[HN Gopher] Managers exploit loyal workers over less committed c...
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Managers exploit loyal workers over less committed colleagues
Author : geox
Score : 89 points
Date : 2023-03-25 20:46 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (today.duke.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (today.duke.edu)
| quantified wrote:
| > Company loyalty is a double-edged sword, according to a new
| study.
|
| I'm not sure what the second edge is? When is loyalty
| meaningfully rewarded?
| suoduandao2 wrote:
| when it's layoff season.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Layoff season is not about keeping the loyal employees, it's
| about keeping the necessary ones.
|
| Loyalty isn't really valuable to the company when retention
| isn't a concern.
| jiriknesl wrote:
| As a CEO who had to do some lay-offs, I would terminate
| loyal workers who care about the company the last, even if
| I had to change their focus.
|
| At a certain size when you know all people in the company,
| a CEO always know which 15 % of people will be let go first
| and which 15 % will the company keep even if the business
| is losing money every month.
| willcipriano wrote:
| So you get to stay at a failing company as a reward?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| How'd that work at Google? Loyalty is zero guarantee of
| safety during any sort of reduction in force. You're just a
| line in a spreadsheet. Also, you can have the best working
| relationship with your manager and if they don't have enough
| juice, you're still out.
|
| Tips: Robust emergency fund, keep your network warm, work
| enough to keep your employer reasonably happy, show up every
| day like it might be your last.
|
| (technologist for 22 years)
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Do you realize you shifted the gold post from having
| benefit to providing a bulletproof guarantee?
|
| Nothing in life is guaranteed.
| gruez wrote:
| Loyalty isn't rewarded per se, but someone who is committed
| to their work/team/company is going to be lower on the
| layoffs list than someone who's doing rest and vest while
| doing the bare minimum.
| vkou wrote:
| Layoffs in large firms are typically handled in complete
| secrecy by third-party consultants, and 'loyalty' isn't
| an input they plug into their formulas.
|
| The decisionmakers that, at the end of the day, approve
| the recommendations of the consultants are usually
| incredibly removed from any actual work that gets done.
| I'm talking about people with 300+ reports. They have no
| fucking idea whether or not you are 'loyal'.
|
| The people who have an idea of that find out that you got
| laid off at the same time that you do.
|
| Likewise, when an entire department gets gutted (with no
| internal transfers available), nobody with any influence
| over that decision is going to care that you were busting
| your ass for the firm's bottom line every Saturday.
| gruez wrote:
| > and 'loyalty' isn't an input they plug into their
| formulas.
|
| >They have no fucking idea whether or not you are
| 'loyal'.
|
| My comment literally says
|
| >Loyalty isn't rewarded per se
|
| What metrics do you think the "third-party consultants"
| are using?
| vkou wrote:
| > What metrics do you think the "third-party consultants"
| are using?
|
| Closing their eyes, and throwing darts at the historical
| record of your three-point "NI/Meets/Exceeds" score,
| where you are on the org chart, and whether you're being
| paid more than your peers.
|
| If there was any method to their madness, you wouldn't be
| seeing people with strong performance histories getting
| canned (In divisions that haven't been shut down).
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Prove your assertion. You are attributing logical,
| rational behavior to orgs and their participants that
| rarely are those traits. I have personally attempted to
| defend directs from layoffs, and that quickly turned into
| me making calls to other orgs so they could land safely
| elsewhere, facts and value be damned.
|
| I support rational decisioning ("here is the evidence
| this person delivers value, is committed to the org's
| success, and should be factored into retention"), it's
| just rare imho. YMMV. Perhaps I've just been unlucky in
| my journey. If that is the case, n=1, build your
| assumptions off of competing data.
| gruez wrote:
| > Prove your assertion. You are attributing logical,
| rational behavior to orgs and their participants that
| rarely are those traits. I have personally attempted to
| defend directs from layoffs, and that quickly turned into
| me making calls to other orgs so they could land safely
| elsewhere, facts and value be damned.
|
| And what am I supposed to do if my experience was the
| exact opposite to yours? Do you want me to dig up emails
| and/or other company documents that show there was
| "logical, rational behavior" in my organization?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Nah, I'm just saying that our experiences are going to
| wildly differ and my recommendation is to plan for the
| worst. Please don't take my comments as anything other
| than that, and I absolutely did not intend it as a
| personal attack.
|
| If you've worked at amazing (logical, rational) orgs that
| value commitment and will take care of folks in return, I
| am genuinely happy for you. Envious even. It is more rare
| than you would think. Regardless, workers must protect
| themselves. If you'd like to discuss further, contact
| info in my profile.
| not_the_fda wrote:
| I have never seen that happen.
|
| I have seen people who were loyal and worked for the same
| company for 20 years be thrown to the curb like trash,
| and they were not poor performers.
|
| You are just a number on a spreadsheet, and if you have
| been there awhile its an expensive number, you are
| probably older with a larger salary and higher healthcare
| costs.
| noncoml wrote:
| > You're just a line in a spreadsheet.
|
| Spot on. IT workers need to realise this and start acting
| accordingly. You are no more important to an exec of a tech
| company than a barista is to Starbuck's exec.
|
| Unionise and stop being jerks during technical interviews.
| prepend wrote:
| Or even better, use your skills to start your own
| company.
|
| I've never seen a unionized software company make good
| software. And I've seen lots of different types of
| software.
|
| I don't think programmers are interchangeable cogs and
| there's so much variance and diversity across people, I
| wouldn't want to work for a company that paid me the same
| as everyone else and fired based on seniority.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| If your whole department or project is being let go loyalty
| and personal relationships doesn't matter. If your
| department or project is one of the ones told to manage out
| poor performers more aggressively or to cut X% of headcount
| being someone your manager can count on is going to make
| you substantially less likely to be one of the people
| managed out or cut.
|
| Sure, they might bring in consultants like it's Office
| Space but those consultants ask everyone what they think of
| their team members and keep score and in that scenario it's
| still better to be the person everyone likes and/or
| respects with more than the absolute bare minimum work
| output.
| watwut wrote:
| The layoffs I have seen just were not that thought out.
| First people to go were the most paid ones, regardless of
| performance anyway.
| [deleted]
| treis wrote:
| >how'd that work at Google
|
| How do you know it didn't?
| crazygringo wrote:
| In theory, with promotions.
|
| In practice, they've decided to bring in an external candidate
| to fill the role at the higher level. But you're the best
| person to bring them up to speed because you know so much with
| all the extra projects you've taken on!
| quantified wrote:
| Yes, all the projects that you were hoping to be able to work
| on as a reward are out of reach because you're too valuable
| to the ones you're on.
| roenxi wrote:
| In theory maybe promotions and bonuses were being handed out
| they should tend towards the more loyal workers.
|
| But I would advise against working overtime as a strategy to
| get rewards, it usually doesn't work in my experience.
| vlunkr wrote:
| I work for a small company, and I do believe loyalty is
| rewarded here. Raises, bonuses, freedom to move between
| projects, etc.
|
| I'm sure it's a different story when you're working with an
| army of devs. It's a numbers game, everyone is easier to
| replace in that situation.
| [deleted]
| doctor_eval wrote:
| So loyalty is treated as a weakness, rather than a strength.
|
| What a shitty world we've built for ourselves.
| henry2023 wrote:
| Be loyal to your wife. People organizations are higher order
| entities who could not care less about you. Building a
| relationship of loyalty with them is just not something you
| should do.
| Gigachad wrote:
| There is a middle ground. On one side you have working massive
| unpaid overtime and stressing out, and on the other side you
| have WFH bludgers who spend 90% of their time on YouTube and
| reddit knowing they will get away with it.
|
| Then there is actually doing the work you are paid for and
| putting a good effort in but not letting it extend unreasonably
| beyond hours and not letting it stress you out. It's actually
| far more rewarding to do this where you actually care about the
| work you do and feel some pride in it vs completely
| disassociating.
| pigsty wrote:
| > on the other side you have WFH bludgers who spend 90% of
| their time on YouTube and reddit knowing they will get away
| with it.
|
| If they're getting away with it, that's a problem with the
| company not distributing their workloads properly. 90% of
| work hours wasted should be immediately obvious.
| eecc wrote:
| If I ever did that, it'd be J2 or some training. YouTube and
| Reddit have vampired way to much time from my life already.
| fwsgonzo wrote:
| Indeed. It's crazy the amount of stories I've seen on Reddit
| this past decade from people who are warning others about the
| dangers of treating a company as family etc., after they
| themselves were discarded at a whim. It's always the same
| story, and they sometimes profess how unexpected it was, and
| how important they were (or how many projects they lead) in the
| company.
| whack wrote:
| > _We value people who are loyal. We think about them in positive
| terms. They get awarded often. It 's not just the negative side_
|
| If the managers also award loyal workers in various ways, it
| would hardly be exploitative. As a manager, if something
| absolutely needs to get done outside of normal work hours, of
| course I would lean towards asking the person most likely to say
| yes. And of course I would also give that person a larger end-of-
| year salary increase, bonus, or fast-tracked promotion to
| recognize their efforts and commitment. It seems odd for the
| study to focus purely on the additional work the loyal workers
| are doing, and ignore the various ways in which they would be
| rewarded for it.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| > Participants handing out the unpaid work in Stanley's study
| were compensated $12 an hour.
|
| Isn't that a kick in the nuts for poor John?
| yalogin wrote:
| Loyalty also makes you earn less compared to their peers. I am
| exhibit A for that:)
| WesleyLivesay wrote:
| Sucks being dependable.
| osigurdson wrote:
| It seems pretty obvious. The ones most willing to do the work end
| up doing it.
| Animats wrote:
| A more effective cure: pay for overtime.
| [deleted]
| analog31 wrote:
| My knee jerk impression is that the study could be explained by
| _defining_ loyalty as willingness to accept unpaid work.
| maxk42 wrote:
| It's not "unpaid work" if you're classified as an exempt
| employee, which is never explicitly addressed in the article.
| That's why you get a certain salary regardless of sick leave,
| holidays, etc - you are being paid to apply your professional
| skill to a task, not conduct menial labor for a certain number
| of hours. I would never work unpaid overtime when I was working
| as a retail clerk. That's why they had a time card system which
| I had to punch in and punch out of. If a customer kept me late
| by even 15 minutes, I'd be compensated for all of that time.
| Now later in my career I'm an exempt professional, and I don't
| mind crunching when it's crunch time. That's part of why my
| salary is so much higher now: I understand that I have a job to
| execute at any cost. If a deadline is in danger of being missed
| I will put in the extra hours necessary to achieve success
| regardless of being asked to or not. That's why managers award
| me crucial projects and that's the kind of employee I would
| lean on when I have a crucial project of my own to manage.
| That's also the first employee to be put up for promotion and
| the last one to be expendable during hard times. This isn't the
| least bit surprising.
| ary wrote:
| Did anyone think otherwise and need to have it explained?
|
| Having been on both sides of the employment equation a few times
| now I can say confidently that people act on their values and
| respond to incentives without regard to where they sit on an org
| chart. This too doesn't require a study to confirm. Perhaps I'm
| naive and the point of publishing this is to drum up engagement
| from the aggrieved employed.
|
| Be you an employer or employee the hardest thing to be in
| business is _ethical_. Convincing (or paying) people to care is
| incredibly hard, as is convincing (or paying) people to learn. It
| gets a lot easier when you find a way to tie either of those
| things to their values, and honestly most people, rationally,
| value themselves above all else. Is it any wonder people give up
| and begin exploiting one another?
|
| This article reads like someone found the Gervais Principle [1]
| and viewed it as full of low-hanging fruit for a study.
|
| [1] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-
| principle-...
| zabzonk wrote:
| > it doesn't mean we should just abandon work commitments or
| dodge uncompensated overtime.
|
| it's not dodging! if you won't pay me for my work, i'm not going
| to do the work!
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Indeed. That the author chose this wording is a signal of how
| sick and biased the employee/employer relationship is.
| zabzonk wrote:
| but only in certain professions - you try getting a
| builder/electrician/plumber to do unpaid overtime! why
| programmers are suckers for this is a bit of a mystery.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I've done a fair bit of not-specifically-compensated
| overtime over my career.
|
| In my 20s and early 30s, if I didn't have anything going on
| socially or sports on a given evening, I was pretty likely
| going to write code (for enjoyment). Sometimes that was for
| me, but often it was for the company.
|
| Doing what I enjoy is why I was a sucker in your
| estimation.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| I mean, yes? You could have built side projects,
| contributed to open source, freelanced, etc. There are a
| ton of ways to do what you enjoy without allowing someone
| to profit off your unpaid labor.
| zabzonk wrote:
| yes, i certainly used the university that i worked for
| facilities when i was starting out, but only for my own
| projects (arguably bad, i might admit) - i never did or
| have done any work for my employers that i wasn't
| compensated for, and i can't imagine why anyone would.
| SteveGerencser wrote:
| Because the barrier to entry in programming is zero. Or
| near enough to it. Code on your free time, learn php on
| your free time. Suddenly you are WordPress developer.
|
| Learning a trade can require very expensive tools, often
| time as an apprentice or journeyman, and learning at the
| very first stage of your career that your labor has value
| and you need to charge for that.
|
| I can hire a programmer from anywhere in the world and
| often incredibly cheaply. I can't do that with a tradesman,
| they actually have to be local, often have more work than
| they can ever get done, and know that I can't outsource the
| construction project to someone 1,000 miles away.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| > I can hire a programmer from anywhere in the world and
| often incredibly cheaply
|
| This has been tried many times with quite predictable
| results and you're incorrect that you can't hire
| tradesmen from far away - happens all the time.
| sage76 wrote:
| Where I live, programmers tend to be book smart and very
| arrogant about it.
|
| Plenty of people from my college and department genuinely
| think they are smarter than everyone else.
|
| This blinds them to the kind of street smarts required to
| understand even basic ideas of how to not get exploited,
| the utility of unions, power dynamics between employers and
| employees.
| astrange wrote:
| Programmers are salaried/equity holding exempt employees so
| it's not unpaid.
| zabzonk wrote:
| on the contrary, most programmers i've worked with have
| been contractors/consultants, paid by the hour.
| eggsmediumrare wrote:
| It's crazy how many people don't understand this
| xyzelement wrote:
| It depends on the job and company. I've worked with folks w
| your mindset who'd bail at 5 when their team stayed till 7.
|
| Then 5 years out, their team mates were making an extra 200k
| a year because they got bonuses and raises in return.
|
| So in their case it was short term uncompensated overtime ,
| long term well compensated.
| zabzonk wrote:
| 5 years is short term? do the maths. anyway, few people
| stay with a company that exploits them for 5 years.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I feel like you mentally inverted every thing in my post
| and then replied to that.
| zabzonk wrote:
| I feel otherwise, but please expand a bit.
| xyzelement wrote:
| Alright. Two guys working in a great company. One had the
| attitude of "no uncomped OT" and leaves at 5. The other
| guy works till 7.
|
| At the end of the year guy 2 gets an extra 40k comp raise
| vs guy 1. In 5 years that's a 200k difference.
|
| So by avoiding "uncomped OT" guy 1 fucked himself out of
| a ton of comp.
|
| OBVIOUSLY this depends on the company and there's no
| guarantees. I've been lucky enough to work on companies
| that were like this and this every man for himself short
| term thinking was poison.
|
| YMMV.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| You went from '200k a year' to '200k over five years'.
| zabzonk wrote:
| > YMMV
|
| it certainly does. i have worked for several investment
| banks as a contractor, and i can assure you they do not
| much care how many hours you put in. if you wanted a big
| bonus (as a contractor, i obviously didn't get one) you
| had to produce value to the bank. and sitting at your
| desk until 7pm simply does not do that.
|
| also, how much does that 2 hours per day, per year, over
| 5 years add up to?
| bleep_bloop wrote:
| The few companies I've worked at, by 5 years the company
| either has sold up and everyone was replaced / let go,
| maybe a select few get to stay out of dozens - the vast
| majority lose out and were exploited or the company goes on
| a hiring spree and there aren't pay raises or bonuses
| because company growth is valued over employee
| satisfaction. Feels like you're talking about the exception
| rather than the rule or perhaps the tech industry 10+ years
| ago but certainly not today.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > So in their case it was short term uncompensated overtime
| , long term well compensated.
|
| How does one identify whether one will be long term
| compensated or not? Would an employer agree to committing
| to something like this via a contract?
|
| In my experience, switching jobs gets you there faster and
| without the unpaid overtime.
| sage76 wrote:
| I have seen loyal people get exploited, frustrated and
| leave more often.
| yedava wrote:
| The way I see it, companies know that there will always be
| people who would sacrifice quality of life for money, and
| adjust compensation for that. This wouldn't be a problem if
| only a few companies do this. But when every company does
| this, it results in forcing everyone to just keep working
| long hours in order to stay afloat.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Yes, but this form of gambling is a terrible thing to
| encourage implicitly. It's awful for society to ask people
| who have worked to attain a "normal" education, trying to
| apply to "normal" companies, to choose between life-harm
| and _potential future compensation_. For specialized cases
| like a silicon valley moonshot startup or whatever, fine.
| But this scenario, allowed to progress naturally, will work
| itself into more and more "normal" cases.
|
| This is especially compounded by the fact that software
| developers have a higher tendency to fall outside some of
| the social norms that normally serve as natural controls on
| this kind of scenario. I.e. if you can do your job for
| unusually long (because it's not physical labor, and/or you
| enjoy doing it both as a job and a hobby), and you don't
| have many other obligations (you don't have kids, or you
| can afford childcare; or you don't have a wife, or you have
| a wife who doesn't mind you spending little time together;
| or you can afford to order prepared food often or don't
| have a cultural/personal bias against it), what happens is
| the people with these properties work more hours, causing
| the market to adapt and pressure the other people in the
| same field. In other fields, this doesn't happen in enough
| numbers to cause this problem.
| m348e912 wrote:
| Former manager here, I definitely leaned on the guys/ladies on
| the team I could count on over "less committed team members". The
| ones I could count on were eager and willing to step up when
| needed and I very much appreciated it. In this case, they were
| salary and worked more hours than some of their counter parts.
|
| I did my best to reward them with promotion opportunities and
| supporting them as much as I could in their career.
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