt you will have to deal with in
| a year or two when they have left from boredom? Do they have
| some undiagnosed/unmanaged neurodivergent trait such as ADHD
| that may lead them to burnout? Are they 'throwing themselves
| into work' because of personal issues that may lead to a house
| of card style collapse if they reach breaking point? Are they
| abusing drugs?
|
| Over the years I have worked with a few very high performers
| because of some of the above reasons. I am not saying _all_
| very high performers have something from the above list, there
| are just some people that are like machines on overdrive and
| always have been. But many times there is a _reason_ behind it
| and a good manager will identify that for everyones benefit.
|
| In my personal experience the very high performers I have
| worked with had a mixture of personal and drug issues. One of
| which lead to a terrible outcome that destroyed their career
| and family. For a couple of years they were the "rockstar 10x
| programmer unicorn" people dream of having. But over time
| problems become more common, internal team issues were almost
| all this persons fault, etc. They went from being a rockstar to
| a tremendous liability and resulted in several team members
| leaving due to the hostile environment they created.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| My productivity can be crazy high when I'm manic, but the
| code tends to be a bit beyond my own comprehension when I
| look back on it months later. I also tend to skip tests
| because they are a "waste of time".
|
| I'm medicated now but I still have pretty strong swings in
| productivity. Fortunately, I found a job that can work with
| that. No one has a problem with me taking days off without
| notice (and sometimes without pay). Being able to take time
| to deal with episodes has avoided the stress and burnout that
| has cost me several jobs in the past.
|
| I've also learned to use depressed cycles to re-read my code
| to make sure I can still understand it. If I don't, I've got
| an engaging puzzle to unravel and document.
| satysin wrote:
| It sounds like you have excellent understanding of yourself
| and have a supportive work place/manager/team which is
| fantastic.
|
| Everyone has _something_ about them that is different. Part
| of a good team and manager is supporting each others
| differences when needed.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Multiple problems here that give insight into the organization
| itself:
|
| 1) Normal Agile development and scrum cycle empowers engineers to
| take their own tasks from the queue at the beginning of the
| cycle, and focus on those. There is no top-down management unless
| at the beginning of the cycle some tasks are prioritized. This
| simply conveys to managers what is going on, for them to relay
| and forecast to other stakeholders. Bob doesn't have this, the
| manager doesn't have this. So, what are they doing at that
| organization?
|
| 2) "Promotion to a managerial role" is an antiquated concept,
| many tech companies are very familiar with this quagmire that
| developers don't want to not be developers, and so there are
| higher compensation tracks on the developer side in parallel to
| the managerial side, instead of one or the other for
| "advancement". The observation that this organization does not
| have this kind of leveling also says a lot about how it is
| managed.
|
| Until these bottlenecks are filled, it is going to be difficult
| to address Bob's understimulation.
| itsboring wrote:
| Bob shouldn't be working at a place where he's only allowed to
| work on tasks that are assigned to him by a manager, and twiddle
| his thumbs when he has none. He should be able to create his own
| tasks, do some experiments, R&D, self-directed training, open
| source work, whatever he finds compelling.
| Test0129 wrote:
| The counterpoint to this is if you aren't specifically assigned
| tasks you're basically expected to go through the backlog to
| hunt for things to do. In most companies the backlog is never
| empty and so you don't _really_ get any time for any of these
| ancillary tasks. This is part of the reason performance
| optimizations and other improvements never get done. PMs are
| encouraged to stuff backlogs full of nonsense related to new
| features because that 's what the people up top want to see.
| When the reality is, allowing your engineers even 8 hours of
| unstructured time a week will often produce better work.
|
| The exception to this rule of course tends to be the top of the
| ladder (senior principal, whatever) who generally get to do
| whatever they want as long as it's company related. 99.99% of
| engineers will never reach this point, however, and so the vast
| majority of these high performers are subject to the tyranny of
| JIRA and it's subsequent negatives.
| zffr wrote:
| > The counterpoint to this is if you aren't specifically
| assigned tasks you're basically expected to go through the
| backlog to hunt for things to do. In most companies the
| backlog is never empty and so you don't really get any time
| for any of these ancillary tasks.
|
| In my experience, most companies have some baseline level of
| work they expect you to do as an employee. Once you complete
| that, then you have some flexibility to choose the work that
| you do so long as it adds value to the company. It is also
| important that your work is _perceived_ by your manager
| /peers to add value too.
| closeparen wrote:
| >you're basically expected to go through the backlog to hunt
| for things to do
|
| No, you're expected to feel a sense of ownership over and
| identification with the system, and to have a fairly deep
| personal sense of itches that need scratching and ideas worth
| exploring. Some of those ideas may originate from other
| people, but if you need other people or an issue tracker to
| tell you what the backlog is, you're not _really_ right for
| that kind of role.
| ms4720 wrote:
| Why should I feel a sense of ownership over something
| everyone, myself included, know I do not own? Really why?
|
| I have a sense of professional responsibility that says do
| my best at work because I take the money, but that is
| different.
|
| If I have unallocated and paid for time at work I look for
| things to fill it with that are valid work and improve my
| skills, or braindead things to fix like typos in the text
| or simple documentation updates. Both mean I am earning my
| pay and oddly enough I get a lot of props for the second
| and so does the engineering team overall for that work.
| slt2021 wrote:
| there are several tiers of companies, tech product
| focused companies tend to pay more, but they also require
| you to have sense of ownership for the product. Companies
| decided to pay more to have self-driven engineers that
| figure out by themselves what to do, rather than hire
| nanny for each engineer that gives and monitors tasks.
|
| totally cool if you dont have that, you can work at some
| bank or hospital and work in your own style, but the
| compensation will be smaller
| Izkata wrote:
| > if you aren't specifically assigned tasks you're basically
| expected to go through the backlog to hunt for things to do.
| In most companies the backlog is never empty and so you don't
| really get any time for any of these ancillary tasks.
|
| This is addressed on a comment on one of the answers: They
| had three sprints worth of backlog until Bob joined and
| burned through it all.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > The counterpoint to this is if you aren't specifically
| assigned tasks you're basically expected to go through the
| backlog to hunt for things to do. In most companies the
| backlog is never empty and so you don't really get any time
| for any of these ancillary tasks.
|
| Yea, instead of thumb twiddling, just go fix some bugs! Every
| company I've ever worked at had 1. more bugs than could ever
| be fixed and 2. had an _incoming_ bug rate faster than the
| team 's fix rate, therefore the bug count perpetually grew.
| Some of these could be long standing bugs that annoy actual
| users that just perpetually get ignored by the company. Go
| fix one and make someone's day.
|
| There is no such thing as a Software Engineer with nothing to
| do. When I read HN comments from software engineers who say
| things like "yawn, my work fits into about 6 hours a week,
| and the remaining 34 hours I just take it easy, maybe work on
| a side project, maybe horse around on Facebook..." my mind
| boggles! Where do you work where there are no bugs in the
| backlog to fix??
|
| If there are really no bugs to fix, maybe look into cleaning
| up the code base. Turn a few compiler warnings on or run the
| static analyzer and go looking for trouble. Re-factor that
| gnarly part of the code that's always tripped up new
| employees. Add unit tests. Add integration tests. Automate
| some part of the build. Maybe work on a nicer bug dashboard.
| stackbutterflow wrote:
| Common answer is you don't get paid more.
| Test0129 wrote:
| As much as most people don't like to admit it this is
| also the reason I tend to not vigorously hunt for work in
| the backlog after hitting my requisite sprint goal plus a
| few points. Realistically bug fixing like a mad man is
| what makes us look at each other as good engineers.
| Managers, however, will see this and raise your sprint
| points next time making your goals that harder to
| achieve. Goodhart's law raises it's ugly head every time
| JIRA is used. Unpointed work can be seen as a boon (in
| the right company) but in _most_ companies today working
| on something unpointed is "cowboy" and you're more
| likely to get in trouble for it. Even if the marginal
| benefit is positive.
| Frotag wrote:
| Plus, I may have downtime to dumpster dive for old
| tickets but my manager / peers usually don't. So try to I
| avoid creating PR work for others unless the ticket is
| relevant to the feature-being-developed or a one-line
| fix.
| Kakashi4 wrote:
| All the things you've mentioned if there's no bugs to fix
| sound really boring to do. They're also high effort, low
| reward (most of the time). I'd rather do something else
| that I enjoy, than do any of that since I'd get paid the
| same amount if I did it or not. Not everyone works on
| something that they're hyper passionate about, or that is
| very useful to people, to the extent that they'd work on it
| if they don't have to
| katrotz wrote:
| Thats more a question of having a balanced team size,
| ownership and accountability.
| faizshah wrote:
| Yea, this is where I like the amazon model of ownership. It's
| something like:
|
| SDE I - can work on clearly defined components of a project
| assigned to them
|
| SDE II - can work on an ambiguous project with multiple
| components lead by a technical strategy
|
| SDE III - lead influence and define strategy for ambiguous
| projects across multiple teams
|
| This person is operating at an SDE II level but is being
| managed at an SDE I level...it's time for a promotion. What's
| worse is the manager is micromanaging the engineers. Instead
| the employee needs to be given more ambiguous project level
| work that aligns with the team/product strategy where they can
| define their own tasks. Also the manager should consider
| falling back from managing at the task level, instead helping
| facilitate at the project (or "story") level. The fact that the
| manager is managing at a task level and is unable to find work
| for this engineer tells me that the team doesn't have a strong
| tech lead who is familiar with the team/product strategy and
| can help mentor/lead other engineers.
|
| In terms of retaining the engineer and making them less
| insecure about their role, when the manager gives the team
| member more insight into the team's strategy and the way that
| the manager is evaluating their work it helps team members feel
| more secure in their role. A lot of the anxiety comes from
| guessing what your manager is thinking and how you are being
| evaluated and shows a lack of communication between manager and
| team on strategy, values and performance evaluation. The
| manager should consider holding weekly 1:1s focusing on these
| topics.
| closeparen wrote:
| Absolutely, but this is a particular feature of product-
| oriented tech companies. Enterprise could maybe work like
| that but usually doesn't. Consultancy absolutely can't. This
| is why it's so important to work in Silicon Valley and not
| just any software development role.
| gfdsgfdsf wrote:
| >Why you don't promote Bob?
|
| >Bob doesn't want to lead or be a manager,
|
| pretty sure at amazon or any "big tech" you get fired for
| this
| gloryjulio wrote:
| Uhhh no...? On the contrary in big tech u can stay ic up to
| even director level. Manager level ics are very common.
| It's the opposite of what you described
| fknorangesite wrote:
| Isn't this exactly what Staff+ roles are for? Being able to
| continue getting promoted but staying on an IC track.
| faizshah wrote:
| At amazon the engineer track has leadership level roles:
|
| SDE I -> SDE II -> SDE III -> Principal Engineer (SDE IV) -
| you provide technical advisory and strategy across an
| organization -> Distinguished Engineer/Sr. Principal
| Engineer etc. (SDE V)
|
| Some choose to stay at SDE III level until the end of their
| career though since it offers the most freedom to code. You
| absolutely don't get fired for this.
|
| This track exists at Oracle and Google. I am not familiar
| with the others.
|
| There's a whole book on this: https://staffeng.com/book
| gfdsgfdsf wrote:
| you get fired if you dont make it to IC3 or 4 (depending
| on company) eventually, and getting promoted to those
| levels does require leadership. sounds like bob just
| wants to work on bug fixes forever, there is no path to
| promotion there.
| gloryjulio wrote:
| There are different types ics. You absolute can stay as a
| type of programmer who concentrate on your own project
| with 0 people leadership. But you do need tech
| leadership. You are taking this kind of project because
| your are technically sufficient and that's your
| leadership.
|
| It doesn't mean it's a solo project. It just means you
| have the technical direction and you can let ppl manager
| to handle ppl side of things and you do almost 100% tech
| side of work. If you have 0 tech leadership and can only
| work on tasks assigned to you, you are not even ic4
| worthy, that's absolutely ic3 ie ng level.
|
| Again this is more of a feature in big tech where this
| kind of projects are available
| faizshah wrote:
| For that kind of person even IC1 is not a good fit
| instead I usually recommend they will do better as a QA
| Engineer, Support Engineer etc. in FAANG or software
| engineer at a non-tech company (gov contractor,
| healthcare etc.). At least at FAANG companies IC is not
| just coding, it's mentoring, providing technical
| leadership, writing design docs, oncall, etc. This is not
| leadership in the sense of a people manager it's being
| able to provide constructive feedback to other teammates
| and positively influence your team's codebase,
| architecture and product. Basically being able to lead
| technical decisions and technical strategy.
| roflyear wrote:
| You know why these companies don't really exist, right? Because
| the majority of people just won't work in those environments,
| and they are also the environments where it is really difficult
| to keep track of what people are doing.
| itsboring wrote:
| I'm not sure it has to be one or the other extreme. Plenty of
| places have the "20% time" where you're free to work in a
| self-directed way, learn about new stuff that interests you,
| etc. Maybe for this hypothetical Bob, that 20% is more like
| 50%, but it doesn't mean that everything has to go totally
| wild west.
| roflyear wrote:
| Right, this will probably solve OPs problem for sure.
| sbf501 wrote:
| 30+ years in software engineering, ~20 in management, and
| I've never had difficulty keeping track of what people are
| doing. Can you elaborate your experience of environments
| where this isn't possible? It sounds like just the
| clusterf*ck companies?
| roflyear wrote:
| I work in fintech, my experience is if you're operating
| this way you'll have an even harder time to get recognized.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| They don't exist on a company-wide basis, but I've seen
| plenty of companies where engineers who are capable of
| setting their own tasks are allowed to do so. (As a sibling
| comment points out, this is very common in the stereotypical
| big tech companies, and in fact your promotions are typically
| based on the scope of things you can get done on your own
| initiative.)
| blueyes wrote:
| They should pay Bob to acquire new skills in his free time,
| and/or they should pair him with an overambitious product manager
| or demanding client.
| RobRivera wrote:
| I keep a constant queue of things I need to be better at and read
| up on. I think every engineer should as a matter of
| professionalism. If an organization has a shortfall on human
| resource management, why should Bob incure the cost and spin grey
| cycles? You can be proactive by investing time into understanding
| strategic okrs and make strategic bets on what work COULD be high
| reward and pull something off the back log, but then youre
| gambling with your tome, and to be quite frank, its disrespect
| from leadership in the sense that they are given large sums of
| money to do THAT work and are either abdicating it or
| mismanaging.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Hey Bob. You go independant so you can fill your own queue to
| your hearts content. You are wasting your life fullfilling some
| other's get rich quick dream instead of your own.
|
| Getting gigs will not be a problem.
| mtippett wrote:
| So he can't work on the product for the full week as per the
| article.
|
| What about looking internally about tools, techniques and
| approaches that can help him accelerate the team. It is outside
| of the product.
|
| From what I have seen of hyper productive employees, there are
| two types:
|
| The self aware junkie - they know why, how and what to do. You
| can ask them, and they will tell you. People won't necessarily
| agree or understand why it works, but they know. This ability to
| externalize and communicate allows for step function improvements
| in the org. _IF_ the team is willing to try new things.
|
| The naive "I dunno" - this is much harder, they do what they do,
| but they don't know how they do it. in this case you just need to
| fill up the hopper with more work.
|
| Of course there are risks here, the velocity my end up making the
| system "their system" capturing their ideas, conceptualization,
| etc. If they have a great bar in communication (documents,
| diagrams, etc) then that can work quite well. But the risk is
| that people may not understand what it is they are working on in
| the end (see Tao of Rodney in Stargate Atlantis).
|
| But ultimately this is between the engineer and their manager.
| They need to work it out. The engineer needs to work out what
| they _really_ want, and the manager needs to work out how to
| provide.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Absolutely mind-blowing that their first response was to give Bob
| _busywork_ instead of sitting down with him and reassuring him
| that everything is fine and it 's ok to slow down a bit and maybe
| give him 1-2 days where he's able to do free-form research that
| could lead to company-wide improvements.
| _tom_ wrote:
| Reddit has been overrun with cleverly constructed fictional
| posts. Let's not let this happen with hacker news.
| mmastrac wrote:
| I have a theory that 80% of the top posts in the off-my-chest
| and AITA are basically just made up by very good creative
| writers, but it's impossible to prove.
| richliss wrote:
| Someone needs to check that he's not creating shit at a million
| LOC per hour.
|
| Run some code analysis metrics over his code.
|
| Let's say he isn't.
|
| Give him these challenges:
|
| 1. Increase unit test coverage. When it's at about 85% he can
| stop. 2. Increase automated acceptance test coverage. And so on.
|
| That should buy you time.
|
| Then tell him to learn to master refactoring and patterns and let
| him knock himself out improving code problem areas.
|
| That's an endless challenge and he'll get old and tired soon
| enough.
| pnf wrote:
| Bob should be fired. He clearly shows no independent initiative
| and burdens his colleagues with his insatiable need to be given
| "tasks" like a robot. Is he a robot? Is it really BOB the
| Multivac we are talking about here and not a human being at all?
| If not fired, his time should be padded out with Turing tests to
| determine whether he is indeed an AI. If he is human, the most
| compassionate thing his management could do is to assign him
| tasks that deepen his humanity and prepare him for a life that
| isn't just being told what to do next. "Read this novel by
| Friday", "Watch this film and write a report on its meaning and
| relation to your own experience", "Take a walk along the river
| and report all the things you saw".
|
| If that's not the sort of place you work, assign him random
| tickets from random open source projects sponsored by your
| company. The first task could be to write a random task generator
| in a randomly selected language. Then, open an office pool and
| take bets on Bob's tasks. Make it interesting. The person who
| wins the pool gets to fire Bob.
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