[HN Gopher] The office is a theatre for work (2019)
___________________________________________________________________
The office is a theatre for work (2019)
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 284 points
Date : 2023-07-18 15:01 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tomcritchlow.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (tomcritchlow.com)
| ryandrake wrote:
| An Ex-Google employee had a hot-take[1] on Twitter a few months
| ago that nicely sums up the fact that work theatrics are starting
| to become the only thing that matters. It seems every year work
| (at many companies) becomes more and more about performance art
| and self-promotion and telling a story about getting things done,
| than it is about actually getting things done.
|
| 1:
| https://twitter.com/bengold/status/1618589049803132931?lang=...
| js8 wrote:
| I think it's because the rise of liberalism in the recent
| decades. Every political/economic system has a way how
| individuals can freeride at other's expense (be selfish).
|
| In authoritarian systems, it happens through becoming a corrupt
| authority. In collectivist systems, it happens through tuning
| out in lazy disinterest. In meritocratic (liberal) systems, it
| happens through hustle and pretense of usefulness.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Worth noting that the person who coined "Meritocracy" was
| doing so in the context of his book-length critique of it and
| caution against its adoption.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy
| js8 wrote:
| I am aware of that and I was thinking whether I should use
| it. But the ideology of liberalism is partly based on that
| idea, that there is some objective performance evaluator
| (free market, natural selection), which will assign value
| by one's merit (because you can sort of observe that
| scoring process and act accordingly).
| Spivak wrote:
| I think it's more base than this; in order to be valued you
| have to be seen as useful. This is only somewhat related to
| being actually useful. Workers who haven't drunk the company
| Kool-Aid have realized that their own personal value is
| maximized by giving priority to work that is visible over
| doing the best or most work.
| js8 wrote:
| > in order to be valued you have to be seen as useful
|
| My point is, that's a characteristic of liberal
| (individualist, meritocratic) paradigm. In other paradigms,
| your value comes from something else than usefulness. In
| authoritarian (patriarchal) system, your value is inherent
| in your (or your family) social status, like your wealth.
| And in egalitarian (collectivist) system, you're valued
| (but also less so) inherently by virtue of being part of
| the group.
| nullc wrote:
| Is this really a criticism of market driven systems?
| Performative works is more of an issue with huge
| corporations -- while these exist in market economies,
| internally to the company is not a market economy.
| Usually they're somewhere on the line between
| authoritarian and collectivist internally, and the
| performative fake work looks like the way you cheat in
| authoritarian and/or collectivist economies.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Coders are the new Managers.
|
| Because CPUs are the new workers.
|
| (kind of obvious if we are knowledge workers now. At some point
| we had to invent the knowledge equivalent of a JCB or a steam
| engine)
|
| Now this has lots of implications. Managers are there mostly to
| organise and supervise workers. If one tech bro can organise a
| thousand CPUs globally, what is his manager organising? How we
| treated managers was qualitatively different to how we treated
| workers (see Unions for example). So do we pay the tech bro what
| we used to pay his manager? Do we give the tech bro a key to the
| executive washroom? Should we pair him up with a "politician
| type" who can go to the meetings? Sort of like how YC funds 2
| founders cos that is shown to work better?
|
| Work theatre is still a thing, and becomes more performative the
| less impact your work has on any outcomes.
|
| Twitter and Musk has been an inflection point. If firing
| basically anyone who did not commit code, if that works (for some
| definition of works) then we are in a new world.
|
| "How do you manage a company through code?" - asking the same
| questions that were asked 500 years ago when we asked "how do you
| manage a company / state through written words?"
| oxfordmale wrote:
| Twitter and Musk is not an inflection point. It "success story"
| has been kept alive by Muskovites and companies needing to
| justify their lay offs after overhiring
|
| Advertising revenue at Twitter has halved. Year on year traffic
| is down by 12% down. By all metrics Twitter is not doing well,
| and I am not even discussing the high debts that are crippling
| Twitter. See links below.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/business-66217641
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/10/twitter-traffic-is-nosedivin...
| aprdm wrote:
| What a crazy thing to read, makes absolute no sense in any
| level
| _jal wrote:
| > Twitter and Musk has been an inflection point.
|
| Is the claim, "everyone else who accidentally buys an 11 digit
| social media operation will choose to run it in to the ground,
| too"?
| MikeTheRocker wrote:
| This makes no sense unless you're going to redefine what
| management means.
|
| > If one tech bro can organise a thousand CPUs globally, what
| is his manager organising?
|
| A programmer leveraging distributed compute is nothing like
| coordinating an organization.
| potatolicious wrote:
| Precisely. The only way to make this analogy work is we
| contort the notion of management/coordination so far outside
| of any common meaning as to render the word meaningless.
|
| When I drive a car, am I "managing" the pistons in the
| engine? When I'm taking a picture, am I "managing" the
| photosites on the sensor?
|
| The only way to make this contorted analogy work is to fully
| enter the mind palace and depart any semblance of the world
| everyone lives in.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| (a long reply)
|
| So the "managing pistons" comment is relevant I think. At a
| certain level of abstraction you are right - you don't care
| if the engine is poweeed by pistons and spark plugs or
| swans tied by ribbons. you press the pedal you go faster.
| Let's measure those levels of abstraction somehow - I am
| going to guess that you need to be 2 orders of magnitude
| (of some thing or other) removed before the abstraction is
| relevant - so if you have 1 client you really need to care
| bout everything about them. With 100 clients it does not
| matter too much and with 10,000 clients your abstraction
| level is enough who cares what any one client thinks.
| (ignoring every customer motto poster for 30 years).
|
| Now this abstraction model of management is useful I think
| in explaining the difference in middle management and upper
| management - middle are still inside the abstraction level
| as the people they are managing - so for 100 people there
| are say 10'middle managers and one upper manager. The
| middle managers have to care about the 9 people they manage
| but the one upper manager probably does not have to worry
| about the behaviours of those 9.
|
| Maybe it's 3 orders of magnitude - who knows. But there is
| something.
|
| Now the upper manager (100) will have some mental model of
| how the work is arranged below him. And then the upper
| uppper manager (10,000) will have a similar mental model.
| But it will probably be much more "pour in money, get an
| expected output".
|
| The problem is how effective the mental model is. Somewhere
| between the foppiest of aristocratic imbeciles and, I
| dunno, Steve Jobs, most upper management have mental models
| that are misaligned with reality.
|
| So back to software.
|
| When we release software we are making a chnage to, yes, an
| organisation. How that organisation behaves and performs.
| We are then managing that org. Coders manage because they
| are the ones making the small but consequential design
| decisions (see "the code is the design"). They are
| organising the code, which organises the compmay. They are
| making management decisions (at low level, less the 2
| orders magnitude). But it is still managing by any sensible
| definition (no true scotsman would disagree)
|
| Software offers another interesting idea - that for each
| release there is an expected outcome - we will see a
| reduction in spam by this much or a increase in revenue
| from left handed mechanics in Ohio or increase is latency
| for these queries or whatever.
|
| The point is for a company that wants to it can build
| models of how it's codebase works and how chnaging some
| parts of it affects other parts. And test that model on
| every release.
|
| in short you can build a battle tested "mental model" of
| your own organisation. So when upper management (4 orders
| of magnitude) want to make a chnage they can make expected
| predictions about the model and its change. Be transparent
| about it.
|
| They can find that software makes implicit explicit - that
| if you have a company that behaves day to day via code, if
| it is driven by software (for example deliver these parcels
| to these locations) then you are a programmable company -
| and what you do day to day is programmable. And also
| modellable.
|
| If you want to make large scale changes, you can. just look
| for the right piece of code. If you want to check if those
| changes are right ones you have a daily tested model of
| likely affects. That is waaay better than "CEOs gut feel"
| or "an excel we mocked up in two days with Bain and co"
|
| And importantly that model can be brought up in court when
| you get sued for the terrible M&A decision you made that
| got you your second yacht.
|
| So that's a long post and I may have lost my thread but,
| when the workers are ridiculously leveraged (as coders can
| be) the idea of managing them as previously seems foolish.
|
| Maybe the coders building the apps that tell Amazon workers
| where to drive and when - are they the new managers of the
| drivers? Are the people deciding if those drivers should
| work 20'hournshidts or just 19 hours the real managers?
|
| Somewhere along the line we have lost the need for a huge
| slub of "people who organise workers" and if we lose them,
| there is another set of "people who communicate and co-
| ordinate so an org with so many people are all aligned".
| once we get rid of those sets of people, and most other
| people just do what the software tells them, there is far
| less managing of people needed.
|
| So that's a programmable company and coders as managers in
| a nutshell.
|
| I may be crazy or above or "just don't know how the world
| works". But I don't think so.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| My take: designing and implementing systems that are the
| systems by which an organisation performs its day to day
| tasks. There are varying levels of abstraction etc - please
| see below long comment)
| p_j_w wrote:
| > A programmer leveraging distributed compute is nothing like
| coordinating an organization.
|
| It seems some of us have taken the analogy of the CPU to a
| brain a little bit too literally and reducing human
| interaction to computing flows. It might be true in a very
| strict sense if you wanna go hardcore materialist (which is
| fine philosophically), but it seems like a shitty mental
| model, doesn't it?
| MengerSponge wrote:
| I'd argue you just need the right flavor of abstraction. I
| can't wait until you can just type from
| bschool import mba
| groby_b wrote:
| There'd be much to say about your points, but... you're missing
| the entire point of the article and rhapsodize on the title
| instead. Because the article isn't, at all, using the word
| "theatre" in a derogatory sense.
|
| It's specifically talking about "performing" work is important,
| how to avoid it from sliding into bs-ing instead, and how
| consulting work is related to improv theatre.
| werds wrote:
| read back what you have written here in a couple of days with a
| clear head, you are talking total nonsense man
| csours wrote:
| I have some thoughts on a parallel line.
|
| My big question is: What is the base unit of work of software
| development. After all, 'You can only manage what you can
| measure'
|
| I'm curious what other people think, so please try to come up
| with an answer before you read the next line.
|
| I think the base unit is 'learn and try'. Learn something and
| try something.
| ebiester wrote:
| Peter Drucker said this in 1967, in The Effective Executive. He
| went further in Management Challenges for the 21st Century:
|
| > [F]ewer and fewer people are "subordinates"--even in fairly
| low-level jobs. Increasingly they are "knowledge workers." And
| knowledge workers are not subordinates; they are "associates."
| For, once beyond the apprentice stage, knowledge workers must
| know more about their job than their boss does--or else they
| are no good at all. In fact, that they know more about their
| job than anybody else in the organization is part of the
| definition of knowledge workers...
|
| > To be sure, these associates are "subordinates" in that they
| depend on the "boss" when it comes to being hired or fired,
| promoted, appraised and so on. But in his or her own job the
| superior can perform only if these so-called subordinates take
| responsibility for educating him or her... In turn, these
| "subordinates" depend on the superior for direction. They
| depend on the superior to tell them what the "score" is.
|
| > Their relationship, in other words, is far more like that
| between the conductor of an orchestra and the instrumentalist
| than it is like the traditional superior/subordinate
| relationship...
|
| We are already living as though this world were true. I don't
| remember the last time I saw a manager fully specifying each
| ticket for a developer, for example. Managers _are_ paid what
| managers used to be paid. The average developer is paid like a
| manager; their managers are paid like a manager of managers.
| The average manager I have worked with spend a fraction of
| their time in actively telling people what to do; most of their
| time is managing the complexity of the coordination of work and
| only incidentally the people.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Not making a statement vis a vis remote work vs in-office - but
| for me personally, some of the things mentioned in this post are
| exactly why I prefer to work in the office. These little things
| can end up mattering and becoming surprisingly impactful, at
| least IME.
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| That's interesting. Do you mind saying whether you currently
| work in an office away from home or work from an office in your
| home ?
| croutonwagon wrote:
| I worked from home 100% from Feb 2020 through October 2021 -
| so roughly 1.5 years.
|
| For me
|
| - work life balance suffered. I would often be found running
| back to my office to shoot out a quick email and then be
| found there working 1 hour later.
|
| - Work life balance suffered. I would no longer enjoy after
| hours lab stuff/HAM/games/music/tinkering in my office at
| home because the office was also where i did paid work. So it
| became exhausting even going in there.
|
| - office politics suffered. Which, running my infra/ops team,
| meant things got harder. It was harder for me to prevent shit
| from rolling downhill as some pushy rando would just directly
| bludgeon people on Teams etc.. People were generally more
| dickish and demanding (outside of my control in MANY cases).
|
| - Office politics suffered - in person meetings and all
| staffs and such are times where little things can get
| communicated. Saying hi to this person or whatnot or just
| seeing them reminded you that you need to reach out later
| etc. All zoom meetings and the like suffer from this. And for
| some it becomes de-humanizing
|
| - Work life balance suffered. Family expected me to
| immediately transition from work mode to home mode, i had
| little time for myself to decompress at the END of the day. I
| tried walking, including at the end of and begging of the
| day, but that was always seen as overrideable by many.
|
| - Work life balance suffered. Many started working random
| hours and would ping me in those times. Setting boundaries
| helped a little but I got more after hours calls in that 1.5
| years than I did int he 5 years prior, or the 1.5 since
| coming back.
|
| - Work life balance suffered. Wife would expect chores and
| errands to be run while working. When at the office I spend
| those ebb times working on non-critical stuff, not laundry or
| market runs.
|
| - Managing folks and project became harder. My rockstars did
| great, even excelled and many have opted to stay fully remote
| (and I still feel like this is a large swath of people here
| on HN, supremely motivated and enjoy their job etc). But my
| average folks had productivity tank. I ended up playing
| babysitter for some especially bad employees. Literally had
| folks not so secretly going fishing without taking the time
| off, only to be found out when fires started and they couldnt
| respond etc.
|
| - Burnout increased across the team, including with some of
| my best. Partially because of the above.
|
| Ultimately i returned to the office, and drug a few along
| with me. Its helped in almost all of the above. I still work
| a more hybrid setup, sometimes leaving at lunch and working
| the afternoons from home etc. But mostly its in office.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| I am an IC, but other than that all of this was true for me
| during the 3 years I mainly worked remote. I definitely can
| echo what you said about people being dickish and
| bludgeoning people on remote calls - especially when we
| didn't enforce a camera policy. People said things that to
| that point in my career would have been absolutely
| shocking, and I never have heard anything remotely close in
| an office setting. I guess it's probably easier to be that
| way when working with people who are nothing but a name and
| a title to you, but I don't know.
| jeltz wrote:
| Not OP but I have done both and right now do a mix of both
| and 100% agree. These interactions was something I missed a
| lot when working 100% from home.
| castlecrasher2 wrote:
| As someone who's been remote-only for about six years, I agree.
| I'd prefer a balance of remote/in-office work, and the in-
| office work I've had during this time has been invaluable.
|
| Further, I agree with the author that there can be issues with
| office bullshit and I find that the vast majority of that is
| due to a combination of incompetence and poor organizational
| culture.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Fuck all this bullshit and work from home. Seriously. This is
| why.
| w0mbat wrote:
| Really, this headline format works for anything, like "The office
| is a prison for work", "The office is a whorehouse for work",
| etc.
| drc500free wrote:
| A good exploration of these metaphors is Gareth Morgan's Images
| of Organization[1] . To your point, my personal favorite is
| "Organization as Psychic Prison" - not in the sense of keeping
| physically curtailed, but in the sense that it is hard for
| workers to break out of the memes and processes of an
| administrative organization. A good summary is here[2]:
|
| 1. Machine: an organization is a series of connected parts
| arranged in a logical order in order to produce a repeatable
| output
|
| 2. Organism: an organization is a collective response to its
| environment and, to survive, must adapt as the environment
| changes
|
| 3. Brain: an organization is a set of functions designed to
| process information and learn over time
|
| 4. Cultural System: an organization is a mini-society, with its
| own culture and subcultures defined by their values, norms,
| beliefs, and rituals
|
| 5. Political System: an organization is a game of gaining,
| influencing, and coordinating power
|
| 6. Psychic Prison: an organization is a collection of myths and
| stories that restrict people's thoughts, ideas, and actions
|
| 7. Instrument of Domination: an organization is a means to
| impose one's will on others and exploit resources for personal
| gains
|
| 8. Flux and Transformation: an organization is an ever-changing
| system indivisible from its environment
|
| [1] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/196016
|
| [2] https://academy.nobl.io/gareth-morgan-organizational-
| metapho...
| omgomgomgomg wrote:
| The office is for bosses who cant focus on work unless they get
| to micromanage and slow down everything and then think nobody
| else can if theyre not in office.
| majormajor wrote:
| A lot of commentary here on HN about this as an "office vs
| remote" thing but my read is much more a "large organization" vs
| "small organization" thing.
|
| "We want to ship and try as many things as possible" is often the
| only way to survive as a small new growing company in a
| competitive market. But it's _rarely_ what companies maximize for
| when they 're big and successful. The politics and theater comes
| from normal human interactions in a large group with a lot of
| intentional overlap/redundancy and not a lot of existential
| pressure. The org wants to be robust against any individuals
| leaving, they want to have teams ready to go in case they _do_
| need to move quickly in response to something, but most of the
| time they 're just spinning wheels and keeping the money printers
| going. Remote work isn't going to prevent those dynamics, or the
| need to make sure you appear to be valuable through all that. If
| you fail at the "appearing valuable" game in an org like that,
| you're gonna be at the top of the list to cut when growth slows
| and the company hits the "reorgs and layoffs" part of the script.
|
| The more intrinsically motivated, "let's directly do impactful
| things!", sort of person can easily end up bouncing themselves
| off the wrong incentives for years in an org like this.
| andai wrote:
| Discussed at the time (102 comments):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21669726
| aprdm wrote:
| 100% ! Doesn't take any of it too seriously, try your best to be
| part of the act and have a positive impact on it, don't get upset
| if it isn't working out for whatever reason or if it simply isn't
| your kind of theatre ! There are many theatres out there..
| moomoo11 wrote:
| How about something better?
|
| Anyone who's there past series A/B of a upward trajectory company
| is basically deadweight.
|
| Having worked in the past at a tech unicorn, I'll say that the
| quality of talent that came in later was atrocious. They came
| from big tech and other impressive places, but they were so rigid
| and inflexible to work with.. Everything needed "process" or had
| to be so clear (like following Lego build instructions) otherwise
| they couldn't operate. I don't wish to bring up a cringe military
| analogy, but I do believe us early folks had a operator mindset
| where we understood the mission end goal and executed on it.
| These guys need calendars, notes, a million SaaS tools, to just
| ship a new feature that adds a button that makes an API call.
|
| I'm talking software "ENGINEERS" (key word) who spent more time
| making BS documents that nobody read or found much value in
| (literally never viewed by anyone else). The worst part were the
| big tech managers who came in later and just made the place a
| hellhole to work where nothing got done anymore.
|
| I honestly believe that the future success of the company was
| only possible due to 90% of the work being done by the 10% who
| were there early. These later stage employees were just show we
| were growing on paper.
|
| Honestly that experience has ruined working at companies for me.
| I just can't do it anymore, especially with people like that who
| are just bad, full stop period fin. And it sucks to just collect
| a check because its too easy.
| coding123 wrote:
| I wonder if most of life is theatre sometimes. Had a mental
| breakdown one day when I was younger, when I was taking the bus
| to work - programmer at a healthcare startup. And I was thinking
| about some homeless people - and in my head I didn't understand
| how I was so highly paid and these people - older than me,
| probably worked as mechanics in the past, or some job that was
| useful. Then there's me, where I was working daily on code that
| matches patient records. The company sends me to conferences like
| HIMSS and there's just all these other companies doing the same
| thing.
|
| I'm just like so I'm basically in sales - all this work that I do
| on patient matching is so that we can sell some kind of solution
| to others. What do these other people need it for? Why didn't
| they pick another company that was better and faster? What
| justifies my life being a happy existence moreso that someone
| that fixes cars. I mean that's useful, fixing a car.
|
| I still break down periodically and wonder why my life is
| justified to be so comfortable. Is it just that I've decided to
| sell out in specific ways that make me worth it over someone
| else?
|
| There also doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason why someone
| that fixes cars shouldn't be paid massively more. I mean from a
| utility perspective, this patient matching is just doing a lot of
| marketing fluff about saving time. It's all a superflous industry
| though. If things were done differently, there would be no
| patient matching. And in fact, is a medical record on a computer
| that much more life and time saving than paper records? How often
| does a diabetes patient really have a digital record on file that
| when they come after a car wreck, unconscious, that some specific
| medication should NOT be given. Are those ER doctors really going
| to query IHE web services to find this person and know something
| about them?
|
| It's all just weird to me, how we justify and move to the next
| thing. I guess without "progress" there will be someone
| complaining, so we keep changing.
|
| So the people worth having a house are willing to keep changing
| with the world. But it's all wrapped up in lots of salesy stuff
| an feels very immoral.
|
| And now I'm not even in healthcare anymore. So I don't even have
| that! I am no longer able to fake tell myself that "hey I'm
| saving lives - this is worth it".
|
| Is it truly our personal greed that drives us to make our lives
| meaningful. It's so that we can get that bigger house and faster
| Xbox and new clothes.
|
| Life is all theatre when you think about it. Maybe that's why
| it's easy to say "office is theatre for work" It's all theatre.
| JSavageOne wrote:
| This is why I'll likely never work in an office again. So much
| theater, posturing, and bs. I'd rather be judged strictly on my
| results, which remote work maximizes.
|
| When offices were still a thing at least one could have some
| alone time to focus and a sense of privacy. Open offices are
| awful and straight dystopian unless you're actually a startup
| with < 20 employees. Why employees put up with that is beyond me,
| but I'm glad that COVID put offices out of fashion. Just wish I
| could get some apology letters for the office grunts and Uncle
| Toms who used to make a big deal out of WFH to make themselves
| seem relevant.
| imiric wrote:
| IME these issues are not exclusive to office work. While they
| are more visible in an office environment, they also happen
| when working remotely, but are just less visible, and
| potentially more out of your hands. In an office you're mostly
| forced to play these games if you want your career to progress.
| Remotely you can somewhat avoid them, but ultimately if most of
| the company is playing this and you're not, you will either
| stagnate in your role, or be let go.
| civilized wrote:
| > Much as we might like to think of organizations as rational
| machines - the reality is that companies are social organizations
| and people interacting with people is the way decisions are made
| and how work gets done.
|
| My experience is largely opposite to this. I agree that we
| usually need to coordinate to take action in modern
| organizations, but this coordination is often a formality tacked
| onto the more meaningful individual work that preceded it.
|
| 1. Important decisions aren't made in a meeting unless at least
| one person has thought through the options beforehand and come
| prepared to explain the pros and cons of each and why their
| recommendation makes sense.
|
| 2. Work doesn't get done in a meeting unless prerequisite
| individual work was done beforehand. There has to be some _thing_
| to discuss in the meeting. An individual has to prepare that
| thing.
|
| Decisions can be made and work done with short, few, and informal
| meetings, but not without serious individual preparation and
| production.
| groby_b wrote:
| > Important decisions aren't made in a meeting unless at least
| one person has thought through the options beforehand and come
| prepared to explain the pros and cons of each and why their
| recommendation makes sense.
|
| Uh, yes. If people do not come prepared to meetings, they are a
| giant waste of time. (Exception - pure "information radiator"
| meetings) Meetings are the point where you align different
| well-founded opinions, not where you find a solution. But that
| alignment is critical to getting work done efficiently.
|
| But note that OP didn't talk about meetings per se, just about
| people interacting. And in any group of people, the ultimate
| outcome in terms of work is _always_ driven by interactions. If
| you don 't collaborate, you can't build at group scope. _How_
| you collaborate depends on the group. Some groups have shared
| chat rooms. Some have meeting. Some angrily yell at each other.
| But it always shapes the work, and moves it in a defined
| direction.
|
| A group without social interaction is the work equivalent of
| Brownian motion.
| civilized wrote:
| The OP says social interaction is "how work gets done". This
| is misleading unless we also add "and individual work is also
| how work gets done, in some ways to a much greater degree".
|
| If I were to say "individual heads-down focus is how work
| gets done" I would be rightly criticized, even though this is
| somewhat closer to the truth than what the OP says.
| steve1977 wrote:
| I would agree with this. Most of the work gets done _between_
| interactions of people, not during those interactions.
| bowsamic wrote:
| That _is_ what they 're saying. Your individual work is placed
| relative to the social organisation and the interactions
| therein. That isn't the complete opposite, it's the same thing.
|
| Have you ever tried working in a job where your boss just
| ignores you, no one cares what you do, and you're just getting
| paid anyway? Obviously, some people are intrinsically extremely
| motivated even with no contact for years, but many people,
| probably most, without any social organisation or interactions,
| will not manage to work, even if they want to.
|
| Even just the threat of not having anything done by the next
| meeting is a huge part of the "social organisations and people
| interacting with people" that "gets work done"
| civilized wrote:
| It's too vague to know what it's saying. Much like the common
| experience of an hour long meeting that no one prepared for
| that doesn't go anywhere.
|
| I agree that your interpretation has some truth though.
| [deleted]
| cainxinth wrote:
| See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
| steve1977 wrote:
| And also
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Presentation_of_Self_in_Ev...
| jkick wrote:
| nice! that is I thought to post here
| rcktmrtn wrote:
| Not really though. FTA:
|
| > ... These are all ways to avoid bullshitting - but
| unfortunately there's one simple way to avoid bullshit - by
| being critical. It's far easier to retreat to the critical,
| negative position and say why things won't or can't work.
| Except... this is a mistake.
|
| I think this article does an admirable job contexualizing
| itself in the very real world of "bullshit" work performance,
| but simultaneous not being satisfied with giving into cynicism.
|
| The bullshit jobs critique is very good and probably does seep
| into material talked about here, but on an individual level
| it's a beautiful and worthwhile activity to unravel the parts
| of the "bullshit" that are actually meaningful. Signaling and
| performance might be hyperreal and pornographied in the current
| world, but they still have a valid and healthy version worth
| considering. The idea that "All the world's a stage, And all
| the men and women merely Players" is a beautiful part of the
| human condition that long predates modern capitalism.
|
| It's refreshing to read something that acknowledges the need to
| "meet people where they are" in terms of how you interact, but
| doesn't give into the narrative that this means you're
| condemned to a life of bullshit. It's good to have a larger
| understanding of the world's ills too, but I think people who
| spend their whole work day just thinking about how their jobs
| are irredeemable bullshit are fools.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Well, seems like "Critical Theory", which is about applying
| "critique" as much as you can in the context of Philosophy or
| politics or related, is like the Nexus Hub of "Fashionable
| Nonsense", AKA: Bullshit.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| This idea, that work is theater, the only thing that matters is
| the performance, not actually getting work done, etc. is to me
| symptomatic of some kind of bubble. Real work has always been
| about work, and if people aren't really working it means that
| we're in for some sort of correction. Whether that means layoffs,
| incumbents getting beat out by companies actually doing real
| work, or something else, I don't know.
| badrabbit wrote:
| - Brown nosers who have minimal competence but get ahead by doing
| anything but their job
|
| - Coworkers who play politics based on shoulder surfing others
|
| - Coworkers getting bullied and isolated because they don't do
| face to face social crap well enough to get in with right "office
| gang" as I call them.
|
| - Having to look busy and do busy work so you don't look
| unproductive even though you are
|
| - For big companies: coworkers in remote offices and different
| time zones don't get the same career opportunities because they
| can't be face to face with the right people
|
| - Huge one for me: Having to tolerate bullshit political debate
| and tasteless jokes in the background (open office) and even
| forced participation when I just want to do my job without
| hearing about freaking trump or biden and shit or who random
| people like to have sex with and how!
|
| I don't get it. I mean I would think the legal people would be
| all for remote working just because of the liability it removes.
|
| It sure us a theatre except most participants play the role of a
| third rate congressman or think the story is about prison
| life/gangs.
|
| I admit to exaggerating a bit on some points but I am confident
| that if you just want people to do office work and be productive,
| remote work is the best way. If you can't then either you are
| managing wrong or you have a lot of people whose only skill was
| office politics and theatrics who don't know how to bullshit
| remotely. I think "the great reshuffling" might be triggered
| largley by that. A lot of bullshitters like that can do great in
| roles where face to face manipulation is useful for example.
| kept3k wrote:
| I completely agree. Everyone that wants to go back to the
| office are people who either:
|
| 1) Depend on others to get their work done (through
| manipulation, etc.) 2) Play great theatrical performances
| [deleted]
| isykt wrote:
| You can have work theater or work surveillance, take your pick.
| Someone has to make sure the money is being spent well and if
| you're not good at making that case you'll get canned.
|
| All these "I work better from home" folks never mention how they
| prove it to the company.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| What do I need to prove? That I produced x widgets in y hours?
| How about my team meets their goals and KPIs YoY consistently.
| How about there's work on the board, and theres 2 weeks to get
| it done, and we get it done. What more surveillance do you
| need? If theres dead weight on the team, it will be brought to
| light one way or another, through manager 1 on 1's, peer
| feedback, check ins, personal goals, etc.
| Peroni wrote:
| >All these "I work better from home" folks never mention how
| they prove it to the company.
|
| How do those in the office prove it? Are you looking at their
| screen/output over their shoulder? The only physically
| noticeable measure of "productivity" in an office is time spent
| at your desk. Any other measure of productivity has absolutely
| nothing to do with being in an office or working from home.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| > All these "I work better from home" folks never mention how
| they prove it to the company.
|
| Are you trolling? I'll assume honest intentions, but this is
| borderline flamebaiting.
|
| By showing you built what you promised you'd build.
| bearjaws wrote:
| Why would they need to prove it on an arbitrary forum?
|
| Shouldn't their company / hiring manager have KPIs for their
| role and track them ?
|
| By maintaining that job they are clearly meeting whomever's
| opinion of good enough to keep the job.
| lliamander wrote:
| Having good KPIs is hard. It does not excuse surveillance
| management, but it makes it understandable.
|
| I think it is important for employees that want to have less
| surveillance put forth the effort to heavily communicate to
| management.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> By maintaining that job they are clearly meeting whomever
| 's opinion of good enough to keep the job._
|
| By the same rationale, would you agree that if a company
| insists on workers returning to the office, the are clearly
| _not_ meeting whomever 's opinion?
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Companies rarely openly say decreased productivity is the
| reason of RTO. It's always obscured in positive-sounding
| rhetoric about fostering collaboration, etc. The real
| reason, whether it is actually became they are not meeting
| expectations on one extreme, or to stroke the ego of
| executives on the other extreme, or simply to justify
| office real estate, is known only to management.
| manicennui wrote:
| I prove it by delivering. I've been promoted a number of times.
| jkaptur wrote:
| I mean, one easy way I prove it is by showing up on time to
| meetings because I don't have to scramble between two
| conference rooms. That's just to start.
| eweise wrote:
| Well there's this thing called Jira which tracks all the value
| being contributed to the product.
| isykt wrote:
| If everything you contribute to the product is tracked in
| Jira, you should consider your career trajectory. Managers
| are humans. They rely on a synthesis of data and social cues
| to form an opinion about how much to invest in your growth.
|
| As automation becomes more common, forming relationships with
| colleagues and managers will become more important. As money
| becomes more expensive, someone, somewhere will be looking at
| a spreadsheet drawing a red line for who to cut. That
| decision won't be made using just # of JIRA tickets closed.
| eweise wrote:
| "forming relationships with colleagues and managers will
| become more important." Sounds like your think getting
| ahead is a just a bunch of ass kissing. At least in
| software companies, almost everything of value is stored,
| code, project plans, goals, product requirements, software
| designs, all the scrums ceremony stuff. If manager A is
| great at communicating with her colleagues and managers but
| missing their commitments, then they are out. If the senior
| engineers are producing crappy designs, then they will be
| out. If the regular engineers velocity is really low, they
| are out. I don't see how being in an office vs WFH makes
| any difference. Please be more specific.
| no_wizard wrote:
| By proving on my measurable KPIs & Delivering more work in less
| time. The metrics measured are higher than when I worked an
| office, by a good margin.
|
| This is appearing to be an industry trend as well[0] that WFH
| is on average more productive.
|
| RTO has more to do with management "productivity paranoia"[1]
| than anything else, seemingly
|
| [0]: https://www.vox.com/recode/23129752/work-from-home-
| productiv...
|
| [1]:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/glebtsipursky/2022/11/03/worker...
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Simple question. Are you happy with my output or not?
|
| Are you happy with my tickets solved, APIs built, etc? How does
| milling around attending meetings help you answer that? How
| does having me in excruciating team building sessions or Scrum
| meetings where I say nothing help you answer that?
|
| If yes, let me work. If no, fire me.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| Yeah, this is an epidemic in workplaces. Everyone just wants to
| appear to do things - so the hard things don't get done because
| everyone is more focused on showing that they work instead of
| tackling the problems.
|
| I don't really have a good solution to this but it's really
| messed up.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Remote work that's based on quality output is the solution. At
| least in software development.
|
| My first job was in an office. I became friends with someone
| who I'll say mastered the "art of not working". He was always
| the first one in, the last one out. When decisions needed to be
| made, he was the one people would consult with. However, he
| never did any meaningful work. It's not like he was a people
| manager. He wasn't. He was a developer. But he never developed
| anything. He just appeared to. That appearance of work gave him
| job security, raises, and eventually more power within the
| company. It truly was an art form as I don't think any company
| would have noticed. That's how good he was.
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| > When decisions needed to be made, he was the one people
| would consult with.
|
| Sounds like a useful employee. Maybe not rushing around
| constantly allowed him time to actually think through
| problems.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Sure but he wasn't even the best dev on the team, or even
| someone I would have went to for answers. He just appeared
| to be. The entire thing was a ruse.
|
| Also, it's not that he wasn't running around. That's
| actually my point. If running around and looking busy is
| what it took, he'd do that. Essentially he did everything
| he could to give the appearance of working.
|
| Now that I've been in the industry for over a decade, I can
| say it's a pretty common type of character. They're usually
| the ones that get promoted.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think we all have worked with this guy. When he set up
| his character, he put all his skill points into Charisma.
| blindhippo wrote:
| Without knowing details, it could be that this person (or
| persons in your experience) are actually delivering work
| that doesn't fit what you deem to be meaningful work. Yet
| the businesses are rewarding them. Might be a calibration
| issue on your side potentially?
| Given_47 wrote:
| I would assume they're suggesting the company also has
| misaligned incentives
| axus wrote:
| That is a well-paid rubber duck, and if they're helping
| the company make money then good for them.
| kzrdude wrote:
| How did you notice?
| jimbob21 wrote:
| You've just described a technical director, so it is no
| surprise that he was promoted.
| deebosong wrote:
| "Everyone just wants to appear to do things - so the hard
| things don't get done because everyone is more focused on
| showing that they work instead of tackling the problems."
|
| I agree. Seems like an internal motivation thing. Not saying
| it's easy, simple, or in some instances even possible. But
| gotta want to do it for your own reasons when the external
| incentives (optics that lead to staying hired or getting
| promoted or building a reliable & professional reputation, and
| staving off the flip-sides as well) aren't there anymore.
| vsareto wrote:
| The incentives often don't line up. And there can sometimes be
| a sticky status quo that resists change. You may also get
| politically subverted or just plain lied to. It's hard to
| predict these during a job interview.
|
| The incentive problem started when it became better to change
| jobs for higher compensation. Working less intensely for the
| same pay while you secretly manage life problems or just play
| around is also appealing. Your earnings are also typically soft
| capped as an individual hard worker. And then there's no real
| security to back you up even if you decide to get invested -
| you can still be let go for no fault of your own.
|
| The economy can't keep asking people to stay in these kinds of
| jobs while also eroding their standard of living at their
| mostly-static income levels. It's too easy to feel like a
| sucker being a hard worker and this is a recent cultural shift
| (within the last two decades IMO).
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Have my pay reflect wins I achieve.
|
| As things stand, my incentives are to appear busy to my boss
| and otherwise do as little as possible. If I achieve something,
| there should be cash money in my pocket above having done
| nothing.
|
| Currently, my incentive is to be overemployed and figure out
| how to seem just above mediocre. Key word being "seem." I am
| very dedicated to doing as little work as possible to allow for
| more overemployment.
|
| Tackling a hard problem has the same pay as spending all day
| "consulting stakeholders" and getting bogged down in Scrum
| process.
| groby_b wrote:
| > If I achieve something, there should be cash money in my
| pocket above having done nothing
|
| There is cash money in your pocket in advance, so you do
| something. That's what a salary is. The problem lies with the
| company not firing you and instead focusing on folks who
| actually do work.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Carrot or stick can be used, but the same lack of incentive
| applies.
| esafak wrote:
| It is hard to objectively measure the productivity of knowledge
| work, so people optimize the company's proxy metrics, and on
| persuading the people that are assessing their performance. And
| then there are companies where nobody is even trying because
| there are no incentives to improve; e.g., government offices,
| monopolies, etc.
| webnrrd2k wrote:
| There is a qoute about exactly this problem, but coming at if
| from a very different context...
|
| "The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your
| intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you
| parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy's cutting sword,
| you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to
| attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking
| or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut
| him."
|
| Miyamoto Musashi, The Book Of Five Rings
|
| That idea is also said as: "the main thing is to keep the main
| thing the main thing". It's been a difficult thing to do in my
| life, and I get it when other people get distracted, as I often
| do myself. And, very often I need to just go along with
| distractions in order to accomplish things. In practice, it's
| not an easy skill.
| radiator wrote:
| Perhaps somehow to you that quote is about exactly the same
| problem but ... it doesn't look like it.
| tra3 wrote:
| It's about intention. If your goal is to get stuff done,
| you'll get stuff done. If your goal is to appear to be
| getting stuff done, you may be perceived as someone
| productive but the facts on the ground will be different.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| Keep going down the clownhole and you'll realise that nobody
| really does any work.
|
| Take a company like twitter. It's a finished product but you'll
| have 10,000 employees there. You'll have an entire department for
| youth engagement. You'll have an internal theatre group putting
| on shows. But who actually does work? Maybe a dozen people? The
| rest are just there because somebody needs to be there because
| that's what is done.
|
| The problem we have as a species is that we've been so effective
| at optimisation that we have eliminated the need for anyone to
| exist. A few farmers can feed the country. A few automated
| production lines could produce the goods.
|
| But then all the other people would starve to death. So we just
| keep on making jobs to put them in. It gets further and further
| away from reality the further down the hole we go. You'll have
| someone who's job is to read tweets and rate their suitability.
| Why? To make sure the suitability from the suitability committee
| is enforced of course!
| arp242 wrote:
| > The problem we have as a species is that we've been so
| effective at optimisation that we have eliminated the need for
| anyone to exist. A few farmers can feed the country. A few
| automated production lines could produce the goods.
|
| Yes, Bangladesh is just a country of robots making jeans, and
| China is just a country of robots making sneakers.
| vel0city wrote:
| As someone who grew up and live around farms, trust me. It's
| not just a handful of farmers for most things you eat, unless
| it's literally just corn, wheat, and soy. So many fruits and
| vegetables still rely on hand picking as so many automated
| processes damage the produce.
|
| And as others mentioned, you're then ignoring all the steps
| between the field and the plate. I guess you see the chef at
| the restaurant or the person stocking the shelves as non-human?
| dav_Oz wrote:
| > _The problem we have as a species is that we've been so
| effective at optimisation that we have eliminated the need for
| anyone to exist. A few farmers can feed the country. A few
| automated production lines could produce the goods. But then
| all the other people would starve to death. So we just keep on
| making jobs to put them in. It gets further and further away
| from reality the further down the hole we go._
|
| I understand it to be hyperbole but the point that as a rough
| estimate only at most 1/10th of the available work force is
| actually "needed" in a developed country to "function" is
| probably accurate. From a late 19th/early 20th century
| capitalist pov the optimization point was reached somewhere in
| the 60s/70s. The problem is we have inherited and
| institutionalized how to "provide for oneself" from a long gone
| era.
|
| If the goal was - metaphorically speaking - to reach the West
| Coast from the East Coast; this kind of capitalism had done a
| fairly good job until the 70s or so. By no means perfect but at
| least somewhere in the ballpark of a right trajectory.
|
| Atm however we are past the west coast somewhere at the edge of
| our outer solar system lost in the Oort cloud. Remarkable
| engine indeed but way off course. And because it is so
| confusing out here (e.g. global financial market 10x bigger
| than world's GDP witnessed by all in 2008) in the vast 2.7 K
| cold nothingness of uber-optimization, the goal of wealth
| distribution (participation in the market) to the levels of say
| the 70s seems futile and utterly romantic - a long forgotten
| pale blue dot of paradisiacal opportunities. Even if the
| propulsion system which took us way out here is proof of the
| exact opposite in principle. Nobody has to starve to death as
| in "natural law" because of a conceptual eternal idea of how a
| certain kind of economics which was very successful at some
| time period (and ultimately had won the Cold War) has to work.
| But people really indeed do in the millions. It is just a sad
| state of affairs, still.
|
| ... but yet some dream to eventually reach Alpha Centauri with
| this good old machine: "We are halfway there, look, you can
| even "see" it." When in reality it would take approx. 1000
| generations at the current speed.
| JTon wrote:
| I'm not following this at all. This narrative is at odds with
| the cut-throat capitalist narrative which is also popular to
| characterize businesses today. I.e. If business administrators
| could cut labour costs by reducing workforce, they would in a
| blind of an eye. For knowledge workers, I think the "idle
| capacity" model is more correct. Basically, demands for output
| are not constant, they ebb and flow. It's expensive to acquire
| and train staff, so they retain surplus capacity. It's
| inefficient, but it's more resilient.
| js8 wrote:
| > If business administrators could cut labour costs by
| reducing workforce, they would in a blind of an eye.
|
| But this assumes that they are smart enough to know how to
| eradicate those extra costs, but bullshit jobs might have co-
| evolved among labor as a defense mechanism against that sort
| of thing.
| izzydata wrote:
| I have no doubt that a lot of the economy is built on bullshit
| jobs, but most people do at least "some" work. It might not be
| necessary for our survival, but I'd like to think human society
| has moved beyond that.
|
| Still, I'd love to see some kind of UBI and acknowledgement
| that working isn't completely necessary for the entire
| population if you just want to live.
| Zanneth wrote:
| > The problem we have as a species is that we've been so
| effective at optimisation that we have eliminated the need for
| anyone to exist. A few farmers can feed the country. A few
| automated production lines could produce the goods.
|
| This couldn't be further from the truth. Human labor is still
| desperately needed throughout the world in order to keep things
| running. It's not just farmers. You also need drivers, clerks,
| mechanics, accountants, etc. And that's just to get food into
| your local grocery store.
|
| Nothing in modern life is free, even though it may seem easy
| for most of us living in the developed world. All of this stuff
| exists only because people are working really hard to keep it
| that way.
| t14n wrote:
| Yes, human labor is critical for subsistence. But let's look
| at how many people are employed by industry in the US:
| https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/employment-by-major-
| industry-...
|
| About 2% of people in the US work in
| agriculture/forestry/animal handling/etc. If you include
| transportation workers, that's still about 5% of US workers.
| And if you include wholesale workers and utilities workers --
| that's still < 10% of the US population.
|
| All of this work is critical and necessary (to your point).
| But I think the BLS data is evidence toward OP's point that
| we've automated and optimized a lot of the work necessary for
| subsistence.
| jaggederest wrote:
| I think you have to include a lot of "Retail Trade" and/or
| "Leisure and Hospitality" in those numbers, though I'm not
| sure where grocery and food service workers fall exactly.
| Meat packing, prepared foods, etc are a lot more manual
| than agriculture itself. Most people do not want to eat raw
| field corn/wheat/soybeans.
| sky_rw wrote:
| Using the USA as an example of labor distribution in this
| regard is disingenuous. Like most leading countries, we are
| supported by an external labor class operating extremely
| cheaply and exporting critical goods into our system.
| Agriculture work in the USA would be much more prevalent if
| 13% of the Mexican population wasn't directly involved in
| agriculture. In fact ~78% of Mexico's exports go to the
| USA. Its a vassal state, supplying the USA with cheap and
| largely unregulated human labor critical for our
| subsistence. You say we optimized our work, I say we
| imported $40 Billion in food from China last year.
| hax0ron3 wrote:
| >It's not just farmers. You also need drivers, clerks,
| mechanics, accountants, etc.
|
| Also the regulatory apparatus which does a pretty good job of
| ensuring that food doesn't have dangerous chemicals or
| pathogens in it, and the law enforcement without which the
| regulatory apparatus would be toothless, and the people who
| maintain the communications infrastructure that the
| regulatory apparatus and the law enforcement rely on to be
| effective, and so on.
| edrxty wrote:
| As with most things, the truth is in the middle. This is
| obvious hyperbole but for the purpose of making a point.
| There are a __lot__ of useless jobs out there.
| the_cat_kittles wrote:
| i dont know how to engage with a comment like this. but i have
| a feeling that its an example of garbage in garbage out. i
| recommend you take any one of those specific assertions, maybe
| starting with "a few farmers can feed the country" and really
| try to actually substantiate the claim. good luck!
| blippitybleep wrote:
| I got myself a fancy job at Spotify. It was a dream come true, or
| so I thought. I couldn't believe how many meetings I had to be in
| each day. I couldn't believe how little autonomy I had or how
| much time I had to devote to preparing (months in advance) for
| performance reviews. I also couldn't get over how many middle
| managers had a chip on their shoulder about the idea that
| "technical" work might have equal value to management work at a
| tech company.
|
| I became a contractor and that's where I realised the true
| programmer dream. I just cycle between collecting requirements &
| analysis and writing code. I spend maybe 2-3 hours in meetings
| per week, just to aim the cannons, as it were.
| imiric wrote:
| This resonates a lot with my experience.
|
| Take OKRs, for example. Everyone is expected to set their target
| goals, publicize and discuss them with others, and follow them
| religiously. Otherwise you send the signal that you don't like
| setting goals for yourself, and thus have no desire for self-
| improvement, which reflects poorly on your performance review.
| There are company-wide ceremonies about OKRs themselves;
| workshops, office hours and endless discussions about best ways
| to plan, track and meet your objectives. The amount of time and
| effort spent just doing this management work makes up a large
| portion of working hours.
|
| Speaking of performance reviews, they're another huge waste of
| time. In the ever-important self-review you're expected to
| present proof to your higher-ups that you're not only worthy of
| keeping the job, but also why you deserve that 4% raise. So you
| better have been taking notes of your accomplishments in the past
| 6 months, otherwise those OKRs might come in handy. Your work
| would apparently be invisible to the company if there were no
| performance reviews, so make sure to make the best case for
| yourself, and to cherry-pick peers that would leave you a
| positive review.
|
| The amount of theatre and politics involved in modern work
| culture is exhausting. I just want to get good work done, and go
| home.
| brazzy wrote:
| What's an OKR?
| jghn wrote:
| Objective & Key Result. IOW a measurable goal with a
| designated target
| naavis wrote:
| What's an IOW?
| esafak wrote:
| In other words
| xcxcx wrote:
| It's almost rude not to bother spelling out three words
| with such unique acronyms. The time one person saves not
| typing an additional whopping 11 characters is wasted by
| the number of readers trying to figure out what it means
| skirmish wrote:
| You obviously meant to say: "IAR not to bother spelling
| out three words...".
| jghn wrote:
| > with such unique acronyms
|
| It's been part of netspeak since at least the late 80s
| xcxcx wrote:
| IDKT
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I don't know about rude, but AKA is a much better known
| phrase than IOW.
| mateo411 wrote:
| There is actually a pretty good book about them.
|
| Measure What Matters by John Doerr
|
| It shows the history of how they have worked well at some
| companies in the Valley. You asked one question about this
| and now you have to read a book. That's a shame.
| esafak wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectives_and_key_results
| boredemployee wrote:
| Coincidentally, the company I work for, which notably has a
| culture unlike anything I've ever seen, has just fallen into
| the OKRs trap.
|
| Took away all the joy I had to work in this place.
| ajkjk wrote:
| I like offices, but I agree that OKRs and performance reviews
| are a farce. OKRs in particular: I cannot believe how
| frequently people act as though there is no way to think about
| work other than OKRs, as if it was some immutable natural law
| instead of just a thing somebody thought up one time. As far as
| I have seen, OKRs are a mechanism for leaders at every level to
| divest themselves of the responsibility to _lead_, by making
| "accomplishing things" somebody else's problem, as measured by
| a number that they will get perfunctory status reports on.
| takinola wrote:
| I share the frustration you express based on my experience
| working at large companies. However, there is a strong steelman
| explanation for why this is required.
|
| In a 5 person company, it is easy to sit around the table and
| decide what needs to be done and then have everyone "get good
| work done and go home". In a 5,000 person company, it is not
| obvious what needs to be done in the first place talk less of
| making sure everyone knows their part in it. Should we be going
| after SMBs or Enterprise customers? What do we (or more
| importantly I) do differently based on that decision? How do we
| time the next campaign push to line up with the product launch?
|
| There are thousands of decisions that need to be made and it is
| impossible to do that without having these formal processes
| that allow people to coordinate in large groups. I would argue
| that >60% of work involved in a large company is coordination
| rather than actual building, selling, marketing, whatever. The
| larger the company, the greater this percentage becomes.
|
| I would love to know if anyone has found a solution to
| counteract this phenomenon but it seems like an immutable law
| based on my experience.
| nradov wrote:
| One solution is to establish a strict, clear company culture
| with guiding principles for making most decisions. All
| employees are expected to conform or leave. This allows for
| rapid alignment and execution. But it doesn't work as well
| for dealing with disruptive innovations.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| I think OKRs are required to communicate intent and targets.
| It is a great way for communication "across" and "upwards".
|
| But it is a shitty tool "downwards". Suddenly you have
| managers insisting that a feature must be rolled out before
| the 31st of March, even though rolling out 2 days later will
| be safer.
|
| It creates perverse incentives such as OKRs used for
| "individual" performance reviews when in reality, a lot of
| work is team/x-team/group effort. It causes ICs to play
| corporate games.
| takinola wrote:
| But that's an issue with how the OKRs are derived rather
| than if the OKRs are required. If the teams come up with
| OKRs with bottoms-up involvement then the issue you mention
| is mitigated.
|
| The fact that a thing can be done badly is not an argument
| for not doing the thing.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > If the teams come up with OKRs with bottoms-up
| involvement then the issue you mention is mitigated
|
| This still does not solve the problem that "individuals"
| are scapegoated for OKRs defined by someone else. I have
| actually seen people getting fired for not delivering on
| OKRs, which were ultra ambitious in the first place. The
| problem was not ambitious OKRs. The problem was
| individual consequences for team/management ambition.
|
| > The fact that a thing can be done badly is not an
| argument for not doing the thing.
|
| Sure, but this doesn't prevent discussion and bringing
| the failure modes to the fore. In fact, I would suggest
| that Gen-z and gen-alpha will be very difficult to hire
| and keep because they naturally understand the BS that
| OKRs are, having been exposed to BS games in school,
| college and with friends.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > Your work would apparently be invisible to the company if
| there were no performance reviews
|
| Yet another indicator of poor (i.e. lazy) management maybe if
| you have to keep track of every single accomplishment yourself.
| How about managers keep track of the awesome things their
| employees do and celebrate them for it and help them improve if
| they're lacking.
| Cyberdogs7 wrote:
| I am a lazy manager then. The problem is context. I ask all
| my engineers to self track accomplishments for several
| reasons:
|
| 1. It puts them in control. If they want to leave the team,
| they have a handy list to hand to their new manager right
| away.
|
| 2. They can capture details I would miss, no matter how close
| to the work I am. They will capture exact why that design
| process was hard and what it was like dealing with those 4
| external teams.
|
| 3. It improves their writing and communication skills. I
| spend my 1:1's going through the accomplishments and working
| with them on how to expand and add context to items, where to
| add detail, and how to be concise with the results.
|
| So far, I receive positive feedback on this. On the flipside,
| I don't do this for myself :)
| [deleted]
| McDyver wrote:
| So, is a manager in this context really needed?
|
| I'm in control, I need to make my case towards a new
| manager and team if I want to move (basically a new
| interview process), and try to improve on communication and
| writing even though +80% (number pulled out of empirical
| personal experience. YMMV) of my peers want to focus on
| work and be happy and introvert.
| flerchin wrote:
| No. Management is not needed in this context. Maybe for
| coaching/removing low performers.
| brazzy wrote:
| You have your context, your manager has everyone's
| context. They cannot understand the details of
| everything, but you cannot make strategic decisions
| (budgeting, staffing, which projects to do at all)
| because you don't have the overall picture and the input
| frim everyone else.
| jacobyoder wrote:
| The moment I start dealing with other teams/depts, I
| almost certainly have more context about most things than
| the manager "managing" me. You end up asking other folks
| "why X? why Y?" and get their perspective in their terms,
| and incorporate that in to however you're getting your
| stuff done.
|
| The only thing "managers" have access to is info they
| choose not to share, or info they're told not to share,
| which creates an explicit vaccuum/silo of info, and
| increases the power imbalance. _Most_ of the teams I 've
| worked on have been this way. Yeah, sure... I don't have
| "the big picture" you created on a corp retreat with
| other dept managers... but why don't I have it? Because
| you've chosen to only share bits and pieces... "for your
| own good". Makes very little sense to me.
|
| If I know you're planning on doing "functionality A" at
| some point, inform us now, because that very likely has
| an impact on decisions I'm making today. I'm far more
| likely to understand the impact on my own work and my
| team's work than you are, given that you don't actually
| know how to do the work (in most cases).
|
| I've had a couple good manager-types over the years, but
| only a couple.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| I'm surprised everyone is roasting you for this. I
| personally don't want my manager breathing down my neck and
| monitoring everything I do. I'm paid well and given a lot
| of freedom at work, the "obligation" of spending 30 seconds
| every week to make a note of something cool I did so that I
| can tell it to the people who pay me seems pretty
| reasonable.
| avensec wrote:
| I read it as discourse related to a binary proposal
| without any nuance. The root being "Whose responsibility
| is it to keep track of accomplishments: The Manager or
| the Individual?"
| Eldt wrote:
| You could do the work and allow them to supplement what
| you've noted down.
| Cyberdogs7 wrote:
| I very much could, but again, I am a lazy manager. Not
| even trying to convey sarcasm there.
|
| I do believe them doing the work is important to point
| 1., putting them in-control. The most important part of
| my job is setting them up to succeed. If they require
| their manager to always positively advocate for them,
| they are leaving their careers up to change. Not all
| managers are looking out for their directs, so teaching
| people to look out for themselves is important to me.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Your _job_ is to know who is creating value to the
| company. If the company comes to you and says "Tough
| times. Need to axe one person. Who is it?" are you going
| to _ask your team_?
|
| Your _job_ is to know how the team functions together.
| What are the skills of your team, who is better at what,
| who gets on with who, etc. You going to ask them each to
| write that down too?
|
| I get the value of having them also do it for themselves,
| but if they write down total bullshit are you going to
| spot it? Seen that happen. Or if they miss things that
| you thought were valuable and they didn't? Are you
| planning on just _remembering_ it six months later?
|
| >I am a lazy manager
|
| You will do well in corporate America or higher
| education, apparently.
| Spivak wrote:
| My manager does this for me and I adore him for it. I can
| just talk about myself with normal human words and he'll
| come back with it all written up in business-speak.
| filoleg wrote:
| Not a manager and not the person you are replying to, but
| I kind of get their perspective, as I see it somewhat
| similar to how I treat referral/recommendation letters.
|
| If someone I closely know asks me for a recommendation
| letter, and they are a person who (in my eyes) deserves a
| great letter, I just tell them the format for the
| specific letter (e.g., 2 paragraphs, less than 300 words,
| what type of content the letter is supposed to contain,
| etc), and ask them to write it themselves. Then I take
| it, review to make sure all is good, go over it with the
| person (in case there are any potential suggestions for
| improvements [based on my knowledge of them] or parts
| that i find questionable), edit if necessary with them,
| and then submit it.
|
| Now that I am looking at it, that's a very similar
| process to how performance review historically went with
| my managers.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Part of the context of referral letters is you're usually
| doing them a favor, not your job.
| filoleg wrote:
| The manager is also doing you a favor by letting you
| express yourself to what you believe your strong points
| during the review cycle were, going over them with you,
| and helping you come up with ways of writing it that
| would result in your desired outcome. As opposed to the
| performance review process (which i've seen before),
| where the manager takes no input from you, compiles your
| pull requests/design docs/etc, provides zero context for
| your work to the higher ups, then "ships it", and you
| only get to go over the final outcome with them. The
| latter also counts as "doing your job" just as fine.
|
| What I am trying to say is, just like with
| referral/recommendation letters, there is a large degree
| of how much the manager cares about your performance
| review, how much voice they want to give you in this, how
| much support and assistance they are willing to provide
| you, and how much work they decide to put into it on
| their end.
|
| A wise manager knows that they cannot possibly know your
| work as well as you do. So they want to work with you on
| bridging that potential gap between the outer
| visibility/importance of your work and the true
| value/effort involved in it.
| dennis_jeeves1 wrote:
| >I am a lazy manager then.
|
| And a very incompetent one. While there is some value in
| what you said i.e Engineers tracking their progress and
| what they did. This often results in bragging. The most
| competent people are generally not the best braggers. The
| best braggers often make a career out of it.
|
| If I run a company and i had a manager like you, I would
| fire you. I really mean it.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| > I am a lazy manager then
|
| Indeed. From the sounds of that it sounds like you don't
| have the full picture at all.
| [deleted]
| deely3 wrote:
| 1. So, if they do not plan to leave the team they can skip
| it?
|
| 2. Why do you need this details? Why you did not recieve
| this details in the firts place?
|
| 3. As any other writing. If you believe that this skills
| should be improved then why not use some training? And
| again, if person writing skills is already good then its ok
| to skip it then?
|
| > So far, I receive positive feedback on this.
|
| Positive honest feedback from subordinate? Did you provide
| any alternative they can choose?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > The amount of time and effort spent just doing this
| management work makes up a large portion of working hours.
|
| Not anywhere I've ever worked.
|
| Yeah, such things exist. Yeah, they take a bit of time. "A
| large portion of working hours"? No.
|
| If they actually do take a large portion of working hours, then
| you're at a company that either doesn't have enough work for
| people to do, or else that has work that needs done but the
| people aren't doing it. Either way, that's a place where
| layoffs are likely to show up sometime rather soon, and that's
| a drain to work at in the meantime.
|
| Look around. There's better places out there - places that care
| more about the work, and less about the ceremony. (Don't get me
| wrong, there's still ceremony. It just doesn't dominate.)
| esafak wrote:
| OKR exist to align and motivate the company. It works top down
| and bottom up; the executives announce what the company is
| going to be doing for the next term, and it ripples down as
| each org and team sets goals that are aligned with the plan.
| That's all it has to be; a good thing done right.
|
| Have you worked at a company where you had no idea what the
| plan was and where the company was headed? I have and it is
| frustrating. That is the kind of company that would benefit
| from the alignment that OKRs instill.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| So align the company, no OKRs required.
|
| I'm living OKRs now and they are _the biggest_ waste of time
| I 've ever experienced. They encourage work that fits
| whatever you've nailed yourself to for the quarter. They give
| people who are good at dressing up their work in charts a
| podium. These same people are most often the people who do
| the least real work.
|
| OKRs are unequivocally a disaster for productivity. Real
| output and its impact is not as simple as any box you can
| invent to hold it.
| mateo411 wrote:
| I think it's really hard to do OKRs correctly. It seems
| like you are working at a place that is not doing them
| correctly. I've also worked at places that haven't
| implemented OKRs correctly.
|
| At the very least it appears that not everybody has bought
| into the OKRs and alignment has not been achieved.
| skirmish wrote:
| Same happens with OKRs. Once there is a meeting to review
| them, 2/3 of OKRs have been deprecated and not even started,
| and everybody talks about all this other exciting new work
| they did that is not reflected in OKRs at all. Deprecation
| and new work comes from management. How is that better?
| esafak wrote:
| You should not veer that far off your OKRs, otherwise you
| spend more time on the process than you get back in
| alignment. You describe a company with no resolve. The
| leadership has to want alignment for OKRs to work.
|
| I think it is a good practice in any case to set yourself
| goals, and demand the same of your team or as wide a circle
| as you can influence. It's just shared planning.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| > In the ever-important self-review you're expected to present
| proof to your higher-ups that you're not only worthy of keeping
| the job, but also why you deserve that 4% raise.
|
| While I'm not going to say I'm "quiet quitting" as far as my
| work, I quiet quit a couple of years ago as far as being
| concerned about promotion and raises. I do just enough bs to
| get through the review process knowing that real raises come
| from job hopping.
| eweise wrote:
| Theater and politics is the main reason I liked contracting.
| There's just no bullshit. Do your work and get paid. Feels
| great.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Not dealing with Office politics and incompetent or slow
| management is the main reason I remain a freelancer.
| dtjb wrote:
| Metrics/KPIs/OKRs are how we align large organizations around
| complex outcomes.
|
| Highly effective workers always see these measurements as a
| waste of time, but when you're trying to validate and steer the
| contributions of thousands of workers - with varying levels of
| skill, motivation, and accountability - you need a GPS to make
| sure you're still on the path.
|
| While I think goals and metrics are necessary, I do agree that
| organizations tend to over-formalize the process. "The map is
| not the territory" etc.
| hourago wrote:
| Ironically, all these will be solved by raising everybody 3%
| and that's it. By trying to measure individual performance, the
| company is taking away time from their employees. And the ones
| that end up getting the rise are the best ones at doing
| reviews, not at doing the job.
|
| I prefer that everybody gets the same raise, and that the
| company pays competitive salaries. To spend so much time
| justifying your own job for a company that is making a lot of
| profits makes little sense.
| majormajor wrote:
| In this world your best, most productive people leave because
| they see the weakest performers getting rewarded the same as
| them.
|
| Most people know when people on their team aren't pulling
| their weight. If it isn't addressed by management it turns
| into a demoralizing situation.
| miah_ wrote:
| Same is true in the OKR world, but your most productive are
| leaving because they don't want to play the game or perform
| theater. You still end up with demoralizing situations as
| people who don't want to play the review game are going to
| lose.
| majormajor wrote:
| I'm not saying OKRs are perfect, I'm saying "just don't
| measure performance at all" is a 100%-losing play for a
| manager, whereas if you try to manage performance, you
| have a chance of doing at least an adequate job at it.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| That's how it works in a lot of places in Germany.
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| > I prefer that everybody gets the same raise, and that the
| company pays competitive salaries.
|
| I'm not sure how you square this with promotions (the main
| driver of performance reviews). No company who hired me five
| years ago could have kept me with a constant 3% increase,
| that is _significantly_ less than I achieved through
| promotions, the rate would no longer be competitive.
| lliamander wrote:
| Indeed. I've averaged about 10% per year, and I probably
| could have gone for more.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| That makes sense in a boom cycle, but we're seemingly
| entering a bust now.
|
| This era of CS was probably unique in the history of STEM
| of having high salary rewards for changing jobs quickly.
| This never existed in Medicine, Maths or Engineering really
| (unless you found your own company or such.)
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| My question was about promotions - other engineering
| professions _definitely_ have promotions, and those
| promotions come with >3% pay rises.
|
| Also, even without boom times top engineers will still
| make a lot of money because top positions are still
| insanely hard to fill. I know of several top companies
| with L8+ positions that have been sitting vacant for over
| a year, competition for these candidates is _fierce_.
| devhead wrote:
| i would add that this must include executives; 2 years ago we
| all got the same 3% while executives got 40% (while
| overseeing a stock drop of 65%).
|
| one side effect though is w/o equity it's easy to feel a lack
| of motivation to work as hard if you get the same raise as
| everyone else who might not be doing great work.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| You're actually motivated by equity in a private company
| that will statistically not be worth anything?
| [deleted]
| kenjackson wrote:
| > I just want to get good work done, and go home.
|
| You can do that. You just may not get paid by a third party, if
| no one else can assess or help determine if the work you're
| doing is aligned with what they're trying to accomplish as a
| group. But as an entrepreneur this is probably great. Your
| payment is from customers who have agreed that you've delivered
| something of value.
|
| Of course, I've learned, even with the two startups I've done
| -- once you get above a certain size you do need to ensure
| everyone is aligned on priorities and that there is a structure
| to talk about promotions/pay raises/bonuses. It doesn't have to
| be OKRs and performance reviews, but its some mechanism that
| ends up eventually being equally hated.
| harryquach wrote:
| > The amount of theatre and politics involved in modern work
| culture is exhausting. I just want to get good work done, and
| go home.
|
| Remote work has largely removed the theatrical aspect of my
| position. This is one of the reasons I hope to never work in an
| office again.
| codyb wrote:
| As an experienced developer, I love working remotely. As a
| younger developer, I'm glad I got the office experience a few
| times. Even if, the entire time, I hated the open office
| layouts.
| nkjnlknlk wrote:
| It depends if you're trying to get promoted or not. One of
| the reasons I never aim for a promotion internally--remote or
| in person--is the requirement of theater over everything
| else. It perverts the day to day.
| ssss11 wrote:
| It's probably one of the reasons the managers want you back
| in as well - they want/need the theatre
| jpm_sd wrote:
| "LARPing your job" on Slack seems to be a common issue with
| remote work.
|
| https://annehelen.substack.com/p/larping-your-job
|
| https://www.theawl.com/2015/04/are-you-just-larping-your-
| job...
| Draiken wrote:
| I never understood this. If you can get away with
| "pretending to work" then either you have a bullshit job or
| everyone is in this bullshit rodeo together.
|
| If I work with someone (supervising or not) I know if they
| are working or slacking off. And no, you don't need made up
| metrics or to be sitting next to them for that. If you
| really are in the midst of people that actually get stuff
| done, I should add.
|
| On somewhat of a tangent, I'm not gonna lie: it sometimes
| feels like everything is a big farce in tech.
|
| We write code for useless functionalities on mostly useless
| products. Product managers often don't even understand/use
| the product and copy competitors blindly. C-suite/founders
| pretend they know what they're doing but copy whatever is
| trending at the time (Agile, OKRs, Scrum, squads, etc).
| Investors give out money to people that yell the right
| buzzwords loud enough (and/or have the right connections).
| The list goes on.
|
| The only people that really work are the ones in the lower
| echelons answering support tickets, keeping things running,
| actually committing code, etc. Everyone else sits on
| useless meetings adding "meeting for X" in their reports.
| Ironically those getting things done are the most
| scrutinized for "LARPing" by higher ups.
|
| Maybe I've been really unlucky in my career but I've found
| this to be true in every single job.
| johnea wrote:
| Oh yes, I too would much rather watch the theater from home
| on TV...
| Spivak wrote:
| And during the lulls replacing doom scrolling on Reddit with
| house chores has been a godsend for my mental health. I
| pretty much only go into the office when there's catered food
| (ie when there's planned non-work related socializing).
| ilyt wrote:
| Or just having mid-day break to cook and eat some food in
| peace. Splitting 8h day into 2x 4h parts helped a lot.
| mcbutterbunz wrote:
| And not just food, healthier food (hopefully). Good
| that's fresh and not just microwaved frozen pizza.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > The amount of theatre and politics involved in modern work
| culture is exhausting. I just want to get good work done, and
| go home.
|
| At the heart of it, this is why I tend to avoid working in
| particular parts of the software industry. Not every company
| engages in this sort of thing, and I prefer working for those
| that don't.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| "that you're not only worthy of keeping the job, but also why
| you deserve that 4% raise."
|
| I once 'earned' a 4% raise at a perf review in July. Was then
| was told because I only started in January that year, my raise
| - affecting the pay going forward - was prorated to how long
| I'd worked already, so .. I only get 50% of the 4%, so... 2%
| raise.
|
| Felt far more manipulative and shady than if I'd just been
| given a 2% raise.
| TylerE wrote:
| I would have walked out if someone tried to pull that on me.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| FWIW, I left about 3 months after that. That was the
| tipping point.
| RetpolineDrama wrote:
| You brought this on yourself when you signed up to work at
| $bigCo.
|
| There's a whole wonderful world of startups out there that
| don't work this way, and it sounds like you'd be a lot happier
| there.
| sarchertech wrote:
| I've also worked at plenty of startups that worked just like
| this. Once they hire an engineering VP from bigco, the
| infection spreads quickly.
| [deleted]
| barbazoo wrote:
| Smaller shops too, not just startups. I've been in places
| with ~300 employees that don't have all that ceremony around
| performance and self set goals.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| And ive worked at places with fewer than 50 devs that had
| implemented the okr nonsense with predictable result so
| it's not universal.
|
| The truth is that unless you run the place you really have
| no control over some bigco management getting hired and
| trying to parrot all this stuff
| mjx0 wrote:
| I hate these rituals at $bigCo, but pretty strongly believe I
| need the stability of working for $bigCo to feel happy. Is
| there somewhere that isn't a startup that doesn't have these
| issues?
| dbrueck wrote:
| It's a false sense of security. At a $bigCo, your entire
| division might disappear tomorrow because the Board wants
| to cut costs.
|
| A shift in perspective might help: instead of tying
| "stability" to time at a particular company, think of it in
| overall employment terms, and in that sense things can be
| extremely stable even if you work at a lot of different
| companies.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| >It's a false sense of security. At a $bigCo, your entire
| division might disappear tomorrow because the Board wants
| to cut costs.
|
| I know HN is 90% software guys but if your product is
| physical and you're at $bigCo this happens far less
| often.
|
| More likely you get spun off as a different company.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| You mean like car companies?
|
| https://www.nationalreview.com/news/ford-latest-
| automaker-to...
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Do you _have_ stability at $bigCo? Yes, they 're less
| likely to close up completely. But how likely are you to
| get laid off?
|
| In fact, you can think about OKRs as a cargo-cult magic
| charm to try to keep layoffs from hitting your manager.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| > But how likely are you to get laid off?
|
| Enormously less likely than you are to have a startup or
| SME shut down.
| lnsru wrote:
| As recent tech layoffs showed, job security is an
| illusion even at big corps. I work in toxic and heavily
| understaffed group. And guess what, the guy who loudest
| complained about being understaffed was let go. Problem
| solved!
| Domenic_S wrote:
| > _But how likely are you to get laid off?_
|
| Much less likely, and guaranteed to be with some not-
| unsubstantial severance. Non-RIF layoffs (aka 'firing')
| comes with months or years of warnings.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Have you been paying attention lately? BigCo is laying
| people off by the 10s of thousands.
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| Maybe so, but their culture can be just as horrid.
|
| You've gotta believe in the cause, which is really just a
| narrative used to promote extended work hours and grind.
|
| Then you've got to evangelise and act as a missionary for
| this world changing product ... the business has a cult like
| sheen of "changing the world" and everyone is the smartest
| person in the room just for being smart enough to be there.
|
| Behind the bullshit narrative, everyone is overworked and the
| directors so busy chasing their exit with their legs and
| stroking each other off with their hands that the only tool
| they have left is their mouths. Out of which spews thinly
| veiled promises of a great product to hide their greed.
|
| It's all the same really.
| aprdm wrote:
| Not every startup is like that. There's plenty of 9-5 out
| there. Look for startups with older people who have kids..
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| And plenty of large companies without excessive ceremony.
| Black and white thinking, needless polarization ...
| really gets us nowhere. That was sort of my ham fisted
| point.
| fakedang wrote:
| > the directors so busy chasing their exit with their legs
| and stroking each other off with their hands that the only
| tool they have left is their mouths. Out of which spews
| thinly veiled promises
|
| I wish I didn't visualize this. This could be a Renaissance
| painting.
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| Feed it as a prompt to Stable Diffusion or something and
| its the perfect attack on corporate greed.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| It is always greener on the other side of the fence, but
| sometimes it is greener because the septic tank is leaking.
|
| I did several tour of duty in startups. There were good, bad,
| and ugly, just as much as in $bigCo.
| itisit wrote:
| My armchair wisdom: the degree to which a worker must generate
| metrics, however contrived, in order to provide accountability
| and transparency, however inaccurate, is directly proportional
| to the size and complexity of an organization. There comes a
| point (let's call it the Gibbons Threshold) where the work of
| generating metrics takes more time and effort (and cost) than
| what an outsider would deem to be real work that truly benefits
| the business's bottom line.
| ilyt wrote:
| I'd say it's directly proportional to the incompetence of the
| manager managing the worker.
| jon-wood wrote:
| I think this is a really key thing to take into account when
| choosing where to work. Where I am now I report directly to
| one of the founders, and I'm one step removed from the CEO,
| that means there's approximately zero ceremony around
| tracking achievements and value added. The same was true in
| other small companies I've worked for.
|
| The ceremony starts to be introduced when people become
| further removed from those who are ultimately responsible. In
| my previous job there was a whole process, company wide, to
| ensure everyone got properly ranked based on performance and
| potential. As a management team we'd spend half a day every
| six months just going through this process, which was
| preceded by everyone in the company doing a self-assessment
| that would then be reviewed by your manager. It was all
| incredibly tedious.
|
| Some people thrive in an environment where what you're doing
| is driven by whatever currently seems the most important, and
| value is apparent just from everyone knowing what's going on.
| Others want more structure to things, and a clear path to get
| from where they are to where they want to be. I don't see
| either as being invalid.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| These threads are so wild to me. According to the collective HN
| hive mind, nobody does any real work, managers are totally
| unnecessary, offices are inevitably a waste of time and money,
| companies will try to exploit you at every opportunity, and you
| shouldn't try to work beyond the bare minimum to advance your
| career.
|
| Meanwhile here I am, with a boss who I feel values and respects
| me and who is absolutely critical to my job performance and
| happiness, I make tons of meaningful human connections and
| collaborate 10x better face to face in the office (not to mention
| like my coworkers and like doing things like go to lunch with
| them), have consistently tried to go above and beyond my role's
| requirements and have been rewarded consistently in my career for
| that effort, and absolutely do real, meaningful work every day
| (albeit as a relatively small cog). All while working for a big
| company that has politics and problems and bureaucracy but still
| manages to achieve amazing things despite the hurdles that
| operating at this scale incurs.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| I think a lot of companies don't actually make anything so
| there's no fundamental reason to really care (or if cynical :
| be proud)
|
| As an extreme example - thousands of brilliant engineers would
| pay money to work for F1 teams. Not forever, but a little
| while, and certainly not just for the resume, but to say they
| did it. (I'd be lying if i didn't say I sometimes daydream
| about it.)
|
| As a moderate example - medical technology/devices. It's
| certainly exploited to some degree on the most global
| capitalist level (e.g. you can pay people less if they have
| intrinsic motivation) but there is something neat about working
| a 12 hour day on something that will help sick people get
| better.
| exBarrelSpoiler wrote:
| Sounds great, you've really found the place for you. Only
| question is: what are you doing posting on HN then?
| nkjnlknlk wrote:
| Sounds like you have some combination of:
|
| a) good luck
|
| b) privilege (gender; ethnicity; wealth)
|
| c) a personality that performs the "theater" authentically
|
| d) good people around you
|
| e) alignment on your perceived value between others and
| yourself
|
| That is an envious position and one I'd love to hear more about
| especially since it is at a big company. How did you go about
| finding this opportunity? What were your interview strategies
| for identifying bullshit companies?
| at_ wrote:
| One of the main joys of being a contractor is that this dynamic
| can be turned on its head. No amount of bullshit can save you
| from not delivering on a task you have been explicitly paid to
| do, and people often assume the best (rather than the worst) if
| you shoot for 'silent success' as a delivery mode.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| > No amount of bullshit can save you from not delivering on a
| task you have been explicitly paid to do
|
| IBM and Accenture are masters at the bullshit of not delivering
| so they can keep on billing.
| acheron wrote:
| "If you can't be part of the solution, there's a lot of money
| to be made prolonging the problem."
| manicennui wrote:
| https://despair.com/collections/demotivators/products/consu
| l...
| acheron wrote:
| Yep, that's the one. I think about it a lot.
| munificent wrote:
| I understand why many people will perceive this article as saying
| that the workplace is inherentely inauthentic or dishonest, but
| many sociologists will tell you that _all_ social venues are
| theatre-like.
|
| As humans, we have many roles that we take on for the different
| contexts that we live in. Me as "dad" at home with the kids, me
| as "husband" with my wife after the kids go to bed, and me as
| "employee" at work are very different roles. I use different
| language, have different goals, different tone, different energy
| level.
|
| At the same time, none of those are any less "me". They are all
| authentic. They're just contextual.
|
| And it is entirely natural that knowledge work requires social
| skills and performance. You may write the most beautiful
| efficient code in the world, but if it lands in the repo without
| anyone noticing, it has no effect. It must be seen and used by
| other humans to provide value.
| imbnwa wrote:
| >I understand why many people will perceive this article as
| saying that the workplace is inherentely inauthentic or
| dishonest, but many sociologists will tell you that all social
| venues are theatre-like.
|
| The sociologists all got this from Kant as many of the 'human
| sciences' were deeply influenced by him. Auguste Comte, widely
| viewed as the founder of the discipline, was a notable Kantian.
|
| From Kant's Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View:
|
| "On the whole, the more civilized human beings are, the more
| they are actors. They adopt the illusion of affection, of
| respect for others, of modesty, and of unselfishness without
| deceiving anyone at all, because it is understood by everyone
| that nothing is meant sincerely by this. And it is also very
| good that this happens in the world. For when human beings play
| these roles, eventually the virtues, whose illusion they have
| merely affected for a considerable length of time, will
| gradually really be aroused and merge into the disposition."
| nkjnlknlk wrote:
| > Me as "dad" at home with the kids, me as "husband" with my
| wife after the kids go to bed, and me as "employee" at work are
| very different roles. I use different language, have different
| goals, different tone, different energy level.
|
| FYI this type of code-switching is not universally present for
| everyone though it may be for you. Some people are their
| "authentic" selves the majority of the time. It is often
| suboptimal to be that way though.
| munificent wrote:
| _> FYI this type of code-switching is not universally present
| for everyone though it may be for you._
|
| There's a difference between overt code-switching like people
| do when among members of their own race versus others
| compared to the more basic "I don't tell dirty jokes around
| grandma but I do around my bros."
|
| _> Some people are their "authentic" selves the majority of
| the time._
|
| I don't think of any of these roles are inauthentic. People
| contain multitudes.
|
| You're right that _some_ people deliberately collapse their
| roles and behave mostly the same across all contexts. I think
| it 's usually done as a sort of power play to show that they
| don't _have_ to behave differently to suit others around
| them. Trump is a good example.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| The most obvious example I can think of is the "walk and talk".
| For a casual work conversation, walk around the office and talk
| to your peer. You are literally going around performing work for
| an audience, intentionally or not. Sure, "presentations" are also
| performance, but are really a caricature of work.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| A few years ago I was offered a job with a very long commute. The
| pay was good and the recruiter assured my that I could work from
| home half the time (this was all pre-covid.)
|
| After a few months I got some bad feedback from my manager's
| manager. I rarely had a need to talk to him directly so I almost
| never saw him or messaged him. He was convinced that however we
| were tracking story points said that I was less productive from
| home and I needed to come in more.
|
| I came in every day for a week before returning back to my normal
| two days at home three in the office routine. Shortly after that
| the office got reorganized and that manager's desk just happened
| to end up near my new one. Obviously I started seeing him a lot
| more and he gave my manager feedback that I was doing much better
| work. Nothing had changed.
|
| Work definitely feels like a theater.
| RajT88 wrote:
| I've been noodling about this for years now, without really
| coming up with such a concise thesis.
|
| A notable example from my prior job:
|
| There was a developer who during the early phase of cloud
| adoption, wrote some wrappers in powershell for the Azure
| Powershell cmdlets. They did some quality of life of stuff, and
| he checked into source control dozens of these wrappers. I recall
| it being about 80. He got talked about as _the azure guy_.
|
| Some time goes by. I need to do some Azure automation, so I look
| into those wrappers. They don't do anything useful for most use
| cases; I write my own automation from scratch. I go on to have
| many interactions with this dev; he doesn't really know Azure
| particularly well, but still has the reputation of being _the
| azure guy_. I am pretty sure nobody calling him _the azure guy_
| actually ever used any of those scripts, and I 'm similarly
| confident those scripts never got used for anything _even by
| him_.
|
| Don't get me wrong - was a smart and nice guy, and a good dev and
| great at his job. But - the mythos he had built with those ~80
| files checked into source control allowed him to find
| opportunities to work with Azure and get to know it better. I
| eventually left the company. Who knows, maybe he really is an
| Azure guru now?
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| Timing is everything
|
| For years I was "the big data/programming" guy at a small ~1k
| total employee company because I spent a lot of time with a lot
| of freshly available data sources, internal documentation and
| code, python, PHP and Apache
|
| But I never studied anything close to it, just right place,
| right time and made some tools to help out people/part of the
| business that needed help.
|
| (They were, for reasons not of their own making operating with
| sticks and stones. Those tools are also software sticks and
| stones but with ugly glue all over, but they work and that's
| what was needed and what was done)
|
| I'm sure
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