[HN Gopher] Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company's caf...
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Starbucks CEO will work a shift at the company's cafes once a month
Author : zvonimirs
Score : 320 points
Date : 2023-03-23 12:33 UTC (10 hours ago)
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| mc32 wrote:
| Ahhh "undercover boss" except not under cover.
|
| But seriously, unless the whole shop is staffed by management, to
| get a taste of the job on some rotation, they will mostly just
| get in the way of front line people. In high school I hated,
| hated it when a boss would come in and do work. It just stunk the
| atmosphere.
| roflchoppa wrote:
| The only way things like this really work is by not giving any
| heads up to the store or the store management.
|
| Otherwise store management spends a huge amount of time trying to
| tidy up before "corporate" comes by.
|
| At least that was my experience when things like this happened at
| the fruit stand.
| yuters wrote:
| I saw this happen too. Lots of people doing overtime to tidy up
| the store for when the regional manager came by.
|
| I had my hand in a cast at the time in a work related incident,
| so I only did some menial tasks. The regional manager focused
| on me for a time, and was extremely frustrated with how slow I
| was. He proceeded to show me how much quicker he could do those
| menial tasks with just one hand. It was weird. I feel like the
| disconnect he had with the realities of the stores is on an
| entire other level than not being there to witness it.
| bandofthehawk wrote:
| Was his demonstration helpful? Or do you mean that he was
| only able to do the tasks faster because he was rushing them,
| or that fast completion of these tasks was not really
| meaningful to the overall performance of the store?
| yuters wrote:
| No there was no useful tips or anything new to his
| demonstration, only speed. If the completion of these tasks
| was meaningful to the performance of the store, it was only
| in his opinion. The store was already in the best shape it
| had ever been because of our hard work between the
| announcement and the day of his visit.
| conductr wrote:
| But he wants you to move fast all the time, so he can
| reduce hours somewhere as a result
| yuters wrote:
| Obviously he was only concerned about optimization.
|
| Just want to make sure that it's understood the point I'm
| making is that I had an obvious injury, still showed up
| for work, still did work, and was met with nothing but
| reprimand by this manager that I had just met. So in this
| particular case the benefit of a manager going down to
| the trenches seems only beneficial for one side.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Assuming he actually works the whole shift, he still can
| experience what works as a barista in his company is like
| (workload, how to deal with customers assuming they don't
| recognize him) somewhat truthfully.
|
| I think it's worth something.
| angry_moose wrote:
| First line:
|
| Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan told employees Thursday that
| he'll work a half day every month at one of the coffee
| giant's locations.
|
| Something tells me it'll be something like 1-5pm; not the 7am
| rush.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| >Something tells me it'll be something like 1-5pm; not the
| 7am rush.
|
| 11am-6pm seem to be peak hours for cafes near me - and
| google data confirms this. Why would 7am be peak time
| there?
| handsclean wrote:
| I believe Google's data would reflect number of people
| hanging out inside more than number of customers passing
| through, since a customer that stays 10x as long has 10x
| the impact on average number of people inside the
| building. 11-6 sounds right for times the seating area is
| most full, but I'd imagine the biggest rush of in-and-out
| customers is just before work hours. Fortunately, there's
| a Starbucks near me that I happen to know has had its
| lobby closed for a year or two due to a high crime rate,
| and Google's data for it does indeed show a strong peak
| from 7 to 10.
| Talanes wrote:
| Friendly neighborhood barista here: actual sales numbers
| have always shown a peak somewhere between 7-10. If might
| appear busier later in the day, but that's more likely a
| function of having less staff for afternoons.
| badwolf wrote:
| I've mixed feelings. Many probably wouldn't want the semi-
| dead weight of big executive screwing up the morning rush.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| I haven't worked retail, I know its unpleasant but is
| there really that much skill to it?
| Talanes wrote:
| Yes, working as a barista means you're running multiple
| independent instruction loops in your head at all times,
| while also having to act like a pleasant sociable human.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| I have never worked as a barista, but I have worked as a
| line cook. It's not hard to cook one thing. It takes some
| time and practice to cook many things at once at a speed
| that keeps up with a good lunch rush. You can also easily
| compound the situation by trying to go too fast anyway,
| resulting in orders being sent back.
| conductr wrote:
| Yeah it's like juggling. A non juggling person can't
| really just decide they're going to juggle a few hours a
| month and expect some balls won't be dropped.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| This comment is such a perfect microcosm of HN
| toyg wrote:
| Doing things, doing things correctly, and doing things
| correctly and quickly are VASTLY different things.
|
| At rush time, you don't have time to think. You must have
| muscle memory to carry you.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| It's less about seeing how x store runs and more about seeing
| how the job for x employee is, no?
|
| I dont think undercover bossing is helpful. But a CEO working a
| barista or manager shift at a store and dealing with customers
| and all the shit employees deal with it going to be insightful
| for the CEO. Hopefully that will help set policy and make work
| better for those workers.
| MadSudaca wrote:
| My experience at the lemonade stand have been similar.
| bannedbybros wrote:
| [dead]
| vecinu wrote:
| It's funny because it reminds me of stories my grandparents
| told me about communism in Eastern Europe where the higher ups
| would come inspect their factories and the execs would know in
| advance and prep everything to look perfect.
| appleiigs wrote:
| If he and executive come in on a regular basis at the same
| stores, it won't be a such a big deal after a while. They'll
| get to know the staff at the store, they'll know the routine.
| Like if Tom Cruise was your neighbour, it'll just be "Hi Tom".
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| It's really obvious when you put a c-suite 40-something or
| 50-something exec on a blue collar team: nobody's gonna be
| fooled for a minute. It's like that SNL skit of Kylo Ren from
| _Star Wars_ going undercover in the employee cafeteria.
|
| As long as you spring it on them they won't have a chance to
| tidy up first. They'll still be on their best behavior and
| follow every rule to a T once the exec shows up though.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| to be fair half of what made that funny/awkward is Kylo
| fishing for compliments. If Narasimhan is chill, it might be
| less super-awkward. Plus, who knows Narasimhan. This is the
| first I've heard his name. I wouldn't be surprised if most
| starbucks counter employees don't know the name of the CEO,
| much less what he looks like.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| It's not really name or face-recognition usually. Execs
| slumming it in the trenches just speak and listen
| differently. And they have very specific priorities there
| that day (it's not "I'm just covering my shift" like
| everybody else). They stand out, clear as day.
| notahacker wrote:
| Plus _someone_ involved in the running of the store has
| to know why there 's a highly educated, highly curious 50
| year old who doesn't know how to make a latte or work the
| till added to the crew today, and that person is going to
| want to make sure everyone is on their best behaviour.
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| Or, tell every store he's coming and everyone will tidy up! You
| don't even need to send the CEO to any store! /halfsarcasm
| chankstein38 wrote:
| Ah cool. One day a month where everyone has to be on their best
| behavior and everything has to work perfectly to impress the CEO
| who will, inevitably, not gain anything from the experience
| except the ability to pass judgement on employees that have to
| deal with the struggles of this job every day for like 1/100th of
| his pay.
| zapdrive wrote:
| Does he have a degrees in gender studies?
| linker3000 wrote:
| This is laudable, and it will be good if it had a return on
| investment by identifying opportunities for improvement.
|
| On a personal level, however, it would only work for me if Mr
| Narasimhan decided he didn't like the taste of the coffee and
| changed it; I haven't visited a Starbucks in decades because I
| find their brew quite unpleasant!
| tiedieconderoga wrote:
| It's a nice gesture, but this sort of ear-to-the-ground work is
| something that everyone over a VP level should be doing in such a
| high-touch customer-facing business.
|
| When it's just the CEO for one day a month...it's like when you
| see a frontpage news article declaring that your governor
| recently undertook a choreographed ride on the local subway to
| better understand their constituents' public transit concerns.
| Instead of making them seem relatable and trustworthy, it
| highlights how grossly out of touch they are.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I'd like to see them work a month on worker pay, with no access
| to outside funds, house or car. Get some real empathy going.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| One shift a month means that the CEO will have a much better
| feel for the customer environment and not be disconnected.
|
| I hope he rotates through a few different stores, though.
| Otherwise, he may become myopic to the quirks of one particular
| location.
| palijer wrote:
| Once when I was working our incoming phone support a tech
| accidentally added our CEO's office number to the round robin
| system for incoming support calls.
|
| CEO fielded 4 calls before he figured out what happened. No
| idea if he solved the problems or not.
|
| I kinda dreamt since that day that any product managers would
| work some time taking support calls for their products and
| it'd be a better world because they'd realise all the issues
| we've been raising about their product are real.... But
| instead we were just lowly support folks who didn't know
| about product development and they continued to be "agile"
| blululu wrote:
| A little bit of knowledge can be less than useless. It gives
| the impression of understanding while passing over the
| harsher realities. The way that such a move is enacted
| matters. Is this shift scheduled on a random Saturday/Sunday
| with ~48 hours notice. Does the shift last 8 hours? Does his
| replacement randomly show up 30 minutes late and he needs to
| work an extra 30 minutes with zero notice? Does he need to
| open the shop bright and early after closing the night
| before? If the CEO is insulated from these rather common
| experiences then the exercise masks the problems with a
| veneer of understanding.
| isk517 wrote:
| You make a good point. Probably better to just work a full
| two weeks at a location once a year than 1 day a month.
| paxys wrote:
| This is pretty common industry wide. Executives who are
| actually serious about it will do it silently and without a PR
| campaign.
| captnFwiffo wrote:
| [dead]
| robotburrito wrote:
| They should pick a barista to be CEO for one day a month.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| What an insult to the actual food service workers.
|
| Complete waste of time that could be better spent improving their
| conditions.
| bluedino wrote:
| I worked for a large tier 1 automotive supplier where every new
| hire, whether you were an executive, salesperson, whatever, had
| to work the assembly line for their first two weeks.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I know there are companies that make everybody (PMs, engineers,
| whatever) take a turn doing customer support. This sounds a bit
| like that: make people who are normally at a distance from the
| actual customers and their needs get a face full of it.
|
| I've spent a lot of time building software for people who aren't
| me, largely in domains where the users are experts in something
| I've never done. Even though I'm not a CEO, and this would be
| more of a lateral move on the org chart, I've always really
| wanted to actually spend a couple weeks just doing some version
| of their jobs instead of mine. I think it would be worth several
| years of just asking them questions about what they need.
| kgwxd wrote:
| Time to go see an audiologists.
| Diederich wrote:
| I worked at the WalMart home office in Bentonville, Arkansas for
| about 13 years, the whole time in Information Systems, salaried.
|
| For most of that time, there was something called 'store
| appreciation', around November, where everybody salaried _had_ to
| travel to a WalMart store and work a full day there. And it had
| to be a Saturday, in addition to the normal Monday-Friday.
|
| Most of my peers really complained about it, and it was kind of a
| pain in the ass, but it was usually illuminating and interesting.
| More than once, my experience there directly illuminated stuff I
| was working on or could work on back in tech land.
|
| Inspired by that, I started to strongly encourage everyone on my
| team to spend a day in the NOC or Field Support (the two help
| desks we supported more than others) once a quarter or so. Again,
| a lot of complaining but most of the time we'd come back with
| some really useful insights.
|
| EDIT: To be clear, 'everyone salaried' definitely included all of
| the executives, who would make a big deal out of it during big
| meetings, and often talk about their own personal findings.
|
| It went back to a very "in the store, hands on" style from the
| founder, Sam Walton.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I'm not sure I see the point of this, unless it's just for PR.
|
| Working a half day per month will tell you very little of
| importance in any workplace. And, if you're the CEO of the
| company and all of the other employees (and especially
| management) knows you're the CEO, working that half day will tell
| you exactly nothing.
| zachthewf wrote:
| As long as the customers don't know, I can imagine it might
| help.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yeah, I guess I imagined he was looking for a whole-picture
| understanding, not just the customer interactions. But I
| suppose I was mistaken.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| A customer is going to get banned from all starbucks on his
| very first shift for being rude.
| efsavage wrote:
| I think you'd be surprised what even a little manufactured
| exposure can do. It doesn't need to be undercover. At almost
| every company I've worked at that asks for feedback I recommend
| some version of this. Some things I think you could learn in
| only a few hours at a Starbucks: * "Wow that
| machine is a pain in the ass to use" * "3 customers got
| angry at me because ____" * "Making ___ the way Jane
| showed me was much easier than the training" * "I hate it
| when customers pay using ____"
| JohnFen wrote:
| Sure, there are a few things. That's why I qualified my
| statement. But they're necessarily going to be minor things,
| not the larger persistent problems that only become clear
| once you've spent some real time working.
| justizin wrote:
| none of those things listed are minor things, those things
| are the entire job.
|
| no, a CEO isn't going to know what a clopen is like, but if
| they're responsible for people who are designing a process
| / choosing a set of tools / setting expectations for
| employees, being willing to step into the workers' shoes is
| a worthwile move.
| conductr wrote:
| I find as a customer just sitting in a restaurant/Starbucks
| setting for an hour or so I can point out a handful of
| issues. And they're typically not even "issues" to
| employees, because it's what they're used to. It's just
| operational changes that could improve the situation for
| them or the customer. There might be a few things behind
| the counter I don't notice as well but I think the reason I
| notice them is because I'm under the radar. If they knew I
| was an exec watching things I'd be seeing something
| differently (in many cases).
| imroot wrote:
| When I worked retail tech, I would find opportunities to go to
| the store to figure out what the pain points were for our hourly
| associates, and found time to work on getting those problems
| removed or reduced: happier workers equal more sales.
| neilv wrote:
| Talking with the people on the ground is generally a great idea.
| I first heard of Hewlett-Packard doing this.
|
| As can having execs be familiar with the boots on the ground
| business, so it's not just numbers abstractions.
|
| Issuing a press release looks like a different or additional
| goal. Such as customer/investor PR for the company, internal
| messaging (reaching vast low-level employees via public news
| outlets), or personal brand.
| daedalus_j wrote:
| Ron Johnson used to do this when he headed Apple retail. Would
| just go into a store totally undercover to the customers
| (obviously staff would recognize him) and work for a bit.
|
| Occasionally fairly major changes, both to the staff side and to
| the customer experience, were made based on his visits.
|
| I don't recall ever seeing a press announcement about it. Saying
| you're doing it to win brownie points sure makes it seem
| inauthentic. Then again maybe it's better this way than leaking
| it to a reporter and pretending that it was discovered
| organically. Guess we'll have to wait and see if anything
| actually comes out of it to know if it's just a stunt, but I'd
| put my money on it.
| Twirrim wrote:
| Jeff Bezos used to do similar with Customer Support. He'd meet
| up with someone in customer support, and shadow their calls for
| the day. A number of features came out from it, like the
| ability for customer support to "pull an andon cord" and
| immediately yank a product from sale pending investigation by
| senior support staff. It came about because the customer
| support rep anticipated all of the problems a customer was
| having with a particular product on a call. "We see this all
| the time with that product". That annoyed Jeff. There was
| wisdom, people seeing ways customers were having a bad
| experience, and they were powerless to do anything about it.
| favaq wrote:
| >obviously staff would recognize him
|
| I think it's probable that they wouldn't.
| daedalus_j wrote:
| In the bay area, where "oh god, corporate is in the building"
| is a way of life and common thing you bet they would.
|
| Outside the bay area, eh, 50/50, you're right.
| joezydeco wrote:
| 100% chance that the regional corporate staff gets notice
| this is happening and goes on a panicked 48-hour cleanup
| drill to make sure the store is spotless for the incoming
| exec and make sure the grumpier members of staff are given
| the weekend off.
| daedalus_j wrote:
| Once again, outside the bay area: absolutely true.
|
| In the bay area though, that was just Thursday. No
| warning, could and did happen any time.
|
| The difference was incredibly stark. I wonder if that's
| true for Starbucks in Seattle.
| sharkweek wrote:
| Reminds me when I was a bank teller - the area manager would
| come into our branch sometimes trying to like disguise
| himself...? But it was always SO obvious after about 10
| seconds that it was him while he'd sit in the lobby and
| observe.
|
| It was also impressive how fast word would go down the teller
| line that "corporate" was in the branch and everyone would
| sort of shape up for the hour they were around.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| > "Saying you're doing it to win brownie points sure makes it
| seem inauthentic."
|
| Starbucks doesn't have a good track record for replacement CEO
| for Howard Schultz (founder/CEO).
|
| So I'm sure these kind of announcements is to instill
| confidence with Wall Street that this CEO will work out.
| tssva wrote:
| I wonder if he did the same thing at JC Penny when he was
| running it into the ground.
| wnevets wrote:
| In his defense shoppers wanting stuff to _appear_ to be on
| sale is pretty dumb.
| agloe_dreams wrote:
| The hardest thing for that was that for him to succeed he
| really needed to play the long game. JCP was and still is
| eternally screwed. Mall retail is pretty much doomed to die
| and the ever increasing sale ratios are a side effect of
| attempts to 'growth hack' their way out of the inevitable.
| The fact of the matter was that JCP was more expensive than
| Walmart for, effectively most of their main brands, the
| same product. Sales allowed JCP to pretend their product is
| 'worth more'. The problem became a race to the bottom
| though. Once you say a store-brand Polo should cost
| '$69.99' but is on sale for $24.99, you start to tell your
| customer "Our products are overpriced." As ultimately, your
| product still is more expensive than the $14.99 Walmart
| product.
|
| By removing the price war, pricing their product at value.
| You now can compete on a more simple message of quality:
| "Our product is worth $10 more because X". The best part of
| this is...that's exactly what Walmart is actually doing.
| Walmart is actually rather sale-resistant and they frame it
| as a 'rollback' rather than X% off. Walmart's message is
| purely the regular price, not the value.
|
| The issue you of course run into for JCP though, is in the
| interm, as the market changes, you need to throw a bunch
| quarters made up of that built up growth hacking debt of
| ever increasing sales in the trash. That just won't fly on
| Wall st.
|
| What JCP really need is a reboot though, they are doomed
| either way due to their leases. Organizationally, I would
| be trying to get rid of those as fast as possible and get
| into outdoors small-medium retail. They have a great brand
| but have insanely expensive locations.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Using an incorrect model of your clientele's behavior and
| emotional responses is even dumber.
|
| Of course, I would have made the same mistake as Johnson.
| But it is always a good reminder of how differently
| people's brains work.
| whoopdedo wrote:
| Was he the guy who promised to make their pricing easier to
| understand with clearly labelled discounts without coupons?
| He is. Then he probably did spend time in a store because
| confusion over sales and extra time at checkout were common
| at JC Penney. His plan would have made the shopping
| experience less complicated.
|
| The problem is it didn't translate into improved performance.
| The opposite actually. Because what customers say and what
| customers do aren't always the same thing. They may complain
| that there are too many coupons. But when given the choice
| they preferred using coupons.
|
| So he got sacked and JC Penney went back to the old pricing
| scheme. By becoming even more risk-averse no one after him
| even tried to pull the company out of its death spiral. In
| hindsight the plan would never have succeeded because the
| customers who would have appreciated the simpler pricing had
| already left. The JCP shoppers at that time were coupon
| hunters who resented the changes. He ignored the existing
| customers while chasing ex-customers who didn't want to
| return.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| I didn't see it that way. He took a big swing to do something
| different and was fired less than two years into it. Maybe
| you could argue that he was straining against something too
| strong to overcome or misapplying his lessons from a higher-
| margin brand, but it's also possible to say that he wasn't
| given enough time to see it through.
|
| It's like if someone would have taken over Kodak at the turn
| of the century to go all-in on digital. It would have hurt
| the company in the short term and kicked against their core
| business but maybe they would have come out on the other side
| better off. Impossible to say if the scenario isn't allowed
| to happen.
|
| His tenure coincides with the beginning of the decline of
| department stores in general, so you'd have to show that
| JCPenney fared uniquely worse to say that he ran it into the
| ground. It still exists, unlike Lord and Taylor and Sears.
| Doesn't seem to have fared much worse than Macy's, though I
| didn't do a ton of research here.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Yes, we don't actually know whether it would have worked.
| He said upfront that it would need more time; apparently he
| didn't manage upward effectively enough and for some reason
| the board didn't feel desperate enough to give him more
| runway.
|
| Department stores had already been declining for a long
| time before he came along, though.
| ksec wrote:
| Why is why the user experience of Apple Retail has gone
| downhill after he left and Steve Jobs passed away.
|
| From CEO of Dixon, to CEO of Burberry and finally Apple
| veteran, Deirdre O'Brien. The improvement she made was like
| many of the recent Mac changes, reverting back to old design.
| kernal wrote:
| Form over function. It's what Apple does.
| pembrook wrote:
| Ahrendts (of Burberry) was such a weird choice, unless
| Apple's goal at the time was to maximize in-person watch band
| sales.
|
| Seems Tim eventually realized selling luxury trench coats
| isn't very similar to premium computer hardware/software.
| Meanwhile investors had to pay nearly $200 Million in comp
| for the privilege of her leading this "town square" fantasy
| (not sure I'd ever consider a store in the mall a community
| fixture) while ignoring the internet exists.
|
| Would have rather put ChatGPT in charge of the stores and
| spent that $200M on improving the software that a Billion
| Apple users spend time with every day.
| parker_mountain wrote:
| > Occasionally fairly major changes
|
| like what? I'm curious. There's nothing that shows the flaws of
| a process like running it yourself.
| stcroixx wrote:
| Probably better to just listen to the people that do it all
| day than to think you pop in as an outsider and have some
| special insight.
| daedalus_j wrote:
| Possibly so, but the man was one of the best salespeople
| I've ever met. Ice-to-eskimos level, all while being
| completely genuine. He had a genuine interest in and deep
| understanding of the customer experience and was easily the
| equal of any full-time sales staff.
|
| When it came to the areas he wasn't as comfortable in, say
| the genius bar, he still deeply understood the customer
| experience, but never tried to do the job if he wasn't
| able.
|
| Boy, I'm coming off like a fanboy here... It was just a
| truly impressive and inspiring thing to see as one of the
| regular employees. If I worked at Starbucks it's what I'd
| want to see, not some propped-up press tour.
| flappyeagle wrote:
| Reminds me of seeing the chairman of a major fashion
| label do the same thing - dude was so slick, saw him sell
| the hell out of the place to 3 women before I left.
| savanaly wrote:
| Disagree. Experiencing something yourself is a whole nother
| ballgame from being told about it. "You can't tell people
| anything" [0]. Recognizing this applies to oneself shows
| intellectual humility IMO.
|
| [0] http://habitatchronicles.com/2004/04/you-cant-tell-
| people-an...
| jrumbut wrote:
| People need performance and narrative.
|
| Spending one day a month so you can say to fellow
| executives "I actually went and touched the problem, we
| need to fix it" and so employees can say to each other "he
| actually came and touched the problem, he must be working
| on fixing it" has real value.
|
| Actually learning about the problem and coming up with a
| solution is best done by listening to the people like you
| said, but there's a role for the other thing too.
| feoren wrote:
| You're describing an incredibly toxic environment.
| Executives blowing each other off, employees not trusting
| executives, executives not considering a problem real
| until they've seen it themselves. All of this is a crutch
| in place of actual trust.
|
| Yes, I realize this toxic environment is present in 95%
| of all companies in the U.S. That makes it worse, not
| better.
| jrumbut wrote:
| I don't know if toxic is the word for it. No human has
| infinite capacity for logic or empathy.
|
| Being conscientious takes effort almost by definition.
| All of us need reminders to put that effort in.
|
| That's why people talk about "getting a seat at the
| table." If you are physically in a room with someone and
| they hear your voice and see your face you become more
| real to them.
|
| We face a choice of either denying the messy parts of
| human nature (and seeing how that goes) or adapting our
| processes to account for them.
| yardie wrote:
| > Executives blowing each other off, employees not
| trusting executives, executives not considering a problem
| real until they've seen it themselves. All of this is a
| crutch in place of actual trust.
|
| You could apply this to literally 99% of any employer in
| the world.
| vkou wrote:
| > You're describing an incredibly toxic environment.
| Executives blowing each other off, employees not trusting
| executives, executives not considering a problem real
| until they've seen it themselves. All of this is a crutch
| in place of actual trust.
|
| That's kind of the problem that Starbucks is having right
| now.
|
| Or rather, it's a symptom of the war its executives are
| waging on its employees. The former are going to need to
| do a hell of a lot more then a shift a month to rebuild
| that trust.
| gorbachev wrote:
| That would work, if Starbucks had that kind of a culture,
| but they don't.
| xeromal wrote:
| Any human in the world will believe someone if they
| experience for themselves. Sometimes it's necessary.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Why not both?
| daedalus_j wrote:
| pricing stuff, metrics stuff, customer flow changes. Real
| day-to-day stuff.
|
| One of the ones I personally witnessed related to the
| services that salespeople were expected to sell along with
| the computers. There was some kerfuffle going on about stores
| not meeting the expected "attach rates". He spent a whole day
| selling computers, and could not meet the expected attach
| rates himself. Couple weeks after that changes to pricing and
| program benefits were announced. I later learned that the
| need for changes had become a very high priority the same day
| as his visit.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| There are a whole class of problems that fall into the
| "seems like a good idea/measure at some management level,
| based on the data and worldview they have, but fail in
| reality, due to some detail at the ground level" category.
|
| Or, consequences of lossy compression as information gets
| summarized before being transmitted up the management
| ladder.
|
| And it isn't always a bad management call! Sometimes
| they're making the right call on the data they have, but
| they're missing critical data.
|
| E.g. Not realizing that 1/5 a store needs to be used for ad
| hoc inventory because too much product was flooded during
| holidays, ergo it cannibalizes display space, ergo the
| sales rates of various SKUs are all out of whack (to come
| up with a contrived example)
| justin_oaks wrote:
| Sure, the decisions by management may make sense based on
| the data they have, but how stupid are management that
| they trust information filtered through layers of
| underlings?
|
| I get it, at some point you have to admit that you're not
| going to get 100% truth from people. But that doesn't
| mean you don't talk to different people at different
| layers of the company.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| It's not 100% truth -- it's that you can't even get 100%
| detail.
|
| This clip always resonated with me, re: high level
| leadership: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gguxM8eABP8 (as
| context, one subordinate he's talking about is presented
| as a terrible leader, the other as a great one)
|
| Specifically, the point being made that _all_ information
| is... uncertain. And how a good leader makes good
| decisions within that uncertainty, instead of picking
| winners.
|
| It's easy to make the right decision when you have all
| the facts, but you can't have all the facts when you need
| to make 15+ decisions in a day.
| danielodievich wrote:
| Many years ago I did a few short weeks on an engagement at Wynn
| casino in Vegas. It overlapped with Christmas time and I was
| invited to a holiday dinner, which had several thousand people
| rotate through the huge conference room ballroom over an entire
| day. Everyone from casino from the dealers to cleaners and
| cashiers - and even us contractors - rotated through. It was
| very nice while also yet another unmemorable catered event. It
| would have remained unmemorable for me except for this part.
| Someone later asked me if I had some cake, and I said yeah, I
| went by the cake table and some guy in pink shirt served me a
| slice, I asked for a small one and he took care of it. Well,
| apparently that was Steve Wynn, the owners, he I guess did that
| at the holiday dinner, meeting everyone in a marathon session.
| I don't know if that is still true but I thought that was a
| nice way to meet everyone eye to eye.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| These "king gets wisdom from dressing as regular person"
| stories are great, and it's definitely a great idea for higher
| level folks to sample the ground truth themselves on a regular
| basis. CEOs are at a real danger of being surrounded by yes-
| men, and it's very possible that through conditioning and
| repetition they might actually start believing insane corporate
| positions.
|
| However, there's a real smell of something going wrong from
| them as well. The CEO working a single shift noticed something
| that needed to be changed? Why? Did none of the thousands of
| workers who work those shifts every day notice that problem?
| Did they have no way to report it? Did those reports not get
| evaluated properly? Was there a manager in charge of the stores
| who did not notice the problem? Sure, fixing the problem is
| great, but if the CEO needs to personally witness the issue for
| it to get fixed, then there must be thousands of other issues
| not being fixed.
| bmj wrote:
| _Sure, fixing the problem is great, but if the CEO needs to
| personally witness the issue for it to get fixed, then there
| must be thousands of other issues not being fixed._
|
| Keep in mind in a corporation like Starbucks, the CEO is
| likely a hundred or more levels removed from the daily
| operations of a cafe. That's a lot of internal politics for
| even a motivated regional manager to navigate.
| boole1854 wrote:
| If a manager at each level oversees only two unique people,
| then an organization with 100 levels has 2^99 + 1 (~a
| quadrillion quadrillion) employees.
| ovao wrote:
| Your point being?
|
| /sarcasm
| wintogreen74 wrote:
| >> Keep in mind in a corporation like Starbucks, the CEO is
| likely a hundred or more levels removed from the daily
| operations of a cafe.
|
| Really? You think there's a hundred or more
| executives/managers/supervisors between the CEO and someone
| on the floor of a SBUX? I'd bet closer to 10.
| karaterobot wrote:
| This is an example of calling someone out for a
| misstatement that does not change the meaning of their
| message, and so was probably not necessary to make.
| indymike wrote:
| > Was there a manager in charge of the stores who did not
| notice the problem?
|
| Probably. But there are often three to six layers of filters
| between the CEO and a service worker. Those managers may not
| see the effect of a small problem across the entire system.
| Sometimes those managers have incentive to hide problems to
| protect their bonus. Other times, the problem seems
| unimportant. In Starbucks case, a company with a great
| employer reputation is suddenly facing unionization, so there
| is a problem there. Unions don't happen because employees are
| happy.
|
| > if the CEO needs to personally witness the issue for it to
| get fixed, then there must be thousands of other issues not
| being fixed.
|
| In retail, nothing reveals subtle and not so subtle issues
| faster than being at the point of interaction with customers.
| Things that might look great on paper or sound good in a
| meeting at corporate sometimes aren't a good idea. Also, what
| works in one region, or even at a store across town, might
| now work well in another. You won't see any of this from a
| board room or flying in a Gulfstream.
| nijave wrote:
| >But there are often three to six layers of filters between
| the CEO and a service worker.
|
| In my experience, each layer also tends to lessen the
| severity/criticality. Even when everyone is well
| intentioned and truthful, you end up with a lot different
| story/description when it reaches the end of the chain.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Agreed. I love these people that think that hierarchy is a
| substitute. It's the only way to scale but it misses a lot.
| Talking and actually understanding cross-cutting issues or
| solvable pain points is the only way. Most people don't
| take on a sense of ownership and they infect a culture into
| being too conservative (which management also encourages
| because as you get bigger mistakes get amplified).
| MrGilbert wrote:
| Your last paragraph has a valid point, and the outcome of
| such a visit can simply be that: There are ideas, but for
| some reasons, they don't make it to the higher levels. Let's
| find out why!
| daedalus_j wrote:
| That problem is exacerbated in this case by the difference
| between "retail", "retail corporate" and "corporate". The
| fact the that anything coming from the frontline employees
| not only had to work it's way up to retail leadership, but
| then to essentially an entirely different corporation's
| leadership makes it nearly impossible for ideas that
| require action by "corporate" to trickle all the way up.
| rfrey wrote:
| It could be that working in the store for a day is a good way
| to get candid and unfiltered input from those workers and
| managers.
|
| Agreed that information should flow up the chain freely, but
| there are a lot of incentives working against that, some of
| which are just human nature (e.g. desire to fix the problems
| in one's own backyard without escalating.)
| WalterBright wrote:
| The CEO can easily see problems that the line workers don't
| see as problems.
|
| For example, I happily programmed in C for many years while
| not even noticing severe problems with the language. Later
| broader experience with other languages led me to wonder why
| I didn't see the problems with C before, even though they
| were negatively affecting my work.
| WalterBright wrote:
| For a small example: S s; S *p;
|
| To read a field: s.field p->field
|
| It turns out that there's no ambiguity in using `.` for
| both `.` and `->`. Both can be: s.field
| p.field
|
| But what's the problem with `->`? It's when you want to
| refactor the code to switch between a value to a reference.
| If `.` is used for both, just change the typedef and maybe
| a couple places. With `.` and `->`, there are maybe
| thousands of tedious changes to make in the code base. The
| inevitable result of this is you're _not_ going to attempt
| such a refactor, as it 's too much work. The code stays in
| the way it was originally designed.
|
| I was able to see this only via broader experience with
| other languages. I never even noticed the issue before.
|
| C++ addressed this not by fixing it, but by introducing the
| reference type. But the C++ ref type brings along with it
| all kinds of new problems, which I won't get into here.
| tshaddox wrote:
| The workers might be distracted by other problems that are
| literally impossible for the CEO to even simulate, like
| food insecurity, housing instability, looming medical
| bankruptcy, etc. I bet the CEO is able to be a much more
| productive barista without spending company time worrying
| about those things!
| WalterBright wrote:
| If the CEO is spending a shift working on the line, he
| still has all his CEO responsibilities to worry about.
| Those are 24/7, they never stop.
| afavour wrote:
| Of course of those problems become too much for the CEO
| they can always quit.
| bakugo wrote:
| [flagged]
| WalterBright wrote:
| I didn't mention Rust.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Nor D. :)
| cameronh90 wrote:
| It's like observability versus debugging.
|
| Sure, ideally you can get all your actionable information
| from your metrics, but in reality sometimes to understand
| what's really happening you just need to step through the
| code one statement at a time.
| slyall wrote:
| It happens. Imagine the duty manager has to spend 30 minutes
| each shift sorting out inventory paperwork because the system
| is old and slow.
|
| Nobody at the store has any influence, the area managers
| complain but the project for the new system is low priority.
|
| The CEO has the ability to see that this is a problem and the
| project needs increased priority.
| dennis_jeeves1 wrote:
| >Was there a manager in charge of the stores who did not
| notice the problem?
|
| Along similar lines why did the manager's manager not notice
| the problem? IF the CEO can spend time investigating how the
| lowest tier workers operate, surely every manager can spend
| time looking at the tier of workers below his immediate tier.
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| > Sure, fixing the problem is great, but if the CEO needs to
| personally witness the issue for it to get fixed, then there
| must be thousands of other issues not being fixed.
|
| If they have a good CEO, they will realize there is an issue
| with the reporting system and fix that. If not, at least the
| glaring issue gets resolved, and perhaps someone else is able
| to use this as evidence to improve the reporting system in
| the future.
| otikik wrote:
| > The CEO working a single shift noticed something that
| needed to be changed? Did none of the thousands of workers
| who work those shifts every day notice that problem?
|
| _Obviously_ , he's much more intelligent than all those
| other people, that's why he's the CEO and way richer than
| them. Rich people are more intelligent and better than poor
| people in most aspects. That's why the laws favor them.
| don-code wrote:
| I understand that your post is sarcasm, but it does bring
| up the underlying issue of who's been empowered to make
| changes, and ultimately, who's had (correctly or
| incorrectly) trust placed in them.
|
| An interesting thing happened at a company I worked for:
| the engineers were, during a time of intense labor
| pressure, asked to staff the fulfillment center. The
| fulfillment staff worked under a supervisor, and were
| supposed to perform the same rote tasks all day long: hook
| this device up to the bench, pack this box, unpack that
| box, and so on. The engineers worked under their
| engineering managers, and were supposed to perform the
| _exact samesame_ rote tasks all day: configure devices,
| pack and unpack boxes.
|
| What really happened was that the engineers found all sorts
| of ways to optimize the process as they went - and they
| made them largely without asking anybody. They then shared
| the optimizations with the other engineers, who followed
| suit. And they were rewarded by engineering management for
| finding those optimizations. Later, they propagated back
| down to the supervisors, who propagated them down to the
| fulfillment staff.
|
| If the fulfillment staff deviated from their rote tasks,
| though? They'd have most likely been fired.
| Mizoguchi wrote:
| The current king of Jordan used to dress as a regular person
| and ride public transportation. Not sure if to get wisdom or
| popularity.
| danabrams wrote:
| Even if the problems get reported, this helps the CEO get
| insight into how to prioritize fixing them, how much to
| invest in doing so, etc.
| throw101010 wrote:
| I like your last paragraph a lot, one reason in my experience
| as to why a problem didn't get reported/fixed is that
| employees are unfortunately rarely rewarded for fixing
| processes in large structures (or just once, when the fix
| itself improves the productivity in a lasting manner).
|
| So a real blocker in my opinion is that there is no clear
| incentive structure to even think or care about a fix in the
| first place.
|
| The CEO will care much more about it because their
| compensation/position is essentially tied to improving this
| side of the business.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| There can even be an opposite incentive, where fixing an
| issue that was wasting time means more or different work is
| assigned to everyone
| recfab wrote:
| There can also be a lot of what I'll call "political
| inertia" involved.
|
| In my experience, the existing process has a way of
| appearing invisible such that any change will feel like
| more work, even when it isn't. It's hard to improve things
| when your coworkers perceive you as trying to give them
| more work.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Agreed. The ideal scheme would be anonymous reporting +
| objective third party prioritization + financial
| compensation if benefits realized.
|
| The lack of compensation always baffled me. If an
| employee comes up with a change that saves the company
| $x, why don't they get bonused <$x for the year? Win/win.
|
| Make it subject to approval or somesuch, to prevent
| gaming and weed out edge cases, but every employee should
| be incentivized to find a way to do their job better.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| You aren't paid based off the value you provide.
| Companies don't know how to measure that anyways. Your
| salary is based off of how expensive it would be to
| replace you.
| matwood wrote:
| But in this case the measure is clear.
|
| Sales is another job where value is very clear, hence
| good sales people are often some of the highest paid
| people in a company.
| stcroixx wrote:
| The CEO is just a superior human capable of things others can
| only dream of.
| echelon wrote:
| The CEO should have incredible hustle and ownership, breath
| of experience, ability to see second order effects in both
| the business and the market, ability to predict the
| business environment in the short and long term, ability to
| plan changes strategically, ability to judge how areas of
| the business are functioning or impaired, etc.
|
| The job of the CEO is to know as much as possible and take
| responsibility for it.
|
| That doesn't always happen, but it should.
| morelisp wrote:
| "CEO does a day of actual work" is great if it helps the CEO
| better understand quotidian business process and customer
| needs.
|
| It is a sham when it's used to counter disagreements from
| employees.
| wintogreen74 wrote:
| WestJet, Canada's second largest airline, used to do this a
| lot. I remember handing my coffee cup and trash to Clive
| Beddoe, one of the original founders, with a double take. They
| were largely employee-owned and it showed. Then they went
| public, grew on the backs of shareholders and were taken
| private again by PE. Now they're worse than Air Canada, the
| former poster child for terrible airlines.
|
| When a company is young and wants to engage employees I think
| this type of signaling can work great. When you're the
| established, mature incumbent and your employees feel they need
| to unionize to get fair treatment, this is a stunt for the
| public and not going to change anything internal.
| arcticbull wrote:
| AC gets a lot of undeserved hate. They're better than all the
| US airlines, without exception and they're on par with a lot
| of continental European airlines. Much better than BA.
| There's things they could do better for sure, but onboard
| service, seats, lounges, ground staff - all solid. Huge
| improvements to Aeroplan after they bought it back.
|
| After a lot of bouncing around the US it's a treat to fly. I
| feel like hating on them is something of a Canadian pastime.
| zug_zug wrote:
| This is only going to be remotely effective if the workers aren't
| aware he's CEO. Heck even the franchise-owner is going to have
| the store cleaned probably, ask his friends to come by and
| compliment the store.
| outime wrote:
| They could do something like in Undercover Boss [1] so that
| employees (allegedly) don't know the person working there is
| the CEO.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undercover_Boss_(British_TV_se...
| prottog wrote:
| Starbucks doesn't franchise, at least in the US. Though you
| will find "licensed" stores in airports and such.
| jeremy_wiebe wrote:
| So basically an episode of the show Undercover Boss?
|
| https://www.cbs.com/shows/undercover_boss/
| dghughes wrote:
| It's a good idea PR or not. Seeing employee stress is good since
| just because work is being done doesn't mean the employees are
| able to do it effortlessly. Stress on employees I think is
| overlooked as long as the work is done. Or rather the employee
| stress isn't noticed since it's not measured or even thought
| about.
| acomjean wrote:
| There was a Roger Moore show "TV NATION" where he challenged CEOs
| to do things with their products. "Format a Floppy" was one. The
| only one who took him up was the ford CEO who did an oil change.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_Nation
| slim wrote:
| Michael Moore
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| My inner cynic screams that the cafes will temporarily become
| Potemkin villages, with fake customers, photo ops and everything.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| Yeah, but don't just let him work in the Seattle suburbs, drop
| him in random Starbucks around America. Let him work a shift in
| St. Louis.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| St Louis Starbucks are pretty nice, they aren't putting stores
| in bad areas of the city.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Lemme know which store so I can avoid it.
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| If this was not a PR move, but a desire to get a sense for work
| conditions, real problems, etc, it would not be publicized.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| It can be both. If you have a better way to run your company,
| why not do it and also score a bonus PR win in the process?
| Havoc wrote:
| Could always be both
| pcurve wrote:
| It would've been a better PR for them to have not publicized
| it. They really didn't need to, because people would find out
| anyway.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > If this was not a PR move, but a desire to get a sense for
| work conditions, real problems, etc, it would not be
| publicized.
|
| And it wouldn't work. I don't think a lot of people would be
| comfortable sharing real complaints with the CEO who parachuted
| in for a single shift. It will probably end up being a bit of a
| Potemkin village situation. The shift will probably be filled
| up with the highest-motivated, most ass-kissing employees,
| whose focus will be keeping the CEO comfortable.
| the_mar wrote:
| Of course it is for PR, it would be really dumb to not
| publicize it.
|
| It would absolutely work in a sense. Of course the CEO will
| not get a real experience and of course no one will bring any
| real grievances to him. But the CEO will still get some
| exposure to day to day. It is still somewhat better than not
| doing it at all. It's a good precedent to set and one can
| only hope more CEOs would follow
| dachryn wrote:
| you are underestimating the impact of programs like this.
|
| The CEO will quickly spot broken processes and
| inefficiencies. Ass kissing can't make up for business
| problems. Beyond that, by working in a different store,
| gets a feel on how generic the approach can be, and where
| they need local optimizations.
|
| The only think you are taking out of the consideration is
| toxic lower management and asshole colleagues, but that's
| not something I'd expect the CEO to fix directly himself.
| If anything he is just bored of the ass kissers and good
| news shows, and wants to regain a feel of reality
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > The CEO will quickly spot broken processes and
| inefficiencies.
|
| They will quickly spot what they perceive to be broken
| processes and inefficiencies, but they don't have real
| experience of the actual work at that level to be able to
| safely move Chesterton's fence.
| 988747 wrote:
| [dead]
| meken wrote:
| How sure are you of that?
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Good luck keeping something like this secret. Also how else can
| you run a company if you don't understand what process can be
| improved and how?
| standardUser wrote:
| If this is _not_ solely a PR move I 'd be genuinely worried
| about Starbucks leadership.
| brookst wrote:
| If you really meant that, you wouldn't have posted it publicly.
|
| I think that reasoning might have some flaws.
| btbuildem wrote:
| Ideally, he gets reamed by some irate customers and gets to
| experience what the staff do on the daily.
| kieckerjan wrote:
| I once took a cab in the middle of the night. The cabby was a
| elderly gentleman who did not seem to know his way around very
| well. It was a long ride so we got talking. Turned out he was the
| new boss of the company (a fairly big company, lots of cars) who
| wanted to get to know the circumstances under which his drivers
| worked. He had been working the night shift for a couple of
| weeks.
| conductr wrote:
| I hope you told him "nice chat, but under normal circumstances
| I'd be pretty upset that you took me on a joy ride costing me
| extra time and money."
| moi2388 wrote:
| Fantastic. Now stop sourcing 1% of your coffee unethically (as
| per your statement that 99% of your coffee is ethically sourced)
| adrusi wrote:
| I don't know the details around this, but it seems like it
| would be near impossible to get 100% ethical sourcing, because
| no matter how good your process of vetting suppliers is, at
| Starbucks scale, you're going to get fraud. A shady supplier
| just needs to bribe or blackmail one of your procurement staff
| to look the other way.
| msla wrote:
| Now where have I heard this before...
|
| We few, we happy few, we band of baristas;
|
| For any to-day that boils a brew with me
|
| Shall be my bestie; be they ne'er so vile,
|
| This day shall glow up their selfie post;
|
| And customers in Bed-Stuy now a-bed
|
| Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
|
| And hold their socials cheap whiles any speaks
|
| That pulled with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
| nico wrote:
| Maybe he's scared of AI and starting to train on skills that are
| harder to replace by computer, at least in the short term.
| twawaaay wrote:
| As it should be.
|
| Nothing worse than a CEO who does not understand how their
| business works at the lowest level. Unless this somehow does not
| matter for business profitability or future (which there are
| examples of but much less than many people would think).
|
| In my experience, upper management has this problem of getting
| accurate information. This happens for many reasons and is
| really, really, really hard to fix. It usually requires
| conscious, serious and sustained effort from the manager
| demonstrating his/her people that it is safe to bring information
| whether good or bad.
|
| I bet the a shift once a month is good investment of time as long
| as he won't be placed in a bubble -- a model Starbucks location
| where everything works perfectly because the CEO works there once
| a month.
| mataug wrote:
| I really hope he picks a random Starbucks location across
| various cities.
| maxk42 wrote:
| I think it would be better if he stuck to one. That way
| employees might over time become comfortable enough to voice
| their concerns to him. A one-time visit would feel more like
| an inspection than anything else and everyone would be on
| their best behavior.
| twawaaay wrote:
| I know people behave very differently when within hearing
| distance of a higher up. Now imagine you are the highest
| one... every person you meet, every day, is constantly
| thinking hard about filtering what they are telling you.
|
| It does not matter if you pick random locations, people will
| still modify what they are saying when they see you.
|
| But it helps a bit. There is higher chance you will finally
| meet some people who are not afraid to tell the truth. There
| is also chance you will start seeing some patterns. It is
| probable that managers will clean up a lot of stuff when they
| suddenly get to know about a visitation, but they won't clean
| up everything and you will get at least some glimpses. Visit
| enough restaurants enough times and glimpses may form an
| image of reality.
| dahwolf wrote:
| One of my recurring revenge-porn dreams is as follow.
|
| I'm the owner (so not CEO) of a massive multinational. I'm
| mysterious and not really publicly known. The actual CEO is the
| public face.
|
| Next, I apply for a role in one of the branches, say a local
| sysadmin, get the job and start working there. I do my job,
| intentionally fuck up a few times, and take note of any
| dysfunction in the organization. There's lots, management are
| bullies.
|
| Fast forward a few months and at the weekly all hands meeting, it
| is me sitting at the head of the table. The local manager
| aggressively insists that I move, but I remain seated. He gets
| security involved but security does nothing. He tells me I'm
| fired but I don't blink.
|
| As the dust settles, I open the meeting and immediately fire all
| of management, whom are physically thrown out. Next, I give all
| staff a raise and do something nice and personal for each of
| them.
|
| Everybody claps. Then I wake up from the cat sitting on my face.
| pkaye wrote:
| Isn't that the premise of the Undercover Boss show?
| dahwolf wrote:
| No, my story is much better.
|
| Undercover Boss doesn't fire anybody as far as I know. The
| premise of Undercover Boss is a company that is starving
| their employees. To distract from this awkward reality, the
| Undercover Boss picks an employee that is double-starving,
| say a single mother.
|
| And then radically improves her life. Everybody claps and is
| in tears not realizing that everybody else continues to be
| fucked.
|
| Not my approach. I achieve total justice.
| gooseyman wrote:
| Working a shift is great. While co-workers may act different,
| most customers won't.
|
| Now... CEOs with "push-button menu option" based call centers
| under them should be mandated to call monthly and complete some
| task.
| ivansmf wrote:
| Allegedly Costco has a policy of making their white collar folks
| work on the floor of their stores and rotate positions before
| getting to the office, same with McDonalds. I would love to hear
| from someone with first hand experience to confirm or correct my
| impression. I did confirm that Costco gives good benefits and
| decent pay for all their automotive section employees, and since
| then I only buy tires there (since 2000) for that very reason.
| Every time I visit I reconfirm that is the case. It is not much
| in the great scheme of things, but it is an honest effort to buy
| from good employers.
| [deleted]
| Kye wrote:
| It's a noble idea, but it's not enough to give someone who's
| already wealthy beyond imagination a sense of the precarity of
| people who have to work to live. That's the real problem: people
| with _all_ the power making decisions that impact people in
| circumstances they can 't imagine even if they might have
| experienced something that vaguely resembles it 20 or 40 years
| before.
|
| No matter what he does, he knows he gets go to home to a safe
| place with plenty to eat at the end of the day. You can't
| simulate the effect of the lack of that certainty on someone's
| work.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Hope they make him clean the toilets
| whack wrote:
| I recall Amazon used to do something similar. Executives would
| sometimes take customer service shifts. The goal isn't PR or
| worker morale - most people see through stunts like that. The
| real goal is to help leaders better understand their product, its
| problems, and customer frustrations.
| gitfan86 wrote:
| The main reason you do this is to weed out executives who are
| mostly interested in the prestige. People like that are much
| more likely to be good at shifting the blame for problems than
| actually fixing or preventing problems.
| setgree wrote:
| as always, Silicon Valley covered/predicted this
| https://www.vulture.com/2017/04/silicon-valley-recap-season-...
|
| > "You're doing what Bob Iger does at Disney!" Jack tells
| Gavin. "He makes every manager wear the Goofy suit one day out
| of the year."
| codyb wrote:
| That's what I asked my boss to do for me. Pair me with someone
| using our tool so they can ask me to do real world tasks and
| see how I can handle it. Should be later this month. And will
| try to do one session every month or so.
| [deleted]
| logicalmonster wrote:
| > Executives would sometimes take customer service shifts.
|
| This won't happen among most companies, but I'd love to see
| that become a common practice with at least some high-level
| developers.
|
| There's so many pain points in many customer service
| organizations that are easily solvable if a developer
| understood the frustration and waste with many customer service
| tasks. Nothing motivates more than having to do some annoying
| manual billing process that's error prone or looking up
| customer information by logging into 5 different systems.
|
| Alas, Google has no customer service, so their developers shall
| be placed in the void until morale improves.
| isk517 wrote:
| 100% agree, especially if it is industry specific specialty
| software. Seen so many applications that have processes that
| only make sense to the people that developed it and are at
| best tolerated by the users that have no other choice than to
| use it.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| This should absolutely be a thing for vertical integration
| developers. If you're developing cashier software for Target,
| you should have to use it under realistic circumstances
| sometimes. Same for Amazon driving software, helpdesk
| software, sales, etc.
| wincy wrote:
| When I worked for a large logistics company we'd have a few
| days a year where we'd go downstairs and shadow someone
| using our software. It was very informative. The UX people
| were redesigning workflow to be "easier" and less
| information dense and the experienced people (who worked
| mostly on commissions mind you) where very pissed and
| wanted their hot keys and their at a glance information.
|
| It was very eye opening.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| >The UX people were redesigning workflow to be "easier"
| and less information dense and the experienced people
| (who worked mostly on commissions mind you) where very
| pissed and wanted their hot keys and their at a glance
| information.
|
| That doesn't necessarily mean that the UX people were
| wrong though. Even if their changes made the experienced
| people slightly slower, it could be worth it if it
| significantly sped up onboarding.
| JohnFen wrote:
| You only onboard someone once. In theory, that person
| will have to be using the system every day for years.
|
| Why optimize for the one-time thing at the expense of the
| everyday use?
| logicalmonster wrote:
| I suppose that the Devil's Advocate sort of
| counterargument is that for many startups or businesses
| on the bubble of survival, their most important task is
| for paying customers to understand the basics of their
| software and get hooked with a paid subscription quickly.
| From that perspective, it's ok if customers don't
| absolutely LOVE the software in a year or two, as long as
| they like it just enough to be paying today.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Perhaps, but I have no sympathy for companies using that
| business model.
| imp0cat wrote:
| It's a bit more complicated than that. Here's a great
| article that explains how users can be sorted into
| categories (from beginner to student to expert) and what
| each of them wants and needs.
|
| https://breakingpoint.substack.com/p/your-three-kinds-of-
| cus...
| sfink wrote:
| The math isn't straightforward. With a high enough rate
| of churn, there can be more onboarding work hours than
| post-onboarding work hours, especially if the onboarding
| ramp up time takes a while (as it presumably would if you
| only optimized for experienced use). And high rates of
| churn are not exactly uncommon.
|
| Also, everybody goes through onboarding, and initial
| impressions have a lot of power. It's pretty easy to
| create a system that everyone hates just because it's a
| little difficult during onboarding. Social reinforcement
| can be stronger than reality.
|
| (Personally, I still lean towards optimizing for
| experienced use, if you can do it without sacrificing the
| onboarding experience _too_ much. Hotkeys that the new
| employee never needs to see or know about are a typical
| example, though I prefer a smoother ramp by mentioning
| the key on applicable menu items. The newbie can ignore
| it, the intermediate user can learn from it, the
| experienced user can ignore the menu.)
| asoneth wrote:
| > Why optimize for the one-time thing at the expense of
| the everyday use?
|
| I'm not necessarily endorsing this perspective, and it
| depends on the specifics, but there are cases where this
| makes business sense. If you take a task that requires an
| expensive expert and make it something that an unskilled
| worker can do then you you can lower overall labor costs
| even if each user is less efficient in the new system.
| ruined wrote:
| It is possible to achieve both. Making an explicit choice
| to degrade the ability and satisfaction of experienced
| employees is just optimizing for staff churn.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| > The UX people were redesigning workflow to be "easier"
| and less information dense and the experienced people
| (who worked mostly on commissions mind you) where very
| pissed and wanted their hot keys and their at a glance
| information. It was very eye opening.
|
| Just curious. Many applications have some kind of
| "Settings" or "Preferences" section with some kind of App
| UI customization being possible. Often it's just a set of
| fairly simple features like picking a favorite background
| color for your App or being able to upload your own
| avatar or something.
|
| But are there Apps out there where you can pick between
| say "Beginner and Expert" modes and have a radically
| different UI and UX depending on how experienced and
| comfortable you are? (Gmail sort of has a touch of that
| concept with the ability to either have a dense or
| comfortable email layout, but that's barely scratching
| the surface of what's possible)
|
| PS: I realize that trying to develop, maintain, and
| support mobile and desktop versions of different versions
| of the same App would morph into a significant and
| unpleasant challenge, but being able to pick the type of
| UI might be a possible solution that pleases more types
| of users.
| toyg wrote:
| _> But are there Apps out there where you can pick
| between say "Beginner and Expert" modes_
|
| Yes, plenty. They've never been particularly popular,
| because they tend to impose an "all or nothing" switch to
| the user: by going Expert, you're suddenly overwhelmed by
| loads of options you don't know and don't understand.
| People mostly prefer a gentler path, where you become
| familiar with one feature at a time when you need it
| particularly badly.
|
| This, in theory, would suggest that the best approach is
| to morph the interface over time, making those advanced-
| but-useful features easier to access once discovered. But
| most people also hate interfaces that change, so in
| practice that approach doesn't work well. Maybe it will
| all be solved by a ML engine that looks at what you do
| every day and automatically serves you the features it
| thinks you'll want; but Microsoft kinda tried that in a
| bunch of places and I don't think it was particularly
| successful.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| 1) Just thinking out loud here, but some games have the
| most complex and information dense user interfaces you'll
| ever see. And sometimes they solve this problem by
| introducing new features in sort of a well-designed,
| first-class tutorial over the course of a few missions in
| a single-player campaign. Maybe Apps can try the same
| approach?
|
| 2) I can't help but think that many UI problems would be
| solved by Apps replacing meaningless icons with actual
| text labels. I can't remember what half the random
| symbols on software I use daily for hours means. If
| something is a sharing icon or a saving icon, I have no
| clue half the time. But simply having text labels on
| buttons and links everywhere would make all software a
| lot more explorable and understandable.
| toyg wrote:
| _> some games have the most complex and information dense
| user interfaces_
|
| Completely different audiences and incentives. Gamers
| game because they _want_ to; most people use apps because
| they _have_ to, to get shit done and pay the rent. Gamers
| are motivated to inspect capabilities in order to get an
| advantage, to solve the gameplay puzzle, even just to
| kill time; people are motivated to _get the hell out of
| apps as quickly as possible and go shopping_.
|
| I don't care about the capabilities of MS Word, I just
| want to type some stuff out. I don't care that Outlook
| can read RSS feeds, I just want to send an email. I skip
| every single onboarding wizard I can skip, because I
| honestly don't give a shit about 90% of "features" out
| there. If people cared about advanced features, we'd all
| be using Emacs.
|
| _> many UI problems would be solved by Apps replacing
| meaningless icons with actual text labels_
|
| I don't disagree in principle, but the reality is that
| text takes a lot of screen real estate, scales badly, and
| most people think text-heavy UIs just look ugly. We could
| definitely have better and more meaningful icons though;
| the "material" anti-skeuomorphing bullshit has inflicted
| a lot of damage on the credibility of UX practitioners,
| over the last decade. The 90s in comparison were a dream.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > The UX people were redesigning workflow to be "easier"
| and less information dense
|
| I never really understood why they focus on these two
| things. They're good for rank beginners, I suppose, but
| once you've even approached competency, those "easier"
| workflows inevitably end up being a huge pain in the ass,
| and lower information density is actively a terrible
| thing.
| afavour wrote:
| > They're good for rank beginners, I suppose, but once
| you've even approached competency,
|
| It's because you're aiming for a system where you don't
| need to reward the competency of long term employees and
| can instead just pluck random people off the street, pay
| them next to nothing and replace them when they quit.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| > There's so many pain points in many customer service
| organizations that are easily solvable if a developer
| understood
|
| AND if a developer actually has the opportunity to do
| something about it. Many companies overbook their developers
| time such that deadlines are constantly missed, where in that
| prioritization is their room for significant improvements to
| other services?
|
| If the Engineering Manager is judged by their project
| throughput how does the EM feel about their reports working
| outside of that scope?
|
| If there's value in Customer Service there should be a
| distinct team working on it and it shouldn't become a second
| job existing employees have to work.
| jrockway wrote:
| > Alas, Google has no customer service, so their developers
| shall be placed in the void until morale improves.
|
| We had customer support for Google Fiber, and engineers could
| pair with a CSR to listen to calls whenever they wanted to.
| We were widely regarded as having excellent customer support,
| and of course, customers were calling us about our highest
| priority but most difficult to fix bugs.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Doordash devs went ballistic when they were asked to do a few
| PAID deliveries every month.
| hackitup7 wrote:
| Don't worry, with no customer service the customers will also
| be placed into a void too.
| samsolomon wrote:
| This rings so true. As a designer it's invaluable to have
| teammates with domain expertise--they have a much better idea
| about customer pain points. Honestly, they can usually
| articulate the problems better than customers can in
| interviews.
|
| Where I work it's not uncommon for people to come into
| engineering through support > support engineering > software
| engineering. At one point our top AE decided he didn't want
| the stress of selling and went from AE > PM > UI Engineer.
| These have always been some of my favorite engineers to work
| with.
| thenipper wrote:
| When i started at Shopify we had to setup a store and do some
| customer support. It was a great way to understand the
| product, especially since my role wasn't going to be customer
| facing at all.
| screwturner68 wrote:
| The issue in my opinion is their day or two on the job really
| doesn't give them a good picture of what's going on. Sure they
| might see a few things but they could just as easily be an
| anomaly as they could be systemic. I wish upper management that
| are brought in from the outside would be required to work a
| month or two in the field and live on those wages. For example
| at Starbucks in the 2 days he works he might see that the
| espresso machine is getting loaded wrong 40% of the time
| slowing up the line. Seeing this he might go back to the
| mothership and decide everyone using the espresso machine needs
| more training to reduce the failures. What he is missing is
| that there are supposed to be three people working not two and
| the person making espresso is working his fifth double shift
| this week because the wages are so low they can't pay their
| rent and is making errors because he's tired. He would have
| also missed that the manager had sent a worker home that day
| and the day before because it wasn't busy and the manager
| wanted to improve his margins. He also missed the next day when
| it was really busy that same manager was demanding that an
| employee on their day off come in and work because they were
| busy and if they didn't come in they would be fired (leaving
| them even more short of people and creating more delays). It's
| like a person who fasts for 24h saying they know what it's like
| to be starving. If you really want to see what's going on a day
| or two simply won't cut it you need some time for things to
| sink in and if you don't know what's really going on how can
| you run a business properly?
| flappyeagle wrote:
| You're making a lot of assumptions about how dumb he will be.
| Like you think he will just overfit on every detail instead
| of asking the store manager or employees about what he
| experienced? You think he will not work in more than one
| store, in more than one geography? Cmon man.
| quacked wrote:
| Honestly I think you're making as many assumptions as the
| parent commenter--I agree you're right that the portrayal
| of the exec is really biased towards assuming stupidity,
| but it really depends on the quality of the executive and
| the people that hired them. It's completely possible to get
| a total dumbass, and also possible to get a genius.
| quacked wrote:
| Eh, I think it depends on how canny the executive running the
| experiment is and how much experience they have in the
| particular part of the industry. I worked in restaurants when
| I was younger and now have done a lot of sales-side and
| logistics management, and it wouldn't take more than a day of
| working in a new restaurant for me to accurately understand
| some of the major issues going on. You just have to be open-
| minded, identify the best employees, and let them freely
| bitch at you for about two hours while trying to do the work
| with them. That'll give you a good sense of the big blockers
| at that particular restaurant. Same is true for any software
| org.
|
| The difference will be if you think that you're going to come
| up with better prescriptions for success than they are (and
| this is where the level of executive cleverness comes into
| play). One day per month in a Starbucks shop and then giving
| technical directives wouldn't make any sense, but one day per
| month in a Starbucks shop and then redirecting budgeting at a
| corporate level might.
| maxk42 wrote:
| I would believe that's the case if Narasimhan were working a
| full shift, but he's only working half a shift once a month. At
| that point why bother? What are you going to learn in 4 hours a
| month where all the employees are on their best behavior and
| the store is made immaculate prior to your arrival?
| naniwaduni wrote:
| What are you going to learn on a full shit that you won't
| learn at least half as well on half a shift?
| zvonimirs wrote:
| Absolutely! And that's what leaders should be doing.
| dobladov wrote:
| In this documentary about Kawasaki, they also mention that
| everyone has to expend some time in the production line, it
| seems like a great way to motivate your engineers to improve
| the process. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg32DlveFiE
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| I have a dumb question related to this.
|
| The new Starbucks CEO is Laxman Narasimhan. Google says he's
| worth about $20m.
|
| The previous Starbucks CEO was Howard Schultz. He's worth about
| $3.7b
|
| Can somebody who is worth between $20m and $3.7b really just...
| hang out broad daylight behind a counter at a Starbucks from a
| security perspective?
|
| Obviously I get the gap between $20m (he's just starting out,
| I'm sure his net worth will grow to at least $50m shortly if he
| does well at Starbucks) and $3.7b is huge. But at what point is
| going outside (without security? where people know you will
| be?) kind of a risk?
| evantbyrne wrote:
| I'm not a criminologist, but I would assume that personal
| safety has more to do with the environment a person occupies.
| Poor people are more likely to be victims of crimes than the
| rich. Being a recognizable celebrity or a target of organized
| criminals may be exceptions to the rule. How many people
| would recognize the Starbucks CEO on the street if they saw
| him?
| takinola wrote:
| What exactly do you imagine is going to happen? There are
| lots of very rich people walking around in public all day
| long with little ill effects? The most you can get by robbing
| him is the stuff he has in his wallet, which is pretty much
| going to be similar to someone with a much lower net worth.
| If you walk around in Palo Alto, you will likely bump into a
| billionaire or two on a typical day.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > What exactly do you imagine is going to happen?
|
| If I was worth $3b (like the previous Starbucks CEO), I'd
| be worried about being held up at gunpoint/abducted/held
| hostage for ransom.
|
| I am lead to believe Tim Cook doesn't just walk around like
| you and I?
| glasss wrote:
| I think you're overestimating the danger of being outside.
| alexanderchr wrote:
| There are very few people in the US that need security to
| walk outside just because of their net value.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| CEOs of major corporations have private security details and
| they will undoubtedly be part of the planning and execution
| of this project.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I think a week in warehouse might do good for them. Or as
| delivery driving...
| makestuff wrote:
| Jeff Wilke (former ceo of amazon retail) used to do that
| during Q4 peak. It was also pretty common for engineering
| teams to signup to do a day in the FC so they could see what
| it was like.
|
| Bezos would do one day a year operating the customer service
| lines.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I worked at a small (in Amazon scale - still the largest in
| the country) home grocery delivery service and everyone pre
| corona had to spend their 2 first weeks in the warehouse.
| Everyone had done it, including managers and c-level
| richiebful1 wrote:
| I figure that's a much better place to work than an Amazon
| warehouse then?
| kube-system wrote:
| The couple of people I personally know that have worked
| at Amazon warehouses says they're pretty well ran in
| comparison to other warehouses.
|
| And I know personally that my experience working in a
| small-business warehouse back when I was young was
| absolutely garbage. Smaller businesses rarely get any
| news coverage, but I worked in a warehouse with zero
| ventilation, no safety training, no safety equipment,
| nobody trained in logistics, broken and improper lifting
| equipment, etc. This is par for the course at a workplace
| with zero outside scrutiny.
|
| Amazon warehouses are at least run by professionals in
| logistics, have proper safety procedures, equipment,
| training, etc. As I understand, the 'bad' part is the
| volume. But at the end of the day, even a well-run
| warehouse job is a warehouse job. It is physical work.
| brentm wrote:
| Historically I think they all did around the Christmas rush
| but probably not so much any more.
| happymellon wrote:
| In the UK I did some work with HMV doing Dev work on their
| stock systems.
|
| Similar situation where they would send everyone in the
| company to work in the store, so you would actually use the
| system you've developed in the real world and understand
| why everyone always hates the software.
| capableweb wrote:
| They want them to understand customer frustrations, not
| employee devastation. Plus, make the C-suite realize how they
| treat the "lowest" employees of the company and they might
| not want to work there anymore, have to tread carefully
| there.
| 1equalsequals1 wrote:
| Ignorance is bliss, very mature strategy
| dataviz1000 wrote:
| My first career was a chef. When I asked a friend of the
| family who owned a restaurant when I was teenager what steps
| I should take to become a chef, the advice he gave was "Get a
| job as a dishwasher in a restaurant because the most
| important thing you need to know is to respect your
| dishwasher because anytime everything goes wrong and you are
| in a jam, it is your dishwasher who will save you." Unknown
| to me the restaurant that hired me when I was 17 as a
| dishwasher was also one of the most prestigious restaurants
| in California in the early 90s which lead to years cooking in
| Michelin Star restaurants. Good advice.
| harimau777 wrote:
| Reminds me of something that my father told me: "Always be
| nice to nurses and janitors. Nurses run hospitals. Janitors
| run buildings. Secretaries run offices."
| JohnFen wrote:
| Right.
|
| In the case of offices, the receptionist is the most
| important and powerful person there. They are the ones
| who have the ear of everybody else, have control of
| access to everyone else, know how things _really_ work
| (as opposed to how everyone says they work), etc.
|
| A good or bad word from the receptionist can literally
| make or break business deals.
| ksec wrote:
| It is basically the bottom half of the triangle that runs
| everything, anything else are mostly management.
| methodin wrote:
| Can you elaborate a bit on how the dishwasher role gets the
| restaurant out of jams?
| dataviz1000 wrote:
| A line cook can't stop what they are doing for even 5
| minutes during a 4 hour period of time. There might be a
| lull for 15 minutes between seatings to run to the
| bathroom, but sometimes not. It is brutal work. Because
| of the thin margins in restaurants, they tend to be under
| staffed. When something needs to be fixed during service,
| maybe a plumbing problem, the ice machine broke, or a
| purveyor didn't deliver the correct items so someone
| needs to run to the supermarket, it is usually the
| dishwasher who fixes the problem. The pay is awful for a
| dishwasher. Likely, especially in California, the
| dishwasher in the restaurant you are eating at isn't
| legally allowed to be in the United States. Other times,
| the dishwasher will have a criminal record and can't find
| other work. Another dishwasher in Portland had his entire
| face tattooed with body modifications. They are in that
| position for a reason. The point is paying the dishwasher
| in respect if not higher wages is important to the
| survival of a restaurant. A chef depends on this person
| who is in the lowest social position to have his or her
| back.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| I'm not certain I'd pay the bill for an expensive meal
| were it served on grubby crockery.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Can't cook if your tools aren't clean?
| toyg wrote:
| If it's anything like the small, dinky restaurant i
| washed plates for, the reality is that the restaurant
| doesn't have enough plates and pans to satisfy every
| order on a busy night without washing something. Pans in
| particular are reused multiple times during a shift, and
| they better be well-scrubbed, because you don't want your
| fancy ingredients tasting of something else.
| TheDesolate0 wrote:
| [dead]
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| IIRC McDonalds still does this for some subset of its corporate
| workforce.
| dataengineer56 wrote:
| I know of several restaurant chains who do this - it's seen
| as very important for restaurant head office workers to
| understand exactly how the restaurants work and the problems
| that they experience.
| badwolf wrote:
| Waffle House also required you to work in a restaurant for
| some time before they'll let you buy a franchise.
| kotaKat wrote:
| And depending on the franchise owner, could also be the
| franchise.
|
| My first McJob was at an owner-operated McDonalds where the
| owner would roll in at lunch on a Saturday in his BMW Z4, see
| the lunch rush, wash his hands, throw on some gloves, and
| call out to turn on the other side of the grill for assembly
| and start packing orders himself on that side to help out the
| workload.
|
| Gained a lot of respect as an impressionable young adult on
| what a good leader looks like at that job because his efforts
| trickled down to his store manager and the managers
| underneath them.
| screwturner68 wrote:
| I don't know if it's still the case but you used to have to
| go to Hamburger U before you could own a McD's so you knew
| how to do the job. I actually see it all the time and you
| can always tell who the owner is, instead of some really
| uninterested 17 year old you get a middle aged man in a
| pressed (insert fast food name) polo who is super happy to
| take your order.
| rchowe wrote:
| Apparently this is why some of the McDonalds restaurants in
| the Oak Brook / Chicago area are very good (or at least
| perfectly to spec)... they are owned by corporate and used
| for executive training.
| screwturner68 wrote:
| That is the most expensive McDonalds I've ever been too.
| newsclues wrote:
| It also helps leadership understand employee frustrations,
| which translates into improved customer experience.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| If they were paid the minimum wage too it might drive home a
| greater understanding of their employees as well, though
| unfortunately the large existing bank accounts of the CEOs
| ensures that any lesson that might come with that small
| paycheque is not likely to sink in.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| Chick-fil-A CEOs have been doing this (if not more frequent)
| since inception
| elmer007 wrote:
| I'm not familiar with the C-suite level, but I can confirm that
| my local CFA's operator is _routinely_ working various
| positions at his store. When he isn 't, he's sitting at a table
| working on paperwork.
|
| I'm there a lot (some would say too much, but I wholeheartedly
| disagree!), and it's odd to pass through without seeing him. He
| works the register, he takes orders in the drive through, he
| directs traffic in the parking lot, he carries orders out--
| everything. I'm certain that he's done shifts in the kitchen as
| well, just that I couldn't seem him to know.
|
| Just today, I went into the restroom to wash my hands and he
| was cleaning the stall.
| fykem wrote:
| [flagged]
| nr2x wrote:
| Yuuuuuup, this dude is clearly terrified of unionization.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| Everything about the Starbucks CEO shift up is because of
| unionization. Old CEO didn't want to face congress, now if he
| still has to, he can simply say, "I don't speak for Starbucks".
| Schultz is a freaking COWARD. Now this. It's clearly a PR stunt
| to show other suits that the CEO "cares". But it's really to
| keep pushing their thumb down on the union busting button.
| Julesman wrote:
| Definitely a PR move. But I figure it's about implying that the
| work isn't that hard and that the reasons for unionization are
| overblown. In other words, the work is easy so they don't need
| a raise. Some BS like that.
| danesparza wrote:
| All of the execs should have to do this. Creating a vested
| interest in better working conditions and a better customer
| experience is good for everybody.
| swader999 wrote:
| It would be better to put the whole executive together into a
| location for two weeks.
| ekianjo wrote:
| yeah, one day is not going to cut it. Full immersion requires a
| lot more time. Also with a single day at once location, you
| risk being seen as "the special guest" and treated differently,
| while this kind of thing would smooth out over the course of
| several weeks.
| brvsft wrote:
| That's way too much time. More than enough to allow some
| disgruntled workers to plan out and execute an assassination
| of the CEO.
| swader999 wrote:
| You're not supposed to say that part out loud.
| digitcatphd wrote:
| I know things are bad in the economy but dang..
| tullianus wrote:
| SpaceX (at least in my experience) requires design and
| manufacturing engineers to spend shifts on the production line to
| make sure there isn't low-hanging fruit in improving either the
| design or the manufacturing flow. If your manager hears
| complaints from the production team and you _haven 't_ spent some
| shifts on the floor getting to know the issue personally, you
| won't be long for the job.
| Pigalowda wrote:
| I'm sure the regular employees will love enduring an entire day
| dedicated to the sociopath's dog and pony show.
|
| The CEO should just go work in a coffee field for a day. What an
| ass
| TheDesolate0 wrote:
| [dead]
| telecuda wrote:
| Ask to be put on frontline email/phone customer support for your
| product a few times a year.
|
| Hearing problems/complaints directly from the voice of the
| customer, then having to explain a sometimes cumbersome
| workaround to solve them, is invaluable. Plus you buy goodwill
| with your support team for walking a day in their shoes.
| ethicalsmacker wrote:
| Ah yes, the CEO is slumming it. I would be more impressed if he
| accepted cafe pay for one month instead.
| proee wrote:
| The CEO is probably independently wealthy, so shutting off his
| pay for one month does nothing. I think this is a great
| opportunity to get to know what it's like to work at this
| level, the type of people, etc. If this person has a heart, it
| should enable good changes in the company based on bottom-up
| feedback.
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| In the post Reagan era, a CEO with a heart is not going to be
| CEO for long.
| rideontime wrote:
| How about for a month per year? And they have to subsist solely
| on the wages earned from it.
| jstanley wrote:
| Why would that be better? Wouldn't that leave him less time to
| do his actual work?
| rychco wrote:
| It would be better for the stated goal of understanding the
| culture & challenges of living as an actual barista at
| Starbucks, rather than just a publicity stunt.
| gannonburgett wrote:
| Sure. But it'd also give them a level of empathy it seems
| many CEOs lack. I'd say that's worth 1/12 of their work and,
| if anything, might make them a more efficient and truly
| understanding leader the remaining 11/12 of the year.
| brookst wrote:
| And just skip any major business meetings in that month?
|
| If you think he's a bad CEO, you shouldn't want him there
| at all. If you think he's a good CEO you shouldn't want him
| dropping his work for a month.
| coldpie wrote:
| He's a CEO of a major company, man. They don't have actual
| work. This would be the most productive month of his life.
| dachryn wrote:
| I was not expecting this Reddit level of comments on HN.
| Really hoping you are sarcastic.
| coldpie wrote:
| Nope. The role of executives at large companies is to
| most effectively move resources away from labor and
| towards the owners of capital. They decide where to open
| the next branch to crush competitors who treat their
| workers and customers better; they negotiate deals with
| suppliers so those suppliers and their workers have fewer
| resources; they coordinate with other large competitors
| to hamper workers' attempts at improving labor
| conditions.
|
| This, to me, doesn't qualify as work. Large company
| executives create no value. They only take and store
| value from those who actually perform real work.
| umeshunni wrote:
| This is HN, not /r/antiwork. Back to Reddit, you go,
| troll.
| coldpie wrote:
| Acknowledging the relationship between capital and labor
| is not an antiwork sentiment.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| That sounds like a lot of work to me. Whether it is good
| for society is an entirely separate question.
| bannedbybros wrote:
| [dead]
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Literally every time I've moved up the chain in my career
| I have done less work. I have seen the same in peers who
| have surpassed me. I have no reason to believe this
| changes by the time you reach CEO level.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| The bit where they bring in a pro CEO in Silicon Valley
| who spends most of his time messing around with his
| horse-breeding hobby instead of running the business is
| basically just a documentary. Like most of the rest of
| the show.
|
| This is how CEOs often manage to "do so much". All kinds
| of charity involvement, "advisor" work on other
| businesses, sit on boards, et c, then blog about how they
| still find time for their family and/or staying fit
| despite being so "busy". It's not because they're super-
| humans working 100 hours a week with perfect time-
| management discipline, but because a lot of them don't
| really do jack-shit for _any_ of their "jobs".
| nektro wrote:
| > Starbucks CEO says he'll work a shift at the company's cafes
| once a month
|
| > Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan told employees Thursday that
| he'll work a half day every month at one of the coffee giant's
| locations.
|
| contradiction in the first sentence. doesnt leave this stunt in
| good light
| safeimp wrote:
| What's the contradiction?
|
| I did a quick search and see a Starbucks shift consists of:
|
| > Evening shifts are around 3pm - 7pm or 4pm - 8pm. Morning
| Shifts 4 a.m. - 1 p.m. Midday Shifts 8 a.m. - 4 p.m
| elijaht wrote:
| This is cool. IIRC Doordash has a similar policy for at least
| rank and file employees. I think it's a great way to understand
| aspects of a business
| standardUser wrote:
| This kind of stunt is right up there with "pizza parties" except
| unlike pizza parties, which only insult your workers, this will
| also completely stress them out for a day!
| riffic wrote:
| walking the Gemba
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemba
| jaysinn_420 wrote:
| highest paid barista ever
| criddell wrote:
| It should be a shift swap. He works as a barista for barista
| pay and the person he takes the shift from should be CEO for a
| day for CEO pay. Business Insider says[1] the new CEO's
| compensation is something like $28 million, so the barista
| should get around $115k for the day's work.
|
| Maybe then both parties will come to realize whether or not the
| 3 orders of magnitude difference in pay is warranted.
|
| [1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/starbucks-ceo-salary-
| laxman-...
| whiterace1488 wrote:
| >Maybe then both parties will come to realize whether or not
| the 3 orders of magnitude difference in pay is warranted.
|
| Do you really think that baristas should be paid $115k daily?
| Or that CEOs should be paid minimum wage?
| criddell wrote:
| I'm saying if the CEO wants to work as a barista then they
| should find a barista that wants to see what the CEO job is
| like and swap jobs and pay for a day. I doubt either party
| will be particularly good at the other person's job, but
| that's not really the point of the exercise. Both would get
| a glimpse of the other person's working life.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Not sure how well this will work, other than as a PR stunt.
|
| If he's serious about this, he should go in, in disguise, without
| anyone at the store knowing who he is (including top management).
| fvold wrote:
| I guess there is no PR wins in just listening to the floor-level
| employees, then?
| jrm4 wrote:
| Oh, the cynicism.
|
| I'm not exactly sure how this will go down for Starbucks per se,
| maybe it is PR-ish -- but to pull the camera back a bit, I think
| it would be tremendously helpful to normalize this idea
| _everywhere,_ even if it may not always work out perfectly.
| gorbachev wrote:
| Given how unpleasant the relationship between the current CEO
| and their baristas have been [1], this can not start well,
| unless the new CEO takes some steps to make friends first.
|
| 1. under the current CEO Starbucks has racked up numerous labor
| violations for union busting
| brvsft wrote:
| Yeah, I don't see the big deal. He's the new CEO and appears to
| be setting the tone, informing people of one of his first
| efforts. Stating it publicly seems uncontroversial for a
| business with publicly-traded stock.
|
| I also don't see it as some veiled attempt to act like he's
| trying to empathize with every aspect of the workers' lives.
| Not that a lot of people are suggesting this, but some are, and
| it seems like an incorrect impulse to assume that. As the new
| CEO, he wants to see the operating conditions of their stores,
| where they make most of their money. Seems like a decent idea
| to me, and is presumably different from what the previous CEO
| was doing.
| jjulius wrote:
| >... I think it would be tremendously helpful to normalize this
| idea everywhere, even if it may not always work out perfectly.
|
| It's all dependent upon the intent of the CEO or person coming
| in and doing the work. Just as an anecdote, I have seen too
| many times where a superior comes in with the intent of doing
| the work to prove it can be done better, rather than to
| understand the realities of what employees are dealing with,
| and the results are negative. I frequently had a COO who would
| come to my warehouse, get on the front line with processing
| equipment (just as an aside, this was an ITAD company
| processing end-of-life IT equipment for data sanitization and
| remarketing, so it's tech-related), and take a cavalier, "SEE!
| I could go through ALL of that in X amount of minutes! I don't
| understand why people can't move fast enough blah, blah, blah."
|
| What he never realized is that he didn't do all the work. He'd
| capture _only_ what _he_ looked at in the system, never put
| anything away, and left a massive pile of work, and garbage,
| behind him that my team always had to clean up. He wouldn 't
| take the time to do the rest of the work that the team has to
| do themselves day in and day out. He half-assed it and berated
| us at the end, and I could never get him to understand this.
| It's not that it "didn't always work out perfectly", it's that
| it made morale plummet every single time it happened.
|
| So yeah, I share your sentiment, but to a point - it's reliant
| upon the person diving in to keep an open mind and _actually_
| give a shit about it instead of just using it as a, "Look at
| me, I'm a man of the people!" opportunity.
| comte7092 wrote:
| I used to work in hospitality.
|
| One of the higher ups had worked his way up from the bottom of
| the totem pole. He would come and work the frontline and the
| employees were generally appreciative.
|
| One of his subordinates followed his lead - except he had no
| idea what he was doing. He was slow, got in people's way, and
| did things no frontline employee would ever be allowed to do -
| just give stuff away constantly.
|
| At the end of the day, the CEO isn't ever going to be under the
| same pressure or constraints as a normal employee. This is
| extremely likely to just end up being a vanity project.
| ahoy wrote:
| Can you imagine how annoying it would be to be one of the
| bariastas working when Schultz shows up and is just in your way
| for 4 hours?
| everly wrote:
| Just FYI they got a new CEO
| system16 wrote:
| The reverse of this: in my early days in tech support for a major
| router manufacturer, we were told the CEO would occasionally call
| in posing as a customer, and agents had been fired for being rude
| or offering poor support. To this day I don't know if it was true
| or not, but it scared enough people to think Big Brother was
| always watching.
| queens_ridge wrote:
| I used to work in tech for a large retail company and when you
| joined the company you had to work 3 days straight at one of the
| stores. Honestly it was brutal and they put me to work. It made
| me thankful to work at the corporate office if anything.
| screwturner68 wrote:
| Try a couple of months at the wage they pay those poor
| bastards. That's the thing about "having to work the floor". If
| I'm the CEO, I'm making $10MM a year and frankly busting ass
| for 4 whole hours at $5000/h isn't a big deal. It's a
| completely different experience when you have to bust ass all
| week at $8/h
| mavu wrote:
| It's a nice gimmick that gives some positive press coverage.
|
| Only in a very dysfunctional company will this lead to any
| meaningfull improvement.
| bennetthi wrote:
| I feel like there should be a word for this.
| dboreham wrote:
| "UndercoverBoss"?
| meghan_rain wrote:
| Putin should fight one day in Bachmut and maybe some problems the
| world is facing right now wohld solve themselves :-)
| josh_fyi wrote:
| Any employees at those shifts are going to be terrified...
| rullelito wrote:
| That would probably be the safest place to work, can't fire
| anyone with the risk of bad PR.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > That would probably be the safest place to work, can't fire
| anyone with the risk of bad PR.
|
| Why? Just as long as they don't fire someone on the spot,
| live on social media, I'm sure their PR team can handle it.
| E.g. make a statement "Joe Schmoe had persistent performance
| issues and was fired a month after the CEO visit, there's no
| connection to the CEO."
| brvsft wrote:
| Why even make any statement? That would seem more
| suspicious to me.
| brookst wrote:
| Depends on personality. Some will be excited to give him an
| earful about everything that makes their job difficult.
|
| "And the handles on the carafes! You see this injection molding
| seam? You see where it is when I pick up the carafe for tbe
| 500th time today? You see these callouses? You're not going to
| have callouses, you're going to have blisters! Like everyone in
| the first week! And the packaging on these cups! You see
| this..."
| dehrmann wrote:
| IIRC, Starbucks has a store at their HQ. Hopefully it's not that
| one.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| This is good. But it should be unannounced. He should just show
| up and work.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| And it really should be a week or two. You can grind through
| hell on optimism for a day. Doing it day in and day out is the
| hard part and may highlight different negative aspects of the
| job compared to just showing up for 8 hours
| jonas21 wrote:
| Part of the reason to do this is for employees to know that the
| CEO understands their job and their concerns. The vast majority
| of employees will not be working at a store the CEO visits, so
| it makes sense to announce it internally. It sounds like that's
| what they did, and CNBC got a hold of that email.
| stagger87 wrote:
| The marketing department will not allow that to happen.
| Arrath wrote:
| This is good, right? Then a team of <trolls/activists> can
| all arrive at the same time and order a big pile of 'secret
| menu' 19-ingredient monstrosities from the CEO.
| dpflan wrote:
| Social Media viral coefficient may have been higher with a
| quieter announcement and the CEO just showing up leverage
| social media managers.
| cushychicken wrote:
| Any CEO doing this for the right reasons - I.e., to help
| ensure the product is good - would whip the marketing
| department right into shape and tell them to keep a lid on
| it.
| babypuncher wrote:
| In this case, the marketing department was not involved, at
| least publicly. CNBC is reporting this from an internal
| email they got their hands on.
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